Chapter 10
Artemis
What the hell am I doing? I’m towel wrapped, still dripping on the recovery-room floor, hand curled around the bicep of the man who won’t leave me alone. The real question is—do I even want him to?
I told him to stop pursuing me, but from the flicker of defiance in his eyes, I’ll have another package on my doorstep tomorrow morning. When he withdrew his presence, it… stirred something inside me, something that put us where we are right now.
I inch toward him, and he steps away, his back colliding with the door I didn’t let him escape through.
My gaze skims every inch of his face. His wavy hair covering his forehead, his questioning, taunting creamy brown eyes, his tanned skin, even the way his breath slides effortlessly through his nostrils.
Dios mío. I need to pull myself together.
Sexy nostrils?
Get the fuck out of here.
Of course security let him back here—Xavier Martinez could charm frost off the ice. He probably told them he left something here after his last game.
We’re locked in a battle of wills. Xavier, pressed against the door and me leaning into him. Our breathing has synchronised, our hot stares unmoving. If I wanted to, I could close the inch or two distance between our lips and kiss him.
But I don’t want to.
The surge of heat in my veins is deafening, but I can’t pull myself back from him to make space.
Fine. Maybe I do want to.
“What do you want, Xavier?” There’s a heaviness in my words I didn’t expect, a longing that’s masked by frustration. “I have enough going on in my life right now, I don’t need…” I jerk my chin at him. “Whatever fuckery this is.”
He snorts. “Funny, fuckery is exactly what I think you need.” He tips his head again, teasing light dancing in those milky brown eyes of his. “But what do I know?”
This dude will be the death of me.
Breathing gets harder the more our chests compress each other’s. He eyes my lips like he’s thinking about kissing me too.
Fuck, it’s hot in here.
I take a step back, but he’s there, in my space, shaking his head like he’s not letting me escape any more than I let him escape.
“I’m not going to be the butt of some kind of joke, Xavier. No pranks, no mind fucks, no games, no clowning around, just leave me alone and go back to whatever the fuck it is you do.” My breath spears into my lungs in sharp bursts.
He doesn’t back down, his lazy, heated stare slides across my features, assessing, gauging. He walks his fingers along the tattoo inked under my left collar bone. “For a man with such a deep, philosophical tattoo, you seem to have quite the habit of running away from the now.”
His touch scorches, leaving sizzled skin in its wake, and no amount of blinking erases the vision that is Xavier Martinez touching my bare skin.
“No pranks.” His fingers feel steadier as he walks them up the column of my neck making me suck in another harsh breath. His eyes spear mine with precision, and a flutter in my stomach sees something real in those brown depths.
“No mind fucks.” He tangles his fingers in the thick, still-damp hair at the nape of my neck.
“No games.” He shakes his head, but his eyes don’t leave my lips.
The air crackles around us. He smells faintly like cinnamon. Fuck him for that.
“What’s your angle, Xavier?” My voice is rough, like it’s been through a cheese grater.
Still watching my mouth, his lips quirk. “I like how my name sounds like a prayer on your lips, Artemis.”
A shiver slinks down my spine leaving goosebumps blooming over my cold skin. With his free hand, he brushes the pad of his thumb over my lips, prising my lower lip back from my teeth before letting it go.
Self-control slips between my fingers like sand through a timer. I swallow, reminding myself of the quiet commitment I made to myself, my siblings, my team this year. Grounding myself in my why, struggling to ignore the growing hardness between my legs.
If stubbornness were cardio, I’d have Olympic lungs. I splay my palm out on his chest, pushing him back hard against the door. He grins back at me, those fucking eyes provoking me as his head rattles against the glass pane behind him.
“Are you trying to break me? To prove a point? Is this some kind of fucking bet?”
He shakes his head, his heart thrumming quickly under the palm I can’t peel away from his body. Shit. Is that a Raccoons hoodie? Is he…? I blink, but the word Raccoons and the logo don’t disappear.
He’s in my barn, wearing my gear, and staring at me like he wants to consume me as much as his ghost has been consuming my thoughts for weeks.
“I’m not trying to break you, Artemis.” He covers my hand on his chest with his own and uses it to pull me back toward him by bending my arm at the elbow. “I want to see what happens when you melt.” His nostrils flare in time with the heat in his eyes. “Maybe clean up the puddle with my tongue.”
His words skate across my cold skin, breathing fire into my chilly body, and speaking directly to my already hard dick.
“Better question than all the ones you asked?” He sweeps his nose against mine, his scent, something citrus mixed with mint and God damn fucking cinnamon shoots straight into my bloodstream. “Why are you so intent on fighting this pull between us?”
My pulse races, my skin begging for release while my brain chants rules I can’t remember anymore.
He doesn’t wait for an answer, and while I’m frozen in place, he brushes his lips against mine. It’s a graze, an invitation, a silly little tease. It’s not fucking enough, so I step into it, into him, and my hair pulls tight in his fist as he covers my mouth with his.
The kiss isn’t soft. It’s frustration, longing, release, and challenge all tangled into one breath-stealing connection I want to dissolve into. His grip in my hair tightens when he feels me start to pull away, and he holds me in place despite him being the one pinned against the door.
His hard dick squeezes against my own throbbing cock, and the towel I’d been clutching between us as some sort of flimsy shield falls to my feet leaving me barefoot in shorts, being devoured by the beautiful enemy.
The sound of a stick hitting the tiles out in the corridor snaps me out of my addled haze. We aren’t alone, someone might see. And while I don’t care that people know my sexuality, I care that they might question my loyalty.
I step back, still pressing Xavier into the door but willing my body to simmer the fuck down and get under control.
My chest heaves with heavy breaths. My puffy lips tingle. When was the last time I kissed someone on the lips? Claudia? I didn’t kiss my hook ups, so we’re talking at least months ago.
Sex comes and goes, but kissing… kissing is the ultimate act of intimacy, and this smug fucker caught me off guard. And now he’s branded my lips with his.
“That was a mistake.” My voice shakes, like it doesn’t even believe the words either.
His cheek twitches, a smirk threatening to tug his lips. “Okay.”
I resist the urge to drop eye contact, or touch my still buzzing lips, or the worst option of them all, give in to the caged animal in my chest roaring at me to kiss him again.
“It won’t happen again.”
“Okay.”
“I need to leave.” He tilts his head. That fucking head tilt will be the goddamn death of me.
His smirk says he doesn’t believe me, and maybe I don’t believe me either. I remove my hand, stepping back and creating more space between us, my body moving on autopilot. “I… I have book club.”
Out of all the lies my tired brain could invent, it picks the one with social media receipts.
He doesn’t even indulge me with an ‘okay,’ this time, he purses his lips suppressing a grin. “There’s no book club on game nights.”
Cabrón.
I silently cuss out Justin for his stupid Get Lit book club, and his stupid social media account that tells everyone all about us.
It’s kind of fun that most university teams we play have set up their own book clubs, too.
And sometimes, we do read-a-longs or pick the same book as another group or two some months, but right now it’s an inconvenience.
His mischievous eyes call out my overt lie.
Something about the fact Xavier knows the inner workings of book club tells me he reads similar books to the ones we read in Get Lit, and that shoots lust right to my irrationally hard cock.
I need air. I need out. Because, despite the fact my skin is cold, my core is anything but. I shove him to the side and tug the door open and head out into the corridor. Shit. I forgot my clothes.
Hesitating, I roll onto the balls of my bare feet then my heels. Fuck it. I’ll find something else to wear. If I go back into that room, I won’t be able to stop my fingers from spearing themselves into his hair and kissing him until neither of us can breathe.
A flash of his soft, hungry lips against mine heats me from the inside as I head to the changing rooms. Every step leaves wet footprints, proof that I’m already melting.
I make it halfway down the hallway before I realize I’m shaking. I tell myself it’s the cold but it’s not. I’ve tasted the forbidden fruit, and now I want the whole fucking orchard.