Chapter Nine Jordan #2
We’d never been out to eat together; the food, on both nights, had been delivered to the hotel room.
If I took her out to dinner, there was a solid chance I’d be recognized.
I never went anywhere without a fan coming up to take a picture or to ask for an autograph.
That couldn’t happen with Maya. But if we went to breakfast at this hour, there was far less worry that that would happen.
“Are you telling me you’re not hungry? Because I fucked every calorie out of your body last night, and you should be empty at this point.”
Her cheeks reddened as she smiled. “You and your way with words . . .”
“Well?”
She crossed her arms. “I’m actually quite hungry, yes.”
I reached for her hand. “There’s a diner on the next street.” I walked her to the end of the block, and when we reached the entrance to the restaurant, I held the door open and followed in behind her. “Two,” I said to the waitress as she walked by with a coffeepot.
“Sit anywhere,” she replied. “Menus are clipped behind the salt and pepper shakers.”
I led Maya to a seat in the back—away from the windows—and took the spot across from her.
“Have you been here before?” she asked.
I handed her a menu, remembering the last time I’d been here over summer break when I was still in college after partying at the bars all night. “A long time ago. You?”
“Never, but I bet they have good pancakes.”
“Why would you think that?”
“All diners have good pancakes. It’s a thing.”
In the last couple of days, since Maya had been fucking consuming me, the walls of my structure had crumbled.
I wasn’t even sleeping at home anymore. So switching up my breakfast of three hard-boiled eggs, avocado, and cottage cheese on sourdough bread—the same meal I’d eaten for years—seemed almost normal at this point.
I put the menu back behind the salt and pepper. “I’m going to test your theory.”
“I’m going to join you.” She returned her menu, too, and placed her hands on top of mine in the middle of the table, her nails gently tracing the backs of my fingers. “When we parted ways yesterday after our run, were you going to work?”
I nodded, unsure if this conversation was going to lead to a place of honesty.
“Where’s your office?”
“What, are you going to visit me there?” I smiled, knowing I was playing with fucking fire.
“Maybe.”
“It’s in the Back Bay.”
A building my father had purchased over thirty years ago. At the time, it had been four stories tall, and he rented out the bottom two floors. After multiple renovations and additions, it now sat at thirty-six stories, and we filled every crevice of the high-rise.
“I don’t venture over to that area all that often, but I’d make an exception for you.”
Fortunately, the waitress came to our table, cutting the conversation short. She pulled a pen out of her hair and held it to a pad of paper as she asked, “What can I get you?”
“We’re both going to have pancakes,” I told her.
As she wrote, she said, “And to drink?”
“Coffee for me,” Maya said.
“Cream and sugar?”
“On the side,” Maya replied.
“And for you?” she asked me.
“Black coffee.”
“Black coffee,” Maya repeated once we were alone. “You like it that bitter?”
“I try not to consume a lot of dairy. It’s horrible for my body, and I don’t like things sweet.
” I chuckled. “You’re my exception.” A response I’d semi-stolen from her, but it was fitting.
“Along with the pancakes, I suppose.” Which I would regret in a couple of hours, when the gluten would fill me with inflammation and my joints started to ache even worse than my fucking jaw.
As a professional athlete, I’d learned how food can work with you and against you, and even though my career had ended, I’d kept up many of the practices.
“With a body like yours, you must watch everything you eat.”
“For the most part, I do—but because it makes me feel better, not because I’m this vain motherfucker who insists on being this shredded.”
A grin slowly spread over her face as she looked at me through her eyelashes. “You’re not?”
“I know this is hard for you to believe, but no. As I’ve gotten older, the way I feel is far more important than how I look. I focus so hard on the first, the latter ends up benefiting.”
Her teeth flicked over her lower lip. “And that body is unreal. I assume you played sports growing up.” She nodded toward me. “Unless you just have an obsession with hockey.”
She was referring to my tattoos.
I’d tried to keep us in the dark the nights we’d spent at the hotel, but many moments were just unavoidable.
“I played a lot of hockey, Maya.”
“I know what that does to one’s body. I’ve taken care of a lot of ex–hockey players. Those injuries can last a lifetime, and the longer you played, the more damage is done.”
I thought I should define what a lot of hockey was, but the conversation I’d had with Gavin was fresh in my mind. I worried that if I really opened that topic, I’d have to take it deeper.
And what would deeper lead to?
Shit, things were starting to feel so fucking good.
I didn’t want to mess with that, even if it was wrong.
So I nodded and just said, “I played for a long, long time.”
“Then everything you’re saying makes sense.” She pulled her fingers back and crossed her arms over the table, leaning her chest into the edge of it. “I don’t really know anything about hockey. I don’t know if I’ve ever even watched a game, but I suddenly really appreciate the sport.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’ve never had a man pick me up before, or hold me against a wall during sex, or slam me on the bed—all things I’ve loved and haven’t been able to stop thinking about.”
“You think that has to do with hockey?”
“I imagine there’s so much body contact and moving and blocking—whatever you guys do to get that thing in the net—that positions like the ones we’ve done come natural to you.”
That was her diagnosis.
Which was fair, given that she was in the medical field.
Before I could respond, the waitress appeared with our food and drinks. After setting down our coffees, she placed a steaming stack of pancakes in front of me with a large scoop of butter in its center, melting and dripping down the sides.
“Let me know if you need anything,” the waitress said before she left us again.
I removed the butter, dropping it onto a napkin. “You’re right about the contact—hockey certainly trained me to be physical, and that aspect comes very natural to me. But as for the positions, that has nothing to do with the sport.”
“No?”
“I want you to enjoy sex as much as me—and I fucking love it. So I listen to what your body tells me, and I give it what it wants. Whenever it wants it. And how much it wants it.”
“Like the three hours you spent with your face between my legs . . .”
I slid the side of my fork through the soft, fluffy layers. “Your pussy told me it needed my tongue. I licked it until your body told me to stop.” The smile I gave her was as powerful as a wink.