Not Preston Fucking Sinclair #2
I think about her pulling that dress down and stepping out of it and the look on her face in the mirror. I think about the freckles. I think about the way she would say my name if she meant it the way I want her to mean it.
The water is loud. My breath is louder.
I work my hand, stroking my hard cock to the point of pain, but the pleasure is all I feel. Her standing over me, my knees on the ground, tongue tasting her soft skin. I jerk my hand once. Then twice. The third time, a deep throaty groan follows and my head falls back.
The warmth of my water slides down my body, igniting every nerve ending.
Her name is on my lips, but my teeth seal it in, closing on the supple flesh of my bottom lip.
I tell myself it's a release. A physical necessity. Something my body needs so my head can do its job tomorrow, so I don't look at her at breakfast like a man who has not slept and is one good morning away from making a mistake he can't take back.
It's also half a lie.
The other half of me wants her exactly the way I'm imagining her, wants to know what her hands feel like, wants to know what sound she makes when she's tangled with me, hands around my shoulders, needing all I can give.
I lose the rhythm of my thinking. My legs tremble, and my abs spasm.
I come hard. Forehead pressed to tile, water sheeting down my back, her name halfway in my throat and never spoken.
The shame arrives within thirty seconds, on schedule.
I stand there with my eyes closed and let the water run over me for a while.
I think about Maya, because I make myself think about Maya.
The party, six months ago. The suggestion, and the trap I’d fallen for.
The way she filmed me. The way she still calls.
The way I've spent the last six months becoming, very deliberately, a man who would never be that careless about a woman again.
And then this woman walked into my car.
And here I am, jerking off to her in a shower while she stays in my guestroom, innocent to my thoughts.
I'm not going to be careless with her.
I make the promise to the tile and the water and to the man I'm still trying to become. Whatever I just did, I did to myself, in my own bathroom, with the door closed. She isn't going to know. She isn't going to feel any of it.
Tomorrow morning, when she comes into my kitchen, I'm going to be a man who is keeping his hands to himself and his head where it belongs.
I’ll only be the stranger who helped her. That’s all I need to be. That is the deal.
I shut the water off.
I dry off, and pull on sweats. I run a hand through my wet hair and walk back out into the bedroom feeling somewhere between cleaner than I was and worse than I was, in a combination I'm not going to examine.
When I come downstairs to lock up for the night, she’s back on the couch. Her hair is wet. She's in one of my t-shirts, again, because her new pajamas are apparently still in a bag somewhere she has not unpacked. Bare legs. Bare face. The book is closed on her lap.
I drag in a deep breath.
She looks up.
“Hey, do you have a phone charger? Mine is in one of the bags and I don't feel like archeology tonight.”
“Yeah.” The word is like gravel scratching my throat.
I cross to the drawer in the kitchen where I keep the spares and pull one out. I bring it over. She holds her hand out.
Our fingers brush when I hand it to her. Barely. The lightest possible contact but I feel it.
I don’t think she notices.
“Thanks.” She plugs it in. Settles back. “I think I’m going to be here for a while, so…”
“That’s fine. I’m just here to lock up, then I need to get some sleep. I’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
“Goodnight, Easton.” She gives me that breathtaking smile again.
“Night, Riley.”
I go upstairs, and close the bedroom door behind me. I lie on top of the covers in the dark with my hands behind my head and I don't sleep.
Three hours. Three hours of staring at the ceiling and listening to the house settle and thinking about every promise I just made to myself in that shower and about the woman down the hall, who has no idea what I look like in the dark.
Three hours of arguing with myself about whether I'm the version of me she thinks I am, or the version of me my reputation says I am, or some third version I've not figured out yet, and three hours of not landing on an answer.
I sleep, eventually. Lightly, for about four hours.
I'm up before five.
I shower again, briefly and without incident this time, and I go downstairs because I'm awake and there is no point pretending otherwise.
She's in the kitchen already.
She's in my t-shirt, again, and the same shorts as the morning before, her hair is up in a different lazy knot than yesterday’s, and the espresso machine is hissing.
There is already a cup waiting on the counter that I know, without checking, is for me.
She turns when she hears me on the stairs.
“Good morning, roommate.”
Her smile is sleepy and warm, and the part of my chest that I spent three hours last night trying to drown in cold tile goes warm in one beat, and I know, in that moment, that I'm in serious trouble.
“Good morning.”
I take the coffee. Our fingers don't brush this time, and I notice it more than I should. I don't know what to do with that either.
“Sleep well?”
“Great, actually. As soon as I could drop that book.” She chuckles and tilts her head, and my eyes follow to see the book I hadn’t noticed on the kitchen island. “You?”
“As best as I could.”
I drink the coffee.
My phone buzzes on the counter.
I glance down. It’s from Coach.
Coach Brennan:
Hey son. Quick question for you. Who is the Sinclair bride?
I stare at the screen.
Fuck.
There are photos.
Of course there are fucking photos.
Brennan doesn’t text me at five in the morning asking about a woman he has no reason to know exists unless somebody put her in front of him.
I look up. Riley is watching me, mug paused halfway to her mouth, reading the change in my face.
“Easton?”
I lock the screen. Face down on the counter.
“Work,” I say.
Her eyebrows lift. “At five in the morning?”
“Unfortunately.”
I reach for my coffee, forcing myself to look a hell of a lot less concerned than I feel. Because whatever Brennan just saw, Riley shouldn’t have to worry about this.
Somewhere in this city, the photo of the two of us walking into Valentina’s back door yesterday is currently sitting on a sports editor’s desk, waiting on the perfect headline, and I have until practice to figure out what it’ll be, and the cost.