CHAPTER 3 BEN
The drinks are flowing, and I can’t stop smelling her hair. Is that her shampoo? Is it some spray she uses? Perfume? Or is that sunshine smell just her?
It’s strange, really, how a scent can just call to me and awaken parts of me that’ve been dormant for over a decade.
A wall of flowers with a neon sign in the center proclaiming the word love has everybody stopping for a photo op before we sit down to dinner.
We’re not there. We won’t go there, either. I can’t.
Just seeing the word there makes me sweat uncomfortably.
But the word is out there now, mingling between the two of us as we make the rounds. We finally head toward our table. Each couple has their own table for two that faces the front of the room so we can get a view of what it would be like to eat here when the club is actually open.
The other three Aces players I’ve spotted since we walked into the place—Jaxon Bryant, Eric Scott, and Patrick Harris, each with a date—are all spread out across the room.
Instead of seating us near people we know, we’re located in the back.
In front of us are a local news anchor, a drummer from a well-known band, and an influencer who apparently got her start on a reality show.
“Oh my God,” Kaylee whispers. I glance over at her. Her eyes are on the drummer. “It’s Ethan Fuller from Vail! So close to our table!”
I glance at the woman sitting beside him. “With his wife,” I point out, and Kaylee rolls her eyes. “And you’re here with a date, too, remember?”
She giggles. “Are you jealous, Mr. Olson?”
“Nah.” I shake my head. “That guy’s probably jealous of me.”
She raises a brow. “Because you play football?”
I give her the smoothest answer ever. “Nope. Because I’ve got the hottest date in the place.”
She giggles and smacks me in the chest, and we sit.
As usual at these types of events, someone at the front of the room starts talking shortly after we sit.
We’re thanked for our time and encouraged to have fun, and then the first course is served as the music turns up and we’re treated to a show of dancers in the Cirque du Soleil style.
Kaylee nods toward the love wall. “You ever been in love?” she asks. We can have our own private conversation over the music without risking anyone around us overhearing, particularly here in the back of the room where we sit and watch the dancers.
“Starting deep for our first date, Peaches.” I brush it off mostly because I don’t really want to get into it.
She shrugs. “Just making conversation and getting to know the guy I’m dating a little better.”
“Once. You?”
She nods. “Same.”
“What ended it?” I ask.
“He didn’t want the same future I wanted. You?”
I nod. “Same.”
“How long ago was yours?” She plays with the goat cheese walnut thing on her plate and keeps her eyes on the dancers.
As for me, I don’t eat anything that was squeezed out of a goat, so I play around with the nuts a little. The ones on my plate, I mean. For now, anyway. “A decade,” I admit. “You?”
“My senior year of college.”
“Isn’t that a little early to be figuring out what you want for your future?” I ask.
She lifts a shoulder and glances up at me. The way her eyelashes are sort of lowered and she peeks up at me through them is so goddamn sexy that I want to shove her up against the love wall and show her a real nice time. Or any other wall. It doesn’t have to be the love one.
She shakes her head. “There are just some things you know from the beginning of time, right? And I’ve always known I wanted to be a wife and a mother.
I want a whole bunch of kids and I want to support all their different interests.
I want a dog, maybe some chickens, maybe a horse or two.
I want to live on a huge plot of land with nothing around us for miles, maybe with some paths so I can run at dawn and hike with the kids during the day.
I want peace and quiet and privacy since my entire family has been the center of attention since I was a pre-teen.
I want open sky and cool air blowing in the windows.
And if you know where such a place exists, please take me there. ”
My stomach twists in a knot. Oh, I know a place exactly like the one she just described.
Complete with chickens and horses, if she’s really so inclined, and a dog named Buddy who’s scared of spiders.
The only thing it doesn’t come with is the husband who wants kids, too.
She keeps babbling as if she didn’t just turn my entire world upside down.
“I’ve always seen my future that way, but the face of the man has been blank, ready to be filled in with the perfect man.
Dane was a city boy through and through.
He thinks dogs are dirty and he doesn’t really like kids.
He never would’ve liked the peaceful, quiet dream of a home filled with kids and pets I’ve wanted since I was six-years-old and saw the perfect place on some soap opera my mom was watching.
In fact, he moved to Chicago to start a job at Morgan Stanley after we graduated, and now he lives in some skyscraper in the heart of downtown.
” She shrugs as she finishes her tirade, but I’m still stuck back a minute ago when she described my place in Montana almost to an exact T.
“I was traded from Chicago when the Aces acquired me,” I say stupidly rather than responding to anything else she said, my eyes still on the dancers.
She nods. “Did you like it there?”
It feels like a trap. If I say yes, does that mean she’s going to go back and try to be with her ex? It’s only been a year since she broke it off with him. I blow out a breath. I’m not used to weighing my words like this. “It’s a great city full of great people, but it never felt like home.”
“Is it weird feeling like every city you live in is temporary?” She sets her fork down, giving up on the goat cheese walnut thing.
I lift a shoulder. “Sort of feels normal after all this time, but I admit it would be nice to figure out where I eventually want to settle.”
“Not Montana?” she presses.
“Maybe Montana, though it’s a little close to my ex and my mother.”
“Tell me about them,” she says. She picks up her glass to take a sip of her wine, and I set my fork down, too.
We still have another few minutes at least until anyone’s coming by to pick up our plates and deliver the next course, and I have something way more interesting to fill the time than discussing the women who have destroyed my faith in love.
“I could do that,” I say quietly, and I slide a hand along her leg. I reach toward her inner thigh and brush my fingers against the soft edge of her panties. “Or I could do this.”
She sets her glass down as her legs fall open for me. Her lips part and her breathing quickens, and fuck she’s pretty like this when she’s all hot and ready for me.
I slip the panties over with my finger, and she widens her legs just a little more. I keep my eyes on her profile as she stares straight ahead wordlessly.
“You want to tell me more about Of Mice and Men?” I croon close to her ear as I slide a finger through her slit and massage her clit for a beat.
“Mm,” is her first reply, followed by a moaned, “God, you’re trouble.”
I chuckle as I move my finger down and find the promised land. Even though she’s wet as fuck, it’s still a tight fit as I push a finger inside, and she shifts a little in her chair. “You already knew that.”
She glances over at me, her eyes full of need and lust when they connect with mine. “Yeah, I did. And I’m starting to like it more and more.”
My finger continues to thrust while she talks, and her eyes are glazed as I move my finger in and out of her body.
I slip it out and massage her clit again, and that’s when she grips onto the edge of the table.
She keeps her eyes on the dancers, but I only have eyes for her.
I feel her legs tighten against my hand as they clench together, and I watch her face as she falls apart from my touch.
She’s trying to keep her eyes open, trying to focus on the dancers, trying to maintain that we’re cool back here, and she snags her bottom lip between her teeth as she can’t take it anymore.
Her hand grips onto my wrist, her nails digging into my skin, and her eyes close as she tips her head back.
I’m treated to a quiet moan that’ll replay in my dreams tonight as she comes as quietly as she can beside me.
When the clenching of her thighs loosens, I pull my hand back. She glances over at me a little lazily, like she could take a nap after what I just did to her, and Jesus she’s hot.
“All that before the second course,” she says.
I lean in close to her ear and press a soft kiss to her neck. “I want you to be the third course.”
She shivers a little then tips her head back and leans toward me for a soft kiss. “Maybe a second dessert back at your place.”
I chuckle as I toss an arm around her shoulders. “You don’t want to meet me in the bathroom and suck my cock?”
Her eyes widen a little and her jaw slackens. “Apart from the bathroom part of that proposition, yeah, I actually really do want to do that.”
I laugh. “We’ve got all night, babe. If you want somewhere a little nicer than a club bathroom, I’ll wait. Though if we’re really testing out the features of this club, we should probably at least give it a try.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You do that in club bathrooms often?”
I shrug. “Depends on your definition of often.”
She makes a face like she just smelled something bad. “Gross.”
“But now that I’ve got a girlfriend, it’ll only be with you.”
She laughs. “I’m not sure that makes it any better.”
The waitress swings by to take the goat food away and drop off our second course, some sort of butternut soup, and Kaylee is relaxed and smiling.
The wicked side of me says that’s the way I plan to keep her for the next few months until our deal is over.
And then she can move on with her life. She can find that husband who wants a litter of kids with her because she deserves everything she wants out of life.
Part of me wishes I could be the one to give all that to her, but deep down, I know I can’t.
She started asking the questions, so maybe it’s time I give her the answers.
That way I can fend off any potential questions about where this might go next since whatever fun we’re having together is all this can ever be.