When the rest of the hockey team arrived at the bus dressed the way they were expected, he was the only exception. A long line of handsome late-teen, early twenties tough guys dressed in white shirts, black ties, khaki slacks, and black dress shoes filed into the visitors' locker room, and among them was one scrappy, six-foot-two hot dog with short black hair, a goateed chin, no mustache, wearing camouflage fatigues, sneakers, and an old ball cap. Nobody said anything because even though Sean was a loner, he never let our hockey team down, and he was the kind of guy you just had to like. I liked him. Liked him a lot. Maybe even loved him in some ways. That's why I joined the team as an assistant to the coach.

After the arduous bus ride from Maine to Massachusetts for a Friday night game, the guys marched into the locker room with their hockey equipment bags slung over their shoulders, their sticks in hand. Nobody was aware at the time how much the game would demand of us, just that four more hours of driving back on the team's chartered bus waited after the final blow of the horn. None of the guys bitched about it, though. Sure, on a Friday night, there was plenty more for twenty-seven horny college dudes to do. But they' d joined the team to play ice hockey, and play it well they no doubt would. We had a great leader out on the ice. We had Sean.

I set down my tackle box of tape, scissors, and first aid supplies beside a milk crate stuffed full of sports wrap and padding. I hadn't been standing there long when the locker room door opened, and out he walked. The scrape of skate blades on the rubber mat alerted me to his presence.

"Dude, can you wrap me?" a deep, familiar voice growled behind me. I turned to see Sean standing in his black and white hockey uniform. Most of it, anyway. He was bare from the stomach up -- and fuck, what a stomach he had! Except for the tufts of black hair under his pits and a thin trail of dark fur that sliced him along the midsection of his six-pack abs, his chest was completely smooth. He'd dressed in his padded black hockey pants and the stark white team socks underneath, but had yet to don his chest gear, jersey, or skates. The smell of clean, bare jock skin and bleach from the perfect white socks on his size thirteen feet hit my senses and sent a chill down my spine.

Being the assistant to the strength coach for the hockey team, I tried not to think about how much I wanted him. I reached for a roll of athletic wrap and wound it around his shoulders and pecs. His skin felt dry and warm in the cold air of the arena. Just touching his taut muscles and smelling the dregs of deodorant slapped on hours before under his arms each time he raised them to accommodate my movements drained all the moisture from my mouth and half-swelled my dick, dangerous enough in track pants usually, but doubly now since I was in the process of prepping the team captain for battle on enemy ice.

I finished wrapping Sean and would have sent him on his way to finish dressing had he not lowered his team sock off of his left foot, baring the sexy, long flat toes.

"My ankle, too," he said. "Skate's rubbing at the back."

I took hold of his foot and ran some wrap and a piece of padding around the spot he indicated. It took all I had not to stare at his naked skin when what I really wanted to do was suck each of his perfect toes with the same hunger I'd dreamed of giving to his cock.

I finished working on Sean and moved on to a few of the other players who needed to be taped. Our guys took the ice and pretty much got hammered, though not because of a lack of effort. Two and a half hours later, they shook hands with a victorious Connecticut team and filed off the ice, stripped down, showered, and chowed on a dozen pizzas, courtesy of the college. And then twenty-seven very tired hockey jocks boarded the bus along with three coaches, one assistant, and all our gear for the four-hour trip back to Maine.

I know firsthand from having played the game of ice hockey, and even from the dudes who play it seriously all winter, that the effort a guy puts into three periods of nut-pumping play often leaves him feeling pretty boned up once the final horn blows. The sweating, fighting, and adrenaline fill a dude's balls, and in turn, do the same to his dick. So it's not uncommon to catch a teammate with a locker room boner or popping wood in the showers. It's a given, expected, normal.

Our guys were too tired to do more than snore most of the way home, and I'd pretty much resigned myself to sawing logs for the bulk of the journey north. But at some untimed point in the drudging ride back to Maine, I snorted myself awake, triggered back to consciousness by the sound of a soft moan at my back. I couldn't be sure at first if it had been real or part of the horny lucid dream I'd been having until I heard it again, softer this time, accompanied by a wet, slick stroking noise. I knew the sound well -- I'd heard it enough times under the sheets of my bed, in my shower or a bathroom stall, even a few times in the equipment room on campus. It was the noise being made by a man's hand wrapped around a spit-lubed cock. One of our guys was beating off on the bus!

I tipped my head slowly up from the cold window pane I'd fallen asleep against, my eyes still slitted so as not to alert the player pumping his meat nearby. It was hard to see much given the desolate stretch of unlit Interstate we traveled. But to both my panic and shock, that slippery stroking noise seemed to originate one row behind my seat, to the left, at the very back of the bus exactly where Sean Stark had crashed.

Fuck, he's jacking his dick! yelled a voice in my head. I settled back on the seat and carefully rolled my eyes toward the left of the bus. The light from a passing car shot through the darkness, briefly illuminating things. The rapid, desperate pumping went silent. But that quick flip of the lights through our bus showed me an image I'd never forget.

Sean sat all alone, the back of his head leaning against the window, his long, strong legs aimed out toward the aisle, one foot on the floor, the other straddling the seat. At the top of those slightly spread legs, he had both hands cupped over his crotch, and through a gap in his fingers, I noticed his camouflage pants were open, revealing a flash of dark, curly hair riding his thumbs. I also locked eyes on the long, glistening helmet of his cock, held in a death-grip just below its arrow-shaped head. The meaty skin of his hairy balls poked out from the base of his fingers.

As soon as the light died, I heard Sean resume jacking, and even detected the sound of a soft, deep grunt. With all of this happening less than a yard away from me, my cock stiffened quickly up to its full thickness. Slowly, carefully, I slid a few inches along the old, tough vinyl seat, hoping to get closer for a better view without alerting him to my presence. I eased a hand down the front of my track pants and into my underwear to find my tool painfully hard, my nuts hot and loose. The brief glimpse I'd gotten of our team's captain yanking on his hard jock dick burned teasingly in my memory. I had to come -- and I wanted Sean's come. I needed to see more, needed to --

I unconsciously moaned out a desperate grunt. The wet, thumping cadence from the seat one row back to my left again went silent. I realized I'd been a bit too loud, that my action, and Sean's, could get us both in a lot of shit if we weren't careful. Reluctantly, I pulled my hand out of my pants, took a heavy swallow, and scooted to the edge of the seat. With my heart in my throat, I reached out and back one row and clapped the big sneakered foot I'd wrapped in tape several hours earlier. Sean seized in place beneath my hand.

"Hey," I said in a whispered grunt meant only for him. Sean pulled away and sat up. Making sure none of the guys were looking, I slipped out of my seat and beside him in his at the back of the bus. I couldn't be sure if it was wishful thinking or the truth, but the raw, musty smell of a college jock's crotch filled my next shallow breath.

"'Sup?" Sean growled in the shadows. His voice sounded dry and nervous. Unable to stop myself, I glanced down between his legs, noticing both of his hands covered his lap.

I opened my mouth to speak, but nearly choked on the words as they emerged. "Just be a little more discreet, dude," I managed. "What you're doing -- I mean, it's cool. Just don't let any of the coaches see you."

Sean remained silent during the few tense seconds that followed. The drumming of my heartbeats in my ears kept the seven-inch bone between my legs up to its full stiffness. I readied to say something, but the deep moan of the team captain's voice beat me out. "You gonna tell?"

"Hell no, course not," I said. I punched the top of his leg. There hadn't been anything sexual in the gesture. It was what was expected of guys on a team, a show of support, of brotherhood. But as I did it, I felt how tense his toned leg muscles were, and against my better judgment, I settled my hand along his thigh. "Every dude gets boned up after playing hockey. It's part of the game. You know that."

Sean moaned out a breathless sigh. "Fuck, dude," he moaned. "My dick's so hard."

The entire world seemed to ignite at the sound of his voice, going from pitch black to a burning red. The nervous ringing in my ears popped. I didn't hear anything after that, just the wet sound of Sean's cock being stroked. He'd resumed jerking off, only now seated right beside me at the back of the bus. Sean sighed again. His hot, male-smelling breath hit my senses, intoxicatingly beautiful. Before I could stop myself, I reached between his legs, felt the hard contours of his knuckles and the back of his hand first, and then the pulsating, rubbery warmth of his cock. Sean seized in place beside me.

"Fuck," he groaned.

I gave his cock a few firm pumps, enough to coax a fresh trickle of wetness out. The warm juice oozed down the side of my hand. I released my death grip and tasted my fingers. Sean's pre-come was sweet and musky.

"Don't stop," he huffed, demanded. "Help me out, dude."

Before I could talk myself out of it -- and to the shock of both of us -- I slid down off the seat to my knees on the dirty floor of the bus.