Page 26 of Flagrant Foul (Totally Pucked #3)

Sev Delorean

I manage to spend most of the day out of the apartment. We had an on-ice practice this morning, and I went out for lunch with Lewis and Bryce. Afterward, I spent some time wandering around Whole Foods, haphazardly throwing things into my cart.

Teddy is out when I get home, so I take my time unpacking and planning how I’m going to explain why I bought a shit ton of apples, potatoes, and bacon, and not much else.

I find a fruit bowl in one of the kitchen cabinets and carefully arrange as many apples as possible in it.

I find that if I stack them on top of each other in a conical shape, I’m able to put almost two full bags of apples into the bowl.

I stash the third bag in the back of the fruit drawer in the fridge.

I peel a mountain of potatoes and, after reading through several recipes, decide to mash them. Seems simple enough—just boil the potatoes in a big pot of water and whack the crap out of them with a whacker thing when they’re cooked. I can do that.

I fry up some bacon, slice up a few apples, and place them neatly onto two dinner plates.

By the time Teddy gets home, I’ve lost control of the mashed potatoes. Think I might have overwhacked them. They’re smooth to the point of liquidity but also kind of sticky and a lot more gloopy than mashed potatoes I’ve been served in the past.

“What are you making?” he asks, eyes dancing as he walks over to me. “Chicken parm?”

“Nah. I should’ve stuck with chicken parm though,” I admit. “Decided to try mashed potatoes, and I’m not sure I got it right.”

He lifts the lid and peers into the pot and mutters, “Jeez, that’s a lot of mashed potatoes.”

“Practice was long. I was worried you’d be hungry.”

He smiles at me like it’s the first time he’s ever seen me. Like I’m the best thing on the planet. The best thing in existence. “Thanks, Sev. I am hungry, and I love mashed potatoes. And apples. And bacon.”

I know it probably shouldn’t mean so much to me. I’m pretty sure it’s part of his whole seduction routine, being all nice to me and whatever, but damn. Seeing him happy and thinking I made him that way is some heady bullshit. “They started out okay, but they’ve gone all gluey now.”

“Maybe they need a little more milk. It always takes more than you think.”

I add a healthy glug of milk, a pinch of salt, and taste them. The improvement is notable.

Teddy is still standing next to me. Really close. He grabs a spoon, scoops up some mashed potatoes, and blows on them before putting the bite into his mouth. He hums his approval. It’s a soft, low-pitched sound I feel in the tips of my fingers.

When he’s swallowed, he looks down, chin dipping to his chest, as a shy smile creeps up his cheeks and makes a work of art of his face.

“You look nice tonight.” The way he says it is bashful and sweet.

It’s such a simple compliment, but the sincerity behind it floors me.

Takes my knees out completely. “I love it when you wear cut-off T-shirts. I always have. I have a thing for it, I guess. I never told you this before, but this arm”—he reaches up and wraps his hand around the meat of my upper arm—“this bicep, the left one…seeing it roll up and down your arm…it was kind of my sexual awakening.”

That floors me more .

I try not to, I swear to God, I try not to, but despite my best effort, I find myself flexing my bicep.

It makes Teddy huff softly.

He lets go of my arm, but his eyes don’t move. They’re still on my bicep, looking down, and oh man, he’s so pretty when he looks down. All lashes and chiseled cheekbones and angelic features.

He leans down, making me freeze, and for the briefest of moments, rubs his face lightly against my arm.

Nose, lips, cheeks. Soft, smooth cheeks.

His smile has changed by the time he looks up at me. It’s still sweet, but Jesus, it’s laced with some kind of hot sex now too.

I suck in a hard, involuntary breath, and as I do it, he presses his lips lightly against my arm.

It’s nothing more than a dusting of flesh. A ghost. A whisper that pours pure arousal directly into my bloodstream.

I don’t taste my meal. Not the potatoes, not the apples, not even the bacon. I don’t even taste Teddy, though the air is thick and heavy with his presence. I don’t taste him. I feel him. His lips on my skin.

It was the lightest kiss you could ever imagine. So light and innocent that it almost didn’t happen .

I feel it though. Jesus, I feel it. Even now, almost an hour later, I feel it so strongly that I go to the bathroom, twist myself around, and look in the vanity mirror, searching to see if he did something strange to me to make me feel this way. To see if he left a mark on me or something.

Obviously, there’s nothing there. My arm looks the same as it always does.

I go back to the living room and sit on my side of the couch.

Teddy watches TV.

I watch Teddy.

I watch his lips. My arm tingles and burns, and I rub the spot he kissed over and over.

It does nothing to take the feeling of it away.

The problem is, he might have the most perfect lips I’ve ever seen.

They’re not too plump and not too thin. They’re the perfect in between.

They’re darker than most people’s lips. Permanently stained, though I have no idea why.

Probably to torment me. He has a deep Cupid’s bow.

A sharp V cut into pink flesh. The vertical groove that runs from his nose to his Cupid’s bow is deep too, carving a crisp, clear shadow into his face, one that’s perfectly balanced by the cleft in his chin .

In profile, he’s perfect too. His top lip rests lightly on his bottom.

Something about it incites me. Provokes me.

Leaves me unable to tell if I’m horny or angry.

Unable to tell if I want to force his lips open with my tongue, or kiss him so softly that his head spins the same way he’s been making me spin since that night in the club years ago.

Eventually, he gets up and goes to his room to take a shower. His absence sucks the heavy air out of the room and leaves it thin. It’s easier to breathe, but I can’t get as much oxygen as I do when he’s with me.

My phone pings. It’s Nate.

Spoke to Tee today. He sounded good. Said Samir might not be as bad as he thought he was. Can you believe that?

He seems happier, Sev.

Thank you.

I read the message twice as guilt and panic slam into me. Hard, lethal punches that make my blood run cold. Direct hits to my kidneys and ribs that crack bone and wind me.

Love you, bro.

I type quickly, chest tight, throat burning.

Love you too.

I follow my message with a GIF I made of Lockie falling.

It happened during one of his first games for the Blackeyes, and it was one of those falls that almost didn’t happen.

He got hit and tried to correct, almost did, and then lost his balance after a prolonged, graceless wobble.

I found the clip on the internet, applied a slow-motion effect, and set it to a womp, womp, womp soundbite.

Nate and I have been sending it back and forth to each other ever since, no context needed. Nate loves the GIF. It kills him because slow falls are his Achilles heel. He’s a thoroughly decent guy, so deeply kind that he doesn’t usually laugh at others’ misfortune even when it’s funny as hell.

Slow falls are the one exception to that rule.

Nate replies with an idiotic homemade emoji we made years ago in high school. It’s Nate, lying on the floor of his room, with a ridiculously big smile and laughing-tears drawn onto his face with a blue Sharpie.

I reply with one of me posed in the same way.

It’s silly, but it’s one of those things that’s only gotten funnier with time.

Nate’s skin is blotchy in his emoji thanks to the fact that he’d recently started shaving and his pores didn’t like it.

In mine, my hair had been cut way too short, showing a clear tan line where my sideburns had been trimmed.

We both look like what we were—two dumb kids who thought we were way cooler than we were.

Teddy reappears, standing in the hallway with the passage light illuminating him from behind. A black silhouette throws a long, sultry shadow in my direction. I don’t need to look closely to know he’s wearing nothing but boxer briefs.

He sidles over and takes a seat on my side of the couch. He folds his legs under himself and crowds me, kneeling so close to me I can feel the warmth from the shower radiating off him.

Christ, it’s a lot of skin.

“Are you messaging Nate?” he asks.

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

He makes a face. “I can always tell because you have this specific stupid smile you only use when you’re messaging him.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“It’s fine. I’m used to it because Nate smiles almost the same way when you message him.” Tiny ice crystals form in his larynx. Cutting into his voice, leaving it barbed with traces of jealousy.

“It’s not like tha—”

“I know. So you both always say.” He sniffs and sits back on his heels, leaving his nose a little higher in the air than it needs to be. “What were you messaging about anyway? Were you talking about me?”

“No! We’re just…” I don’t know why I lie. It’s not even like Nate or I said anything bad about him.

Correction. I do know. Teddy hates it when we worry about him or monitor his mood too closely, and right now, he’s sitting so close to me and wearing so little that I have less than zero faith in my ability to keep myself in check if he chooses to unleash the contents of a bratty mood on me.

“Show me then.”

Nate and I have volleyed back and forth with enough ridiculous emojis that I feel safe to scroll up and show Teddy. Not super happy about it, mind you, but safe enough.

He scoffs and rolls his eyes when he sees my screen. “What else? You can’t expect me to believe that’s all you messaged.”

“I think you might be unpleasantly surprised by how low-brow our messages usually are,” I reply.

Because I’m feeling daring, and maybe a little too full of carbohydrates, I scroll up until I get to the GIF I made of Lockie.

I know it’s ridiculous, but I want Teddy to see it.

I let it play a couple of times as he watches.

“You’re mean, Sev,” he says as though it’s a high form of compliment.

“I know.”

I put my phone down, letting it slide between the arm of the couch and the cushion, and return my attention to the TV.

Teddy doesn’t move.

He’s so close to me that I can feel his breath on the side of my face. Warm and sweet. More intoxicating than anything I’ve ever experienced. So close that if I turn my head forty degrees, our lips would touch. Maybe thirty degrees would do it.

He breathes in.

And out.

I taste him on my lips and my tongue. On my face and neck, and the back of my throat.

I want to kiss him so badly my teeth ache.

My gums itch.

My fingernails dig into my palms.

The sexual tension between us is a real, living thing. A thing with a name and a pulse. A thing that draws me to him with such longing that it’s almost impossible to stop myself from leaning in. I want to kiss him so badly that my lips part of their own accord.

Through it all, he doesn’t move. He stays where he is, kneeling beside me, looking at me with hope and sweet things radiating from his eyes.

“What do you want, Teddy?” I ask when I can’t stand the tension between us for one more second.

“The same thing I always want, Sev.”

“What’s that?”

“Kisses.”