4. Rosemary
Rosemary
Ithink the man must choke. He doesn’t say a word. Just stands there blinking at me like what I said doesn’t compute.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Oops!” I say, laughing brightly to cover up my blunder. “There I go again. Letting my mouth get me into trouble. Forget I said anything.”
I move to push past him, seeking the comfort and safety of my desk and my chair and the anonymity of the screen. It’s my portal to a world where I embody the Morrigan, a powerful battle-ready Celtic war goddess who can shape-shift, and then I can forget about the awkward, ordinary girl I really am.
But I can’t get past him.
His arm lashes out, blocking the door and forcing me to look up into his face. To my surprise, he doesn’t look disgusted. He looks like he’s fighting for control. Jaw tight. Eyes hard. Body tense.
“Why would you call me that? We’re about the same age.”
“No, we’re not. I looked you up. You’re almost six years my senior. It’s not much, but it’s enough.” I chew on my bottom lip. “And it’s not really about how old we are, anyway. It’s the vibe you give off, and it’s how you make me feel.”
“Rosemary.” He says my name like a warning. Then, his blue eyes flash as he meets my gaze. All I see is my own hunger, my own silent pleas reflected back to me.
Not once has this man touched me. Not once has he dared reach for me. But I haven’t been able to keep myself from touching him. Light, little, fleeting touches across his chest, his arm, his side. Every graze of my skin against his, a tiny test.
An unspoken request.
And suddenly, I realize he’s leaving all of this up to me. He’s letting me take the lead.
So, I reach out and touch him. Slide my fingers over the artwork inked into his skin and bring his hand to the center of my chest. I lay it flat between my heavy, unbound breasts, and let him feel the hammering of my heart.
“Feel that?” I whisper. “That’s what you do to me. You make my heart race. For the first time in a long, long time, you make me want when all I wanted before was to hide away.”
He says nothing, just stares at his palm between my breasts and my hand over his while his throat constricts.
Slowly, I bring his hand up and wrap his fingers around my neck.
His gaze flies to mine when I lift my chin and make him squeeze me.
Just gently, with enough pressure to send a wicked hot lick of desire up my spine.
“Do you like being called Daddy?” I ask, pressing my thighs together against the gathering heat.
“Because I like being Daddy’s pet. I think I’d like climbing into Daddy’s lap and rubbing my body against the smooth, hard planes of his.
” I slip a hand under the hem of his shirt, and skim a finger over his lean, muscled abdomen.
“What else?” he asks, voice thick and hoarse.
“I’d like to get on all fours and nuzzle your thigh,” I drop my hand to his leg, then slide it up and over the hard ridge of his cock. “Plant my face right here and feel it against my cheek, my lips, my tongue.”
“Fucking hell, Ro.” With his free hand, he nudges my face up to meet his dark, hot gaze, and he runs a thumb across my bottom lip. “I shouldn’t even be touching you.”
“Why not?” I breathe.
“Because you said not to.” He presses his finger into my lip, and I can’t resist nibbling on the pad of his thumb. He sucks in a breath. “You made the rules, little kitten. I’m just upholding them.”
“I said no inappropriate touching for your benefit.”
“And I’m keeping to that for yours.”
A soft mewl escapes me. “And if I retract it? If I consent to all manner of touching?”
“I still shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re hung up on someone else.” His gaze searches mine, seeking to see how his words land. I open my mouth to protest, but he shakes his head to silence me. “But if you’re going to play with me, you’re damn well going to think about me.”
Then, he bends his head to mine and takes my mouth in a searing, hot kiss filled with hunger and need.
His grip tightens, and he hauls me closer, slipping one hand into my hair and the other along the curve of my waist. I lean in, aching for him.
Tingling for his touch. But all he does is skim along the curve of my underboob and grip me harder.
I feel every hard inch of his body against mine.
The rough patch of skin on his thumb. The tension coiled in his strong arms. The rigid curve of his cock as it digs into my belly.
The clean soap scent of him overtakes my senses, drawing a moan from my mouth as I twist my hands in his shirt and cling onto him.
He answers by sliding his tongue against mine, taking more than teasing until I’m wet and whimpering and dizzy with the taste of him.
So when he releases me, I stagger back, dazed and desperate. Unsteady enough to reach for him and find him making long strides toward my front door. He pulls it open and pauses to send me a stern look over his shoulder.
“The next time you call me that, Ro, it better be because you want me. Got it, little kitten?”
I swallow hard. “I got it.”
“Good. Then, I’ll see you tomorrow after I swing by the dealership. I’m driving.” Then he’s out the door, and I’m left with the stinging sensation of his lips, the ghost of his touch, and a deep, unsatisfied ache between my slick thighs.
Five days in the presence of a professional hockey player with the body of a god has rewired my brain. It’s the weak excuse I hold on to for how incredibly thirsty I am for a man who won’t touch me because he thinks I’m still hung up on my stupid ex.
I’m not.
Am I?
I toss and turn in my bed, wrestling with the idea and with the messy feelings tangled up inside me.
Everyone thinks my intention is to inflict pain on Psykl0ne for the way he dropped me, but I’m not interested in regaining his favor.
I’m interested in proving I’m the better player.
The superior strategist. The best, really.
The idea that I might still have feelings for him is misguided.
This is a matter of pride. And the suggestion that I don’t know my own mind enough to determine what—or who—it is I want dredges up all kinds of ugly feelings inside me until I’m flinging aside my sheets and stomping out to my car.
I wind up in front of Nick’s apartment building, buzzing his number until his groggy voice answers me through the intercom.
“What. The. Fuck.”
“It’s me,” I say, brandishing my arms against the cool breeze blowing in off the ocean. “Let me up.”
A heavy sigh echoes across the intercom, but the buzzer sounds and I’m through the doors and up the stairs like a shot. When I get to his floor and find him standing in the open doorway looking rumpled, sleepy, and still so damn sexy, I swallow down a groan.
I hadn’t thought it through—coming here, barging in on him while he sleeps in apparently nothing because he’s got the damn flat sheet gathered around his waist. But I barrel through the open door and wait until it clicks shut behind me.
Moonlight spills into the room from the balcony sliding doors, basking his arms, his abs, his jawline in silvery light.
Good God, this was a mistake.
“I don’t have feelings for my ex. Not the kind you mean, anyway,” I burst out.
“That’s what you came all this way to tell me? At…” he twists, adjusting the sheet around his hips and peering into the kitchen at the indicator on his oven. “One thirty in the morning?”
“No. I came to tell you that you were wrong. Everyone’s wrong—” a choked sob escapes me and I dig my nails into my palm to keep steady.
“Everyone’s wrong about me. They all think I fell to pieces and nearly lost everything because Parker broke up with me.
But I didn’t. I fell apart because I was broken.
He broke me, Nick, on the inside. And I let him. ”
He’s by my side in a flash, folding me in his arms and shushing my cries. I press my face into the center of his firm chest, letting the tears fall for the first time in a long time.
“Hey. Hey, it’s okay. Everyone falls apart sometimes. It doesn’t mean you’re broken.” He speaks softly, soothingly as his hands roam over my back. “Why would you think that?”
“B-because he got into my head. He destroyed my confidence and made me feel as if I needed him to succeed. And when all his critiques became criticisms, they weren’t just about my gameplay or my strategy. They were about me. As a person.”
He tenses around me.
“What do you mean?”
I draw back, sniffling as he leads me to the sofa and lets me curl up in the circle of his arms. His hands never stop roaming.
His fingers comb through my hair and draw lazy patterns on my skin while I explain the psychological games Parker played.
How he made me think everything about me was wrong.
How he reframed my interest in cosplay, my fondness for adopting a feline or bunny persona, my tastes in the bedroom as something strange and abnormal.
As something shameful.
And soon, that’s all I felt. Small and ashamed. Dirty.
Like I shouldn’t be seen, or shouldn’t be loved, or shouldn’t be me.
The thoughts were all-consuming, devouring my confidence and tanking my skills until I barely had the will to stream. As I suffered, so did my performance.
The elite eSports team I’d signed with thought it better that we part ways, and I took it.
The sponsorships I held got yanked because my stats dropped, and I didn’t fight it.
And when I walked in to find Parker in bed with another woman, well…
I was twisted up enough to think I deserved it.
I deserved to be betrayed and belittled and brushed aside.
“No one deserves that.” His voice is low and lined with sharp edges.
When I make no comment, he grips my chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilts my face to his.
“Listen to me. What he did to you is despicable. None of it was your fault, and you sure as fuck did not deserve what he put you through.”
“I know that now,” I say, turning in his arms and climbing his lap.
He releases a breath and touches his head to mine. “Good. I couldn’t bear it if I thought you were still thinking of yourself that way.”
“It’s taken me months to rebuild everything.
My brand, my career, myself. But I’m getting there.
It’s why I’m going to compete and why I’m done shying away from my desires.
So when you said I was hung up on him and suggested you were keeping to my rules for my sake, I didn’t like that you thought you knew what was best for me. ”
He leans back and searches my gaze. “Noted.”
“I’m a big girl, Nick. I don’t need protecting as much as I need support as I learn to trust myself and my feelings again.”
I swing a leg over his thigh, straddling him as I run my hands over his bare chest, across the sparse, coarse dusting of hair on his pecs. Through heavy-lidded eyes, he watches me settle over him. Already, I can feel the insistent press of his thickness through the thin sheet.
His hands bracket my hips, then rove lower to knead my thighs. “Okay, Ro, how can I best support you right now?”
In answer, I cradle his scruffy face between my hands and lean in for another kiss.