Page 10

Chapter 9

Nash

F uck. I want to jerk off so bad it’s giving me insomnia. And I have a game tomorrow night, on top of the stupid film crew following me everywhere. I need my sleep. But the hot blonde bane of my existence is sleeping in my office and it’s making me crazy. Which makes the need to jerk off, and give myself some tension relief, even higher. But I can’t because I bought a loft, with no real walls anywhere but the bathrooms. I’m worried she might hear me or something.

I sit up, shrugging out of the sheets, which are tangled in my pajamas. Because I have to wear pajamas now because I have a wife I don't want to accidentally see me naked. Dear God, my life is a joke. I get out of bed and tip-toe into my bathroom because I have wood floors up here, and it's directly above Tenley, and they creak. I close the door then flip on the sconces and lean on the marble counter, my head hanging in defeat. Jerking off in the shower is a good option. But can I shower without waking her? The exposed pipes from the bathroom run down the back wall of the office.

Fuck it. I have to try.

Besides, even if she hears something, she won't come up here. We established rules when I came back from practice and I found her eating potato chips on my couch. She balked at every single rule and acted like I was some kind of evil dictator and then she stomped out, muttering she was going to go eat dinner at Tate's.

My rules aren’t extreme. There were four.

1. No shoes in the house. Always leave them at the door.

2. No eating crumbly things on the couch. Only at the kitchen island.

3. No using the main bathroom after 8pm or before 8am. If she needs to shower, she has to do it between those hours so I have my space and can get my rest, mental and physical.

4. No speaking, TV, music, or anything else on game days. My routine is a media-less day. And no one and nothing will interrupt that.

4.5 No interrupting or commenting on my game day schedules and rituals.

The problem is, one of those pre-game day rituals is sex. Unlike most of my teammates, I play better if I have sex the night before a game or the day of. I can substitute that with jerking off, but I'm worried that won't be enough eventually. For now, it's my only solution. I turn on the steam and the shower, strip off my stupid pajamas, and step in. I sit on the bench at one end and lean my head back against the tile. As the water pelts me and the steam swirls around me, I slide my hand up my bare thigh and rub my cock. I search my mind for something hot to think about.

Tenley bending over in that crop top pops into my brain. Her round, full ass. Her smooth bare stomach. The way her perky tits bobbed in that flimsy pink lace. As soon as the full thought fills my brain I pull my hand off my dick. Because it got rock hard really fast. Too fast .

It shocks me immediately and completely. I stare down at my dick. The asshole stands tall and stares back at me without a care in the world. “No. Not that,” I scold it in an angry whisper. “Anything but that .”

I close my eyes and concentrate on the warm water peppering me as I search through the mental spank bank for a memory or fantasy that has nothing to do with Tenley. I land on Gabby. The last time we were together she invited me over to her place for Netflix and Chill and halfway through Dune she was on all fours on the sofa and I was sliding in and out of her. I remember her tits bouncing, my balls slapping her ass, my name and expletives flying from her lips, which were swollen because the whole thing started with an excellent blow job…

God, what I wouldn't do to see Tenley's smirking lips red and swollen from being wrapped around my cock.

Wait. What? No!

My hand drops my dick and my eyes fly open. Why does my brain keep doing that? I’m losing it. I slap my forehead with the palm of my hand, trying to knock out any and all thoughts of Tenley. I will not jerk off to thoughts of her. Even if she is gorgeous. Even if her tits look like the kind that would feel perfect in my hands and in my mouth. Even if…

I blink. It’s not nearly as steamy in here as it should be. Did I forget to close the?—

The alarm is instantaneous and deafening. A rhythmic, shrill WAH-WAH that sounds kind of like a British police siren. I swing the shower door open and slip and slide across the tile floor, desperate to reach the bedroom and the control panel on the wall by my bed. The fire alarm is hard-wired and included with the alarm system I pay for. Any second a person is going to come over the control panel and ask me for a password. If I don't give it, along with an explanation as to why the alarm is going off, they call the police, fire, and paramedics and trip the alarm for the whole fucking building. At one in the morning.

I reach for the towel on the rack just as I make it to the door, but my feet slip again and I go down in a heap, face-first, half my body in the bedroom and half in the bathroom. Towel in my hand, not wrapped around my waist. So when Tenley comes racing up the stairs, she gets a full view of my very wet, very bare ass. She stops dead for half a second and drops to her knees by my shoulder. “Oh my God. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“No,” I snap far too harshly because she seems genuinely concerned.

“This is Mandy with Home Defense. Is anyone there?”

“Open the windows!” I bark at Tenley and she jumps to her feet, pulling open the two windows in the bedroom that face the side of the building.

“Hello?” Mandy says. “I have no heat detected but do I need to send help? Hello?”

“Yeah. Hey Mandy. This is Nash Westwood,” I say, still lying face down on the floor with my neck craned toward the panel Mandy is speaking from. I haven’t had a second to figure out how to get up without Tenley seeing my junk. “Everything is fine. The stupid steam shower set off the alarm again.”

“Again?” Tenley questions and I shush her so she gives me two middle fingers before dropping her hands to her hips defiantly.

I finally notice her choice of pajamas. Hot pink lace panties that would have matched that bra she had on earlier and a ribbed white tank top. It’s not the thickest fabric and I can make out the shape of her nipples. Also a very faint outline of a pale blonde landing strip… I think… under those undies.

“Nash!” Tenley hisses and when my eyes finally bother to remember she has a face she’s glaring at me and pointing at the panel. “Password!”

“Sir?” Mandy asks again. “Your password.”

“I can’t say that in front of a stranger,” I mutter.

“Are you insane? You’re going to wake up the whole damn building if you haven’t already!” Tenley says. “And it’s something I should know anyway, if it’s so sensitive steam sets it off.”

I guess she’s got a point here. I sigh. “Mandy the password is Stanley.”

Tenley makes a face.

“Thank you Mr. Westwood,” Mandy says and the room is suddenly, blissfully, quiet again. “This is the fourth false alarm due to steam that we’ve gotten from you in the last twelve months. Perhaps schedule an appointment to move the sensors in that room.

“I’ve been meaning to. I will. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight and thank you for trusting Home Defense.”

Tenley waits a second, as I lie my head back on the carpet and sigh. “Is she gone?”

“Yes. Crisis averted,” I murmur. “Only thing on fire right now is my ego. It’s going down in flames.”

“Your password is Stanley? As in Stanley Cup?” She rolls her eyes. “So boring and predictable.”

“Nobody asked you.”

“Why was your steam shower on at this hour?” she asks. “You showered when you got home from practice.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Doesn’t showering wake you up? It’s why people do it in the morning.”

“Can you just go back to bed so I can get up?”

She doesn’t move or speak so I lift my head off the floor to figure out why. She’s standing next to the foot of my bed. Her blue eyes are sparkling. Her mouth a little open, like she’s in shock, but it’s also turned up in the corners like she’s fighting a smile. “Why do I have to go away for you to get up?”

“Duh. Because I’m naked,” I snap and tilt my chin in her direction. “And quite frankly you almost are too. I’m up here sleeping in a fucking snow suit and you’re in that?”

"Is it an invisible snowsuit, like the Emperor's clothes? Because I don't see any snowsuit."

She's enjoying this. A lot. I can tell by the giddy lilt in her annoying voice. I curse into the floorboards. "Tenley. Leave. I need to get up."

“I dare you to just do it,” Tenley says, the lilt in her voice turning to taunting. “You shower naked in front of, like, thirty people just about every day. I dare you to get up off the damn floor in front of me.”

“You want to see me naked?”

She laughs. “Hell no. It’s a dare. The pleasure for me comes from watching you lose the bet, Skippy.”

This is so fucking ridiculous. But now I'm cold and tired, and totally over the entire night. I just want to go to sleep and pretend this never happened. And I know my insomnia won't go the hell away if I let her walk out of here thinking she's won something. Nash Westwood doesn't lose. So I take a deep breath, hold it, and as gracefully as possible on the still slick tile, I get up off the floor.

It takes about two and a half seconds and then I’m standing there, as naked as the day I was born, a foot and a half from Tenley. Her eyes drop lower, and lower, and lower, very slowly, and I don’t move. The towel is still clutched in my left hand but I don’t try to cover myself with it. She wants to look. And I kind of like it. It’s the first time I am absolutely certain Tenley won’t be able to come up with a snarky remark. I’m a professional athlete at the top of my sport and every inch of my body reflects that.

And as for my cock, well it’s somehow managed to stay half hard, and even soft it’s definitely not something she’ll tease me about. Her eyes are on it now, and I can tell she likes what she sees. But I start wrapping the towel around me when her cheeks flush and she bites her bottom lip. Because it’s threatening to make my cock go from semi to fully hard.

She blinks and her eyes shoot to mine. Swallowing, she says, “Didn’t think you had it in you. Impressed.”

“I think I impressed you in more ways than one tonight.”

“Cocky. Gross.” She rolls her eyes before they flitter down to the bulge now under the gray terrycloth. “I think it’s safe to say you’re not repulsed by what you see either.”

My eyes sweep her body again even though I tell them not to. They listen as well as my dick. “You’re a smokeshow Tenley and you know it. You don’t have to hear it from me.”

Our eyes lock. It feels like an eternity that we stare at each other, and something thicker than steam is clogging up the air now. But then she takes a step back and points to the shower. “Speaking of smoke. What the hell were you doing?”

“I told you. Showering.”

“Why?”

“Because I needed to.”

She frowns and folds her arms, which does nothing but push up those tits of hers. Yeah, I can totally see her nipples through her tank. She tilts her head as if mulling something over. “You know Tate used to take multiple showers a day when we were teenagers. Because Conner once came over unannounced and barged into his room and caught him… So he started doing it in the shower until Mom complained he was using too much water and… Yeah. Were you jacking off?”

“What the hell!”

“You were. You were totally spanking it!”

“Shut up! It’s my place and why I shower in the middle of the night is my business!”

"Yeah, I get it. You're too uptight to do it in your room in case I hear." Tenley is much smarter than she looks. Like she's impossible to lie to. She figures out everything. Tate said she minored in criminology or something and her favorite class was advanced interrogation. "So did you get the job done, Nash? Or did the fire alarm interrupt your little midnight masturbation marathon?"

“Rule number five. You need to sleep in actual clothes.” I change the subject entirely.

She shakes her head, her golden hair swirling around her shoulders. It's wavy tonight. She let it air dry after her shower, I think because I didn't hear a hair dryer. "I'll wear whatever the hell I want, Nash-Hole."

“I can basically see your breasts and your…” I glance down again.

“Say it. I dare you.”

“You and your fucking dares.”

She grins. It’s smug. She steps closer. “I dare you to admit I’m right. You were jerking off.”

I growl.

“I win.”

She turns to walk back down the stairs but I take two steps, grab her wrist, and spin her to face me. Now we’re an inch and a half apart instead of a foot. I look down at her, my breathing heavy. She’s blinking up at me. The sparkle in her eyes is now a glimmer of something deeper. Darker. “I was trying to jerk off in the shower. I’m not like other players. I need to fuck before a game. I can’t now. Because of you. And you’re right. I didn’t want you to hear.”

“Oh.”

"And it's not helping me at all that I can see those perfect little tits of yours and that sweet looking…" I swallow. Fuck it. "That sweet-looking cunt."

She gasps. It's one of those good gasps like the kind girls make when you enter them for the first time.

Holy fuck this is insane. We hate each other. I step away from her. Turning, I head back into the bathroom and gently but firmly close the door as I hoarsely bark out, “Go to bed.”

I don't hear anything for a few minutes and then there's the gentle slap of her bare feet on the stairs as she retreats to her makeshift room. I give up on fighting the thoughts in my head and I lean on the closed bathroom door, drop my towel, and wrap my hand around my cock. I start to stroke it, my mind picturing Tenley's face—her mouth open but finally with no sound coming out of it—as I slip my fingers into those lace panties and find her soaked. And then, in my brain, she's on her knees with my dick in her mouth and I've got my hands fisted in her wheat-colored hair and I'm… coming. I am fucking coming.

I try to stifle my groan of relief as my release hits my stomach, and my hand, and drips onto the towel at my feet. Panting, I clean up, run through the shower again, without steam, and walk to my bed naked. Fuck it. She's seen it all now. I don't have to worry about stupid pajamas.

I crawl into bed and scrub my face with my hand. The release has finally melted away all my tension. The physical release and probably the mental one too, as I finally—for the first time since I met her—allowed myself to fantasize about my personal nightmare. I close my eyes, roll onto my side, and start to drift toward sleep.

But then I hear something.

Faintly.

A moan?

I open my eyes and lift my head slightly off the pillow.

Another moan. Soft. Faint. Breathy.

Is she… no. She isn’t. She wouldn’t.

A moan followed by another right on top of it and a small, satisfied cry.

Holy shit. She is. She did.

Tenley Garrison just masturbated in my guest room.

And now I’m rock hard again.