The young athlete has always kept his head down and his hands clean, until the coach's best friend walks into the locker room and stays there. The older man does not coach him, does not owe him anything, which is exactly why he can look at him the way he does — slow, unblinking, like he already knows how the boy sounds when he is not trying so hard to be good.

After practice, when the gym empties out and the fluorescent lights hum, the older man finds reasons to be nearby. He adjusts the athlete's stance with hands that stay too long on his hips. He towels off his own neck while he watches the boy strip out of his uniform, saying nothing, letting the silence do whatever it wants. The athlete tells himself he is imagining the hunger in the man's eyes. He tells himself this even when he starts leaving his shirt off longer than he needs to, even when he learns exactly which benches to stretch on so the man will pass close enough to smell.

The age gap should matter. The coach should matter. The small-town gym walls are thin and everyone talks. But when the older man finally corners him against the equipment closet, breathing beer and want against his mouth, the only thing that feels real is the hand gripping his jaw and the voice telling him he has been watched for months, that he has been chosen, that he is not going anywhere until he is finished with.

What starts as stolen minutes after hours becomes something the athlete cannot name without shaking. The man is possessive in ways that should frighten him — marking his neck where the collar cannot hide it, showing up at his apartment uninvited, sliding into the passenger seat of his truck and directing him to some darker road. Each time he thinks he will pull back, the man finds the exact place he is weakest and presses there until he opens. He has never been handled like this. He has never wanted to be.

But the coach is starting to notice. Whispers move through the town like damp rot. The athlete stands at a crossroads he never asked for, carrying bruises he does not want to explain, waking hard from dreams where the man is inside him and he is begging for it to be deeper, harder, his. He built his future on discipline and straight lines, and now he is lying awake with his hand between his legs, replaying the way the older man's voice sounds when he says mine.

A full-length MM age gap forbidden possessive erotic romance featuring an ambitious young athlete and the possessive older coach's best friend.

Beckett Raeburn

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