Page 29 of He Has Charm (Boston Brawlers Hockey)
Nine
Harper
He’s showering in my bathroom, taking his time, and I know exactly what he’s doing. It’s impossible to keep my mind on anything else as I sit on the couch, scrolling my phone, unable to see what’s in front of my eyes because the image in my head is so strong. Of him pleasuring himself.
Tossing my phone aside, I stand. I need my laptop with the large screen and files to distract me. But it’s in my bedroom.So what?He’s not in my bedroom, he’s in the bathroom. Before I can think twice about it, I go to my bedroom door and listen to see if I can hear the running water, wondering if I have the nerve to dash in and get my computer.
What the hell? It’s my room and I can go inside and get my own stinking computer, can’t I? Plucking up my courage, or maybe giving in to my salacious need to spy and test my theory about his activities, my heart beats fast at the persistent image of his naked wet body that fills my mind. I open the door and step inside.
Two things hit me at once. First, he’s left the bathroom door open. Second, I can hear the water running—and so much more.
I hearhim. The sound of his deep, strangled groan stops me as I stare at the open door, unable to turn away, unable to stop listening or quietly leave the room. Because the next word I hear sounds like… my name, a hoarse, choked version ofHaaarper,drawn out and tortured.
My knees buckle and I stumble toward the door then clutch the edge of it. I hear him even more clearly.
“Fuuuck.ooooh, sooo fucking perfect… sugar buns….” The almost painful scrape of his voice penetrates every cell of my being, shaking me to the core, igniting the sparks of desire into an inferno. He lets out a loud guttural groan and I hold my breath, my body tense and my heart thudding loud in my ears.
The water stops and it’s just him and the sound of his hand pumping wet skin. I hear it so clearly, so vividly, that I feel the pulsing molten liquid pooling between my thighs, my head dizzy with the intense wanting for him, the response to his release as he calls my name again in a last guttural moan.
One hand gripping the door, white-knuckle tight, holds me upright as I squeeze my thighs, clenching tight while my other hand presses between them as if in defiance, trying to get entry to relieve the extreme sensual urge to act. I press my fingers against my throbbing center unwillingly, helplessly, sucking in a breath at the desperate pull, at my brazen action.
What the hell am I doing?He’s in my shower, naked, and he’s going to come out any second and see me standing here, wanting him, vulnerable and depraved, completely lost. I must have lost my mind.
Fear and panic rush to my rescue as I let go of the door and step back, taking my hand from my blazing pussy in an iron-willed move. As I attempt to gather my wits, backing up another step, he pushes the bathroom door wide open and walks out into the bedroom.
Right into my space, inches from me, before coming to a startled halt.
“Fuck.” He says. He’s completely naked and still damp and so close I feel the spray of steamy water droplets coming off him, hitting me, stinging and paralyzing me like some kind of poisonous reptile in a reverse scene from the garden of Eden.
And I can’t help noticing his apple is one gigantic juicy piece of fruit.
Striking the crazy errant thought from my mind, the fear of death—as in the death of my career—takes over with more strength than my irrational yet vitally strong instinctive need for his apple.
I run from the room, pulling the door closed behind me, and circle to a stop at the window, my pulse still pounding.
Of course the closed door doesn’t stop the gorgeous, tempting snake from following me, since he’s perfectly capable of opening the door and perfectly capable of such bold action as to come right up behind me. But even as I hear him and more remarkably feel him coming, I suck in repeated breaths and concentrate on the scene outside the window as if to grasp for the real, rational world outside of my sex-depraved imagination and sex-deprived body and I hold onto the sight of the city to tether me, to bring me back to where I’m at. With my heart still pounding, but a firmer grasp on my baser instincts, though they’re barely buried beneath the thinnest veneer of reason, I turn and face him.
His stark nakedness pummels at that thin veneer, but I keep my eyes riveted to his striking blue eyes and, even as I read the familiar need there—the pulsing, living pull between us like our attraction is an actual snake made of flesh and desire—I stand still but for the vibrations of my tense effort to remain calm.
“Harper… what—?”
I know he’s going to ask what the hell I was doing at the bathroom door spying on him, and I don’t have an answer. Well, maybe I do, but my desperate attraction isn’t a real explanation because this is so complicated and inexplicable, really. And I can’t tell him any of this.
“Don’t. Let’s not … discuss it.” He pins me with hot ice in his gaze, unrelenting and unreasonable. I gulp and squeeze my eyes shut, reverting to irrational behavior before I can stop it, but my heart pounds harder with the fear that I will give in if he moves in just the right way, or says just the right thing. My mind is fuzzy, clouding up, obscuring reality as I stare and see more than the naked man with a throbbing cock tempting me, making my mouth actually fucking water with the flash-forward image of me sucking on him relentlessly. Fuck.
“We can’t let this go,” he says, his voice tense and shaky, the opposite of cool. His shakiness calms me. He’s in the same place I am. We’re in this impossible bind of desperately wanting forbidden fruit together.
“I’m sorry, okay?” I aim my eyes toward the floor between us and back up a step. “I was… getting my computer and it was unforgivable and it won’t happen again. Whatever came over me—”
“Desire?” he asks, his voice more shaky than mocking, and I make the mistake of looking up and meeting his eyes. My gut rolls in a fit of embarrassment and, yes, goddamn desire. But I can’t admit it because he’s forbidden. Whatever chemistry we have can’t go anywhere.
“No.” I force my determination to overcome the pulses of need that fuel my hammering heart and the hot flush spreading through me at his nearness, the stark sexuality of his naked body and those irrepressible sparks along my nerves. But I don’t lower my gaze to take another look at his forbidden fruit, no matter how much I want to see his reaction, whether he’s grown, if his words in the shower were real or a figment of my imagination trying to compensate for my starved lady parts. “You have my apology. I can assure you I want no part of you in spite of… my horrible invasion of your privacy. Now let’s leave this alone.”
“No. I don’t believe you. I saw the look on your face.” He moves a step closer and it feels like the earth moved under my feet, like a seismic shift in energy has invaded my senses. His aura, his scent, surrounds me. The glistening droplets of water on his broad, heaving chest fill my vision, making me waver, almost lean into him. He groans.
“Admit you want me or I’m going to prove it to you.”
A strangled version of the wordnoescapes my lips and I turn from him, but he catches my arm, his hold searing my skin, melting through what I needed to be ironclad defenses, and he spins me around to face him.
“Look at me.”
I sweep my gaze up from the floor and almost faint, my legs rubbery at the sight of his long, hard, erect cock. I force my eyes to meet his. Then I utter the words that taste like the biggest lie of my life, that take the spin from my world because I know I’m robbing myself of something special, something I’ve never felt before.
“Don’t be so sure of yourself, Knight.” I wave a hand in the direction of his breathtaking cock, careful not to touch him, but without backing down because I need to convince both of us. “You may have an enticing package, but you’re hardly worth ruining my career over.”
His eyes flicker and I see the light of desire go out as he takes his hand from my arm and pushes it through his hair. He muttersfuckunder his breath several times and reaches for the gym shorts strewn on my floor, pulling them up and over his cock. This completes the shutdown of my unfulfilled dream, keeps it in the never-to-be column of my life.
