Page 18 of Flagrant Foul (Totally Pucked #3)
Teddy “T-Dog” O’Reilly
To say I’m slowed up might be the greatest underexaggeration of all time. My eyes are dry. My mouth tastes disgusting, and I can barely put one foot in front of the other. The only thing spurring me through the fog of sleep, or lack thereof, is the smell of coffee wafting toward me.
Sev turns to face me as I stagger into the kitchen.
He leans against the counter, not quite sitting on it, but hitching a leg up to rest a butt cheek on it.
His hair is loose. Messy and tangled, though it somehow still manages to look professionally styled.
He’s wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of sleep pants with the drawstring tied in a bow.
Ugh.
Fuck.
It’s too early for this level of hotness.
His T-shirt and pants are pristine. Neatly pressed without a rumple in sight. There’s no way he slept in them last night. No, he slept naked and put them on when he woke up this morning. He probably walked naked to his closet to get them out.
Bare feet on the floor.
My closet. My floor.
The cotton stands out against his skin. Crisp white offsetting an olive-gold glow that makes saliva pool under my tongue.
“Coffee?” he offers.
“Please,” I croak, forgetting to remove excess layers of gratitude.
His eyes skid down my face and come to a halt near my mouth. “Bad night?”
“’Bout average.”
He takes a mug from the wall-hung unit above the coffee maker, slots it in place on the drip tray, and hits the button that makes the machine sound like a rocket trying to take off.
I palm my dick while he has his back to me, pinning the rapidly thickening head under my waistband and covering it with my T-shirt, hoping he won’t notice my boner when he turns around again.
As coffee splutters into my mug in a frothy stream, Sev pulls a hair tie from his left wrist and transfers it to his right before reaching up with both hands.
The movement is fluid, something he’s done so many times that he no longer has to think about it.
Long fingers comb through inky black hair, carding it and pulling it back to the nape of his neck.
For good measure, he runs his fingers through it again.
From his temples all the way back. The same again, but this time over his crown.
He finds errant locks and gets them under control before securing them with his hair tie.
The hair tie is black. Not thick and not especially thin. Nondescript, other than the fact that it belongs to Sev.
He twists it once and folds his hair into a bun, releasing the band with a barely audible flick.
Despite his efforts, it’s imperfect. Tiny whorls of hair have escaped confinement and curl on his neck and near his temples.
I hate how much I love it.
He pads to the fridge, opens it, and gets the milk out.
He takes six steps on the way there, five on the way back.
He smiles pleasantly as he moves the mug from the tray onto the counter and opens the milk.
He pours a dash of milk into my coffee, just how I like it, but underestimates how full the carton is.
He must, as he uses a little too much force and overpours.
Milk spills over his hand, down the mug, and a little splashes onto the counter.
I watch, unmoving. Stock still as creamy liquid forms a thin stream, pooling on the counter once it’s run over his knuckles. For an insane second, I almost lose control and offer to help clean him up. With my tongue.
That thought rattles something loose. Something worse.
Sweet Jesus. The state of me last night. I’m always a mess in the middle of the night, but seriously, I’m going to seduce Sev Delorean ?
My cheeks flush darkly, and I thank God and all that is holy that Sev isn’t a mind reader and that I didn’t take it upon myself to make any announcements about what I was planning. It doesn’t help at all. It’s still utterly humiliating to think about, even if I’m the only one who knows about it.
For clarity, no, I will not be seducing Sev.
Not now or anytime in the future. There is a myriad of very, very sound reasons for this, chief among them being that I don’t know how to seduce people.
I’ve never seduced anyone, at least not on purpose.
Thanks to my little obsession with Sev, I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid relationships, not get into them.
How to shut shit down the second a guy starts catching the feels? I’m all over that bad boy.
How to hook up, run, and never look back? I’m your man .
How to purposefully entice the man you want into falling in love with you? Yup. I don’t have a clue how to do that.
Last night, none of this seemed to matter.
In the early hours, my lack of skill didn’t seem like a problem at all.
I’m not sure if it really happened, or if I was dreaming—or hallucinating—but I’m pretty sure that at one point, I asked Mae how to seduce Sev, and she told me, “Seducing men is easy. Just present yourself in various states of undress, and say whatever filth comes to mind. No filter, no shame. Works like a charm. You’ll have him right where you want him in no time. ”
Hmm, the more I think about it, the more I think I might have been hallucinating.
Not even Mae is that unhinged.
Thank God, I’ve come to my senses.
Sev hands me my coffee without wiping the mug, and I take a grateful sip.
It’s game day. We’re playing the Dogs at home, and thank God for that too.
The last thing I need today is having to deal with getting to the airport and panicking about Sev being late.
I’m going to use the free time to get my head on straight.
I’m going to have a nap after lunch and spend some time meditating and saying my affirmations when I wake up.
I’m going to be an entirely different version of myself, fresh and ready for the game, by the time I put skate to ice.