CHAPTER 21
Fangirl Behaviour
Hunter
My tired muscles relaxed under the spray of the warm water.
I watched suds disappear down the shower drain as a sense of calm finally filtered through my system after the adrenaline from today’s game.
The team had played exceptionally. So had I, despite the state of my mind.
Everyone was riding on a high from our win.
Coach Turner had never been prouder as he gave his usual talk post-game.
I didn’t want to get overly cocky and confident before the finals, but we all had a strong feeling that the championship trophy was finally coming home to the Panthers.
Now everyone left and I was the last one in the locker room, needing time alone to untangle the mess that was my head.
I felt like a wreck on the inside. It didn’t matter that I played the best game of my university career.
Not when all I could focus on was the red-haired beauty sitting in the bleachers.
I assumed my eyes were playing tricks on me. That she was a mirage.
But there she was, in the flesh, and I couldn’t comprehend why she’d shown up after making it clear last night that she only saw me as a friend.
The painful reminder had me gnashing my teeth until my jaw hurt. But I was grateful for the ache elsewhere than in my goddamned heart—the stupid organ that brought me nothing but torment since I’d first laid eyes on Gabriela. I wished I could carve it out of my chest and throw it away.
This yearning was tearing me apart and I just wanted it to stop.
But like a masochist, I kept replaying the moment she sliced me to ribbons with her words. She never meant to give me false hope for a future. She couldn’t be with me like that.
While I foolishly confessed wanting to be just hers.
In the midst of my self-loathing, over the pitter-patter of the water, I heard the locker room door swing open and then a soft click. My shoulders stiffened and I raised my head, wiping back the wet strands sticking to my face.
Maybe Josh had returned to pester me again and ask if I was okay for the tenth time. I appreciated his concern, but I was not in the mood to tolerate his or anyone else’s presence.
As I hedged a glance over the shower stall, I seized with tension.
Through the steam rising around me, I managed to decipher the silhouette of my obsession, leaning back against the locker room’s door.
Most of the lights were shut, save for a handful of fluorescent ones in the changing area that lent some faded illumination near the shower stalls. But it was enough to confirm that it was my Gabriela.
She appeared dazed before her head snapped up.
Her gaze unceremoniously connected with mine.
A slow-burning heat erupted in my core. My pulse pounded embarrassingly fast, the way it always did when she was near me. I wanted to know why she was here and what I needed to do so I could be a man worthy of her.
My moral compass was nonexistent where she was concerned, for I feared that I wasn’t above doing whatever it took to make her smile and laugh.
To make her mine if she allowed it. As a queen to my humble kingdom, I would give her access to my everything.
She only needed to reach out and claim me.
I was hers for the taking. I had always been.
And though I never considered myself to be a gluttonous bastard, I greedily wished she’d be willing to give me a little piece of her heart in exchange for all of me.
I would cherish it—her—until the end of my time.
There were a thousand things I wanted to say, yet I couldn’t speak a single word.
My luring siren became more visible by the second as she waded closer.
Her indelible beauty struck me once again.
Those blue eyes of hers always reeled me in with their power like I was a pirate lost at sea who’d finally found his beacon of hope.
Those red lips held me hostage like a man whose only task in life was tasting her kiss, and that toned body with gentle curves that belonged on a painting in a museum taunted me like a forbidden fruit.
Gabriela was exquisite and I was sick out of my mind with need for her.
In my trance, I opened the shower stall’s door, an invitation clear as day.
Suddenly, we were mere inches apart as she came closer. I could practically taste her exhale with my inhale, her signature vanilla and red roses fragrance funneling through my lungs like a drug.
Her hypnotizing gaze fell over my muscular body in rapture, following the water rivulets glistening down my skin. Lust formed on her features as she eyed the snake tattoo wrapped around my right thigh before gasping when she registered the sight of my thickening cock.
I didn’t bother hiding myself. She already saw all of me.
And though Gabriela may not like me the way I liked her, she couldn’t hide that she was insanely attracted to me.
It was my curse, it seemed, to fall for women who only cared about my outer appearance. But that wasn’t entirely true with Gabriela, was it? She cared for me immensely. Just not the same way I cared for her. This was all friendly for her while I’d strayed too far in the romantic realm of things.
Quietly, we watched each other through a thin curtain of steam and water. Words were insignificant for this moment crackling with pure thrill and anticipation.
A few water droplets landed on her cheek and I was helpless to reach for her, thumbing them away and stroking the softness of her skin. When she leaned into my palm like she’d missed my touch, giving me this look that fucking unravelled me, I lost what small control I had left.
“What are you doing here, little doll?” My voice came out guttural but coated with layers of my undeniable longing. “Besides torturing me with what I want—and what I can’t have—so fucking bad, hm?”
Her eyes closed and she let loose a breathy noise as though my words landed like a shot straight into her sternum. I hated the wrongness of it, wanting to ease her discomfort. “I…”
I leaned down until our foreheads touched and our lips were a hairbreadth away. “Talk to me, baby.”
Gabriela’s eyes snapped open, swimming with conflicted emotions. “You were never in that class to begin with…You only joined because of me.”
I expected her to tell me that she was here to further push her friendship agenda, not state that she somehow figured out my secret. I wasn’t even embarrassed that she now knew the truth.
“Haven’t you realized by now that I’m obsessed with you?
” I confessed. “That I would do anything to be next to you—anything for you to acknowledge my existence?” I wrapped my hand around her neck, her pulse hammering under my thumb, and dragged my open mouth across her cheek, until I reached her diamond-earring-adorned lobe.
“I saw you four hundred and forty-seven days ago and you’ve never left my mind since.
You fucking live in there, Gabby. I go to sleep dreaming of you.
I wake up thinking of you.” My lips grazed the shell of her ear.
“And I spend every hour in between like a pathetic fool trying to talk to you, to be next to you, to just please you as though it’s my life’s sole purpose. ”
Gabriela jerked back, blue eyes flaring with intensity as she watched me.
Her hands rose to cup my cheeks. “You’re not pathetic, Hunter.
Far from it,” she said firmly. “The truth is that there aren’t enough words in any language to properly encompass what you are, but I can say with conviction that it’s nothing short of perfect. ”
She leaned up on her toes to stamp her mouth to mine in a kiss that heated my blood and pulverized all my resolve to stay away from Gabriela.
I’m undone, I thought. I have no defences against her. I’m an open vault and she can take anything and everything from me. So long as she keeps coming back. So long as she never leaves me alone.
I kissed her back with equal fervour, sipping from her roughly like a thirsty man wandering barren lands and finally finding sustenance.
Gabriela’s fingers plunged into my wet hair.
With the hand still clasped around her neck, I dragged her deeper into me, plastering her fully clothed body to my naked one.
“You can’t say shit like that to me. You’re killing me, Gabriela,” I growled against her lips between short, passionate kisses, squeezing her ass and neck for emphasis. The soft whine she released drove me mad. “Did you come here to pick up where we left off Friday night?”
Gabriela panted like she’d run a marathon, pulling away just enough to gaze at me.
The water had drenched her high ponytail, her lashes, and her fur coat.
The heavy-lidded look on her face, coupled with flushed cheeks and a kiss-smeared red mouth, was extremely sexy.
I remembered it from three nights ago. I had memorized it like a sacred scroll, including the taste of her pussy on my tongue, the sounds of her needy moans, and the feel of her hands on my body, pleading for more.
“N-no. I came here to talk to you. I want to mend what I broke, pretty boy.”
That term of endearment wrenched at my heart. “I don’t want to talk right now.”
I didn’t want to hear her apologizing for not being on the same page as me.
We couldn’t help who we liked or when our feelings weren’t reciprocated.
I made peace with it. From the very beginning, I was in too deep.
While I wished I could be enough for Gabriela to forgo whatever it was that was holding her back… I wouldn’t hold it against her.
“No?” She arched a daring brow. “Then what do you want right now?”
“For you to end my misery and take off your coat,” I found myself saying, my voice low and pressing. “I want to see what you’re hiding underneath.”
I couldn’t think of anything else truthfully.