Chapter 26
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
WILDER
What the fuck am I doing?
It’s the same thing I’ve said over and over since the moment I picked Maisie up last night, the thought making itself a permanent fixture in my head.
I know what I should be doing. Which is staying away from this girl. Doing my fucking job. Keeping my head down and focusing on cleaning up my image so I can get back to the NHL.
The same mantra I’ve been reciting so much, I’m sick of saying it to myself.
Yet, here I am, standing in the living room of her apartment.
Telling myself that the only reason I’m here is to have the conversation that we should’ve had the night that she stormed out of my office.
By doing that, I guess I’m only proving her right, that I’m lying to myself.
The alternative is facing the truth, and fuck knows I’ve never been good at that. So whatever, I’ll keep telling myself that I’m not losing my goddamn head over her, that I’m only doing what needs to be done by drawing a line and not crossing it.
For real this time.
I shove my hands in the pockets of my sweatpants and look around, my gaze traveling over the mismatched pieces of furniture that still somehow feel like they go together, even though they’re different styles.
There’s a large cream-colored couch that fills the room with light blue pinstripes running vertically down the fabric. It reminds me of something from the nineties, but it looks soft as hell. The kind of couch that you’d nap on after lunch.
I’m not sure what I expected her apartment to look like, but it’s… bright, a lot of funky colors and pieces that you’d find at an estate sale or something. Shit that feels like her.
What the fuck am I even saying?
I don’t know her. How would I know what feels like her?
“Meow.”
I look down and find a large ball of fluffy black fur weaving its way between my legs, brushing against my pants before it flops down on the rug, blinking up at me.
“Uh… this is my cat, Sir Sebastian. Or Sebastian. Or… Seb,” Maisie says as she walks up, scooping the furball into her arms and snuggling it against her face. “He has no concept of personal space, sorry.”
The thing looks at me and meows again, as if he understands what she’s saying and agrees, but a second later, he leaps from her arms and winds himself back around my calves, resuming his incessant meowing.
I fucking hate cats.
One of the foster homes I was in early on had a cat, and the asshole pissed on my things every chance he got.
“I see that,” I mutter, taking a step back, hoping that the thing will get the hint. Of course, he doesn’t and simply follows, choosing my feet to plop down onto now.
“Let me guess… you hate animals? And babies? Anything happy at all,” Maisie says, and my eyes sweep up to meet hers before dropping to the smirk on her lips.
That smart little mouth of hers.
Now being yet another time where I can’t decide if I want to kiss it or fuck it.
“Not a cat person,” I finally say.
“I’d be more surprised if you were,” she tosses back over her shoulder as she walks into the kitchen, the floor plan of her apartment a spacious, open one, and refills the cat’s food and water bowls. That has him running toward her.
She murmurs gently to him, her voice soft and low, praising him for being a good boy and giving him an affectionate pet on his head.
I’ve never seen her be anything but kind to anyone she meets. Her peers, her friends, kids… now animals.
She’s patient and gentle.
All the things I’m not, it seems.
“I’m going to go take a quick shower, and then we can have this… talk you want to have.” Her arms are crossed over her chest, her chin lifted in what feels like defiance. “Make yourself at home. Don’t be mean to Sebastian, or I’ll kill you.”
“I’m not going to be mean to the cat.”
She narrows her eyes, as if I’m going to torture the damn cat the moment she walks away. Christ.
Her brow lifts. “Good, then I guess you don’t want to die.”
With that, she leaves, sauntering off down the hallway and out of view.
Some minutes later, I’m having an intense stare-off with the cat when I hear the sound of bare feet on hardwood, and when I glance over at the door Maisie disappeared through for her shower, I now find her filling it.
Her eyes on me.
Wearing my hoodie.
The one she stormed out of my office in.
Legs bare save for a dainty little flower anklet around her ankle.
Light honey-colored hair, still wet from her shower, falls in loose waves around her. The scent of her bodywash or shampoo, fuck, I don’t even know, like fresh flowers and rain, surrounds me.
Fucking hell.
“Would you like your hoodie back?” she whispers.
My jaw tenses, hands flexing into a fist at my sides. She knows exactly what the fuck she’s doing.
Just as her fingers curl around the hem of it, I’m moving off the couch, my strides eating the distance between us.
“Don’t.” I grab her hand, nostrils flaring.
Satisfaction burns in her eyes when she gets the reaction she wanted.
Always taunting.
Testing.
Poking at pressure points to see when I’ll fold.
Maisie peers up at me through her thick lashes. “What’s wrong, Coach? It’s yours, isn’t it? I should give it back.”
I’m fighting a losing battle, and we both fucking know it.
“What are you doing, Maisie?”
The words are clipped. Rough and uneven. An exact mirror of the way I’m currently feeling.
“I’m jus—”
I step closer until our bodies are flush, until I’m towering over her. “Provoking me until I fucking snap. That’s what you’re doing.” This close, I can see the light splash of freckles that dust the top of her nose and cheeks. “That what you want? To push me over the edge?”
Her eyes blaze. “Maybe I do. Maybe then you’ll stop pretending that you don’t want me.”
“I never said I didn’t want you,” I grind out, my teeth aching from how hard I’ve clenched them together. “What I said is that I can’t have you. You’re a student. At my goddamn job, Maisie. I’m thirteen years older than you. You’r—”
“A grown woman who is perfectly capable of deciding things for myself,” she says, cutting me off.
“Jesus, why are you so dead set on thinking that we couldn’t…
do this. That we couldn’t keep whatever is between us a secret?
Why can’t it just be between us and no one else!
” Her cheeks are pink, her breath coming in hard little puffs as her eyes flare with something wild. “Is it because you’re a cow—”
I cut her off by curving my fingers around her throat and pressing her back roughly against the doorframe. Heat darkens her gaze, making those blue pools in her irises dark like the ocean just before sunset. “This fucking mouth is just begging to be fucked.”
I don’t miss the way her breath quickens or the way that she attempts to squeeze her thighs together.
“Touch me. Stop fighting this and…” she murmurs and lifts onto the tips of her toes.
My eyes fall shut the moment that I feel her press a kiss at the edge of my mouth, my hold on her throat loosening just enough for her to push against my chest. I step back, and she continues to walk me backward until I’m falling onto the couch, her gaze rooted on mine. “Just fucking touch me, Wilder.”
And then I do.
My palms curve around the back of her silky thighs, and I haul her toward me until she’s falling into my lap, straddling me.
We’re moving together in a blur of limbs, her lips slanting over mine, my hands sliding up her thighs to the globes of her ass as she grinds down on my cock, our tongues tangling together like we’re both fighting this battle together instead of alone.
Jesus fuck, how many times in the last month have I thought about this?
About tasting her again.
I manage to tear my lips from hers and stare up at her as she hovers over me. “This is all it’ll ever be between us. You want this? The sneaking around, me touching you… you have to understand that. It’ll only ever be physical.”
She rolls her eyes. “Just because I’m young doesn’t mean that I’m naive. I don’t want a Prince Charming. I want someone who’s going to make me come without needing a map to do it. It’s sex, not a commitment.”
“I think we both know that making you come has never been a problem.” My fingers flex on her ass, the tips digging into her delicate skin, and she lets out a whimper as she rocks her hips over my cock.
Reaching down, I lift the hem of my hoodie that’s swallowing her, dragging it up her thighs until I get a glimpse of pale pink, satin panties that are almost the same shade as her pretty little cunt.
There’s already a circle of wetness darkening the front, and the sight makes my cock twitch.
Fuck, I just want to tear that little scrap of fabric away and impale her on my cock. Watch her cunt stretching to take me.
Then I think about the fact that I took her fucking virginity against a bathroom wall in a dirty bar bathroom.
I have no clue about her sexual history, although from what I do know, I’m going to assume it probably isn’t much if I’m the asshole who popped her cherry.
Which means I can’t just pull my cock out and slam inside of her like I’m desperate to.
I didn’t take my time with her that night. I didn’t get to savor every little moan, every whimper. Her falling apart on my cock for the very first time. Not the way I wanted to.
That’s about to change. Starting right the fuck now.