Howie
My father has called four times today.
I’ve ignored all of them, despite having absolutely nothing to do apart from my PT homework exercises. Between those and staring at the ceiling thinking about Ella’s lips, I’ve been very busy.
Too busy to talk to that guy, anyway.
I managed to get myself to and from the fridge for meals, and even ordered in some non-meatball food I plan to share with Ella when she gets home from work. I don’t want to stop thinking about her tongue on me last night, the look in her eyes as she wrapped that mouth around my dick.
I’ve just situated myself back on the couch after tipping the delivery guy and setting food on the counter when a few things happen at once.
First, my phone rings again, the word DAD flashing across the screen.
Then the apartment door opens, and even though it’s dark outside, the condo fills with light as Ella walks in with a smile on her face.
So yeah, I’m not talking to my dad right now, while I could be looking at her instead. I don’t even fucking care about the consequences anymore. I silence the phone and toss it on the rug as Ella sinks onto the couch, kicking off her clogs with a groan.
“Long day?” I shift my weight so my body is angled toward hers. The phone buzzes again.
“It was intense. Multi-car crash on the parkway. Do you have to take that?” She gestures at my phone with one hand and starts rubbing her foot with the other.
I stare at her hands, kneading the flesh of her sole. “It’s my dad just calling to reiterate his bullshit.”
She arches a brow. “He’s delusional.”
I nod. Ella knows my dad rides me hard. Wouldn’t take me to a specialist for my shoulder in high school, so I needed that first surgery the summer before freshman year. “Just because he played with a torn rotator cuff and a broken hand doesn’t mean that’s my formula for longevity in the league.”
Ella winces. “It’s such a shitty thing to pressure you about anyway. Your medical staff wouldn’t clear you, would they?”
I shake my head. “Try telling Howie Houser, senior, that things have changed since his glory days.”
Her nose wrinkles adorably. “Glory days? Didn’t he get suspended for a cheap shot that almost broke someone’s neck?”
I nod. She’s not the only one walking in a hockey player’s shadow. Coaches and league officials all remember my old man. Other players, once they put it together, treat me like I’m going to act the same way. I confess, “Everyone treats me with caution, like I’m going to be violent.”
"You're nothing like him." She drops a hand to my arm and squeezes for emphasis.
"You don't know that."
"Bernard." Her fingers thread through mine. "You are nothing like a man who hits people from behind."
My throat tightens. I look at our hands — mine huge, scarred across the knuckles from a decade of blocked shots, hers smaller, a little chapped from work, strong.
We fit together in a way that makes me feel invincible.
I cough and point at the counter, trying to defuse the situation. “I got us food from Nicky’s Thai.”
Her face lights up even brighter, and she’s on her feet in a flash, gathering bags. The aroma of garlic and ginger wafts toward me, and my mouth waters as she pulls out containers and wooden chopsticks. “What’s all in here?”
Ella rushed through a shower while the fried spring rolls cooled, and then we dug into a feast on the couch. We’ve just finished demolishing pad Thai, rice curry, and mango salad when my phone rings again. I kick it with my good foot, and it skitters across the floor, under the television.
She stares at it. “Feel better?”
I grunt. “Not really.”
"I know that ache," she says, placing our empty containers on the floor before settling back into the cushions. "The parent thing. Feeling like no matter what you accomplish, it's never the right accomplishment."
"Your parents had a script for you, too?”
"My parents had a script for Jason. I wasn't even in the cast." She shrugs. "Different flavor of the same thing. You're seen as the wrong version of yourself. I'm not seen at all."
I look at her. She looks at me. The apartment is dark except for the TV glow and the lamp she always leaves on, the one by the curtains, and her face is half-lit and half-shadow, and I think: she doesn't need lessons.
She's never needed lessons. This woman cracks me open, and she does it without trying, without technique, without any of the bullshit I've been pretending to teach her.
Ella Rujkowski is better at intimacy than anyone I've ever been with. She just doesn't know it. She thinks she's inexperienced. She thinks she needs training. But the things she does…I've never had this with anyone else.
She runs her fingers through my hair. Slow, the way she learned I like, nails dragging gently across my scalp.
My eyes close. The tension in my shoulders loosens.
Her nail traces the scar in my eyebrow, and I feel my body respond — not just arousal, though that's there, instant and undeniable — but something deeper. A release. A surrender.
"You don't need lessons," I murmur.
Her hand pauses. "What?"
"You heard me." I open my eyes. "You touch me all the right ways and say the right things, and I come apart. You don't need a single lesson, Ella. Your brother is the only obstacle between you and any man alive falling at your feet."
She stares at me. Her hand resumes its seduction in my hair, slower now, and I can see her processing, filing that statement, testing its weight.
"I still want you," she says. Simple. Direct.
"I still want you too. That's been pretty well established."
"I mean tonight." Her eyes hold mine.
My heart rate does something the team doctor would flag. "Ella—"
"I know what I'm asking." She pulls her hand from my hair and places it on my chest, palm flat, the way she did that first time on the couch when she felt my heartbeat and realized I wasn't calm. "Is your knee too painful?”
"My knee is …" I glance down at it. Wrapped, elevated, aching in the background, the way it has been for days. "It depends on the position."
"What position feels best?”
I swallow. "If you were on top. That would … my knee wouldn't be bearing weight. And I could…" I stop and try to concentrate. "Having you on top would be incredibly hot, Ella. I want to see you. Your body. Your face."
Something passes across her features. A shadow I've seen before, when she crossed her arms over her bare chest, when she commented on being too big to sit on my lap. The cruel voice in her head that says she takes up too much space.
"I'm not exactly light," she says.
"Ella." I sit up straighter, ignoring the protest from my knee. "Look at me."
She looks.
"You could sit on me right now, and the only thing I'd feel is lucky. I have wanted your full weight on me since I saw you at the airport. I have thought about nothing else. Do you understand? You on top of me is not a compromise because of my knee. It's a fucking fantasy."
Her cheeks flush. Her eyes go bright. She bites that bottom lip, and I watch her face shift from doubt to something that looks like hunger.
"I should tell you something," I say, because apparently I've lost all self-preservation instinct.
"I think about you when I touch myself. In the shower.
Every time. Since before the first lesson.
I think about your body and your sounds and your face when you come, and I," I exhale. "That's not tutoring.“
She's quiet for a beat, then says, "I think about you too."
"Yeah?"
"In your bed. At night. After you fall asleep on the couch." She holds my gaze. "I hear you breathing through the wall, and I think about your hands, and I touch myself, and I pretend it's you."
Every drop of blood in my body swims south. My vision narrows to her face, her mouth, the flush spreading down her neck beneath her scrubs. I can picture it, Ella in my bed, in the dark, her hand between her thighs, my name in her mouth, and I'm so hard it strains against my shorts.
"Show me," I say, and my voice comes out wrecked. "Please. I want to see. I want to see how you touch yourself, Ella. Get on top of me and show me how you get off."
She looks around, seeming uncomfortable. "Not on the couch."
“Wherever you want,” I agree.
She helps me up, careful with the knee, slotting herself under my arm like she's done it a hundred times.
We make our way down the hall — me limping, her steady — to the bedroom.
Her bedroom. My bedroom. The room that smells like both of us now, the pillows she sleeps on, the space where she's been lying in the dark thinking about me.
She sits me on the edge of the bed, and I scoot back, propping my bad leg on a pillow.
She stands in front of me and pulls her top over her head.
The sports bra follows. Then the pajama pants, and she's standing there in underwear, and my mouth goes dry because it doesn't matter how many times I see her — every time hits me like Mayhem on dull skates.
Except Ella is soft and strong and so beautiful, my chest aches.
She hooks her thumbs in her underwear. Pauses.
“Please, show me,” I say.
She slides them down and steps out of them, and she's naked in front of me, and I'm looking at her like she's the only thing in the world because right now she is.
"Come here," I beg. "Please. Straddle me. I want to feel you."
She climbs onto the bed, swings a leg over my hips, and settles her weight onto me, and the pressure of her — the heat, the softness, the full gorgeous reality of Ella Rujkowski sitting on top of me — makes me groan so loud the neighbors probably hear it.
"Is this okay?" she asks. "Your knee—"
"My knee is perfect. Everything is perfect. You're perfect." I grip her hips with both hands, feeling the curve of her, the give of her skin under my fingers. "Show me, Ella. Show me what you do when you think about me."
I have zero concern for the fact that she’s my roommate’s sister.
Right now, she’s the hottest woman in any universe, and she’s naked for me.
She reaches between us. Her fingers find the place she needs, and she starts to move — slow, tentative at first, her eyes half-closed — and I watch her face, and I hold her hips, and I think: this is it.
This is the moment I can't come back from.
I don’t just lust after Ella Rujkowski. I'm pretty sure I’m in love with her, and she's on top of me, and she's touching herself, and I'm about to be inside her.
Nothing, not the tutoring, not the right guy, not her brother, not my father, none of it matters as much as the expression on her face right now.
She opens her eyes and looks down at me and says, "Bernard."
Her fingers flutter faster as she stares into my eyes.
I'm done for.