Divisions (Dev and Lee) (20 page)

I reach below myself and give his cock a couple more strokes, watching him as I shift my weight. He adjusts okay, doesn’t look hurt. So I pull him into position right at my entrance and say, “I think you know the answer to that.”

“Always nice to find it out again.” He pulls me down onto him.

He’s big, and the rough barbs always scrape a little on their way in. But after that first twinge, I don’t mind at all. The bigness I like too. I’m pretty flexible in a lot of areas, and so I don’t need a lot of prep to be able to take him in. Sometimes when he goes in fast it hurts for a second or two until I adjust; tonight he eases in gently and there’s nothing but the shivering delight of being one with him again.

I work my way down onto him, his paws tight on my body, and when he’s all the way inside me, our noses are almost level. We kiss again, then, joined at the hips and muzzles, our tongues licking around each other with increasing urgency. Without breaking the kiss, he lifts me up and pulls his hips back, and then thrusts back into me. Up and down, as our lips shift and press together, up and down as his tongue licks the roof of my muzzle and my teeth, up and down as my paws tighten around the back of his neck and my breath whistles out my nose.

He thrusts faster; I clench my rear and moan into his muzzle. His paws grip me harder and his breath comes faster, with moans of his own. I feel my own passion building, even without a paw on my cock, but he’s definitely winning this race. His thrusts are less gentle, his kiss is suffocating, his whole body is shuddering with urgency. I squeeze with my legs and arms as he pumps up and down, and he responds by bringing one paw from my rear to my head, leaning back enough that I’m not going to fall off, and holds me tightly in the kiss, his tongue deep in my mouth, his hips jerking up and up and up.

And with a loud moan that starts in his stomach and vibrates through his chest up his throat and into my muzzle, he slams hard into my rear and squeezes me. Incoherent sounds fill the room; I echo them back to him, gasping, holding him as best I can as the passion and desire flood out of him and into me. His hips shudder up, jerk again, and finally he exhales and comes to rest deep inside me, his hips pressed against my rear.

Our lips part. I think I felt him wince. “You okay?” I whisper.

He nods, growls softly through harsh exhalations. “It’s only when you take me by surprise,” he says.

“Oh gosh.” I wriggle around the hardness, clenching my legs behind his back. I’m nicely close, but not urgently close. “I guess I will have to tell you everything I’m going to do.”

He mouths at my throat, making me shiver and turn my head to the side. “Mmm,” he rumbles through my fur. “How about I tell you what you’re going to do now?”

“What’s that?” I grin, but my breath catches in my throat as he squeezes me against him and slides a paw between us.

“You’re going to struggle and squirm and come in my paw.” He works his huge paw between us and brushes up and down my cock with leathery fingers. I shiver and do squirm, even at that light touch, but his arm is iron across my back.

“That sounds…” I gasp as his paw curls tightly around my cock, thumb rubbing the sensitive tip. “Plau-ausible.”

Slowly, he slides his paw up and down, golden eyes fixed on mine, and the heat of him inside me and the wonderful fire from each stroke of his paw surge through my groin, up my chest into a whine from my muzzle. And even though he knows I’m close—because he knows I’m close—he keeps going slowly, deliberately.

I’m pressed tightly against him, but he has enough room between my stomach and his to keep moving his paw up and down, and before long I’m pressing the side of my muzzle against his head and biting down at the collar of his shirt, twisting as if trying to get away when in reality that’s the last thing I want to do. I want this exquisite, ecstatic torment to go on and on, but my body needs the release, and Dev can’t stroke slowly enough to put it off for long, not with his shaft still hard and warm in my rear, not with his scent in my nose, not with every nerve at my groin on fire.

And it’s not long before the squirms become shudders and the whines become moans and my arms and legs tighten around him, and I jerk and come in his paw, just as he’d predicted. Warmth spreads into my fur with every spasm of my hips, and his paw holds my cock tight, slicker and slicker, moving more easily but slowing down as my climax fades and my cock gets all sensitive and my throat makes higher, whining noises.

He stops and lets me pant against him, brings his sticky paw out and wraps it around me, pressing into my bare fur. I hold him and rub my fingers through the cotton fabric and murmur against his ear, “You ruined your shirt.”

“You have a really nice back and butt,” he murmurs back.

His paws rub along my spine, but he’s also looking at the window over my shoulder, at my reflection and the city beyond. “It looks best with your cock in it,” I say.

“Mm-hmm.” He squeezes me and I squeeze back, both with my arms and my rear. He grrfs and shifts his hips. “It’s a nice city. Being able to live like this.”

“What, having sex in front of a window?” I nudge his ear teasingly.

“Going out. Holding paws. Not worrying.”

“There are places in Chevali like that, too. And ideally we’d like to make the whole country turn out that way.” He’s quiet, so I rub up to his shoulders. “You’re helping. Coming out—that was huge. It helped a lot of people.” I force myself to stop there, not to think about what else he could be doing. With the urgency of sex gone, other thoughts are crowding in around the fringes of my mind, applying pressure where I don’t want any now.

“So maybe a championship-winning gay player would help even more?”

“Bet on it.” I slowly work myself backwards to let him slide out of me, and disengage my legs from around his waist. Keeping my arms around his neck, I rest my knees on his thighs and bring my nose level with his. “It’ll be good for gay people and good for the people of Chevali and good for you. So.” I kiss his nose. “I think you should do it.”

“Also would give me more opportunities.”

I nod. “That too. Though I hope you aren’t looking for more foxes to fill your time if I have to move out.”

He nuzzles me. “I have enough trouble managing one fox. You think I want to screw up my life with more?”

“‘Screw up’ or ‘make more awesome’?”

He squints at me. “Are you trying to talk me into cheating on you?”

“No.” I wag my tail, filling the air behind me with shed fur. My rear is still warm from him and I relish the feeling. “I’m trying to get you to appreciate foxes.”

“I thought I appreciated this fox pretty well.”

“Oh, you did. Let’s shower and maybe you can appreciate him again in the morning.”

So we do, and he does.

I’m probably in a better mood than most of my teammates Monday morning when we get on the plane, all except Charm, who I guess used his Sunday night the same way I did. We sit together and swap tunes and he asks me in a low voice about our night out with Lee. I tell him the stories and he isn’t impressed. “Buncha pro jocks go to a gay club and don’t even get a blow job?”

“Vonni got a blow job.”

“Sure, the married guy.” He chuckles. “Never needed a wedding ring myself, but I hear they work great. Hell, any club we go to, we oughta be the center of attention. And it’s not like I was there taking the attention off y’all.”

It’s obvious where everyone’s attention is. Everyone but the wide receivers is sulking over the loss; they are preoccupied worrying about which one of them will lose playing time to Strike. Everyone growls and snaps at each other, and it’s a relief to get home that afternoon. Lee comes in later in the evening, and we have a good night that doesn’t even include sex, maybe because we’re both worn out from Sunday night and travel. I ask him what he’s going to do this week, and he tells me he’s going to start talking to that activist group, so I tell him to just tell me when something happens, and I try to forget about it.

Tuesday morning when I arrive at the stadium, I have to navigate through a mass of news vans, and the first thought that goes through my head is
Lion Christ, did Lee get a bunch of media to come talk to me already?
Pretty, suited foxes and mice and deer and one kangaroo rush up to my truck as I drive up, and I brace myself.

They see it’s me, and most of them pause and then fall back like a wave at the beach. I’m a little baffled—it’s more attention than I got anytime except immediately after the press conference anyway—until a leopard and a goat hurry up to the truck, and the goat calls, “Devlin! What do you think about the trade for Lightning Strike?”

Oh. Right. I wave them away politely, call, “No comment,” and drive into the players’ lot. I am curious, though. Part of me wants to go out and wait for him with the reporters. I shake my head and laugh, and go in to change.

The locker room is buzzing when I walk in, all about the media outside. We hang around in uniform—no pads today—long after we’re supposed to be out on the field. Even Carson stays with us, curious to see what all the fuss is about. The coaches have to come in and shoo us out. “You guys will meet Strike this afternoon,” Samuelson growls, a real snarl on his muzzle, and we run out to practice.

When I say “we,” of course, I’m excluding Gerrard, who is just doing his calisthenics calmly out on the field, waiting for us. “Did you catch a glimpse of him?” he asks in a bored tone when we all come out to sit with him.

“Not here yet.” Carson answers when I don’t. His tail switches across the grass.

“Good. Can we get moving, then?”

We run drills in the morning, up and down the field, and then go in for lunch. The afternoon’s for private workout sessions in the weight room, but that flies out of all our minds when we sit down for lunch, because five minutes past noon, a loud, light voice calls out from the entrance to the cafeteria, “Hello, Firebirds!”

The whole room, sixty-odd players, turns and stares. There in the doorway is a cheetah in a Firebirds jersey with #11 on it. His teeth are white in a face that is otherwise the red of our logo. As he turns to survey the room, the backs of his ears come into view, red with a gold splotch across each of them. His arms, under the short sleeves of his jersey, are also red, with patterned bands of gold around the elbow and wrist and a trail of gold spots like the Milky Way connecting them. And when he raises his paws, he shows off the Firebirds logo on each paw pad. I don’t know if they’re stickers or a tattoo. Knowing him, probably a tattoo.

Beyond the cosmetic, though, he’s fucking huge. Nearly seven feet tall, the media says, but they don’t mention the muscles that bulge when he bends his arms, the broad shoulders, the legs that are so long they almost look like stilts. Huge, muscular stilts.

“In case you haven’t met me already,” the cheetah says, walking in with a big smile, “I’m Lightning Strike, and I’m here to win a championship.”

He waves to Aston, who waves back; clearly they’ve met already. I look for the other wide receivers, all sitting together: Zaïd, Rodolf, Ty, and a couple others, huddled at one end of a table glowering at the red-and-gold cheetah advancing toward them. Only Rodolf really looks at ease; Ty has his ears splayed and Zaïd’s mouth is twisted up like the burger he’s holding in his right paw was made of sour lime and bitters.

But Strike just points a finger at them and says, “We’re gonna take this league and make it our bitch, boys,” continuing his stroll through the tables. It’s weird how quiet the room is, everybody just focused on him. He’s basking in it, putting on a show for us. And then he’s walking toward us—toward me and Gerrard and Carson. I figure he knows Gerrard is the leader of the defense and he wants to get in good with that side of the ball, but when he gets close to us, he stops and stares right at me.

“Devlin Miski,” he says.

Half the room is still watching him. The rest are watching me. I shift in my chair. “Hi,” I say. “Um. Welcome to the Firebirds.”

He shakes his head. “So courageous. I want you to know that I stand with you. You’re my teammate now and that means I don’t care who you want to fuck. You’re family.”

He holds out his arms. I don’t know what to do.

“Hug him!” Charm yells helpfully from another table.

There’s some snickering, but I don’t think anyone dares laugh. Strike doesn’t flinch or even look away from me for a minute. I don’t know what else I can do. So I stand up and reach out and hug him.

He squeezes hard, too, like when some guys will take your paw and try to crush it to prove how strong they are. So I squeeze back just as hard. He’s smiling when he releases me, claps me on both shoulders, and says, “Don’t let anyone take you down. Gay or straight, we’re all one team, and I am proud of my gay teammate.”

Christ, he had to go there. I want to ask,
Are you
my
gay teammate?
But I don’t have the nerve, not right there in front of the rest of the team. And I don’t get the vibe from him, anyway. He seems more like a college kid holding a passionate sign about unfair labor practices halfway around the world. Maybe he thinks discrimination is wrong. Maybe he just wants to draw more attention to himself. I wish he’d do that without drawing attention to me. “Thanks,” I say, sitting down.

“I know you guys are a championship defense,” Strike says, looking at Gerrard, “and now you’ve got a championship offense to go with it.”

He looks around, maybe expecting applause, but he’s just insulted our offense and we can’t cheer that. So after an awkward second, he just smiles, says he’ll see us on the field, and walks off.

Gerrard doesn’t look very happy at all, and it’s not hard to see why, as he watches everyone else stare at Strike’s red tail waving. It has four gold lines painted up it, ending in four arrow heads at the tip. Clearly the last thing anyone in the room is thinking about at that moment is football.

“Colorful,” I say.

“We don’t have to worry about him.” Gerrard goes back to his meal. “We just have to keep our minds on the game.”

Easier said than done. Even in the weight room after lunch, as I’m working out with Zillo and Gerrard and Carson are spotting each other, everyone’s just talking about Strike. “He was painted that same way when we played him a few weeks ago,” Zillo says. “He just made the Devils’ orange into our gold. The red isn’t even right.”

“It’s close enough.” Honestly, I didn’t notice whether it was the right shade or not. “Anyway, he’ll probably change it again before game time.”

“Hey, Norton!” Zillo waves over the cheetah, our other starting corner. “What did you guys jaw about on the field?”

Norton, of course, doesn’t need to be told whom we’re talking about. “Just, y’know.” He waves a paw and goes back to his station, his black-spotted yellow tail waving behind him. “Cheetah stuff. Who’s faster, whatever,” he calls over his shoulder.

Zillo and I don’t need to remind each other that Strike had Norton beat a couple times back when we played them. Made him look slow, though we’d never say that to him. Wasn’t Strike’s fault the quarterback only threw his way once, and then it was two feet over his head. “Guy’s a beast,” Zillo says, then looks at me with a flick of his big ears. “So, uh. You think he’s…?”

“What? Gay?” Carson is looking my way, too, and so is Vonni, his large black ears swiveled to face me. Great. I shake my head and wonder how many times I’ll be asked this question. “I don’t get that vibe off him. I mean, come on. If he were, he’d be doing a lot more to hide it. He wouldn’t be painting his fur and coming over to talk to me right away.”

Zillo scratches the side of his muzzle and nods. “I guess if he was that open, he’d just come out with it now, right.” When I don’t say anything more, hoping the topic will just die down, he lies back on the bench. “Okay, move me up to two-ten?”

I shift plates on the bars and spot him while he presses two-ten. Then we put fifty more pounds on the plates for me to do my presses. I’m still sore from Sunday, but my ribs don’t protest too much as I lift the bar ten times. It feels good to work out the muscles again after the game and a plane flight. All the ones I didn’t use on Lee Sunday night need the work.

By the end of the afternoon, I’m exhausted. We all wind down at the same time, do our stretches, and hit the showers, getting dressed for a little time in the film room before we go. Gerrard cues up film from our loss at Yerba, and we’re watching some of the plays from different angles when the door opens and closes. We don’t think anything of it; coaches and players come and go during film time. But then Strike’s voice fills the room. “See, that right there, that’s where that fox knew he had a chance.”

The fox on the screen is raising his hand, calling for the ball. The quarterback rifles it over a leaping Carson into the fox’s grip. We turn; Strike is standing in the doorway behind us. He points at the screen. “That little stutter step froze the safety.”

Indeed, Pace is caught between the fox, running deep, and their tight end, crossing in front of him. Steez flicks his ears, his voice mild, but firm. “Poor decision-making. He took too long.”

“Nah, he’s good.” Strike walks around the corner, farther into the room. “Their play’s designed to freeze him.”

“He should have spotted Carson trailing the tight end.” Gerrard points at the screen. “Then he could’ve released to cover the fox.”

“It’s a split-second decision.” Strike shrugs. “I use that stutter a lot. But not always. Sometimes you stutter and then change direction.”

We’ve seen that, of course, on our film of him. We didn’t look at it so much before the Port City game, but Norton and Vonni did and they talked about how hard he is to guard, how he can change direction and then speed up apparently effortlessly. But…

“Not everyone can.” Steez leans his head against his paw and glances at the screen. “These can’t do that. They stutter and go. Sometimes.”

Strike grins. “Well, sure, I mean, not everyone can, but you never know, right? What these guys do well is they’re all on the same page. Really precise with their routes. They don’t have the talent we got here, but they’re exactly where they need to be. Look, this tight end—couple feet in and you pick him up, Miski, couple feet farther out and the other safety, the cougar, he drops off this outside route and takes him.”

“That would leave the other wideout open,” Gerrard says.

“Sure, but that wasn’t where the play was going.”

“Okay.” Gerrard stands, his tail arched and a little bristled. “Thanks for the input, but this really is just for the defense. Don’t you have a film review to go to?”

Strike just laughs. “Aw, it’s not a problem. I don’t mind sharing what I know.” He taps his head. “Helps you guys get into the mind of a wide receiver.”

“You know who’d really appreciate that?” Gerrard points outside. “The cornerbacks.”

“That’s what they said about you.”

Steez sits up in his chair. “Mister Strike, your thoughts are appreciated. I have plays to review and would appreciate some quiet. Watch if you like, but no talking.”

“Yeah, fine.” The cheetah leans across a chair toward me. “I just need to talk to Miski. Can he come outside a second?”

Steez waves at me as Gerrard sits back down. “Make it quick!”

I’m annoyed; I almost wanted him to forbid me to talk to the cheetah. Instead, I’m following my red-and-gold teammate out the door in the back, listening to the film and the discussion and wanting to be part of that.

“Hey,” Strike says, and extends a paw. “Just want to say, really, you’re awesome, man. Stepping out there, making yourself a target…there aren’t many of us willing to do that.”

I shake his paw automatically, thinking,
wait, did he just…yeah, he did
. “Well,” I say, “Um. Is that what you wanted to say to me?”

He frowns briefly. Maybe he wanted me to be more effusive, to tell him we are brothers, all that. But the frown clears and the genial smile comes back. “Nah. Hey, I wondered if my agent got in touch with you.”