Divisions (Dev and Lee) (19 page)

“And she was definitely a she?”

I shake my head. “Okay, I hate to admit you were right, but here’s the other part. Ty said that, said something like, hey, a muzzle’s a muzzle, you sure it wasn’t a guy in a dress? And Vonni says, who cares, if you got blown like I did, you wouldn’t give a shit either.”

Lee laughs, a low, easy laugh that draws a smile out of me despite myself. “I’m glad he’s at least that open-minded about it. If not particularly worried about word getting back to his wife.”

“Nobody’s worried about that,” I say without thinking.

“Well. Good thing I came along for your road game.”

I look at his muzzle, up to his eyes, and his smile is fading. I’m not sure whether or not he’s serious. I know I should be jokey, but I can’t quite muster the energy. “You don’t really think you have to worry, do you?”

“I dunno,” he says. “I saw the way you were looking at that wolf Ty was talking to.”

“I wasn’t—” I take a breath and rest my palms flat on my legs until I’ve retracted my claws all the way. “I was curious. I never went to a gay club before.”

“Neither had your teammates. Seems like they all had a good time. I thought you did, too.”

I sit back and take another bite of salad. “I just don’t want you doing anything like that again.”

“All right.” He lifts his wine glass, his smile gone. “Next time your teammates want to go to a nightclub in a gay district, I won’t come along.”

I sigh. “That’s not what I meant.”

“No, you’re right. I was treating them like friends of yours rather than being sensitive to their careers. So I should just stay out of their lives.”

When he gets like this, the best thing to do is just let it blow over. So I finish up the salad and change the subject to his family. He tells me his dad offered to look after my finances, which I think would be good considering the guy I have now doesn’t really ever talk to me at all about them. I tell him some other things from the game, about what Coach said, and he agrees about us having a winnable schedule.

We get our main courses: steak for me, with potatoes and these crispy green beans that are amazing—although they’re nothing compared to the steak itself, which is mouth-wateringly tender and juicy, and seasoned just enough. Lee has half a rotisserie chicken, a puree of parsnips, and a weird-looking broccoli that he lets me try. It’s also great. We’ve switched to red wine for dinner, a pinot noir recommended by the waiter that costs fifteen dollars a glass. That’s as much as the most expensive bottle of wine I have in my apartment. Of course, I only have three, and I had none before Lee moved in.

About halfway through the meal, my phone rings, and I check the number out of habit. Mom and Dad have taken to calling me on game weekends, though after today’s game I don’t really want to talk to them. But it isn’t them. I stare at the phone and then let it go to voicemail.

“Ogleby,” I say to Lee, and he nods.

“He’s better about calling you just once a week?”

“Has been. I wonder what this is about, though.” The phone beeps with a voicemail message.

“Go ahead and listen,” Lee says, taking another bite of chicken. “As long as you don’t start having a conversation, I don’t think they’ll kick you out.”

I eye the mink at the host stand as I lift my phone to my ear. Her eyes travel past me in a bored survey of the room, but she doesn’t give any sign of caring what I’m doing. And then Ogleby’s squeaky ferret voice fills my ear.

“Dev, honey, I just heard the news, can you believe it? You and Lightning Strike on the same team! I put in a call to his agent, but you know, he’s pretty busy and might not get back to me but there’s definite interest, did you hear what he said about you, how he’s looking forward to playing with you? This could be huge, this could be bigger than Ultimate Fit, this could be, like…” He stops for as long as I’ve ever heard him stop (barring the time I came out in front of him on national TV). “Elite.”

I arch an eyebrow at Lee. “Ogleby thinks me and Lightning Strike could get an Elite commercial.”

He flicks his ears. “They’re his brand. If anyone could get you in there, he could. More commercials would be good. Make gay athletes more of a mainstream thing, get people used to seeing you.”

“It’d be another distraction from football.”

He tilts his head. “True. But if you manage it right, it doesn’t have to be a critical one. You got through that Ultimate Fit commercial okay.”

“God.”

“Just tell Ogleby that the club’s media rep needs to make all the arrangements. That way they’ll know what your schedule is and won’t interfere with it.”

I put the phone down. Ogleby’s message is still going on, gushing about something or another, but I’ve gotten the gist of it. “Will they do that?”

“Uh-huh. Pretty sure. Worth asking, anyway.”

“Why wouldn’t Ogleby know that?”

Lee splays his ears and grins, looking rather adorable. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he says, “if you’re the first client of Ogleby’s who’s actually landed a commercial.”

He has a good point.

After that oh-my-God amazing dinner, I drag Dev out for a walk back to my hotel. I chose the restaurant specifically because it was the nicest one in walking distance, so that we could have a little stroll. Personally, I feel way full, but I know Dev probably didn’t get enough to eat, because he not only ate all of his rich chocolate cake (except the bite he gave me) and all the raspberries around it and the last few bites of the pear tart I couldn’t finish, but when he asked for the check, he also asked if they could refill the bread basket one more time.

So I’m enjoying the walk, and as we’re walking, I reach over to take his paw in mine. He tenses at first, so I say, “Relax,” and he gives me a look. “Seriously,” I say. “Nobody’s going to care, not here.” Also not in Chevali, not in the downtown where he lives. Probably not. You can never tell. But that’s the world we’re working towards, and though I know better than to get into a discussion of how important it is to be open, at least I can lead by example.

“Feels weird,” he rumbles, but he enfolds my paw in his huge one, and we walk along that way for a couple blocks. It feels weird to me, too, having to match my shorter stride to his long one, but we get used to it pretty quickly. And Yerba is totally cool with it, like I said. A couple people glance our way, but nobody looks twice.

The city is a little chillier tonight. There’s a kind of fog that hangs around the buildings. You can just see it at the tops, where their light disperses like our breath in the air, and you can feel it in your fur when the wind blows moisture into your ears. I keep mine folded back, but despite all that, it’s probably my favorite ten minutes in this beautiful city, job interview included.

Dev’s quiet, maybe still thinking about the game, and if I let him, he’d probably go right back to the team. But I don’t want the night to end. So when we get back to my hotel, I insist Dev walk me to my room and then I tug him inside. “You don’t have a curfew tonight, do you?”

He steps in, lets the door swing closed. “Not unless you count having to be on an airplane at nine a.m.”

The clock reads 9:15. “Just under twelve hours.” I grin and slide my paws around his hips. “Plenty of time.”

“Mmm.” He hugs me back and pulls me to him. “What did you have in mind?”

His paws slide down to squeeze my rear, leaving me little doubt what he has in mind. “Oh,” I say, “I was thinking I might show you what Vonni was missing if he got blown by a girl and not a guy.”

“We’re going back out to Korsat Boulevard?” He grins and looks down, and I rest my paws over his tail.

“Could if you want. Those bathrooms have seen a lot worse than a fox with a tiger cock in his mouth.”

“Seems like a long way to go.” He rumbles and shifts against me, and I can feel the effect my words and body are having on him in the warmth against my stomach. But there’s no hurry tonight. I knew he’d be down after the loss; I don’t think he got quite as much out of the dinner as I did. So I’m hoping a nice long play session will take his mind off things. Besides, I want to take advantage of the nice hotel room, and also it’s been days since I saw him off Wednesday morning and I’m horny as fuck.

“We’ve always got this bathroom.” I wave toward the marbled floor, the brass fixtures, the very roomy shower. “If you really want to do it in a bathroom. There’s also this pretty swanky bed.”

“Dunno.” His paw slides up and down my back, over the base of my tail, and down as my tail pushes back up against his pressure. “Seems like there’s too many pillows on that bed. No room for anything else.”

I glance back at the bed, with its pile of brown and gold decorative pillows. Beyond it, the lights of the city wink over the water, already lightly hazy. “You could sweep the pillows dramatically onto the floor.”

“Mmm.” He slides his paw down my tail a few more times. “Then what?”

“Then you could throw me onto the bed. Romantically.”

“Roughly?”

“Roughly and romantically?”

His paws curl around my waist, untucking my shirt slowly. I keep mine around his tail, pressing my stomach into the hardness that’s growing at his waist. “Little hard for you to suck my cock when you’ve been thrown onto the bed.”

“Depends where you’re standing.” I swish my tail behind me, pushing my muzzle up under his chin and twisting so I can see his golden left eye out of my left eye.

He looks down, and then turns me so my back is to the bed and he can see it. “I think I’m still too tall. Unless you were on paws and knees on the bed.”

I grind the edge of my hip against his erection, and mine is getting pretty hard, too. “I can be wherever you want me to be.” It’s not just him who needs his mind taken off things, really. Between my interview and all the other stuff spinning around in my head, it’s nice to just think about Dev and sex.

He chuckles and lifts his head, and then brings his paws up behind my ears, holding my head and rubbing gently at the base of them, which makes me close my eyes and press even closer, just that warm pressure right
there
, over and over. It’s not the kind of pressure that makes me harder; in fact, I turn and just stand right against him as he rubs, not grinding at all. It’s the closeness, the intimate touch in a place that most people don’t think of as intimate—everyone I know has seen my ears, front and back, but very few get to touch them—that reminds me I’m with someone I trust, whose delicate fingers can go wherever they like on me.

There are places like that on Dev, too, that I can think of when I’m not having my ears rubbed like this. My tail swings free behind me and I just press up against him until he places his thumbs under my cheek ruffs and lifts my muzzle to his.

We kiss, warm and sweet and then more passionate, tongues sliding together and curling around each other. I reach for his belt, for his pants, for his zipper, and when all those are loosened, I push his pants and underwear and everything down to the floor, all the while holding the kiss, and he keeps his paws on my cheeks and just purrs his approval. My fingers find the broad curves of his hip bones, the tight muscles of his rear that twitch and move with minute shifts of his weight, the solid curve of his lower back, the tight muscles under the softer fur of his abdomen, and there, the thick ridge of his cock, the sheath below it. My fingers slide up and down the sides, tease the moisture at the tip, and then he lets my muzzle go.

Our noses touch, with smiles. I kiss his muzzle and say, “Someone needs to be cleaned up,” and drop to my knees. Only I have to kneel straight up; I can’t sit back on my heels, and even then I have to pull his cock down and he has to bend his knees, but neither of us seems to mind.

I wash my tongue up the side, along the familiar warm surface, taste the musk of his pre at the tip. He shudders, dropping his paws to my shoulders, as I curl my tongue around his balls and wash slowly up his sheath back along his shaft, back to the tip. Another few strokes of the tongue and he rubs up behind my ears again. The pressure is nice, but now I’ve got something else to distract me. Another few licks, and I take his tip between my lips.

He sucks in a breath. His paws tighten. I have to be careful; chances are he’s as pent up as I am, and I could bring him to the edge quicker than usual. Not that it’d be bad for him to come on my tongue, and we’d still have tomorrow morning, but I want him in me when he finishes.

Still, I can’t say I don’t enjoy having that full length of his sliding along my tongue, the taste of his pleasure filling my muzzle. And I like the shudders, the jerking thrusts he makes with his hips as I suck on him, the shivers in his bended knees. I like that I can do that to this huge tiger, this professional athlete, that these fine-tuned muscles are, for this precious moment, at my command.

Back and forth and up and down I go, settling into the flow, while his fingers squeeze and his legs shake, and his breath comes in pants and gasps. His hips tremble and then jerk, pushing his length into my mouth, and just as I’m thinking I’d better settle down if I want him to finish anywhere else, he pushes my head back and looks down at me.

I get up slowly, starting to pull my shirt off, and his paws rush to help me, tugging at buttons and sleeves, while I grin and pant and the cool air of the hotel runs over my tongue and the taste of him stays with me. As the shirt falls away, he unbuckles my belt and then leaves me to finish the job, walking in two quick strides back to the door to shut off the lights.

“Nobody can see in,” I say. “At least, not without a telescope. But I’m glad you’re so protective of who gets to see my—”

My pants drop to my ankles and Dev grins, spinning me around to face the window. He pushes me to the bed as I kick my pants free of my feet, stumbling to keep pace, and on the bed he keeps me on my knees. Without the lights on in the room, my reflection in the window is ghostly, insubstantial. Behind me, Dev’s is just as transparent as he settles himself against my back. He’s kept his shirt on, wrinkled near the waist where it hangs free instead of being tucked in, cuffs framing his paws as he reaches around my chest to spread his large orange and white fingers across my white chest ruff and stomach. His erection slides between my legs, not up inside me yet, the tip tickling the back of my sac as he pushes his hips all the way up to my rear.

In the window, I watch his paws trace their way down my ribcage, watch them frame my stomach as I suck it in to look better in my reflection. Even though his thumbs press in on my back, his fingers almost meet at my navel.

And just below that, the reddish length of my own erection hangs, though he ignores it for the moment, just sliding paws down my hips, down my thighs, while his muzzle rubs my right ear and his tongue just brushes it. “I want us to see them,” he says.

“You like it here in Yerba, hu-uhhh.” My question becomes a soft moan as his fingers tease around my sac and then up the creases on either side of my sheath, pressing in at the firmness there. I arch my back against him and tighten my thighs around his length. He wriggles gently, not really trying to get away, and lifts one arm to hold me across the chest while the other takes my shaft in soft leather pads. The paws that only hours ago were pushing and shoving other players around the field close around me and hold me.

Slowly, he pulls his paw up my length, finds the moisture at my tip as I found his, and rubs it around as I did. I close my eyes out of reflex and then open them again to watch him play with me in the window-mirror over the city backdrop. His paw moves faster, closer, and though I fight off the growing arousal, I can’t help squirming against him. He purrs against my ear and his paw keeps going, and then he mouths my ear and I let out a squeak.

He chuckles softly, keeps his muzzle there, and strokes even as my leg starts to tremble and then shake, and finally he stops and crosses both paws over my chest, holding me on the bed, his warmth and strength supporting me. Out of my unmolested ear, I hear the swish of his tail across the bed, while my own trapped one tries to swish and only manages to jerk spasmodically.

“Got your lube?” he murmurs in a bass growl in my ear.

“Uh-huh,” I pant. I can’t bring myself to break away from him—I don’t think I could if I wanted to, not until he let me go. These arms shove aside massive linemen; they’re more than a match for one lightweight fox. So I just say, “Nightstand.”

“Oh, hm.” He noses my ear. “Been using it on yourself?”

“No.” I clench my thighs around his cock. “Just…knew you’d be here tonight.”

“Okay.” He laughs again, softly, and his arms loosen. “Go get it.”

I slide away, trailing one arm behind me to brush his erection as I go. He doesn’t make a move to take his shirt off, just watches me with golden eyes as I bend over, tail wagging, and open the nightstand.

When I turn back around, he’s kneeling up with one paw on his cock, grinning at me and stroking himself. I slick up my paw and tailhole good and quick, and clamber onto the bed, where I take over stroking his cock for him.

I get it slick fast and then keep playing with it until he bites his lip and grips my shoulder. “Ready?” I say with a smile, and he nods fast.

I know I’m sure as hell ready, so I place both paws on his shoulders. His eyes flick open. “Fox—”

Before he can finish, I jump up and try to wrap my legs around his waist. He flinches and hisses as my weight comes to bear on him, and his body leans to one side. I try to disengage, but his arms grip my sides and then my rear and hold me, and slowly he rights himself.

“Sorry,” I whisper. “I forgot—did you hurt your ribs again?”

He shakes his head. “Not specifically, but…” He lifts his chest, holding me close to him. I bump my chin against his nose and cross my legs behind his back, taking some of the strain off his shoulders. He settles himself. “Just, everything hurts. A little.”

“I can get down. I just thought—”

“It’s okay, doc.” He lifts his muzzle and kisses my nose. “I can take it.”

“I know you
can
. I’m saying you don’t have to.”

He grins, and there’s little trace of the pained grimace. “The best thing for the pain is you. So the question is, can you take it?”