Balls Up

by Lexxie Couper

  The attendant let out another breathy giggle.

  Curtis spun on his heel.

  Made his way back to his seat.

  Dropped into it, snatched up his headphones and hit play on his screen again.

  Fuck this. Fuck this whole insanity.

  Glaring at the screen, Curtis watched Dead Even 3 begin to play again from the beginning. Stared at the small rectangle of moving light and colour. Willed himself not to see the dark shapes of Rhys McDowell and the first-class attendant making their way down the aisle, passing Rhys’s seat, and through the curtain leading to the rest of the plane.

  Heading towards where—Curtis knew from first-hand experience—the crew berths were located.

  An indefinable sensation churned in his gut, hot and cold and empty at once.

  Jealousy. That’s what it is. You’re jealous. Not of Rhys getting the flight attendant, but of Rhys wanting the flight attendant. Of taking her when you really want him to take—

  Balling his fists, he killed the unwanted thought. Shut it down before it could unravel him.

  It was time to move on. Time to remember the very words he’d uttered to McDowell a mere moment ago: he wasn’t gay.

  Which meant whatever Rhys McDowell was going to do with the flight attendant had zero impact on Curtis now.

  Zero. Nadda. Zilch. Zip.

  Fuck Rhys McDowell.

  He was just a loser soccer player anyways.

  Right, right.

  He couldn’t get it up.

  For the first time in forever, Rhys couldn’t get it up.

  He’d been as hard as a bloody pole for the whole damn flight. Had damn near passed out from blood loss to the brain because his cock had been that full of the stuff, all thanks to Curtis I’m-not-freaking-gay Clarkson. And now he was ensconced in one of the crew rest sections, curtained off in snuggly privacy with the very accommodating, very sexy flight attendant, and he couldn’t get it up.

  Dropping his head back against the reclined seat’s headrest, he let out a self-deprecating snort. “Well, this doesn’t bode well for my reputation, does it?”

  Between his knees, her belly pressed to his groin, her fingers splayed over his bare chest, the flight attendant made a dismissive sound. “Jet lag gets to the best of us.”

  Rhys let out a wry bark of a laugh. The best of us. Huh. A term he’d never ever apply to himself once in his life.

  “It’s no biggie.”

  To show him how much of a no biggie it was, the flight attendant pressed a kiss to his solar plexus, sliding her palms over his chest before giving his nipples a gentle pinch.

  Rhys waited for a hot spasm of appreciation at her touch to claim his flaccid cock.

  Nothing.

  Fuck.

  Lifting his head, he offered her a grin. “Guess it’s back to first class for me, ‘eh?”

  The flight attendant—damn, he really should at least take a look at her name badge—smiled. “It would seem so. Maybe you can go give Curtis Clarkson a hard time.”

  Rhys’s cock twitched.

  He burst out laughing, hoping to fuck to hide his body’s reaction to the cricket player’s name with his ridiculous guffaws.

  The flight attendant giggled.

  Yay. Success. Finally.

  With one last languid slide up his body, she brushed her lips to his. “Maybe next flight, yes? Or I could always give you my number?”

  “Sure, sure,” Rhys answered, squirming beneath her.

  Shit, he really wanted out of here. Like, now.

  He wanted to get back to his seat.

  He wanted—

  To be closer to Clarkson?

  “Or,” he said, grinding his teeth as he grabbed the attendant’s luscious backside in a suggestive squeeze, “we could give it one more go?”

  She let out a husky laugh. “Sure.”

  One more go turned into one more joke. If it were possible, Rhys was positive his cock freaking well retracted into his body. A soft, noodle-retracting thing that made him want to punch I’m-not-gay Clarkson in the face.

  The flight attendant—Schellie, my name’s Schellie—dismissed Rhys’s utter failure to rise to the occasion with another friendly laugh.

  “Next time,” she promised as she adjusted her uniform and smoothed her hair. “Whenever that will be.”

  Before he could respond with some lame attempt at humour, she dropped a quick kiss on his cheek—his cheek! Like he was a cousin or something—and slipped through the curtain. Leaving him alone in the dark crew berth.

  Rising to his feet, he glared down at his flaccid cock.

  “Thanks,” he muttered.

  His cock hung inert against his thigh.

  He glared at it some more.

  “Curtis Clarkson,” he said, drawing an image of the ex-Australian captain into his mind.

  A hot spasm claimed his cock. His balls grew heavier.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Rhys threw up his hands, rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  Grabbing his jeans, he yanked them up over his hips, shoved his still-limp, but potentially interested dick into them and zipped up his fly. All with a scowl and a muttered “fucking Curtis Clarkson.”

  In fact, he muttered fucking Curtis Clarkson at least five times as he redressed. Every time he did, his cock gave a happy little spasm in his jeans.

  By the time he stormed back up to first class, he was ready to grab Clarkson by the shoulders, shake the shit out of him and tell him to stop being a fucking wanker.

  Of course, he didn’t do any of those things.

  What he did was drop into his seat with a wide, thoroughly satisfied smirk on his face, rub at his belly, adjust his package—yep, there it goes, getting harder even at the mere thought of Curtis being in his proximity—and snap his headphones over his ears.

  He didn’t let himself look over to where the cricket player sat. Didn’t let himself see if Clarkson had watched his rather dramatic entrance.

  Didn’t let himself imagine open jealousy on the man’s face as Curtis gazed at him from the other side of the cabin.

  Well, not much.

  Turning on his personal entertainment screen, he jabbed at it a few time, bringing up a movie he fully intended to watch.

  Chris Huntley’s latest Dead Even movie.

  That would keep his mind off the annoying, irritating pain in the arse.

  It wasn’t until the credits scrolled up the screen, to the sound of Josh Blackthorne singing the closing track, that Rhys realized he had no freaking clue what had happened in the movie.

  None.

  One hundred and sixty-two minutes of Chris Huntley running about being the epitome of an action-hero sex symbol, all with a soundtrack care of the man Rhys loved like no other, and Rhys had no idea what he’d just watched. Or listened to.

  For all he knew, it could have been Patton Oswalt running about bare chested saving the free world from zealous terrorists, with The Wiggles providing the soundtrack.

  Fuck.

  Removing his headphones from his ears, he slid his gaze across the cabin.

  And drew in a shaky breath when his stare collided with Curtis’s.

  The man jerked his head away, looking out the window.

  “Too late. I saw the way you looked at him.”

  The smug whisper snapped Rhys’s attention to the woman sitting in the seat between him and Curtis. It dawned on him, somewhere in his fugue, the plane had switched from nighttime mode to morning/breakfast mode. The shutters were all up on the windows and the smell of rich coffee and bacon filled the cabin.

  When the fuck had that happened?

  Angel curled her lips at him in an expression he could only assume she considered a smile. To him, it looked like the kind of face a lion would make after finding a baby gazelle asleep in the middle of its den.

  “Sneak off with a horny flight attendant all you like, McDowell,” Angel said, each word exquisitely articulated on a husky breath, “but I know who you really
want. That’s right, I saw you both. Shame the toilets aren’t big enough for two.”

  “Weren’t you busted trying to join the mile-high club last year, Angel?” Rhys enquired, fighting to keep his heart steady. Jesus, it really did seem that the reporter had a bee in her bonnet over this. How would the Australian public react to any slanderous report?

  He waved a hand and made a goofy laughing sound. “No wait, I was thinking of an article on the mating practices of vultures I read a while ago. No wonder I got the two mixed up.”

  Angel narrowed her eyes. “I can’t believe I had sex with you.”

  Rhys winked. “But you did. And you can never un-have sex with me.”

  Whatever Angel was going to say next was interrupted by the arrival of breakfast.

  Normally a total fan of inflight food, Rhys barely tasted his scrambled eggs (organic, of course), toasted brioche and free-range pork sausages with grilled field mushrooms. Nor did he savour the vanilla and buttermilk pancakes with apple compote and mascarpone cream he’d ordered as an extra. Food he normally indulged in during off-season with such delight it was almost sexual in its rush.

  Instead, he poked at the food with his fork, moving it around the plate with disinterest.

  He knew Angel watched him.

  Knew the gleam in her eye would be one-hundred percent calculating.

  Knew she slid her stare from him to Curtis often.

  Unfortunately, no matter their verbal sparring, he couldn’t find his appetite.

  That’s because you only have an appetite for one thing now, McDowell. One thing. And for the first time in how many fucking years, it’s not Josh Blackthorne.

  Before he could stop himself, he gave Curtis a sideways glance.

  The cricket player was staring into his coffee, his breakfast—scrambled eggs, just like Rhys’s—also seemingly untouched.

  The fact Curtis had ordered the same meal as him, and seemed to be just as disinterested in eating it, sent a lick of something close to joy through Rhys.

  Joy and hope.

  Without thinking about what he was doing, acting purely on gut instinct—it was, after all, the way he lived his life—he picked up the plump strawberry acting as a garnish on the side of his pancakes plate and lobbed it over Angel’s head.

  It struck Curtis’s temple with a soft thud.

  Curtis snapped straight, jerking his head in Rhys’s direction, a confused frown pulling at his eyebrows.

  “I didn’t have any Vegemite,” Rhys said.

  Curtis regarded him with an unreadable gaze.

  Between them both, Angel did that tennis-watching-head-swinging thing she seemed to love so much.

  Rhys didn’t look away.

  His gut clenched.

  Curtis studied him. Silent. His expression enigmatic.

  And then, with a slight twitch of his lips, he picked up the strawberry from where it had landed on his scrambled eggs and popped it into his mouth.

  Rhys grinned, and turned back to his breakfast.

  For some fucking reason, he was suddenly bloody starving.

  Chapter Five

  Curtis wouldn’t let himself speak to Rhys.

  Not as they disembarked the plane, not as they strode through the gangway.

  He couldn’t.

  If he did, if he interacted with the guy on any level¸ he’d succumb to the desire gnawing in his gut and kiss the bastard right there for everyone to see.

  He had things to sort out in his head, in his life, before he did that.

  Like for starters, was he, in fact, gay?

  Surely the intensity of his ache for McDowell suggested he was.

  The thought scratched at him constantly as he made his way through customs. It gouged into his focus as he made small-talk with the customs official—a beaming man who tried not to show how excited he was that Curtis was standing before him—and distracted him as he posed for selfies with more than one cricket fan while waiting for his luggage to arrive.

  Rhys stood a few feet away, dealing with his own fans.

  Fans, Curtis couldn’t help but notice, who were far more open in their lust for the guy than Curtis’s. Giggling, squeeing young women who rubbed themselves against Rhys as they took photo after photo with him on their smartphones.

  Standing on the other side of the luggage conveyor belt, her eyes twinkling with smug delight, Angel watched both of them.

  Twice, she raised her phone in the universally recognised just-taking-a-quick-snap position—once at Rhys, once at Curtis.

  Whether he, Curtis, was gay or not, Angel Waters was going to report it as such. She’d spent the duration of the flight watching them both like hawks. If nothing else, he’d have to contact his manager and his PR agent, and prepare them for what was to come.

  And what is to come, Clarkson?

  The sight of his single suit bag moving toward him on the conveyor belt saved him contemplating an answer.

  Here, in the Sydney International Airport, was not the place for such…decisions.

  Forcing himself to not look at Rhys, he scooped up his suit bag, flung it over his shoulder and strode through the exit that, after navigating a ridiculous stretch of duty-free shops, led him into the public arrivals terminal.

  “Clarkson!”

  At the familiar voice behind him, he froze.

  Turned.

  Rhys walked up to him, stopping a foot away. Still inside the security area.

  Curtis stood. Stared at him. His throat grew tight. His chest tighter.

  Damn it, why did his body react so…so powerfully when he looked at the bastard?

  Passengers hurrying to greet their loved ones and/or limo drivers bustled past them. More than one gave them both curious frowns.

  “So,” Rhys finally said, his voice strained, “am I going to hear from you at any stage?”

  Curtis swallowed.

  Rhys chuckled, the sound as strained as his voice. “No pressure.”

  “I…”

  A warm, soft body slammed into Curtis. Followed instantly by two slim arms wrapping around his waist as warm, soft lips pressed to his cheek.

  In the second it took Curtis to completely be thrown off balance, to steady himself and the woman now kissing him with laughing fervor, he saw shocked disbelief fill Rhys’s face, followed by bleak acceptance.

  And then Rhys was pushing past him, saying something about needing to find a rock star who was no doubt waiting for him, and Curtis was left with the woman whose friendly hug he loved more than anything.

  Turning in her embrace, he hauled her off her feet, even as he watched Rhys hurry out into the crowded arrivals terminal. “Bethany Sloan, are you getting fat?”

  She laughed, whacking him on the shoulder as she wriggled in his arms. “I’m pregnant, idiot. Of course I’m getting fat.”

  Curtis lowered her to her feet again, slung his arm around her shoulders and began walking into the crowd. Ahead of him, he saw Rhys weaving his way through the masses, head ducked.

  A dull weight sat in Curtis’s gut. His tight throat made it tricky to swallow. “You’re pregnant?” he exclaimed, trying to look back at his best friend’s wife. “When the hell did that happen?”

  Bethany laughed. Said something.

  Curtis tracked Rhys’s hurried path through the terminal. Watched him dodge a group of giggling women wearing bright purple sashes emblazoned with Helen’s Hen Night from Hell in gold script, who had just recognised him.

  Something sharp poked Curtis in the rib, jerking his stare from the fleeing man.

  “Oi.” He frowned at Bethany. “That hurt.”

  Bethany studied him, her hip bumping his as they walked side by side, eyes narrowed. “It was meant to. What’s going on?”

  Curtis’s pulse kicked up a notch, thumping hard and fast in his tight throat. “Nothing. What do you mean?”

  Before Bethany could reply, Curtis’s best mate appeared in front of them, hand out, glasses low on his hooked nose.

 
“Clarkson.” Logan Hill—one of the world’s wealthiest men, and an IT guru to rival any other—shook Curtis’s hand. “Good flight?”

  Curtis stared at Logan. Turned his gaze to Bethany. Moved it back to Logan.

  His head roared. His heart slammed in his chest, his ears.

  “Curtis?” Logan frowned, dropping his hand. “What’s up?”

  Curtis looked at them.

  The two most important people in his life were there, right there in front of him, welcoming him home, sharing with him—if the small bump in Bethany’s belly was anything to go by—news more incredible and wonderful than Curtis could fathom, and all he could think about was the man now running through the terminal’s automatic glass doors.

  The man met by a massive mountain of muscle on the sidewalk who—as Curtis watched—directed Rhys with protective might towards a black Audi waiting at the kerb.

  “Curtis?” Bethany’s worried voice stroked at his sanity, her American accent thick with concern. Her arm around his waist tightened with a gentle shake. “Hey, care to share what’s going on?”

  Letting out a ragged sigh, Curtis dragged his stare from the sight of Rhys climbing into the backseat of the Audi and gave his friends a wry smile.

  “I think,” he said, scrubbing at the back of his neck with a shaky hand, “I have an important favour to ask.”

  The distinct smell of supple leather upholstery invaded Rhys’s senses, a heartbeat before the distinct smell of Josh Blackthorne did the same.

  “I see you’re sticking to your normal M.O. for arriving in the country?”

  At his best friend’s chuckled question, Rhys settled himself into the seat beside him in the back of the Audi, fixed Josh with a wide grin and waited for the pounding pulse, the clenching stomach and the yearning ache to begin.

  When it came to being in Josh’s company, that was Rhys’s normal M.O.

  Except this time…

  “Huh,” Rhys grunted. “Well there’s a shock.”

  Josh frowned at him. “What’s a shock?”

  Rhys opened his mouth. Thought about the words in his head and closed his mouth again.

  He didn’t actually know how he’d explain I’m not horny. Not without spilling the beans about the way he’d felt for Josh since they were teenagers, and the last thing he wanted to do was make things uber awkward with Josh.