7. Chapter 7 #3
My mouth parts and my pulse kicks against his arm.
He names another. Then another. Every kid in sight until he’s named all of them.
I take one step sideways without looking, and my shoe catches the edge of the rug.
His hand closes around my waist before I even register losing my balance.
For someone built like he could snap me in half without changing expression, his grip is unbelievably careful.
I go completely still in his arms, shocked and burning up from the overwhelming body-to-body contact. My nipples feel tight, my thighs are pressed together, and my clit is pulsing from the way he murmured against my ear.
He knows all of their names. It makes what I said feel stupid and badly aimed.
“Bad assumptions lead to bad impressions, Lilly.” His voice drops lower. “We need to work on that, don’t we?”
His head dips lower, and the moment his nose drags up the side of my neck, I’m gone.
Heat flashes through my stomach, my skin turning oversensitive everywhere at once.
My hand tightens uselessly around the cords of muscle on his forearm just as his soft mouth presses a kiss behind my ear.
Nothing like the hard-edge to in him anywhere else.
A tiny, broken sound slips out of me before I can stop it.
My knees almost give. I can’t think around the shock of it. Around the fact that he actually did it. Around what that tiny, quiet kiss just did to my body.
He feels my legs weaken. His forearm tightens just a fraction, holding me closer. I think I’ll collapse if he lets go.
The world narrows to the feel of his body, the sureness of his touch, and the ghost of his lips on my skin.
“Lilly?” My dad’s voice breaks the spell.
Panic explodes through me.
I try to jerk forward, to break free, to put space between us before my father walks in and sees his daughter pinned against his star goalie.
Zed doesn’t let me. He tightens his hold just enough to keep me exactly where I am, his arm like steel across my chest. His lips brush the shell of my ear.
“Uh-oh,” he murmurs mockingly, voice low.
I start squirming. My ass presses back against him involuntarily, and I feel—Oh God. Thick, heavy, and unmistakable against the curve of my ass.
“Let go!” A tiny, broken sound escapes me. He chuckles, the vibration rolling through his chest into my back.
“Say please.”
“Please!” I whisper, panting now, with my heart slamming and my core clenching around nothing.
One second before my dad’s footsteps get too close, he releases me.
I stumble forward a half-step, legs shaky, face flaming.
I’m already turned halfway toward the counter, reaching for absolutely nothing, trying to look like I haven’t just had an identity crisis because of a man I met a few days ago.
Zed, meanwhile, looks infuriatingly calm when Dad rounds the corner.
“Oh, there you are.” He smiles at me, completely oblivious, then looks at Zed.
“Coach.” Zed gives him a short nod, voice perfectly calm.
I can’t speak. I can barely breathe. All I can feel is the ghost of Zed’s arm across my chest. The heat of his mouth on my neck. The press of his...
My father glances between us. “Ah, I see you’re filling him in.”
Before I can even begin to form a response, Zed answers.
“Yeah.” The word comes out easy and calm. “She...” He closes his eyes briefly and grimaces like he’s trying to place me and can’t quite get there. “Sorry,” he says, opening them again.
I cannot believe the nerve of this man.
“Lilly,” my father says helpfully.
“Lilly, yes.” Zed nods once, like that solved it. “I apologize,” he says, his tone still flat and uninterested. “Too many new faces.”
My mouth might actually be open in disbelief.
“Understandable,” my father chuckles.
Understandable. Nothing about this man is freaking understandable!
He knows my name very well, knows where I live, had his mouth on my neck thirty seconds ago, and now he’s acting like I’m one more counselor he met ten minutes ago near the coffee machine.
My father steps farther into the kitchen. “Either way, everyone’s thrilled you’re here.”
“Happy to help, Coach.”
I’m still too stunned by how easily he’s doing this.
My father claps him once on the shoulder, entirely unaware that he is touching a man who just had his daughter backed against a kitchen counter.
“Good,” he says.
Zed inclines his head once, returning my father’s smile.
My father turns to me. “Lilly, can you help me out with the equipment check for the second house?”
It takes me a second to process the words. Then I snap out of it.
“Yeah. Of course.”
I push off the counter and force my legs to move. My dad is already turning away, talking as he heads for the doorway, and the second his back is to us, Zed’s face changes and the lie drops away.
His eyes slide over me from head to toe in one slow, shameless sweep that makes my skin go hot all over again.
I glare at him. Really glare. His expression doesn’t change or ask forgiveness. He gives me nothing else. So I turn and follow my father out of the kitchen, still feeling the hot, solid press of him against my ass.