Straight Until Overtime by Chase Power - Bonus Chapter

Straight Until Overtime: Bonus Chapter

An exclusive scene by Chase Power
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Pride Tape

Set three weeks after the epilogue of Straight Until Overtime. Jay’s POV.

Jay noticed the tape during warm-ups.

Not immediately — he was focused on his own routine, firing pucks at the net with the rapid-fire release he’d spent the off-season sharpening, feeling the preseason ice under his blades for the first time since May. The arena was half-full for an exhibition game. The energy was loose, casual, more barbecue than battle. Families in the lower bowl, a few scouts in the press box, the kind of game that existed to shake rust and settle roster questions that didn’t involve either of them.

He caught it on his third lap around center ice. Liam was at the blue line, running through his pre-game pivots — lateral slides, controlled edge work, the mechanical routine Jay had memorized over months of watching this man move with the focused precision of someone who treated warm-ups the way monks treated prayer.

His stick was low, blade on the ice. And that’s when Jay saw it.

A strip of rainbow tape. Wrapped neatly around the shaft of Liam’s stick, just above the blade, visible every time he handled the puck. Small enough to miss from the upper deck. Unmistakable up close.

Pride tape.

Liam O’Rourke — the man who had, four months ago, been unable to say the word bi without his voice cracking — was skating in a preseason game with a rainbow on his stick.

Jay’s vision blurred. He blinked hard, blamed the cold rink air, and skated to center ice to compose himself before anyone noticed the team’s top-six winger was having a full emotional crisis over adhesive tape.

He looked back. Liam caught his eye across the ice. The look he gave Jay was quiet, steady, and carried the specific weight of a man who had done something he wasn’t going to explain because the act itself was the explanation. His ears were red. His mouth twitched — the almost-smile that Jay had spent five months decoding and still found devastating every time it appeared.

Jay tapped his stick on the ice twice. Their signal. I see you.

Liam tapped back. Once. Good.

Jay spent the rest of warm-ups in a state of controlled detonation.

They won the exhibition game 4-1. Jay scored twice off Liam’s feeds, because of course he did — the man could thread a pass through a keyhole, and tonight his passes had an extra edge to them, sharper, more aggressive, like the tape had unlocked something in his game along with everything else.

In the locker room, Tommy noticed first. Because Tommy noticed everything about Liam with the devoted attention of a retriever tracking a tennis ball.

“Is that pride tape?” Tommy asked, pointing at Liam’s stick in the rack with zero self-consciousness. “That’s sick. Can I get some?”

“Yeah,” Liam said. “I’ll bring you a roll tomorrow.”

“Awesome. Petrov, you want in? We could do the whole D corps.”

Ezra, passing by on his way to the showers, glanced at the stick. Then at Liam. Then at Jay. He said nothing, but the nod he gave — brief, weighted, carrying the full approval of a captain who had watched this man claw his way from the closet to a rainbow on his stick in the span of one season — was the Ezra equivalent of a standing ovation.

Jay kept his face neutral until he reached the parking garage. Then he sat in Liam’s truck and vibrated.

“You,” Jay said, the moment Liam climbed into the driver’s seat. “The tape. The fact that the man who couldn’t say bisexual four months ago just skated an entire game with a rainbow on his stick in front of nine thousand people and didn’t even mention it to me beforehand.”

Liam buckled his seatbelt with the methodical calm of a man who knew exactly what he’d done and was enjoying the fallout. “It’s just tape.”

“It’s not just tape and you know it.”

“It felt right.” The same words he always used — after the spin on the ice, after the bare hand on Jay’s hip, after every step into the daylight that he’d taken one at a time until the daylight was just where he lived. “I wanted people to see it. I wanted you to see it.”

Jay’s throat was tight. His hand found Liam’s thigh — their position, their default, the geography of them expressed through a palm on denim. “I saw it. During warm-ups. I almost skated into the boards.”

“I know. Tommy asked if you were okay.”

“You let me discover it in front of the whole team. Like some kind of romantic ambush.”

“It wasn’t an ambush. It was a statement.” Liam started the truck. His ears were still crimson. “I ordered the tape online three weeks ago. It arrived yesterday. I wrapped it this morning while you were in the shower. I almost chickened out twice.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

Jay stared at him — this enormous, quiet, steadily brave man who had spent twenty-seven years hiding and was now, piece by piece, building a life in the open. The man who made terrible eggs and bought crushed flowers and slept with his arm locked around Jay every night. The man who had learned to say I love you with the earnest intensity of someone who treated every word like load-bearing architecture.

“Take me home,” Jay said. “Right now. Drive fast.”

“We haven’t eaten—”

“Liam. I need to be naked with you immediately. Food can wait. My feelings about that tape cannot.”

Liam drove fast.

They made it from the truck to the apartment in under two minutes. Jay’s key jammed in the lock the way it did when his hands were shaking, and Liam’s hand — steady, warm, enormous — covered his and turned it for him. The deadbolt clicked. The door opened.

Jay pushed Liam inside and kicked the door shut behind them.

The apartment was dark except for the fairy lights, glowing amber on their timer. The bodega flowers sat on the counter in their blue mug — this week’s batch, the rose still holding on. Jay registered these details in the peripheral way you registered your own heartbeat: constant, essential, the infrastructure of a life he loved.

Then he shoved Liam against the door and kissed him.

Not gently. Not the slow, tender kiss of a man expressing measured affection. This was a full-body collision — Jay’s hands fisted in Liam’s henley, his mouth open and demanding, his tongue sliding past Liam’s lips with a hunger that had been building since the third lap of warm-ups. He kissed Liam with every ounce of what the pride tape had ignited — gratitude, desire, awe, the bone-deep recognition of what that small strip of rainbow meant from a man who had spent twenty-seven years in the dark.

Liam kissed him back with equal force. His hands found Jay’s waist, his hips, gripping hard enough to bruise through the fabric of his track pants. His back was against the door, the deadbolt digging into his spine, and he didn’t seem to care. His mouth was hot and open and tasted like Gatorade and the particular salt of postgame exertion, and Jay wanted to consume him.

“Off,” Jay said, pulling at the henley. “Take this off right now.”

Liam pulled it over his head. The hallway was dim, but the fairy lights from the living room caught the planes of his chest — the reddish-brown hair, the heavy pecs, the bruises from tonight’s game already purpling along his ribs. Jay ran both hands over him, palms flat, fingers spread, mapping the territory he knew by heart and never tired of exploring. His thumbs traced Liam’s nipples and Liam sucked in a breath, his stomach clenching.

“You put a rainbow on your stick,” Jay murmured against his collarbone, then bit down. Not gently. Hard enough to mark, hard enough to leave evidence on that pale Irish skin that would still be visible tomorrow. Liam’s head thumped against the door and a sound tore out of him — low, guttural, the sound of a man whose composure was being systematically disassembled.

Jay kissed down his chest. His sternum, the chain that Jay had given him for his birthday last month — a match to Jay’s, thinner, silver, resting against the copper hair. His stomach, the clenching abs, the trail of hair that thickened below his navel and led to the waistband of his jeans.

Jay dropped to his knees in the hallway. Two steps inside the door. The hardwood was unforgiving against his kneecaps and he didn’t give a shit.

“Do you have any idea what that tape does to me?” Jay looked up. Liam was staring down at him — green eyes blown to black, chest heaving, his hands braced flat against the door behind him like he needed the support to stay upright. “You stood on that ice with a rainbow on your stick and you didn’t flinch. You didn’t hide it. You just wore it, like it was nothing, like it was as natural as taping your blade, and I—”

His voice cracked. He swallowed it down and redirected the emotion into his hands, which were already working Liam’s belt open. The buckle clinked. The zipper hissed. Jay pulled his jeans and boxers down together and Liam’s cock sprang free — thick, flushed, already fully hard, because Liam had been hard since Jay shoved him against the door and they both knew it.

“Show me,” Liam said. His voice was wrecked. His hand found Jay’s hair — gentle at first, the way it always started, fingers threading through the curls. “Show me what it does to you.”

Jay took him in his mouth.

No teasing, no buildup, no slow approach. He swallowed him deep on the first stroke — the head hitting the back of his throat, his lips stretched wide, his hand wrapping the base where his mouth couldn’t reach. Liam’s hips jerked forward and the sound he made — broken, raw, a punch of air that echoed off the hallway walls — sent heat flooding through Jay’s entire body.

Jay worked him with the focused, devastating skill he’d spent months perfecting on this specific man. He knew Liam’s body the way he knew a defensive scheme — every pressure point, every trigger, every angle that produced maximum effect. The flat of his tongue dragged along the underside on the upstroke. His hand twisted at the base in counterpoint to his mouth. He hollowed his cheeks and sucked, then went soft and let Liam fill his mouth, the contrast making Liam’s thighs shake.

He pulled off long enough to speak, his lips wet and swollen, resting against the head. “You’re so brave.” His voice was hoarse, pitched low, aimed directly at the praise kink that lived at the center of Liam’s wiring. “The tape. The team. Your parents. Every single step. You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known and I am so fucking in love with you.”

“Jay—” Liam’s hand tightened in his hair. His hips were trembling with the effort of not thrusting. “If you keep talking I’m going to—”

“Not yet.” Jay took him deep again, held him there, swallowed around him. Liam’s entire body locked up — abs rigid, thighs granite, his head thrown back against the door, a shattered moan vibrating through his chest. Jay pulled back slowly, dragging his tongue, letting Liam feel every inch of withdrawal, then dove again. Again. Building a rhythm that was merciless and worshipful and designed to take Liam apart from the foundation up.

Liam’s hand flew from Jay’s hair to the doorframe, gripping the wood. His other hand pressed flat against the door behind him. Both arms braced, muscles corded, holding himself up while Jay destroyed him from below. The sounds filling the hallway were obscene — wet, rhythmic, punctuated by Liam’s increasingly desperate breathing and the quiet, satisfied sounds Jay made around him.

“Jay — stop — I want—” Liam’s voice was barely functional. He reached down, cupped Jay’s jaw, tilted his face up. The eye contact in that position — Liam towering above, Jay on his knees looking up with his mouth full and his eyes dark — made both of them shudder. “Not like this. I want to be inside you.”

Jay pulled off with a wet sound that made Liam’s cock twitch. “The wall. You promised me the wall.”

“I didn’t promise—”

“You held me against a tile wall in the shower three months ago and I think about it approximately once an hour. You owe me a wall, O’Rourke.”

Liam’s expression shifted — from overwhelmed to focused, the competitive edge surfacing through the haze of arousal. The look of a man who had been issued a challenge and intended to meet it.

He bent. Hooked his hands under Jay’s thighs. And lifted.

Jay’s feet left the floor. His legs wrapped around Liam’s waist on instinct, arms locking behind his neck, and Liam carried him from the hallway to the bedroom like he weighed nothing — because to a man who squatted four hundred pounds for warm-up reps, Jay’s one-eighty was a rounding error. Jay kissed his neck the entire way, sucking marks into the skin below his ear, tasting sweat and cedarwood soap, and laughed against his throat because being carried by a six-three defenseman through a fairy-lit apartment was both the most ridiculous and the most romantic thing that had ever happened to him.

The bedroom wall was cool against Jay’s back when Liam pressed him against it. The contact — cold plaster, hot skin, the full weight of Liam’s body pinning him two feet off the ground — ripped a sound from Jay that was embarrassingly loud and completely involuntary.

“Clothes,” Jay gasped. “Off. Everything. Now.”

Liam set him down just long enough to strip. Jay’s track pants and compression shorts hit the floor in one motion. His shirt followed. Liam kicked off his jeans, which were pooled at his ankles from the hallway, and then they were naked, face to face, the fairy lights from the hall casting amber stripes across their bodies.

Jay looked at him. All of him. The width of his chest, the thickness of his thighs, the cock that was flushed dark and straining, the chain glinting against his skin. Four months of sleeping beside this man every night and the sight of him still made Jay’s mouth go dry.

“Come here,” Jay said.

Liam pinned him against the wall again. Lifted him. This time it was skin on skin — their cocks pressed together between their stomachs, Jay’s legs wrapped tight around Liam’s waist, the friction of their bodies creating a heat that radiated from every point of contact. Jay groaned and rolled his hips, grinding against Liam’s length, and Liam’s fingers dug into the backs of his thighs hard enough to leave fingerprints.

“I love you,” Jay said. He said it into the space between their mouths, the way you said something that was too important for volume.

“I love you.” Liam kissed him — deep, thorough, the kind of kiss that was an act of sex in itself.

“I love you.” Jay said it again because he could, because four months ago the man holding him against a wall couldn’t say bi without choking and now he wore rainbows on his hockey stick and held Jay’s hand across restaurant tables and slept in Jay’s bed with the covers kicked off and his arm locked around Jay’s waist like letting go was structurally impossible.

“Nightstand,” Liam murmured against his mouth. “Don’t move.”

He carried Jay — still pinned, legs still wrapped — three steps to the bed, set him on the edge, and reached for the drawer. Lube. Condom. The choreography so practiced it was muscle memory now, each movement economical and sure.

“Against the wall,” Jay said. “I want you to fuck me against the wall.”

Liam’s eyes went molten. “I need to prep you first.”

“Then prep me fast.”

Liam slicked his fingers. Knelt in front of where Jay sat on the bed’s edge, pushed Jay’s thighs apart, and pressed one finger inside him. Jay’s head fell back, a hiss escaping through his teeth — not pain, just the initial stretch, the body adjusting, the nerve endings firing. Liam was careful but efficient — he’d learned this, learned exactly how Jay’s body responded, how much pressure, how much time, the curling motion that found the spot and made Jay’s spine bow.

“More,” Jay breathed.

Two fingers. The stretch deepened. Liam scissored them slowly, opening him, and when he crooked forward and hit the spot, Jay’s hips jerked off the bed and his hand shot to Liam’s shoulder for balance.

“There — right there — fuck, Liam —”

Liam worked that spot with a patience that bordered on sadistic. Slow, firm, rhythmic pressure that built the heat in Jay’s core to something approaching unbearable. Jay was panting, his cock leaking against his stomach, his fingers digging crescents into Liam’s shoulder.

“I’m ready,” Jay gasped. “Wall. Now. Please.”

Liam withdrew his fingers, rolled the condom on, and slicked himself. Then he stood, lifted Jay off the bed, and carried him back to the wall.

The plaster was cool against Jay’s back. Liam held him with one arm, positioned himself with his free hand, and pressed forward.

The first inch was a revelation. It always was — the stretch, the fullness, the overwhelming intimacy of being entered by someone you loved while suspended in their arms. Jay’s body opened for him, took him in, and the sensation of Liam sinking deeper — inch by inch, controlled, his arms trembling with the effort of holding Jay up and going slow simultaneously — was consuming.

“Fuck,” Jay whispered. His legs tightened around Liam’s waist. His arms locked behind Liam’s neck. He was completely supported — nothing touching the ground, held aloft by Liam’s strength and the wall at his back, and the vulnerability of that position, the total trust, made everything more intense.

Liam bottomed out. Held still. Their foreheads pressed together, breathing each other’s air. Jay could feel Liam’s heartbeat through his chest — fast, pounding, the heart of a man overwhelmed by sensation and emotion in equal measure.

“Move,” Jay said against his mouth. “Don’t you dare hold back.”

Liam moved.

The first thrust pressed Jay’s back against the wall and drove the air from his lungs. The second hit the angle — the one Liam had mapped with obsessive precision over months of learning Jay’s body — and Jay’s vision went white at the edges. The third made him cry out, loud, his voice echoing through the apartment, bouncing off the walls he’d hung with art and the ceiling he’d strung with fairy lights.

Liam built a rhythm. Deep, deliberate, each thrust driven by his hips and his legs and the full power of a body trained to deliver force. Jay’s back slid against the wall with each stroke, the friction a counterpoint to the devastating pressure inside him. Liam’s hands gripped Jay’s thighs, fingers spread, supporting his weight with an ease that was both practical and obscenely hot — the casual demonstration of strength that Jay would never, ever get tired of.

“You’re everything,” Liam said. The words he always said — their words, the ones that cracked Jay open no matter how many times he heard them. “You taught me who I am. You showed me what it feels like to stop hiding. Every morning I wake up next to you and I can’t believe —” His voice fractured. His rhythm faltered for one stroke, then steadied, deeper. “I can’t believe you stayed. After everything I put you through. You stayed.”

Jay’s eyes burned. The praise — sincere, specific, delivered mid-thrust by a man who hoarded words like currency and spent them only when they were real — hit every nerve in his body. He was used to giving praise, used to being the one who talked, who guided, who said you’re doing so well and you feel incredible. Receiving it — from Liam, whose approval had to be earned and whose words had to be pried from his chest like splinters — was the thing that undid Jay every time.

“Always,” Jay managed, his voice wrecked. “I’ll always stay. I—fuck—right there, don’t stop—”

Liam didn’t stop. He shifted Jay’s hips, tilting the angle, and drove into the spot with precision that made Jay’s entire body clench. Jay’s cock was trapped between their stomachs, leaking, the friction of Liam’s abs against the shaft creating a secondary wave of pleasure that layered over the primary and built toward something catastrophic.

“Touch me,” Jay gasped. “I need — Liam, I need your hand —”

Liam adjusted his grip — shifted Jay’s weight to one arm and the wall, freeing his other hand, which slid between their bodies and wrapped around Jay’s cock. The grip was firm, the rhythm matched to his thrusts, and the coordination — driving into Jay from below while stroking him between their bodies, holding him against a wall with one arm like it was nothing — was an athletic feat that should have been impossible and was, instead, the most erotic thing Jay had ever experienced.

“Come for me,” Liam said. Low, rough, a command disguised as a request. “I want to feel you. I want to hear you say my name.”

Jay came apart.

The orgasm detonated from his core — deep, radiating, fed by the angle and Liam’s hand and the praise still echoing in his chest. He came in long, shuddering pulses between their bodies, spilling over Liam’s fist, his muscles clenching around Liam inside him. He said Liam’s name — not once but three times, four, the syllables stripped of everything except raw need and raw love and the complete surrender of a man who had spent years protecting himself and had found, finally, someone worth lowering every wall for.

Liam followed. Two more thrusts — deep, uneven, the rhythm gone ragged — and then he buried himself to the hilt and came with his face pressed against Jay’s throat. The sound he made was muffled but devastating — a broken, overwhelmed cry that Jay felt vibrate against his skin. Liam’s arms tightened. His body locked. He held Jay against the wall and shook through it, both of them trembling, both of them wrecked, the fairy lights casting amber patterns on their skin while the apartment held them like a promise kept.

They slid to the floor.

Liam’s legs gave out first — not from exhaustion but from the particular muscular collapse that followed holding a hundred-and-eighty-pound man against a wall while having the most intense orgasm of his life. They landed in a tangle against the bedroom baseboard, Jay in Liam’s lap, both of them breathing hard, sweat cooling on their skin.

Jay pressed his face against Liam’s chest. Listened to his heartbeat — fast, slowing, the steady drum that Jay fell asleep to every night and had become, without his permission, the sound that meant safe.

“The tape stays,” Liam said. His voice was hoarse, his lips against Jay’s hair. His hand rested on Jay’s hip — thumb against the bone, their signature touch, the gesture that said mine without needing a word.

“The tape stays,” Jay agreed.

“And I was thinking —” Liam paused. The pause of a man assembling words carefully, the way he always did when the words mattered more than his comfort. “The charity gala next month. The red carpet.”

Jay lifted his head. “What about it?”

“I want us to go together. Not as teammates. As a couple. On the carpet. In front of the photographers.” Liam’s jaw was set, but his eyes were soft — green and gold in the fairy light, carrying the quiet determination of a man who had decided to stop arriving at the daylight in increments and simply walk into it. “No more ambiguity. No more ‘they’re just teammates.’ I want my arm around you and I want them to see it.”

Jay stared at him. At this man — sitting on a bedroom floor, naked, covered in the evidence of what they’d just done, his hair wrecked, his neck marked, pride tape still wrapped around his game stick in the equipment bag by the door — and felt something settle in his chest that had been unsettled for a very long time.

Marco had said daylight. Had said if he can’t claim you in the daylight, walk away. And Jay had believed him, and had almost walked, and had stayed instead because something in Liam’s eyes told him the daylight was coming if he could just be patient enough to wait for it.

The daylight was here. It had arrived on a strip of rainbow tape and it was never leaving.

“Yeah,” Jay said. His voice was thick. His eyes were wet and he didn’t try to hide it, because hiding was something other people did, people who hadn’t earned the right to be seen. Jay had earned it. Liam had given it to him. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Liam pulled him close. Kissed his forehead — the seal, the stamp, the wordless promise that had become their ritual. Jay closed his eyes and let himself be held and thought: This is what it feels like when someone chooses you. Not in the dark. Not in secret. In front of everyone, in the light, with a rainbow on his stick and your name in his mouth.

It felt like home.

It had always felt like home.

Thank you for reading! If you loved Liam and Jay’s story, please leave a review — it helps other readers find the book.

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