Dean's POV

The professor's words had barely faded when I tugged my backpack strap higher on my shoulder and slipped away along the wall.

Staying close to the wall, keeping my head down, making sure my footsteps didn't make a sound—I'd practiced this routine at home for four years, and I was good at it.

One careless moment and I'd catch the contemptuous stares from my father and mother.

Two months since transferring here was enough time to learn a new way of walking, but unfortunately, I'd sprained my ankle last week and now had no choice to hug the wall again.

The hallway was packed with people, and someone's shoulder slammed hard into mine as they passed, followed by a burst of laughter behind me.

I heard someone shout "Watch it!" but I wasn't sure if it was directed at me—didn't matter though, I kept my head down and kept walking.

"Hey, freak." Their tone sounded like a joke, but I could hear the malice underneath.

Three guys in hockey team hoodies were walking toward me, their mocking eyes sizing me up.

I didn't stop, just lowered my head, gripped my backpack strap tighter, and edged another half-inch closer to the wall.

A hockey puck rolled from the side and stopped at my feet.

I stopped, crouched down to pick up the puck, my thumb unconsciously rubbing against a scratch on the rubber edge, then stood up and handed it over.

One of them caught the puck, tossed it up, and caught it again.

Curtis, the hockey team captain who was all the rage on campus, wasn't there today, but his teammate Brendan stepped forward. "You play doorman in the hallway every day or what?"

The other two whistled and egged him on from behind.

I held my breath, my fingers nearly digging holes into my palms.

Brendan didn't get a reaction from me and probably found me boring, so he shrugged and turned to leave.

I limped forward, my shoulder scraping against the paint on the wall—nice job, Dean, my social skills were about as solid as a loose baseboard.

The entrance to the ice rink was in the athletics complex, a separate building across from the student union. I pushed open the door, and the cold air hit my face like a slap.

Three-thirty in the afternoon—the hockey team hadn't started practice yet, and only two maintenance workers were operating the Zamboni machine on the ice.

The roar of the machine filled the entire empty arena, making my teeth ache.

The Equipment Room door had a faded sign nailed to it that read "Student Equipment Assistant." I pushed it open and tossed my bag onto the shelf under the pegboard. My job was simple: organize gear, set up cones, sharpen skates, mop floors—basically all the dirty work nobody else wanted to do.

Everyone knew I was the poor kid who transferred from a community college upstate, living on a scholarship and an ice rink job, walking around timidly like a stray dog expecting to get yelled at any second.

What they didn't know was that every night after returning to the dorm, I logged into an encrypted forum and updated the LGBTQ+ novel I'd been writing for two months under the anonymous ID "Ice_King."

I pulled out my phone and leaned against the wall to unlock the screen.

The page was still on the encrypted forum I hadn't closed last night, its domain name just a string of random characters.

I had an anonymous serial post in the creative section: Checking Orders: The Cold Captain Barebacking His Teammate.

Hunter, the protagonist in my story, was everything I could never be in real life—a walking fire wherever he went, arrogant, crude, insufferable, excessively controlling.

And in the story I wrote, he'd pin his teammate against the locker room wall or any corner and fuck him relentlessly.

Yes, that teammate in the novel was me.

I wrote Hunter vividly, taking from him everything I'd never dared to want in real life—attention, possession, and that almost explosive physical need.

Just thinking about Hunter's real-life prototype made heat surge through my lower abdomen.

Last night I'd updated Chapter Seventeen, the most explicit chapter I'd written so far.

Hunter emerged from the shower, toweling the water from his blond hair, droplets running down the lines of his abs and disappearing at the edge of the towel loosely hanging at his waist. "Seen enough?"

My throat tightened. "I wasn't—"

But Hunter had already turned around, and the towel at his waist dropped.

It was the first time I'd seen another man's penis this close—half-erect, the purple-red glans partially exposed beyond the foreskin.

"Then look closer." Hunter stepped forward, backing me against the wall, grabbing my chin and shoving his thumb into my mouth. "Suck it."

I sank to my knees.

His cock hit the back of my throat and I could barely breathe, saliva uncontrollably dripping from the corners of my mouth. "Mmph..."

Hunter gripped my hair, steadily fucking my mouth, each thrust pushing me to the edge of gagging.

He came hard, hot bitter semen splashing onto my tongue. Before I could catch my breath, he yanked me up and pushed me face-first against the wall.

Two fingers probed into my hole, and I couldn't control my moaning. "Hunter, wait... too deep!"

Hunter's fingers were strong and slender, with calluses from years of gripping hockey sticks at the knuckles, and that rough texture scraped against my inner walls, making the muscles at the base of my thighs twitch uncontrollably.

"Here?"

"Hunter, don't—" I couldn't help crying out, and Hunter let out a low laugh, adding another finger. I was stretched too wide, my hole sore and swollen, but I didn't want him to stop.

His burning glans pressed against the entrance between my cheeks, rubbing a couple times, coating itself with the fluid leaking from my hole, then thrust all the way in without mercy, even commenting in a husky voice, "So tight, you cock-hungry slut."

My body was completely filled, his glans grinding against the most sensitive spot inside, I couldn't grab onto anything, just getting pounded by him thrust after thrust.

My uncontrollable cries and moans echoed through the locker room. But being fucked by Hunter hurt so good... don't stop...

The update ended there abruptly. The view count was still climbing, with a dozen new comments.

I scrolled through a few comments casually—they were mostly about the plot and anticipation for the next chapter.

【OMG he actually fucked him against the locker room wall! Crazy!!】

【Stringing us along for over ten chapters, always cumming in his pants, finally getting some real action this time.】

【You write with such realism. The details about Captain "Hunter"... are you on the team? But don't you think the teammate in the story is too weak?】

【Fuck, this chapter is hot】

But when my finger stopped on one particular comment, my heart involuntarily tightened.

In fact, over the past two weeks, this ID named 【SWEET】 had left comments under every one of my updates. At first they were corrections about technical details of hockey I'd described, but gradually the comments became very personal.

【When you write about him fucking his teammate, do you get hard yourself?】

【Well written. Have you tasted him?】

I was too familiar with this kind of boundary-crossing tone.

I'd deleted that comment at the time, but the next day it appeared again under the new chapter, rephrased but with the same meaning.

Ding—

A notification popped up at the top of my phone. 【I know you're watching】

My heart skipped a beat. I waited maybe another half minute, confirming that this ID called 【SWEET】 wasn't going to pop up with anything new, before I shoved my phone back in my pocket and turned to deal with that damn ice resurfacer.

The mop handle was thicker than my arm, and only one of the bucket's wheels could turn while the other was jammed. I muttered a curse and had to crouch down and pry at the stuck wheel with my hands.

This shitty place couldn't even provide a decent bucket, but had money to buy the hockey team new helmets—three helmets cost as much as my tuition for a whole year, a calculation I'd probably made eight hundred times.

Whatever, calm down, Dean, new school, new environment, don't screw it up.

I stood up without finding my footing properly, and my already-twisted knee made a cracking sound.

Pain shot from the surface of my skin straight to my bone marrow, and I sucked in a sharp breath.

"Need help?"

I turned around to find someone in a gray work jacket standing by the door, probably twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with messy brown hair and an expressionless face.

I'd seen him before—the hockey team's assistant coach, what was his name... Abel, right.

"No thanks," I replied.

But he didn't leave, instead walking over to the bucket and crouching down to fiddle with the jammed wheel.

With a click, the bucket was fixed.

"This bucket's third wheel has always had issues. Next time you use it, don't drag it along—lift it up first, then set it down."

"Thanks..." I replied quietly.

"Just call me Abel," he looked me up and down for a long moment, then extended his right hand. I hesitated before shaking it.

His hand was dry, with thick knuckles and calluses on the palm. "Mike mentioned you're the new student video assistant?"

I said, "Yes, Coach, I'm still learning."

Abel smiled slightly, his eyes scanning the equipment checklist in my hand. "Don't be modest. I saw the practice footage breakdown you put together last week—detailed work, even our data analysis team is too lazy to do that."

My ears burned, and I said thanks again.

Abel casually patted my shoulder. "There's an intrasquad scrimmage tomorrow afternoon. Come to the video area, ask me if you don't understand anything."

He turned and left, his pace unhurried.

I finished cleaning up, went back to the dorm, took a shower, and collapsed on my bed, pulling the blanket over my head.

Today was too exhausting. I wasn't planning to update a chapter, but I still clicked into the community to browse.

The next second, I discovered that a comment had been pushed to the top of the hot comments under my serial post.

【I know who you are. I also know who you're writing about. Tomorrow at noon, ice rink locker room. I'll tell you what you need to do then.】

My finger hovered above the screen as cold sweat from the back of my neck trickled down my spine.

This didn't look good.