Chapter Twenty-One #3
My day was stressful. Terrible. “Long.” I shift uncomfortably. “Yours? How was the weight room?”
He shrugs his shoulder.
His left shoulder. Always and only his left. Maybe it’s a habit left over from when he was hurt. Athletes are different after an injury. We overcorrect, shift, change our body language.
“Fine,” he says. “It’s weights.”
I think about what those reporters said, what they implied. He’s slipping. “If something was bothering you, or you didn’t feel your best, would you tell me?”
“Sure.” The answer is immediate. It calms me slightly, but it doesn’t make the day any less awful. He takes a step closer. “You okay?”
I can’t hold onto a coherent thought the longer he looks at me. I’m drowning in the deep well of his eyes.
I’m weak. It’d be easy to blame Eric for that, or the press, but it’s all me. I need something to hold on to, something hard and real and substantial.
I don’t want to be sad anymore, or a liability to this team, or singled out, or a topic of conversation in a dialogue I get no real voice in, or scared, or in danger of losing my job, or any of it.
Right now, I want to be distracted.
“Come here,” I whisper, patting the desk I’m perched on.
He closes the distance between us. His hands are in my hair as he tips my head back. “I’m too hard up to interpret that invitation as anything other than filthy.”
Oh yes. This I can work with.
I’ve tried to be good. To do the right thing. But I’ve hit a wall when it comes to caring, or being conscientious, or good at my job at the expense of everything else.
The press says I’m giving Leo special treatment even though I’m not. I know hockey, and he deserves his spot.
The press says I want a job I’ve never even considered, and that I’m willing to do shady things to get it, courtesy of what is clearly Eric’s shit-stirring.
They—the world inside my inbox, DMs, text messages—say I’m the worst no matter how much we win.
BENCH THE COACH.
I can’t get anything right. They all hate me regardless of what I do.
Might as well put it out of my head and do what I want.
A very wrong thing. In the worst possible place.
Our lips are fused before I can take a breath. It’s sweet until it explodes into a fit of desperation, roaming hands and cut-off moans and my breasts massaged and groped by his strong fingers. He sucks and bites my top lip and then proceeds to fuck my mouth with dirty thrusts of his tongue.
He hikes my dress higher so he can spread my legs wide, then stares down at the apex of my thighs, my black lace underwear. I feel my pulse throbbing there under his heated inspection. He runs his thumb across the tiny triangle of fabric, pulling a shudder from me.
“What I wouldn’t give to have you here and now,” he rumbles. “I’m going to drop dead from wanting you. Clinical blue balls.”
I fumble with the waistband of his shorts, trying to tug them down. “Can you be fast?”
He covers his hand with mine to stop me. “Fast isn’t the issue. More like quiet. If memory serves, you make the sweetest sounds when I’m inside you. Sweet, but not quiet.”
I push aside my lace panties, giving him a full view. Full access. “I’ll be so quiet.”
His groan is pained. Visceral. “You’re killing me. Fuck, look at you.” He traces my wet seam. “I don’t have a condom.”
My desperation to get lost in him consumes me. “I don’t care. I’m on the pill.”
“Don’t tease me. More than you already tease me by walking around places I can’t touch you.”
“You can’t touch me anywhere.”
“Don’t I fucking know it.” He drives two fingers inside.
I let out a shocked cry of bliss that proves his point about the whole being quiet thing.
“The windows might be dark and painted, but they’re also thin,” he says, his hand going completely still. “And I can’t fuck you bare in your office. I’ll make a mess of you.”
I’m about to pout in defeat when he drops to his knees.
His hand finds mine and he guides my fingers back in my panties, wordlessly insisting I keep the fabric held out of his way. Keep myself exposed.
Need coils behind my belly button, violent and greedy. I lock eyes with him, pulse exploding in my ears as I obey.
“I’ve been out of my mind with wanting you.” He licks up the inside of my thigh and I nearly fall off the desk, knocking the bowl of stress lemons sideways. It teeters but doesn’t spill. He parts my slick skin with two fingers.
Kisses me once with his perfect lips, slowly, as if savoring.
And then he treats me to a long stroke of his tongue.
I’m breathing too fast. It’s embarrassing.
“Perfect,” he growls. “Just like I knew you would be.”
Not perfect, I want to scream. Guilty for letting this continue.
Not good enough.
His tongue flicks over the swollen, needy bud and a moan slips from my lips. No one—ever—has put their mouth there. The closest I’ve come was him, in my bed, before we were interrupted.
His dark eyes snap to mine, swirling with intensity. “If you can’t be quiet, I’ll stop. We are not risking your job.”
If he were worried about that, he wouldn’t be devouring me in my office right now. But I’m too turned on and overcome by him to stop it. “No, no, I’m fine, I’ll—”
He adds a third finger at the same time he sucks on my clit. Holy. Shit.
Did I say that out loud?
His brows lift and he removes his mouth.
I grip the edge of the desk with one hand, his hair with the other. “Please, Leo. I’ve never done this—it feels so—are you stopping?”
He rises to his feet, a devilish gleam in his eyes as he takes my palm and slides it over my mouth. “Do you want to get caught, or do you want to feel good?”
I’m wetter than I’ve ever been as I nod my head, breathing into my own palm.
We’re eye to eye now—well, sort of. He still towers over me. But he’s not on his knees, so he has to twist his wrist to fill me with two fingers from a different angle.
I’m going to fall apart.
He moves his fingers harder, faster. Every nerve ending in my body fires at 200 percent intensity. “Don’t uncover that mouth or I’ll stop.”
And then he’s back on his knees.