Power Play

by Avon Gale

  Max just nodded. “Yeah. You said it was illegal there.”

  Max had no idea that Misha had never admitted out loud that he was gay. Not even to himself. He had hinted and talked around it. But he had never given the words a chance to echo, to be heard and remembered.

  “Yes. It’s illegal,” Misha said, still too caught up in the enormity of the moment to say much more. And what was there to say, really? He was gay and he’d been that way his whole life, and it wasn’t something that went away just because he wanted it to. It was a thing he kept hidden, secret. It had almost cost him his life. But that was years before, in a different country. His fear had eased, but he’d never been comfortable with it. Not really.

  “I’d want to leave too,” Max said simply.

  I left because my father threatened to gut me like a stuck pig. He would not say that to Max. Max had had enough of Misha’s darkness for a lifetime. Certainly for the evening.

  “I thought I was straight,” Max said, bringing Misha’s attention back to him. “And then I went on this trip to Mexico. Right? It was supposed to be my honeymoon, but since that didn’t happen, I just went with some friends. And when I was there, I got drunk and blew the bartender. His name was Javier.”

  As far as confessions went, Misha enjoyed that one a lot more than his own. The image of Max, sweat-soaked and tan from the sun, on his knees on a sultry beach, sucking off a man he hardly knew.

  “I did it, like, four times. And once his friends were there. I blew them too.” Max looked at Misha, not embarrassed as much as curious. “And there’s you. So. I don’t know if that’s enough cocksucking to make me good at this yet or not.” He gave Misha a hopeful smile. “But I figure if you give me some more lessons, I’ll catch up pretty quick.” He winked.

  Misha set his glass on the counter, walked around to Max, and leaned in to kiss him. It was a slow, heated kiss and it didn’t feel as urgent as it did earlier in his office. He felt no guilt and he wanted to take his time and enjoy it. He could feel Max slide his hand almost shyly across his stomach, but Max kissed back without hesitation—as eager and open with that as he was with anything else.

  “You’re not going to make another head coach joke, are you?” Misha asked when they moved apart. He wanted to forget about dinner and take Max to bed. The thought of having Max naked, spread out in Misha’s bed, which was actually big enough for the both of them, unlike the one in the Super 8—was as intoxicating as the vodka.

  “Who said I was joking?” Max’s voice was caught and heavy and rough with desire. Misha once again couldn’t quite believe it was happening—that someone like Max wanted anything to do with him, especially after the accident that brought them together.

  Max liked the pirozhki, which he called pierogies, and he told Misha a funny story about his attempts to cook when he was in college. Afterward he insisted on helping with the dishes, though he wasn’t all that helpful, since his closeness drove Misha crazy with want.

  When they were done doing the few dishes, the tension began to grow at a noticeable rate. Max had proven himself capable of initiating things, even if he wasn’t as experienced. Misha wasn’t surprised when Max pushed him gently against the fridge and settled himself against Misha.

  “You feel really good,” Max said, staring up at him. His pupils were already dilated.

  Misha wasn’t promiscuous, but he certainly hadn’t lived like a saint. Granted, he was in the habit of paying for sex, but even when he wasn’t, even when it was supposed to be about mutual want... it was never quite like it was with Max. No one had ever wanted him as much as Max.

  “So do you,” he said and leaned in to mouth at Max’s neck. “Do you want to go to bed?”

  “Fuck. You’re so good at this,” Max told him. Before Misha could say anything, Max grabbed his face in both hands and pulled him in to kiss him with exuberance. “Hell yes. I want to go to bed. That’s what I was hoping you meant when you invited me over for dinner.” He paused. “Not that I didn’t like the pierogies.”

  When they were in Misha’s bedroom, Max gave a low whistle at the size of Misha’s bed. “King-size, eh? Nice choice.”

  “I’m too tall for the other ones,” Misha said.

  Max must have noticed his defensiveness, because he peered at Misha and asked, “Why do you do that? Is it a Russian thing?”

  “Wanting a bed that I can fit on?” Misha wished Max would go back to kissing and less talking.

  “Ha-ha,” Max said, even though Misha wasn’t joking. “I mean, how you told me the house was a good investment, and the bed fits you.”

  “Those things are true,” Misha answered, slowly, confused.

  “Yeah, but like... dude.” Max laughed. “I had a house with six bedrooms, five-and-a-half bathrooms, and a theater room. My fiancée and I did, I mean. No way did I need all that room. I just wanted it.” His face flushed. “Which is kind of embarrassing to admit, but.... You can spend your money on shit just because you want it, you know.”

  “And you can want things for practical reasons,” Misha said, though Max being in his bedroom was proof that Misha was learning to want things that were impractical.

  Max shrugged again, as easily as ever. “Probably just one of those differences between our cultures,” he joked. “So, what—”

  “Max,” Misha interrupted. He took Max by the arm, as he’d done earlier that day in the hallway. He hadn’t missed how much Max liked the aggression, and though it stirred certain urges that Misha wasn’t sure he was comfortable indulging in, it did bring the focus back to the here and now.

  Misha’s bedroom. Sex. A bed. Max. Misha wanted to fuck him so badly he was dizzy with it. He didn’t do that much anymore. His occasional one-night stands were almost exclusively oral with occasional fingering or toys. He could hardly remember the last one, and he certainly hadn’t been with anyone since he moved to South Carolina.

  Misha wanted to fuck Max. He wanted to do it with Max on his back, looking up at him with those wide, green eyes. Wanted to watch Max fall apart, hear the sounds he made, see every single emotion playing across his handsome features. But Max, by his own admission, was new to all of that. Perhaps it was not yet time for what Misha wanted.

  The thought of teaching Max how to take pleasure from a man was so arousing that Misha had to reach down and press a hand against himself.

  He put Max on his back and lay between his legs. Max responded to the blowjob much as he had that first time. Max writhed and made as much noise as before. He grabbed at Misha’s hair and twisted beneath him. Half-finished sentences tumbled from his mouth in beautiful, thoughtless abandon.

  Misha brought Max to the edge of orgasm twice and gently backed him off, and Max cursed him for being a cocktease. Misha couldn’t remember smiling that much in bed, even with men he wasn’t paying.

  He redoubled his efforts and brought Max once more to the brink with quick, expert precision. When Max panted and twisted beneath him, Misha gently pressed his fingers beneath Max’s balls and rubbed them over his hole. Just to see.

  “Do you think I’ll like that?”

  It was the most coherent sentence Max had managed in a few minutes, so Misha raised his head, careful to keep stimulating Max’s cock so Max didn’t kick him or call him any more names. Max was naked and covered in sweat. His whole body shivered, and his mouth parted. It was enough to make Misha lose the care with which he usually treated Max and say, “One way to find out. Yes?”

  Max lifted himself up on his elbows and blinked down at Misha with glazed eyes. “Do you like it? You’re... y’know. The expert and all.”

  Misha’s equilibrium shook dangerously, but maybe he should get used to it. It seemed to happen a lot around Max. He kissed Max and then reached for the lube he kept in his bedside table. “I’ll stop. If you don’t like it. But yes. I think you will. And yes. I like it.”

  Misha couldn’t lie when he stared into Max’s eyes. It was like Max could see into his heart, even with its shad
ows. Even when they were drowning him.

  “Go for it,” Max said and leaned back in the bed. “If you think I’ll like it, I trust you.” Max ran his fingers through Misha’s hair.

  Misha only got to two fingers before a firm brush over Max’s prostate made him arch up off the bed and come with a loud, almost surprised shout. Misha took Max down his throat. He loved the way the hard flesh pulsed in his mouth. That it was Max’s cock, Max’s flesh, drove him to push his hips restlessly on the bed in search of friction.

  Max trembled when Misha finally sat up and tried to breathe. He tried to ignore how easy it would be to lube his cock and slide inside Max—to feel that tightness and heat all around him.

  “Holy fuck,” Max panted. “Why did it take me so long to be bi? That was amazing.”

  Despite how badly Misha wanted his own release, he put his face on Max’s stomach and laughed. It felt almost as good as it did a little while later, when he tangled his hands in Max’s hair and came in Max’s mouth while Max rubbed Misha’s thighs up and down like he was soothing him. Like he was calming him.

  Chapter Seven

  The Spitfires won three of their next four games. Their only loss came courtesy of a shootout with the Athens Ice Dogs.

  Attendance rose steadily for their home games, which might have been thanks to their winning streak or maybe had something to do with Belsey giving away a car at the end of each one. He said they were donated by a local dealership as a form of advertising, but Max was convinced Belsey was just buying the cars himself and giving them away. He seemed to have a lot of money, but Max wasn’t sure how. He didn’t ask because he was afraid some guy named Jimmy would show up and break his kneecaps.

  It would be nice if Max could win one of those cars. In hindsight purchasing a used Jeep Wrangler was a stupid idea. Somehow he had equated Spartanburg with places like Charleston, not realizing that the weather did indeed get cold in the winter. Sure it wasn’t Duluth, but it wasn’t exactly the beach either. He should have opted for a more sensible vehicle.

  A hailstorm at the end of October put a few nasty dents in the Jeep. Misha told him to park under the carport on the night of the storm, but Max didn’t want to leave Misha and his Magic Fingers to move it. Max pointed out that only one car fit in the carport, so one of their cars was bound to get damaged. But Misha just gave him the “my pain means nothing” look, followed Max to the dealership to drop his car off, and then took him back to his apartment to pick up some clean shirts.

  It wasn’t like Max was living with Misha or anything. He was just staying with him while his car was being repaired so he could have a ride to work in the morning. And so that someone would make him dinner that didn’t involve a box and sauce packets—and then take him to bed and make him lose his mind.

  On the ice Misha was all solemn and imposing. Max thought about his wicked grin, his fingers that drove Max nearly insane with pleasure, his mouth that sucked cock really well, and a habit of speaking in Russian when he got really turned on. It was a good thing that whole Cold War thing was over, because Max really had a thing for Misha speaking Russian.

  Max really had a thing for Misha, period.

  The trip to Mexico confirmed his interest in cock, but it never occurred to Max that he might have feelings for someone of his own gender. In a weird, probably vaguely offensive way, Max just assumed he was only interested in sleeping with men for fun and figured he’d end up in a more serious, permanent relationship with a woman.

  He tried reading about bisexuality on the Internet, but he either didn’t understand what they were talking about, or got distracted by some pretty hot porn.

  Max could easily admit he was bisexual—or, okay, it seemed stupid to not admit it. It wasn’t like it upset him or anything. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal, because he played professional hockey and he’d seen things, heard things, that he never thought too much about. Obviously when you put a bunch of hypercompetitive alpha males together, things happened. Like in prison, or at least like in the prisons in the movies Max watched on the Internet. He knew a few guys in Montreal, teammates of his, who were married and still fucked around with each other because they needed to “blow off some steam.”

  Max knew exactly what they needed to blow off, and it sure as hell wasn’t steam. If it was, they needed to see a doctor. At first he thought they were just being French-Canadians. But later he found out that one of them was from Lansing and another was from Alberta. So maybe not.

  Max didn’t think as much in terms of sexuality as he did commitment. Naively he just assumed that, when it came time to settle down for real, he’d do so with a girl. Like Emma—but maybe one who didn’t fucking leave him with hospital bills and a mortgage foreclosure so she could marry a baseball player.

  But he wasn’t so sure anymore. Max was falling for Misha in a way that meant more than just sex, and that was.... Well, that was a lot more surprising than anything that had to do with blowjobs. Or how much he liked having fingers in his ass.

  He didn’t know what to do about it because, on the one hand, he liked it. He liked Misha’s company, liked how he looked naked, and he even liked that weird Russian music he sometimes sang along to when he thought Max wasn’t listening.

  What Max didn’t like was Misha’s tendency to brood, the way he still tensed up if Max said anything about the accident or referenced his past career, and the way he was so quick to defer things for Max’s benefit.

  When they ordered pizza, Misha would stoically pick off all the meat instead of just ordering it half-and-half because Max might want more than half.

  Then there were the millions of secrets Misha didn’t want to share, the migraines he refused to take medicine for, and the past he absolutely would not talk about. Max, on the other hand, had no secrets at all. Misha knew just about everything there was to know about him, because Max had no reason not to tell him stuff. He knew about Max’s parents, Emma, and the bartenders in Mexico. He knew about the guys Max now realized he’d had a crush on back in Montreal. He knew what Max’s favorite beer was, and how crispy Max liked his bacon.

  And while Misha liked getting blowjobs, liked having Max climb on top of him and grind until they both got off, and even though he said he liked being fingered, he wouldn’t let Max do it. And Max wanted to, because he thought it was cheating to be with a guy and just do the kissing-grinding-blowjob thing. Besides, he wanted to see if Misha went to pieces for Max, just like Max did for him.

  He was also pretty sure he wanted Misha to fuck him, because holy hell, if it felt that incredible with fingers, Max could only imagine that Misha’s cock—his big, thick cock—would feel so good in his ass that Max might die.

  He knew Misha wanted it too. One morning in the shower, while Max jacked Misha off and sucked on his neck, Max asked him if he wanted to fuck him, and Misha groaned and came all over them both before Max was finished talking.

  But Max decided that he wouldn’t allow Misha to fuck him until he either told Max what his deal was or let Max finger him. There could be a valid reason, and Max could respect that, but he kept remembering Misha saying he’d liked it, and Misha wasn’t the type to lie. He couldn’t even get his own favorite toppings on a pizza, for fuck’s sake. So Max wanted to know why Misha seemed so hesitant if he liked it so much.

  And he had a hockey team to coach, which was harder than his coaching gig at Duluth, where he’d been just one of three assistants. But together he and Misha were proving to be a successful team. Misha was technically brilliant and had a great way of motivating the players. His cold-as-death stare suggested they shut up and do what he said. And Max was discovering a real knack for translating Mishaspeak.

  People always accused Max of being a sunny, positive bastard, which made him a bit of a rarity in Montreal, where fans weren’t so much optimistic as they were delusional when it came to their hockey team. No one but the Habs would have a popular website that was called 25Stanley, in reference to the 25th Stanley Cup they
hadn’t technically won yet. But Max was as excited to win games from behind the bench as he’d been on the ice. He felt a real connection to the guys on the team—his team—and took pride in how well they were playing.

  Max waited for Misha after practice so he could finally retrieve his car. It had been ready for a few days, maybe even a week—long enough that the guy from the dealership had made some not-so-vague threats about “selling your damn Jeep to my cousin for six bucks and a pack of smokes.” While he waited he noticed the Spitfires’ goalie, Isaac Drake, having a heated conversation by the side of the building.

  Drake, whose antagonism had mellowed that season because he had a competent team playing in front of him, was still hot-tempered and had a tendency to yell at his teammates. But everyone was used to him by then, and while it was unusual to have a goalie for a captain, Misha’s instincts had been spot-on. Drake took his responsibilities seriously—and not a little violently. Maybe that was too strong a word. Maybe passionately was better.

  He didn’t seem very happy at the moment, and whomever he was talking to wasn’t a teammate. Max wondered briefly if it was Drake’s father. He hoped not, considering they were having a heated discussion and Max wasn’t keen on interrupting parent-child bickering.

  There was something about the way the man was acting toward Drake that made Max uneasy. He wasn’t overly aggressive, but he was standing too close and clearly invading Drake’s personal space despite Drake’s obvious displeasure.

  “... told you. Don’t come here. Okay? It’s not—” Drake stopped as Max got closer, and Max saw something very much like fear cross Drake’s face. Drake never looked afraid of anything, and Max’s unease grew. “Something wrong, Coach Ashford?”

  “Just waiting for Coach Samarin,” Max said. “You all right, Drake?” He addressed it to his player, but Max looked at Drake’s companion when he spoke.