Page 11

Lovie

W hen Harrison’s mouth makes contact with me through the thin fabric, I let out a too-loud, and slightly embarrassing noise, my entire body shivering from the touch.

Guys have gone down on me before, of course. For my birthday, or on Valentine’s Day, and always as some sort of reward or treat. Five minutes of care from them before we got to the real main event.

But when Harrison hooks a finger around my panties, drawing them roughly to the side and pressing his mouth fully to me, it’s not with the hesitancy of a favor.

It’s with a certain hunger, a desperate, lunging swoop of his tongue through me, that catches in the bottom of my throat and tells me immediately that this is going to last a lot longer than five minutes.

It tells me that Harrison Clark isn’t going to complain about his chin getting tired, or how he’s so hard he just wants to be inside me.

What it tells me is that Harrison is about to make me come like this, spread open on my desk.

Distantly, in the back of my mind, I know that this is the last thing I should be doing. Logical Lovie screams with a hoarse voice about HR and policies and public indecency. Logical Lovie reminds me how much we need this job.

But Lovie on the desk can only focus on the feeling of Harrison’s large palms on the inside of my thighs, the scrape of his stubble against the ultra-sensitive skin there.

The way his noises vibrate against my clit, sending a current of pleasure straight to the core of me, shivers rippling out over my body like aftershocks.

This shouldn’t be happening, but it’s like I’ve returned to that night on the airplane, out of my mind with something I’ve never experienced before.

This must be what people are talking about when they use the word lust. When characters in romance books crash into one another, slamming through a hotel room and breaking everything in their wake.

I’ve never understood it before.

Harrison drives forward into me, his hands dropping, his thumb still looped around my panties to keep them out of the way as he cups my ass and holds me in place.

I whimper, then clap a hand over my own mouth, knowing I should check to make sure the door is locked, that the windows are fully covered, but I’m too far gone to care.

And my orgasm is right on the horizon, hovering just out of reach, a tremor threatening to take hold.

Harrison seems to sense this, because he draws his tongue the full length of me, then returns to my clit, murmuring so the low tenor of his voice vibrates through me.

“Fuck, Lovie, you taste so good,” he says, punctuating each word with a swipe of his tongue. “I want you to come in my mouth, baby.”

It’s like I can’t keep a breath inside me, and my legs start to shake around him. The feeling hovers somewhere between unbelievably pleasurable and almost unbearable. Then Harrison slides his hand up, plants his thumb on my clit, and drops his chin, delving his tongue inside of me.

The sound that comes out of me is muffled into my hand, but still loud, broken and twisted, a gasp of surprise and pleasure that morphs into a long, low moan as I tighten and finally, finally release.

Harrison smiles through it, holding onto my hips as I try to squirm away from him, the feeling too much to share with someone else. I realize why I usually do this in private—Harrison is taking me in, seeing me laid out for him, completely undone.

I relax back onto the desk, trying to catch my breath, and Harrison peppers the insides of my thighs with gentle kisses as I try to figure out what the hell we’re going to do now.

Half of me wants to sit up, pull him into me, and slide his belt off, already remembering that night on the plane.

The other half of me wants to get up and sanitize this desk, pretend like this whole thing never happened.

“Lovie,” Harrison whispers, his eyes sparkling from where he still kneels in front of me. The question on his face is clear, and I’m sure that if he asks it, I’m going to hear myself saying yes.

But he doesn’t get to answer the question, because in that moment—maybe through divine intervention—a ringing noise pierces through my office, the lights on the wall spinning to life and casting the room in flashes of ruby red.

I sit up, face hot as I jump off the desk and straighten my skirt, moving back around the other side of the desk to open the window.

“Lovie—” Harrison starts, his deep voice behind me sending another shiver up my back. He makes a noise like he might go on, but a knock on the door interrupts him.

“Lovie?” The voice is vaguely recognizable to me—that PR guy?—and he knocks again. “Hey! It’s just a fire drill. I can show you the evac route. Are you in there?”

Harrison frowns at the door, but I walk over to him, putting a hand on his chest and flattening him against the wall, meeting his eyes and using my most dominant voice. His eyes flick up to mine, a note of appreciation there.

“Stay here,” I hiss, palm tingling at the contact with his chest. “Wait to leave until the coast is clear.”

He raises his eyebrows, amused, “I’m hurt, Lovie. You’d really leave me here to burn up?”

I don’t answer him as I reach out and grab the door handle, wrenching it open and smiling at the guy on the other side.

“Hi,” I say, stepping out quickly, the cool air brisk against my cheeks. Can he tell what I’ve been up to?

If he can, he doesn’t show it. “Fire drill! They do this once a month. We all have to go on the lawn. Let’s walk together.”

“Sure,” I smile, nodding, and when he leads me away from my office, I manage to keep myself from glancing back even once.

I avoid Harrison as much as I can the next week.

Instead, I call and talk to Chrys and my dad. I try a Thai place down the street from my apartment. Game days send me home early, so I don’t have to deal with the crowds around the arena. On my tablet, I tap through spreadsheets, process data, and draft new plans for the team.

One of which turns out to be very controversial with the coach—who finds me in my office the moment he hears about it.

“Mandatory therapy?” Harrison asks, eyebrows in his hair, glancing back and forth from the paper in his hand to me.

I force myself to finish the bite of salad on my fork and don’t allow my body to conjure up any physical memories of what it was like to be touched by him in this room. What it was like for his hands to scrape up my legs, the rough brush of his facial hair against the inside of my thigh.

It doesn’t help that he looks hot when he’s angry.

He stands in front of my desk, with one arm crossed over his chest, his clipboard tucked up under the other, a piece of paper loose in his right hand.

That piece of paper is the information about the mental acuity training I’ve arranged for the team.

“It’s not mandatory therapy,” I say, calmly dabbing at my mouth with a napkin and slowly letting my eyes travel up to his. Instantly, I know it’s a mistake—he’s wearing a snug, short-sleeved collared shirt with enough white to show his tan and enough blue to make his eyes hypnotizing.

“Oh, really?” he asks, tilting his head and returning to the paper, eyes jerking as they travel down the page. “…each player is required to attend a consultation in the following two weeks. That sounds like mandatory therapy to me.”

“Consultation,” I return, crossing my legs under the desk and hoping it’s not too noticeable. “And it’s not therapy—it’s mental toughness and acuity training. They’re not even close to the same thing.”

He blinks at me, then lets out a small, incredulous laugh. “You can’t take all this time from my players, Waters. We need that time for them to actually train and practice.”

I stand, bracing my hands on the desk, not missing the way Harrison’s eyes dip to my chest briefly before returning to my gaze. “The data shows mental acuity training returns gains far beyond the time commitment necessary.”

“If you have all my players jumping through these hoops? We don’t have time for this! We almost lost to the Fire last week and our match-up against the Red Stars is going to be fucked if Canton can’t play.”

I’m aware of that. Fixing John Canton’s recurring injury is on my list of things to do. I’m convinced it comes from a lack of flexibility training.

“They’re only required to complete the consultation,” I say, working hard to keep from gritting my teeth at the look on Harrison’s face. “Then we’ll decide which players would benefit most from continuing with the sessions.”

He shakes his head, then runs a hand through his hair, his eyes sparking when they meet mine again. “Unbelievable.”

I know what he’s thinking—this is all nonsense. Harrison Clark is a traditionalist—he believes in doing things the way they’ve always been done. He thinks of hockey as his craft, and doesn’t want new tools taking away the satisfaction of the work.

What he doesn’t know is that I can respect that. I can respect him wanting to go about things the old-fashioned way, keeping data and analysis out of it, computers off the ice.

But I need this job. And I need to prove to the Baltimore Blue Crabs that I can turn a profit on this team. I can get them to the Stanley Cup Finals.

“Lucky for me, I don’t care if you believe it,” I say, tilting my head right back at him. He catches my eyes, and we stay like that for a beat, staring at one another, the challenge building between us.

In the silence, I feel the memory of my bare legs on this desk between us, the way his fingers dug into my skin. My heart picks up, and I try to tell myself it’s just from how much he pisses me off.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Waters.”

“You always call me Waters when you’re pissed off,” I mutter too quickly, not fully thinking it through. A flush rolls over me when I remember the last time he called me Lovie—when he had his face between my legs.

Instantly, his voice drops an octave, “Oh, yeah? What makes you think I’m pissed off right now?”