Chapter 14
fourteen
MAINE
Consciousness returns like a hangover—slow, thick, and accompanied by a dull throb behind my temples that has nothing to do with alcohol.
My body aches in ways that are both familiar (hockey practice) and decidedly not (whatever the fuck Maya and I did to each other a few hours ago). The satisfaction runs deep, humming through my bones in a way that makes me want to stretch like a cat in sunshine.
For the first time in weeks—hell, months —I’m content and relaxed.
Except I can’t move, because Maya is sprawled across my chest like she owns the real estate. It’s still the middle of the night—or, more accurately, the early hours of the morning—but we both must have passed out after we were finished fucking each other’s brains out.
And now?
Her dark hair fans across my skin in a silky mess that tickles with every breath I take. One of her legs is tangled with mine, her thigh pressed intimately against a part of me that is very interested in a repeat performance only a few hours after we wrapped up.
I should feel victorious. Triumphant. Like I just scored the game-winning goal in overtime against our biggest rival. Except that’s not what this feels like at all. Because all I can focus on right now is the woman using me as her personal body pillow.
In sleep, Maya looks different. Softer. The sharp edges that usually armor her are smoothed away, leaving something vulnerable and achingly beautiful. A strand of hair has fallen across her cheek, and my fingers itch to tuck it behind her ear.
What the actual fuck?
This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. I don’t do feelings.
I don’t get protective urges about women I’m actively trying to seduce for money.
Yet here I am, fighting the insane urge to pull her closer, to build a fortress of blankets around us, and to tell the world to fuck off for the next twelve hours.
Maybe longer.
Because she was there for me when I needed someone to be, and she’s probably the first person I could ever say that about.
The feeling sits heavy in my gut. It’s different.
Complicated. Tangled up with attraction and rivalry and the memory of how she took control last night, how she made me feel cared for.
She didn’t just fuck me. She took care of me. And I let her.
No, more than that. I needed it. Craved it like oxygen.
After yesterday—after my parents dumped Chloe on me like she was baggage instead of their daughter, after I stood there being the good son while they acted like I was furniture—I was hollowed out.
Empty. And then Maya filled me up again the only way she knows how, with a party for the ages and… well…
Whatever the hell that was that came after.
For once, I didn’t have to be the Maine Show.
I didn’t have to crack jokes or flex muscles or pretend everything was fine while I was drowning on dry land.
I could just… be. Broken and exhausted and desperately grateful for the way she commanded my body, my attention, and my complete fucking surrender.
The memory of it makes my chest tight. The way she looked at me like I was something worth conquering. The focused intensity as she mapped every inch of me with hands and mouth. The power in her eyes as she pinned my wrists to the mattress and took what she wanted—what we both needed.
Fuck. Fuck.
And that’s when the other reality crashes in like a slap shot to the face.
The bet.
One hundred dollars to every guy who took it. Money I don’t have to lose if I don’t follow through with it. Money that’s now tied to this woman who’s drooling slightly on my chest in a way that should be gross but is somehow endearing as hell.
The guys’ faces flash through my mind—Rook’s shit-eating grin, Mike’s knowing look, the chorus of laughter when I accepted the wager. They think this is a game. They think Maine versus Maya is a clash of the campus titans. They have no idea that she’s…
What? What is she?
Dangerous , my brain supplies helpfully.
She’s fucking dangerous in ways that have nothing to do with her party-girl reputation and everything to do with how she makes me feel.
Like I matter beyond my ability to make people laugh or score goals.
Like I’m worth more than my usefulness or my ability to be a companion and need nothing in return.
Nobody’s ever made me feel like that before.
The irony tastes bitter. Here I am, experiencing something that might be real, and it’s all built on a lie. A stupid, desperate bet. I can’t back out—the guys would call in the debt immediately—but going ahead with it feels like swallowing broken glass.
I need distance. I need to get my head straight before we sleep through the night together. So, moving carefully, I ease out from under her, my body mourning the loss of her warmth the second we separate. She makes a sound of protest but doesn’t wake, just burrows deeper into the spot I vacated.
I grab a pair of sweats from the floor and pull them on, my movements deliberately quiet. Then I notice it. “Jesus,” I mutter.
My room looks like a crime scene, with evidence of our encounter everywhere I look. The bedsheets twisted and pulled half off the mattress. Scratches on my back that sting when the fabric of my sweats brushes them. The lingering scent of sex so thick I could choke on it.
I should open a window. Air the place out. Clean up. Take a shower.
Distance myself.
Instead, I stand there like an idiot, watching her sleep.
She’s stolen my entire pillow now, hugging it to her chest. The sheet has slipped down to her waist, revealing the breasts I couldn’t get enough of but wasn’t allowed to touch, and the constellation of faint marks I left on her shoulder with my teeth.
Get it together, Hamilton, my mind blares. Stop being such a fucking pussy.
But even as I think it, I know I’m lying to myself. This stopped being simple the moment she sat beside me on the floor yesterday. The moment she saw me at my lowest and didn’t run. Didn’t judge. Just… stayed. And then gave me a cure for the emptiness that was eating me alive.
I force myself to turn away, to lean against the doorframe, and to practice my mask in the reflection of the mirror on the back of my door. Easy grin. Relaxed shoulders. Lazy posture that says, ‘I’m too cool to care about anything, especially feelings.’
It’s the same mask I’ve worn for years, but today it feels wrong.
Like a costume that shrunk in the wash.
Behind me, the bed creaks. She’s waking up. This is it. The moment to reestablish boundaries. To remind us both what this is and, more importantly, what it isn’t. I turn back, the mask in place like armor, and watch as she stretches with a grace that makes me ache for her all over again.
Her eyes find mine, dark and perceptive even through the haze of sleep and probably a hangover of her own. She doesn’t look embarrassed or awkward. Doesn’t scramble for clothes or make excuses. She just watches me with that same intensity that undid me last night.
“Well,” I drawl, forcing my voice into that low, teasing register that usually comes so naturally, “looks like I survived my first night with the wild stallion.”
The words are perfect. The delivery is flawless.
The exact right mix of cocky charm and casual distance.
It’s a line designed to set the tone, to remind us both that this is an arrangement, not a relationship.
That last night was fun but ultimately meaningless.
That I’m Maine, who treats sex like a recreational sport.
But the words feel like a betrayal of something I can’t even name, even as she props herself up on one elbow, the sheet sliding lower, and I have to look away because the sight of her—rumpled and satisfied and wearing my marks—is doing things to my brain that I can’t afford.
“Survived?” Her voice is husky with sleep, amused. “From what I remember, you were begging by the end.”
Heat floods my face because she’s right. I did beg. Shamelessly. Desperately. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. If things weren’t so fucked up, and if I wasn’t feeling so fucking caged by the bet that I made because I couldn’t admit to the guys for one damn second I might be feeling vulnerable.
“I don’t beg,” I lie. “I strategically negotiate.”
She laughs. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
The banter is safe territory. Familiar ground where we can pretend last night was just another round in our ongoing war instead of…
whatever it actually was. But even as we trade barbs, I can’t shake the feeling that everything has shifted.
That the game we’ve been playing has new rules I don’t understand.
“Want to sleep in here tonight?” I say, in a tone that makes clear I don’t want that.
She sits up fully, not bothering with the sheet, and I’m treated to a view that scrambles what’s left of my higher brain function. But it’s not just her body that gets to me, though fuck knows that’s devastating enough. It’s the confidence. The complete lack of awkwardness.
The way she owns her space in my bed like she belongs there.
Like she belongs with me.
No. Fuck no. That’s not what this is.
“I should go,” she says. “Unless you’re going to make me breakfast once we wake up for real.”
“I have cereal,” I manage. “The kind with marshmallows.”
“My hero,” she says dryly, finally moving to collect her scattered clothes. “But I graduated from Cap’n Crunch a few decades ago…”
I should look away. Give her privacy. Instead, I watch like a starving man at a buffet as she moves around my room, completely comfortable in her nakedness. She finds her panties under my desk, her bra dangling from the chair. She puts both on, then doesn’t bother with the dress.
Yep, we’re in our Maya is comfortable around me in her underwear era.
And in a set that small, it’s a sight to behold.
“Are you OK?” she asks, crossing the room to stand in front of me. “You look… constipated.”
I realize I’ve been staring, and her joke startles a laugh out of me, real and unguarded. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous territory for you,” she teases, but there’s something soft in her eyes. “Thanks for last night. I think you needed it after a tough day.”
The words are casual, but the way she says it, the quick glance over her shoulder before she disappears into the hallway and back to her room, makes me think it might mean more. But as I watch the wiggle of her ass and fight the overwhelming urge to chase after her, I realize I’m fucked.
The smart move would be to shut this down. Create distance. Treat her like every other hookup—friendly but detached, fun but ultimately forgettable. But when I hear the shower start down the hall, when I picture her under the spray wearing nothing but water and the marks I left on her skin…
Yeah. I’m completely, utterly, irrevocably fucked.