Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
MACKENZIE
Team practice is in full swing as I tiptoe my way up to my office the next morning. And yep, I’m completely avoiding the man who buried his face between my thighs yesterday, because I still don’t know what to say to him.
What was I thinking? Just because my mom knew how to soothe my dad doesn’t mean that I need to use the same moves on a guy I barely know. My parents were married. They’d been doing the horizontal tango for years – four kids as a testament to that.
I can’t remember the last time I reacted like that to a man touching me. I felt like putty in his hands. Like I’d do anything he told me to. I wanted to.
I wanted to feel him everywhere.
This is what happens when you don’t have any kind of physical contact for months. The last time anybody hugged me was Rachel when we were at work. The last time anybody touched me was when I got my black eye in the locker room.
And I miss it. I miss being touched. I miss being wanted. For a few minutes last night I felt like a goddess.
Now I just feel lost.
At ten my phone pings with a message and I’m glad for the distraction. At least until I see it’s the family chat.
Team talk tonight – 9pm. Dad
Great. I’ve already decided to go see Gramps on the way home, so this should top my night off nicely.
Maybe when the call is done I can pull my nails out one by one with some pliers just for fun.
By the time lunch comes around, I’ve barely gotten any work done.
I haven’t eaten since last night’s hot dog either, so I grab my purse, deciding to head out to the mall where there’s a sandwich shop that does the best salads I’ve ever tasted.
But before I can slide on my jacket, Eli Salinger knocks on the door.
I open it, and just like last night neither of us can find our voices. He looks as awkward as I feel. No, maybe ten percent less awkward.
Because he still has this hockey player confidence that’s impossible to miss. All muscles and intimidation. My heart starts to slam on my ribcage.
“You heading out somewhere?” he asks, his voice low.
“I need some lunch,” I tell him, still not meeting his eyes.
He clears his throat. “Ah. Can we talk before you go?”
The urge to run is strong. But this conversation is inevitable. And also already excruciating.
I try not to sigh too loudly. “Close the door,” I tell him, reluctantly walking back to my desk to put my purse down.
I hear the lock click and take a deep breath. When I turn to look at him his eyes are on me. It makes me jump.
The dark beard on his jaw makes him look even more dangerous. For a second I swear I can feel the roughness of his face between my thighs.
I open my mouth and his gaze dips to my lips.
“I’m sorry for last night,” he says. There’s a thickness to his voice that he has to clear away with another cough. “If you need me to quit I’ll talk to Wayne.”
“Why would you quit?” I ask him, genuinely confused. “I started it.”
“You touched me. I took it too far. We work together.” He blinks. “I’m not even sure if you’re my boss, but if you are that makes it worse.”
“I’m not,” I blurt out. “Gr… Wayne Gauthier is still your boss. I’m just a consultant.”
“Either way it shouldn’t have happened.”
He’s right. We’re on the same page. But instead of feeling relief something else pulls at my gut. I’m… disappointed? Which is stupid because this could have turned out so much worse.
“It was a game night,” I said. “Emotions were high. Tensions hit the roof.” I pull my lip between my teeth. “Why don’t we both forget about it?”
He blinks. “You don’t want to talk about it?”
I shake my head.
“Or reprimand me?”
“No,” I whisper.
He looks at me carefully. “So that’s it?”
“Yep. How was the team this morning?”
He runs his thumb along his bearded jaw. “Pissed.”
“It was a hard match. You could have won it.”
He winces. Ouch, wrong thing to say.
“Yeah, well we need to play better next time.”
It would help with funds if they won, that’s for sure. Spectators like winning teams. Wisely, I don’t voice that thought.
“You will,” I say. “The potential is there. They just need to start working as a team.”
A ghost of a smile passes his lips. And I’m looking at him again, realizing that I don’t just find him attractive. I’m starting to like him.
No, I do like him. And that’s wrong and dangerous and it will only end in tears if I let it.
Which I won’t, because I’m grown up and I know better than to mess with things that make me sad.
“I should head out,” I say, pointedly picking up my purse again, because I need some space. I’m lonely, I’m somewhere I don’t want to be, and I’m grasping at any bit of friendship somebody offers me. “I need some lunch.”
“Oh yeah. Sure.” He nods. I hate that he still looks relieved.
“You want me to pick you up anything?” I ask.
He blinks. “Like what?”
“A sub. Or a salad. What did you think I meant?”
“I’ve no idea.” He shrugs. “I just wasn’t expecting you to offer me something to eat.”
My cheeks flush as I remember offering him something to eat last night. And when I bring myself to look at him that darkness is back again.
“No sub then?”
He shakes his head. “No sub. But thank you.”
I brush past him and reach for the door. “You’re welcome.”
There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Now that it’s over and done with, maybe we can forget it ever happened. That thought lasts until I reach my car and let out a long, agonizing breath.
My heart is still slamming against my ribcage. And I’m still remembering him dropping to his knees in front of me.
It’s simultaneously the hottest and most embarrassing thing that’s happened to me.
But hot seems to be winning out.
“You dirty minx,” Rachel says when we’re talking on the phone that evening.
She sounds like she’s trying to keep from laughing.
“You’ve hardly been there five minutes and you’re already hooking up with a hockey player, even though you told me you hated them.
What else has been going on? Orgies on the ice?
Horny stuff with hotdogs? I need to get out of New York and find me some provincial guy. ”
“He’s AHL not NHL,” I point out. It was a mistake to tell her about last night.
I probably shouldn’t have called her at all.
But I’m sitting in my beautifully sterile serviced apartment with nobody to talk to.
I literally don’t trust anybody else not to spread the gossip and I needed to let it out to somebody.
It’s killing me that I was such an idiot.
The good news is that I know where Rachel’s skeletons are. Like the time she hooked up in an elevator at our Christmas party. With the guy who was repairing the elevator.
“Wait,” she says. “I’ve got his picture on my phone now. He’s hot.”
“Hmm.” This isn’t helping. Because yes, Eli is hot if you like that kind of thing. Which I don’t because me and hockey players don’t go together.
“And he really dropped to his knees and put his face in your crotch?”
I grimace. “You make it sound crude.”
This time she really does laugh. “Honey, of course I do. Because it is crude. In the sexiest of ways. When was the last time a guy breathed you in like that?”
“Um, never?” With most of my exes – and there haven’t been many – oral sex was a one-way street. They definitely didn’t seem to love breathing me in.
My cheeks flame because Eli looked like he enjoyed it a lot. At least for a brief second. And for that moment it felt so good.
“You think it would have continued if the lights hadn’t flickered?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Hopefully one of us would have come to our senses.” Preferably me, because I’m not good at rejection.
Ah yeah, but he rejected me later anyway.
It shouldn’t have happened. That’s what he said. Along with offering to quit.
And now I’m panicking again, because maybe I’m the one who should quit. I want to quit. To get away from here. Don’t I?
“Why would you have come to your senses?” Rachel asks, genuinely confused. “If a guy like that dropped to his knees for me…”
“Because he’s a client.”
“Pah. Not really. Isn’t your granddad your client?” she counters.
“Yes. But he works for the client. You know the rules.” We both know them. If my boss got wind of what happened outside of the locker room, he’d haul me back to New York and fire my ass.
I’m a grown up. I know better than this.
“It’s a shame though. He really is beautiful.”
“Yeah.” He really is. And kind. That’s the weird thing, it’s his rugged kindness that’s killing me. Making me want things that are way too bad to say out loud.
“And I bet he has a huge—”
“Okay! Enough.”
“I’m just saying. Or maybe asking. Did you feel it?” There’s a hopeful note to her voice.
The memory of his thick ridge pressing against me flashes into my mind. And I have to shift in my seat. “So, what’s happening in New York?” I ask, because I really don’t want to talk about Eli Salinger anymore. I don’t want to think about him, I don’t want to fantasize about him.
I just want to do my job and get back to New York.
“Spoilsport.”
“I’m serious. Any new projects on the horizon?
” I feel so out of touch. While I’m here I can’t be working on bids which means I don’t know what’s happening.
I hate the thought that the other consultants are going to get a head start on me if we win a great project and they can put themselves forward.
“A few things are coming in, but nothing major,” Rachel tells me. “Relax. Enjoy the break. How’s your gramps doing?”
“Funny you should ask. I visited him about an hour ago.” And he’s feeling better because he ranted at me about the team’s loss. “He’s slowly healing. But I don’t think he understands that he’s never going to be back to full fitness again.”
“Poor guy,” Rachel says. “It must be awful growing old.”
“You sound like Allison when she’s talking about us,”
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Rachel pleads. “Don’t you hate it when people call us old?”