33. Sophie
Sophie
“It is love’s mysterious touch that turns the mundane into magic.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“ L ittle menace,” I hear Clover call out as soon as he walks inside the apartment.
“Hey, husband.” I smile, walking out of the bedroom to greet him just as he locks his gun inside the safe in the coat closet he installed, and his eyes immediately run over me with so much heat, I feel it burning me from the inside out.
God, no one has ever looked at me like that. No one has ever ate me alive with just their gaze.
In two long steps, he closes the remaining distance between us, because apparently, I wasn’t moving fast enough for him and crushes his lips to mine, kissing me like he hasn’ t seen me for weeks.
I knew he was such a filthy liar when he told me he didn’t like kissing!
My lips have been in a permanent state of swollen these past weeks!
I let out a small whimper into his mouth that only spurs him along and with his free hand, he pulls me tight into his body until I can feel his erection digging into my stomach.
That restrain, reluctance, and fight he was still putting up inside his head, weakened and dwindled more and more with each day, until over a week later there’s not even a trace of it left behind as he takes me as soon as his feet step inside the apartment.
He takes me when I stop by the station under the guise of bringing him coffee, instead serving myself as his snack. Or rather, he demands me to lay down and hold my legs as he brings me to orgasm after orgasm with his skilled tongue, fingers and cock.
Just like he did earlier today.
Scratch that, it was all of two hours ago that I went by the police station to see him. Two. Hours. And we can’t tear apart from each other.
It’s just sex, Sophie. Just chemistry. That’s all.
It’s a mantra I took up after our first time together, in hopes to keep my heart out of this equation. So far, it’s not very effective. Not at all.
With each next second, the kiss grows heavier and hotter, and Clover pulls away from me with a heavy, pained groan. “Damn you, woman. I need to stay away from you, we have a game to watch.”
I giggle, licking off his taste from my lips, and Clover nearly loses it again when he sees me do it.
“You’re a fucking nightmare,” he mutters, fixing himself as he walks into the kitchen to sound of my laugh. “I brought home dinner.” He drops the takeout bag on the counter, along with his badge and car keys, his erection still trying to rip through his pants.
“You know, I could go get dinner for once,” I tell him.
“Why?” He frowns, looking like I’ve said the most ridiculous thing ever.
“Um, because it would be fair?”
Clover has been getting us dinners every night. Not once asking me to do it .
He waves me off. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re busy with work. And besides, it’s always on my way.”
I eye the takeout bag of Chinese that is in no way on his way home.
In fact, it’s on the other side of the town.
I’ve tried it once last week, when Grace, Luke, Griffin, and Julie invited us out for a couple’s date night and fell in love with it.
It was the best Chinese I’ve had—and I’ve lived in New York, mind you.
And now it’s sitting on our kitchen counter.
Ugh , I could strangle this man! See what I mean about my mantra not working? How could it, when he goes and does these little things for me?
“You’re a shit liar, Callum Clover Lovinski. It was not on your way, and you work too. I’m not the only one.”
I did start doing some freelance jobs but I’m not so busy that I couldn’t step out to get dinner. In fact, I spend most of my day at Grace’s store, working remotely.
“Sophie, just take it and set it out before the game starts. No need to overanalyze it.”
“Uh-huh.” I let the subject drop even if the butterflies in my stomach, spread their wings once again.
Every day, every freaking day, he goes and does something sweet for me, all while putting up his grumbling persona up.
Like dropping by with my favorite matcha from time to time or massaging my hands at night because I mentioned typing for too long that day. That’s not to mention that the man took sick leave when I had a headache the other day to stay home and make sure I was fine the whole time.
He wouldn’t allow me to get up from the bed, and if I wanted to go somewhere around the house, he’d just carry me!
Is he torturing me on purpose? How am I supposed to not fall for the guy? Completely, irrevocably, and desperately.
Clover goes to take a shower and change while I place the food at our coffee table.
“Did the game start yet?” he yells from the room.
“No, but they’re about to sing the anthem,” I shout back .
A minute later, Clover comes out of the room, in his outfit from hell—yes, I was the one who came up with that name. Because it is! Low-hanging gray sweatpants, mussed hair from the shower, bare feet, and bare chest with all of his tattoos on display for me, is the definition of hell.
How am I supposed to focus on the game when he looks like that?
“Stop staring or we’ll miss the whole first period of the game and our food will be cold,” Clover says, yet not even bothering to hide his smug grin. The bastard knows exactly what he’s doing to me and my vagina.
He sits next to me, the heat of his skin warming up mine as the scent of his shower gel makes me lightheaded in the best of ways.
I’m dying here, in short, while he starts scooping up the food.
“I hate you,” I mutter, and he chuckles. The sound low and sexy, damn it.
“Hate you back, little menace.”
“Man, I wish those coral plates would be all done already. Don’t you think they’d look good here?”
“I hate you even more right now.” I send him a glare with no heat behind it and Clover knows it, breaking into a fit of chuckles because the guy doesn’t waste a single moment to tease me over it.
So, my love for coral is still a work in progress, but no way will I decline those gifts from his mom.
With a dramatic huff, I make a plate for myself, and we get lost in the hockey game. This has been our routine for the past two weeks. It took one mention of how much I enjoyed watching it with him, and he hasn’t missed a game ever since.
On nights when he has to stay at the station longer, we watch the game in the break room. Yes, Clover still gives me shit for the beers that I smuggled in there, and yes, I do it the next time again as well.
I don’t know if it’s because this marriage is fake and all that, but living with Clover has been as easy as breathing.
Where I thought I’d have to adjust to someone else and spend my days compromising, is not the case here.
No, it simply feels like nothing in my life changed. Only got a hundred times better .
Sava, the Outlaws goalie, is on a roll today, saving puck after the puck from all angles, and soon enough, Outlaws score the first goal of the game as the crowd boos them.
“Ugh, I’d boo your ass if I was there! So what, it’s not your home team, acknowledge talent where it’s deserved! Did you all see that goal Abel just scored? Did you see the angle?” I shout at the undignified crowd.
Clover chuckles silently. “Easy, killer, they won’t allow me to carry my gun in there.”
“In where?” I ask, but my eyes are back on the screen, watching the faceoff.
“Into the arena.”
“Why would you need to go into the arena with a gun?”
Anez wins the faceoff and makes a pass to Abel.
“To defend you against the crowd you are so determined to decimate. Or maybe I should worry about the crowd more.”
“Huh? Clover, you’re not making any sense—oh, come on!” I cry out when the puck misses the net. “Wait, do you have some kind of assignment at an arena? You haven’t told me about that.”
“A game, Sophie. We have a game to watch at the arena.”
“What game?”
“Outlaws versus Vipers. I got us tickets, didn’t I tell you already?”
I freeze, slowly turning toward Clover who just spoke so nonchalantly, you’d think we were discussing our grocery list for the next week and not tickets to an Outlaws game.
“Didn’t you tell me?” I utter slowly, bulging my eyes out at him and then scream, “NO! No, you did not tell me! Clover! Are you freaking serious right now? You got us tickets? As in, me and you?”
“Um, yes?”
“But that’s like a five-hour drive from here.”
“Sure, something like that. You said last week at the diner that you wanted to see them, no?” I stare at him, my mouth opens as tears start to sting my eyes. “Oh, hell, are you going to cry right now?”
“No? Yes? Maybe?” I tell him through a teary voice.
“Sophie, it’s just a game. No big deal. ”
God, I wanna smack this man so hard. No, big deal…No. Big. Deal! Nope, not at all. But try arguing with him, he’ll deny it until he’s blue in the face.
I forget about the game and food and everything else as I climb into his lap, cup his face and kiss him hard. “Thank you!” I kiss him again and climb off his lap, wiping a tear off my cheek.
Clover chuckles softly and brings me back into his lap, nuzzling into my hair. “You’re welcome, little menace.”
The game ends with Outlaws winning, and soon after I turn on YouTube which has become Clover’s guilty pleasure. Specifically, the cop cam videos.
The first time I turned it on, he grumbled about “what the fuck is this” and that he’s not watching “this bullshit.” The next evening, he pretended he wasn’t watching but sat with me the whole time.
On the third, I turned on something else.
Clover frowned and grumbled, “Well, this is even worse than those cop videos.”
I laughed so hard as he pretended to be all grumpy about it and turned on the cop videos.
A week later, he’s commenting on everything they do right or wrong. Exactly as he is right now as we lie here, under the blanket, eating chocolate-covered almonds. Another one of his guilty pleasures that I’ve come to know and now keep stocked at home.
“Okay, that was fake!” I say.
“What was?”
I point at the TV where there’s a car chase that ends with the thief abandoning the car and running away from the cops, who get to him way too fast. “There’s no way the cop could actually catch him that fast.”
Clover snorts. “Of course, he could.”
“Yeah, no. Even I could run away from him, and he’d never catch me.”
“Yeah, no,” Clover repeats patronizingly, and I get up from his chest where I’m lying, turning to look at him.
“I totally could.”
“Little menace, sorry to disappoint, but you’d be no match for a cop with training. ”
“Is that a challenge?” I narrow my eyes at him for a beat, before I jump off the couch, walking toward the front door and slide my trusty, old Converse on.
“Where are you going?” Clover asks, suspiciously.
“Not me, we.” I take out his shoes from the closet. “Come on, up you go.”
Looking at me all confused, he does as I say.
Without saying another word, I walk out of the apartment with Clover trailing behind me. “Care to tell me where is it that we are going at eleven-seventeen PM?”
“To prove a point.”