21. Zach #2
I kiss her and move deeper. Her breath catches and her fingers tighten in my hair and I can feel her getting close and I hold her there, both arms around her, my face buried in her neck, and when she comes she bites down on my shoulder to keep from making a sound and the sharp pain sends me right after her.
I thrust twice more and bury myself in her, muffling a groan into her neck as I pulse inside her, and the feeling is so intense that for a moment I don’t care about the risk or the meeting or the footsteps or any of it.
My whole body is shaking and I’m pressed into her so hard the shelf creaks behind her and there’s nothing in my head.
Nothing. Just her and the warmth between us and the fact that I never want to move again.
For a few seconds we stay together, breathing hard.
Her legs still wrapped around me, my arms still holding her up, both of us too wrecked to move.
It’s almost too much, this raw overwhelming awareness of everywhere we’re connected and the fact that there’s nothing separating us and I don’t want to pull out.
I don’t want this to end. I want to stay exactly here in this storage closet forever and never put clothes on again.
She laughs first, a quiet, disbelieving sound against my chest.
“We just did that.”
“Fuck. We just did that in the facility.”
I pull out slowly, lowering her from the shelf and she snags a towel from behind her. “Oh, shit, I didn’t actually think this through.” She mumbles, wiping at her inner thighs.
I watch her clean up with a towel that belongs to the Puckaneers organization and something about this is either the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me or the most depraved. I can’t tell, and I also cannot stop staring.
“Oh my god, stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what.”
“Like you’re having a religious experience.” She slaps the towel on my chest and I flinch back slightly. “You too. We’re not walking out of here like this.”
I clean up as she buttons her jeans. She’s trying to finger-comb her hair into something that doesn’t look like she just had sex in a storage closet, and I’m standing here with my joggers back up feeling like someone rearranged every cell in my body.
She zips her hoodie and smooths her hair one more time and then tilts her head and looks at my neck.
“Oh,” she giggles, “That looks bad… it’s really visible.”
“Are you serious?” I reach up and touch the spot.
“It’s good.” She stands on her toes and kisses my neck. “Now everyone will know someone’s got you. They just won’t know who.”
She checks her own reflection in her phone camera, wiping under her eyes. “Okay, you have four minutes. Go.”
“I look like I just—”
“You look fine. Fix your hair.” She reaches up and pushes it off my forehead.
“And good luck explaining that.” She taps the hickey and grins.
“Consider it a souvenir.” She kisses me once more, then slips out the door, leaving me standing in a storage room with a hickey and absolutely no way to cover any of this up.
I make it to the meeting room with ninety seconds to spare. Barrett is at the front going over something on the whiteboard. I drop into the chair next to Rodriguez and pull my shirt up as casually as I can.
Barrett talks for a few minutes about defensive zone coverage and special teams adjustments for the final stretch and I absorb approximately none of it because I’m angled slightly to the right with my hand on my jaw like I’m thinking deeply about hockey when I’m actually trying to cover the side of my neck.
Rodriguez is quiet the whole time which should have been my first warning sign.
Barrett finishes. “Questions? No? Good. Get out of here.”
I’m about to make a clean getaway when Rodriguez reaches out and tugs my shirt to the left.
The entire room is moving around us, guys filing out, someone asking Brody about dinner, and Rodriguez is staring at the hickey on my neck with an expression caught somewhere between delight and disbelief.
“What,” he says slowly, “is THAT?”
“Nothing. I got hit with a puck.”
“Zach.” He’s grinning now, the kind of grin that takes over his entire face. “That is a hickey. That is the most obvious hickey I have ever seen in my life.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“WHO IS SHE.” He grabs my shoulders and shakes me slightly. “Z. WHO. IS. SHE. I need a name. I need details. I need everything.”
“Nobody. It’s nothing.”
“That is not nothing.” He pulls out his phone. “I’m telling Juliette. She’s going to lose her mind.”
“Do NOT tell Juliette.”
“Too late. Already typing.” He’s walking out of the room backwards, phone in both hands, grinning at me over the screen.
I pull out my phone to ask Mackie if she made it out of the facility without getting caught by anyone and see a text on my screen.
Mackie
so how’d the meeting go?
Me
Rodriguez found the hickey.
Mackie
LMAOOOOO
how mad is he that he doesn’t know who did it
Me
he’s texting Juliette about it right now
Mackie
he’s never going to figure it out
the internship AND ruining your credibility
truly a double win
Me
please don’t ever put me through this again
Mackie
honestly I think you might secretly love it
Me
I definitely do not