Trystan

“Stop smiling,” I growled at Alex. The stupid fool hadn’t stopped smiling since he and Lincoln made up, fell in love, saw rainbows, blah, blah, blah. His sun-shiny mood was really starting to get on my last known surviving nerve. Okay, it really wasn’t. I was happy for the poor kid. If anybody deserved his happy-ever-after, it was Alexander Bryant. No, I thought the problem was that I was flat-out jealous of his newfound love and deliciously non-vanilla sex life, because for the first time in my life, I found myself being shut down in the sex department. Yeah, shut down. Locked out of heaven. Alexander was getting more nookie than I was.
I didn’t like it.
His fucking grin grew even bigger. “Aww, does somebody need to crawl into their blankie fort and suck their thumb for a while?”
He clapped me on the back with his good hand. The other hand was still recovering from his injury in our championship game. It had only been two weeks ago, but felt like a lifetime. Of course, time was dragging for me because of the whole locked out of heaven bullshit I was currently going through now. Actually, I was not just locked out of heaven, the little tart wouldn’t even give me the time of day. Me—Heisman winner and the number one draft pick in the upcoming NFL draft.
“Shut up, asshole,” I grumbled. “We can’t all be walking on feathery clouds and rolling in glitter. Some of us have to stay grounded and deal with the real world.” I looked down at his backpack. “And, of course, carry his royal highness’s backpack around so that he doesn’t put any extra stress on his hand. Pussy,” I muttered. I rather liked helping Alex out on campus while he was hurt—it kept my mind off my current loveless situation for about four hours out of the day and since football practice was over, that left me with pretty much a full twenty hours to pout over my situation.
Pouting is not for the faint-hearted. The struggle is real.
“I kind of like having the big, bad Dom-in-training waiting on me hand and foot. It’s good for my fragile ego,” he teased.
I snorted. “There is absolutely nothing fragile about your ego, Alex. What the hell happened to my sweet shy straight boy that enjoyed missionary sex once a week with Miss Alabama? I liked that boy. I miss him.” I was definitely teasing there. I didn’t miss that Alexander. He was pitiful. Lincoln, God bless the man, brought out a side of Alex that I would have never in my life guessed existed. He was fun and from what I heard, was willing to try about any damned thing in the bedroom and playroom. “Do you think we will ever see him again?”
“Nope,” he popped. “Boring Alex is a thing of the past and I don’t think Lincoln would allow any missionary sex with Miss Alabama. This is me, Trystan, take it or leave it.”
“Why are we suddenly calling me Trystan? For four years, I’ve been Tank. Now that you’ve moved from Alex to Alexander, you think I have to change from Tank to Trystan?” I would never have told any of them, but I was never fond of the nickname they’d given me. I may have been a tank on the field, but there was more to me than football.
“Yeah, I’m trying to help you grow up and become my little man.” He ruffled the top of my head with his good hand and I contemplated breaking it. “It will make you sound more distinguished.”
“Why would I want to sound more distinguished? I rule this school as it is now. If I get any more appealing, the dudes and dudettes won’t be able to handle my awesomeness.” I didn’t feel awesome at the moment. I felt frustrated—sexually frustrated.
“Okay, enough of this stupid shit talk. What’s really up with you? You haven’t been yourself lately,” he asked. “Is it something to do with your training at the club? Is it not going well?”
Alex’s better half owned a BDSM club where I had been training as a Dom for the past couple of weeks. No, it wasn’t going as I had expected, but that wasn’t what was dragging my ass down. I’d already determined that while I might like things a little rougher and kinkier than the average guy in the bedroom and I loved tying people up in all sorts of wickedly uncomfortable and vulnerable positions, I didn’t actually like all the Dom stuff that accompanied the role. Yes, I liked smacking a bare ass. Did most of that sex gear at the club freak me out? Hell, yes, it did. I still couldn’t believe my little quarterback did some of that shit. When I found myself confused, my head stuck in the past with old Alex, I would ask myself if I should hand him a doll and tell him to show me where the mean man touched him.
“Nah, it’s not going well. I dropped out. It’s not me after all,” I told him and ignored his shocked expression. I laughed at his expression. “Who would have thought it? I was one hundred percent certain the Den was all for me but it turns out to be more up your alley than mine.”
He frowned. “You don’t have to act like I was some kind of innocent virgin, Tank, uh, I mean Trystan. I’d done things before Lincoln.”
Now that was a big fat fucking lie. “Dude! You were the most vanilla ice cream in the freezer before that first night at The Den.”
He shrugged. “Maybe, but I was probably French vanilla.”
He was grinning from ear to ear. Seriously…always grinning.
“Puulease,” I snorted. “Tabitha probably didn’t even let you French kiss her.”
He looked offended for just a second and then said, with a laugh, “Of course she wouldn’t, that spreads germs, you know.”
“Fuck, Alex. How did you deal with her shit?” I still couldn’t believe the transformation my friend had undergone since that night I’d dragged him into the BDSM club that forever changed his life. He’d gone from super sweet, super straight vanilla quarterback to a tie-me-up and spank-my-gay-ass man. He was the bravest damn man I’d ever had the pleasure of claiming as a friend. He’d taken everything in stride—from accepting he had feelings for a man to the picture shit Tabitha had pulled on him all around campus. Then during the championship game, he’d gone and wrecked his right hand, crushing bones and ripping tendons and nerves, but he’d never once hosted his own pity party. I sure the hell would have. I was hosting my own pity party because I couldn’t get somebody’s attention. I didn’t consider myself shallow, but when I actually said it aloud, the way I was feeling right now, I sounded pretty shallow.
Don’t care. I wanted something and I would be damned if I let anything get in my way. Hell, yeah, I would live up to my nickname. I would roll right over him until he didn’t have any choice but to accept that we belonged together. Well, maybe not together, together, but he needed to let me fuck him so I could get it out of my system.
“Hey, you wanna go hang out at the Aquatic Center for a while?” I asked. He looked at me like I’d grown two heads and one of them had a unicorn horn sticking right out the center.
“Uh…no? Why would I want to hang out at the Aquatic Center? I have to put a plastic baggy over my hand when I take a shower. I couldn’t begin to consider a swim.”
I glared at him. He stared back, blinking slowly with an innocence that had to drive Lincoln crazy with lust.
After a few seconds, he said, “Oh! The Aquatic Center, yeah, we can do that.” He leaned in and whispered, “Who are we stalking at the Aquatic Center? Speedo boy?”
“My future lover,” I answered as I gathered up his backpack and mine. Jeez, Alex had a hell of a lot of books in his damned bag. Brainy people were so annoying.
“Boy or girl?”
“Boy.” I couldn’t stop the grin that spread across my face when I pictured my sexy swimmer. He was gorgeous and I needed him to be mine—more than I’d ever needed anybody before. I couldn’t begin to explain why I felt the way I did about this boy who had never really spoken to me or even acknowledged my existence, but I’d never been one to waste time trying to explain why things happened the way they did. I just made them happen the way I wanted them to happen.