Page 2 of The No Touch Roommate Rule (That Steamy Hockey Romance #2)

Right in front of me.

Looking sexy as fuck in that sheer, peach bridesmaid’s dress with a hint of runny mascara under her eyes and a determined expression on her face.

“What do you want, woman?” I murmur, soft and low, jumping right back into the conversation she bailed on over seven months ago.

“Dance with me.” She doesn’t wait for an answer, just grabs my hand and pulls me onto the floor.

The band’s playing “White Wedding,” a weird choice in light of all the romance in the air, but the dirty, chaotic energy suits us just fine.

Makena and I dance like we used to jump on my trampoline as kids.

Like lunatics. Intense. Wild. Holding nothing back, making every person who bops by us laugh, and several people whip out their phones to record our “routine.”

But it’s not a routine, it’s my particular flavor of crazy meeting her particular flavor and creating something weirdly and wonderfully ours.

It’s beautiful. And fun, exactly the cathartic rush I needed to banish all the heavy “musings on love in a hopeless world” shit weighing me down after the ceremony.

It must be exactly what she needs, too. Because when “White Wedding” gives way to “Rock the Kasbah,” we keep the party going.

We dance until we’re sweaty again, and they finally play a slow song. Then, she’s in my arms, her head on my chest, making my soul ache as the plaintive strains of “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner fill the ballroom.

I want to know what love is, too.

And I really want her to show me.

We dance and dance, breaking only to toast the bride and groom, stuff cake into our mouths, and suck down a vodka and cranberry with a splash of lemon that’s nowhere near as good as a Trash Panda, before getting back on the dance floor.

We close out the night at two a.m., along with the last men and women standing, long after Elly and Grammercy have left on their long-delayed honeymoon and Grammercy’s mom has taken her step-granddaughter back to her place.

So far, Makena and I haven’t said a word after those first two sentences. Not a single word. Not with our lips, anyway.

But her eyes on mine, her head on my chest, her fingers gripping my hand tight as she pulls me through the kitchen after the last dance is through…they’ve all told me, I’m not crazy.

There’s something here between us.

Something undeniable.

We slip out through the double doors at the back of the kitchen, and the night hits us like a slap in the face.

It’s pouring rain, fucking pouring , the kind of hot and heavy drops that only come from a Louisiana summer sky.

The alley is empty, surprisingly clean, and lit only by a single flickering lamp by the back door.

But there’s plenty of light to see the way the rain plasters Makena’s dress to her skin as she steps out into the downpour. The way it makes that peach silk so transparent, I can instantly make out the outline of her nipples beneath the fabric.

Christ, she’s sexy as fuck, so hot I have to work to rip my gaze back to her face when she finally says, “I’m so mad at you. So, so mad,” she adds, raising her voice to be heard over the rain spanking the pavement.

I blink. “Wait, what? Why?”

“Because you live rent-free in my head,” she says, the longing in her eyes taking the sting out of the words.

“Seven and a half months, Parker. Seven and a half months, and I still can’t stop thinking about your stupid lips and your stupid face and the way you looked at me like I’ve always wanted someone to?—”

I cut her off with a kiss.

Hey, it worked the first time, and I can’t fucking help it. She’s wet and she wants me, and is so damned sexy, I can hardly stand it.

When my mouth finds hers, she makes a sound—half shocked gasp, half groan of relief—that shoots straight through me.

Because I feel the same fucking way.

There’s never been a connection like this for me.

No woman has ever made me rock hard with a single touch, made me dream about her for months, made me ache for her like I ache for simpler times and easier roads and a point in my life when my family resembled a sitcom more than a late-night drama.

And no, looking back, I never had a truly happy home. My parents’ love was always a lie. But this isn’t. This is real, the first completely real thing I’ve ever felt with a woman.

I want her so bad it’s almost scary.

We stumble backward, her hands fisting in my soaked dress shirt, clawing for my skin. My back hits the stone wall of the hotel hard enough to knock the breath out of me, but we don’t stop kissing.

I stroke my tongue harder, deeper, as she matches me, challenges me, dances with me.

Fuck, we’re good at dancing.

We’re going to be good at fucking, too. There’s no doubt in my mind.

My hand finds her thigh through the slit in her dress, her bare skin hot despite the rain. I grip her there, jerking her leg up around my hip, and we groan.

She rocks against my thigh, both of us shuddering as her pussy grinds into my erection, and I wish for the superpower to make fabric evaporate with everything in me.

“I hate this,” she says, but her lips are already on mine again, desperate, hungry.

“No, you don’t.” I slide my hand higher on her thigh, fingers creeping beneath the elastic of her panties. “You need this. You need it as much as I do.”

She bites my bottom lip hard enough to sting, then soothes it with her tongue. I tangle my other hand in her soaked curls, and fuck, they’re still so soft. As soft as her lips and her tits against my chest.

She’s going to be so soft and slick and hot around me.

Just thinking about it has me so hard it hurts.

“We should stop,” she gasps, even as she opens the buttons of my shirt like she can’t get to my skin fast enough.

“Probably,” I agree, kissing down her throat.

Neither of us stops or slows for a second, though. If anything, things only get more frantic. I palm her breast through the wet fabric of her dress, then jerk it down, baring her nipple to me, the night, the rain.

She makes a genuinely startled sound, and suddenly we both seem to realize that we’re on the verge of something we can’t take back.

She freezes.

Our eyes lock.

We suck air like we’ve run a marathon.

Her lipstick is gone, her mouth is swollen from my kisses, and my shirt hangs open from where she’s torn at it. The rain keeps falling, but time stops.

In her eyes, I see everything I’m feeling. I see it, and I know that she knows there’s no escaping this. We’re meant to be. At least for now. At least for tonight.

Fuck, God, if you’re up there, let her take me home tonight.

She holds my gaze for one more heart-stopping second, but just when I think she’s going to tell me to go get my truck and the biggest box of condoms in the hotel shop on the way to the valet stand, she turns and runs.

She fucking runs!

Away!

From me!

Again!

She runs away through the fucking rain like this is a stupid, sad movie instead of a hot rom-com where we’re totally going to fuck like bunnies, be sad for ten seconds over some dumb misunderstanding, then keep fucking happily ever after for the rest of our lives.

“Makena, don’t you dare!” I shout, but she’s already disappearing around the corner. “Makena!”

Everything in me wants to chase after her, but I know better. If she wanted to be here, she would be.

But she doesn’t.

Why?

I don’t fucking know, but it seems like something a hell of a lot more intense than the fact that we have a tiny, insignificant age gap and she used to cut the crusts off my grilled cheese fifteen years ago.

Maybe she’ll tell me about whatever that “more” is someday.

Maybe she won’t.

But she kissed me back.

That’s the hope kernel I hold onto as I head inside, dripping puddles through the kitchen on my way back to the ballroom to find my tux coat.

She kissed me back like she’s been dying to for seven and a half months.

Like she’s been living with the same ache, the same certainty that we’re meant to crash into each other until it sticks.

That isn’t goodbye…because she didn’t say goodbye.

She just ran.

But she ran last time, too, and she still asked me to dance and gave me one of the best nights of my life. And we barely said a word to each other. Imagine how much fun we’ll have when our smart mouths get in on the action?

Nah, this isn’t the end. This is just the beginning of whatever chaotic fuckery we’re going to get up to together.

I’m certain of this.

Certain as I find my tux coat, share one last root beer with Torrance—I stopped drinking earlier, so I could sober up to drive—and grab a giant piece of cake from the “take home some food” table.

Certain as I make plans to numb my pain with buttercream icing and Saturday Night Live reruns in my living room as soon as I get home.

Certain as the valet pulls my truck around and I press a twenty into his hand, figuring he deserves a reward for being stuck at work at nearly three in the morning.

“Thanks, man,” he says, grinning as he tucks the bill into his vest pocket. “You headed downtown?”

I shake my head. “Nah. Suburbs, dude. I’m a baller who loves grass and piddling in my garden.”

He laughs as he nods. “Cool. Safer right now, too. The roads are starting to flood down there. Management wanted us to tell anyone headed that way to take the long way around or make plans to stay somewhere else tonight. The storm is dumping rain crazy fast. Last I checked, there was a flood warning for half the city until eight or nine tomorrow morning.”

“Thanks for letting me know.” I circle around to the driver’s side, dread hardening my stomach.

I don’t live downtown.

But I know someone who does…

Makena lives in the back of her restaurant.

She sleeps on a little sleeping mat tucked into a shelf under the paper products because she was too fucking stubborn to give up on her dream when the bank refused to give her a business loan, so long as she was still paying rent on an apartment.

When Elly told me the story, it was clearly intended to illustrate how obstinate Makena can be, and encourage me to come to terms with the fact that her lips might never again meet mine.

Instead, it only made me more certain that she’s my pigheaded soul mate.

Together, there’s probably nothing we couldn’t do.

Unless she’s swept away by a flood…

Pulling over to the side of the road, where the water is already six inches deep, I check the weather report to see the area near Makena’s restaurant in bright red. It’s an area I know well, not far from the stadium, full of office buildings.

An area rescue teams will likely head to last, since allegedly no one lives there…

“She probably couldn’t get home,” I mutter aloud. “If it’s flooding now, it was flooding forty minutes ago. She probably called a cab. The driver probably said, ‘I can’t take you there, weirdo—there’s a flood,’ and now, she’s shacked up with a friend somewhere on higher ground.”

Or she’s not, and about to be in serious fucking trouble.

And just like that, I’m off, tires spinning as I head back into the heart of the storm, hoping my truck is lifted high enough to stay above the water.

If she’s already safe and sound, and I end up stranded on a roof somewhere because I tried to white knight it for a woman who ran away from me— twice —I’m going to feel like an idiot. But if something happens to her, my heart will be ripped out of my fucking chest.

A man can live with bruised pride.

He can’t live without a heart.