“I’ll just give you some privacy.” I pass the table and run my hand over the sheets, smoothing out a wrinkle. “Once you’re undressed lie facedown under the top sheet.”
Lance pauses in his unbuttoning. I can see the definition in his pecs, and I try to keep my eyes above his neck. “I didn’t do that last time.”
“It’s fine. I wasn’t clear. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.” I rush out of the living room and cross over to the kitchen. I turn on the water and wait until it’s hot before I put my hands under it. It also helps drown out the sound of Lance unbuckling his belt.
I imagine what it would be like to undress him. To unveil that incredibly strong, athletic body inch by toned, sculpted inch.
“Stop it,” I mutter and shake my head. When my hands are warm enough, I turn off the tap and call out, “All set?”
“Good to go,” Lance says.
I return to the living room and find him lying on the table, his feet hanging off the end because he’s so tall. The sheet is pulled up high enough to cover his butt, the dimples above it dragging my eyes down.
Why the hell does he have to be so damn hot? This would be so much easier if he could just be unattractive and a total asshole, but so far he’s been sweet, apologetic, and funny. I don’t know what to think.
He lifts his head when the floor creaks under my foot. “Did I get it right this time?”
“You did great.”
I turn on the lamp on the side table and turn off the overhead light, choose some music, and pull the sheet up to cover his back and the massive tattoo. The setup isn’t the best because my oil is on the coffee table, which is out of arms reach.
I skim across his back, over the sheet, from one shoulder to the other, as I walk around to the coffee table. “I’m going to start now,” I say quietly.
“Sounds good.”
I begin the way I always do, gauging the tension in his muscles as I press my palms along either side of his spine. He tenses a little when I reach his lower back. “It’s tight here?” I add a little pressure.
“Yeah. It’s sore.”
“Anywhere else?”
“I’m sore in general.”
“Okay.” I peel away the sheet, revealing his back. After pouring oil in my palm, I rub my hands together and smooth them across his shoulders.
A deep sound rumbles through Lance.
I lift my palms right away. “I’m sorry. Do you need me to stop?”
“No. Don’t.” He lifts his head and grabs my wrist, awkwardly trying to put my hand back where it was.
“Okay. I remember you said you don’t like being touched last time, so I wanted to make sure.”
He settles his face back in the cradle. “It’s okay when you touch me.”
I go back to rubbing slow circles on his back, warming up his muscles. His shoulders are tight, especially the right one. Every once in a while I get a low groan out of him that almost sounds like a purr and a growl intertwined. But when I reach his lower back, the contented groans turn into the kind I associate with discomfort.
“How can someone as small as you be so strong?” he asks.
“It’s just using different parts of my body to achieve the right amount of pressure. I couldn’t do this with just my hands.”
He hums and stays silent for a minute before he asks, “Have you always lived in Chicago?”
“Mm-hmm. This is actually the house I grew up in. My parents live outside of Chicago now.”
“Wow. I can’t even imagine that.”
“I guess being a professional hockey player means you move around a lot.”
“Yeah. My contract with Chicago has another two years on it, but you never know if they’re gonna trade you early or keep you on, ya know?”
“That can’t be easy.”
“It’s part of the job. Mostly I don’t mind the travel.”
“So if there was a place you’d call home, where would it be?”
He’s silent for a few seconds. “Here, I guess.”
“In Chicago? Why here?” I shouldn’t ask leading questions. It’s going to get me into trouble.
“I moved from Scotland to Chicago when I was thirteen. I lived with my aunt until I was drafted, and then I started moving around a lot, depending on what team wanted me. So other than Scotland, this place has the most roots for me.”
“Scotland is beautiful. Do you miss it?”
“You’ve been there?”
“I have a lot of family there.”
“I guess with a last name like O’Connor that makes sense.”
“We went on a family vacation there when I was young. I’d really love to go back one day. So how does a Romero end up as a ginger in Scotland?”
“My dad’s family was from Northern Italy. My grandfather married a Scottish woman, and they had my dad. My mum went to Italy for an exchange program in college and met my dad. He followed her back to Scotland. My mum’s not a redhead, but there must’ve been some ginger on her side, too, because this is what I got.” He gestures to his hair.
“So what brought you to the US?”
He’s silent for a few seconds. When he speaks again he has to clear the rasp from his throat. “My mum has sisters who moved here when she was young, so she has a lot of family in the States. She, uh, wanted to be here. My dad came with us at first, but after a while they split.”
“I’m sorry. That must’ve been hard.”
My parents have always been a strong, stable unit. Even when my sister was causing trouble and making life generally difficult when we were teens, they were a united force. I can’t imagine them not together. Their relationship has always been the bar for mine. After thirty years, they’re still madly in love. I want that kind of forever for myself.
“My dad worked a lot, and that included traveling. My parents weren’t very happy for a long time, so it wasn’t as much of a surprise as it should’ve been, I guess. We stayed in Chicago for the hockey opportunities.”
“So you could play professional hockey?”
“Crazy, right? My cousins came to visit one summer while we were still in Scotland, and all we did was play road hockey. It was all I wanted to do after they left. That winter I came to visit them here and learned how to skate. I was a natural, I guess, and the coaches at the rink said there was potential. Back in Scotland, I took skating lessons where I could, but hockey’s not a big thing in the UK like it is here.”
“Does your mom still live in the city?”
“She moved to Connecticut when I was fifteen.” There’s a bite in his tone.
“Oh.”
I don’t press, because my questions seem to make him tense. What kind of mother moves her child across the ocean and then leaves him with his aunt? There has to be more to that story.
I work in silence for a while until I’ve done all I can for his back. It’s much better than it was when I started. I still have twenty minutes left, so there are several other areas I can work on. I glance down at his sheet-covered butt. As nice as it is to look at, it’s a lot different putting my hands on it in the privacy of my own home than in the clinic where everything is sterile and professional. Still, I have to ask. “Would you like me to work on your glutes again?”
“Uh, no. I think we’re good there.”
I’m almost relieved. “If you turn over, I could work on your neck and shoulders. There seems to be a lot of tension through there.”
“Uh, yeah, okay. I think that’d be okay.”
“If anything is uncomfortable, you can just tell me.”
“It should be fine.”
I pull the sheet up over him and get him to lift his hips to remove the pillow situated there. Then I lift the sheet. “If you can shimmy down and turn over, I’ll be able to work on your neck.”
He follows the directions, army-crawling down the table. His feet hang way off the end now. I rearrange the sheet once he’s lying on his back and work on tucking it in around his legs. “Let me know if
your feet get cold, and I can put a heating pad on your legs.”
“I’m good right now, but thanks.”
I fold down the sheet so I have access to his shoulders. They’re massive, like every other part of him—well, the parts I’ve seen so far. Then I pull up my rolling chair so I can get comfortable while I work.
Lance’s eyes are on me as I squirt more oil into my palm and rub my hands together. “Ready?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He gives a curt nod, and I use my thumbs to adjust the angle of his head, making sure it’s lined up straight with his spine before I assess the worst areas of tension, which seem to be everywhere based on the way his muscles lock up.
His eyebrow looks a lot better today than it did the last time I worked on him, and the bruises around his eye have faded a little, yellow and green replacing the edges of black and blue. The matching split in his lip has scabbed over. His lips part as he exhales slowly.
I put pressure on his shoulders, kneading a little before I start in on the muscles that need the most work. Everything is knotted and tight in there. It’s amazing he can even turn his head.
When his shoulders don’t feel like they’re full of stones any more—just rubber balls—I move on to his neck.
Turning Lance’s head to the side, I glide my thumb along the side of his neck. The muscles there are tight, as expected, and the ones I’ve just loosened in his shoulders bunch at the contact. I settle a gentle palm on the side of his neck. I can feel his pulse, strong and rapid beneath my hand.
“Just relax for me, okay.”
“Sorry.” The tightness in his shoulders eases a little.
“That’s better.” I follow the muscle with my thumb again, find the knot, and start working it out. “Do you grind your teeth in your sleep?”
“I don’t know.” His teeth click together, and his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip. “Probably.”
“I can massage your face, if you’d like.”
His eyes flip open, and he tilts his head up until I’m met with pale green. “My face?”
“Have you had a lot of headaches recently?”
He frowns. “I guess.”
“You’re carrying a lot of tension in your neck and shoulders. That can cause headaches. There are some small muscles in your face that might contribute to that. If you don’t like the way it feels, you can tell me, and I’ll stop.”
“Yeah. Okay. That sounds good.”
He closes his eyes, and I shift his head so it’s straight again, then start by smoothing my thumbs across his forehead, erasing the lines of tension with gentle but firm pressure. I work my way down his face, over the bridge of his nose. He has so many freckles. They’re everywhere.
With his eyes closed like this, he looks almost sweet. Like the boy who pulled my ponytail in the hallway in grade school. Like the one who kissed me in a closet more than a decade ago.
I wonder if that boy is still in there, hiding. I don’t want to believe the man I met a year ago is who Lance really is—the man who was too wasted to remember having met me, more than once.
The rumors seem to conflict with the person on my table, I’m beginning to wonder if the hard exterior is Lance’s wall, and beneath it is a man with secrets and insecurities, like his admitted aversion to touch.
I try to focus on the names of the muscles as I move my fingertips over them, but I can’t stay in the present. I’m pulled into the past, back to a time when innocence disappeared one new experience at a time, and the night I fell in love with a moment I can’t ever get back, even though the person responsible for creating it is right here with me.
My sister had disappeared fifteen minutes ago, and I couldn’t find her anywhere. She’d given me two options tonight: stay home by myself or come with her to the party. My thirteenth birthday was the next week, and she’d said this would be like an early birthday party, but better. Sometimes I wanted to be exciting like her, so I’d said I’d come.
I held a red cup of purple Kool-Aid that burned my throat every time I took a sip. I walked into a low-lit room where a group of teenagers were playing a game. The lights were off; there was just the glow of the TV in the corner. Music videos flickered on the screen. Women with hardly any clothes on were dancing to a song I didn’t like all that much. My mom never allowed me to watch that, but sometimes my older sister, Cinny, would let me when she had to babysit me.
No one was paying attention to the TV, though. The teenagers sat in a circle, an empty beer bottle in the middle. I scanned their faces, most of them unrecognizable, although the blue glow didn’t help.
I knew one girl. She had been talking to my sister earlier, so I moved into the empty space beside her, just as a boy with strawberry blond hair leaned forward and gave the bottle a spin. He was beautiful. I thought I knew him. I looked back at the bottle when he caught me staring. I watched it twirl—quickly at first, then slower until it stopped. It was pointed at me.
“Oh my God,” the girl beside me said. “You lucky bitch.”
The boy across the circle lifted an eyebrow, a slow smile spreading across his face as screams and hollers of excitement followed. He downed whatever he was drinking and passed the cup to the boy beside him as he stood.
The girl beside me took my cup. “Get up! Go!”
I obeyed, because I didn’t know what was going on. I’d naïvely thought this was a game of Truth or Dare—that someone would ask me a question, and I would get to choose—but apparently I was wrong.
A chant began, and a flush crept up my neck as I realized I was very, very wrong about what was going to happen.
The girl I’d sat beside sniffed my drink. “Your sister’s going to kill you.” She was laughing, though.
I was ushered across the room, and the screaming got louder. Seven Minutes in Heaven. That’s the game we were playing, not Truth or Dare. I’d never kissed anyone.
People patted the boy on the back and made lewd, suggestive comments. I suddenly felt panicked as he stepped into a closet and someone shoved me in there with him.
There was no way to avoid touching him as the door slammed closed and darkness swallowed us. I felt around, trying to make space among the winter coats. My hand connected with soft cotton and hard muscle. I was exhilarated and terrified at the same time.
“Hey, hey, relax.” He covered my hand with his. It was warm. Clammy. “Are you afraid of the dark?” he whispered. He smelled like the same drink I’d had, but sharper, and I could taste cologne on my tongue. It was familiar.
The small space was suddenly illuminated by the glow of his phone as he flipped it open.
“No,” I croaked.
“Me neither. But I don’t like small spaces.” He rested his shoulder against the door.
I reached for the knob, but he stopped me. “Don’t bother. They locked it from the outside. We’re trapped in here together.”
The word trapped sent a shiver down my spine. His gaze was lazy and a little unfocused as it traveled over my face.
He pressed a bunch of buttons on his phone. I did know him, I realized. Last year he’d gone to my school for a little more than a month at the end of the school year. He used to flick my ponytail when he passed me in the hall. Not in a mean way, more in a gingers-stick-together kind of way. He’d winked at me once. I didn’t know if he remembered. Even though he’d showed up late in the year, he’d been popular—with the teachers and all the students. Maybe because of his thick Scottish accent.
He’d gone on to high school this year, like Cinny, and I was still in seventh grade.
“What are you doing,” I whispered.
“Setting an alarm for six minutes from now.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I don’t think you really want to make out with me for the next seven, based on how freaked out you look, and I can’t lose face.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry. When my alarm goes off, all I’m gonna do is make it look like we’ve been making out the entire time,
’kay?” He shoved his phone in his pocket, blanketing us in darkness once again.
I felt the warmth of his fingertips down my arm, and goose bumps broke out across my skin. He spoke in a whisper I could barely hear because of the noise beyond the door. “I feel like I know you. What’s your name?”
“I’m Poppy.”
“Like the flower?”
“Yeah. Like the flower.”
“You think I’ll get high if I sniff you?”
“What? I don’t—”
He huffed a little laugh. “Never mind. That was dumb. I’m Lance, like what you’d do to a wound.”
I giggled and clapped a hand over my mouth.
“You think I’m funny?” His accent was heavy, thick. So were his words. He’d probably been drinking. I think most of the people at the party had been. I think maybe my drink had alcohol in it too, and that’s why my whole body felt suddenly fuzzy and hyper-alert at the same time.
I nodded, but realized he couldn’t see me so I responded with a quiet yes.
“How old are you, Poppy like the flower?”
“Fourteen,” I lied. “How old are you?”
“I turn fifteen tomorrow.”
“Happy almost birthday.”
“Thanks. Where do you go to school?”
I gave him the name of the local Catholic high school. I liked that he sounded disappointed we didn’t go to the same one.
He took my hand and played with my fingers. It was a heady feeling that made the hair rise on my neck and my skin prickle. “Has anyone ever kissed you before, Poppy?”
That time I didn’t lie. “No.”
“I should be sorry I’m gonna be yer first, then.” He lifted my hand, and I felt his hot breath on my fingertips, then softness as they brushed against something. It was his lips, I realized.
“Why?” My voice didn’t sound like it belonged to me.
“Because I’m going to take something you can’t ever get back.” His words were old. Sad.
“What if I tell you it’s okay to take it? Would that make you feel better?”
“Not really.” He dropped my hand, and I felt his fingers in my hair, tugging gently on the end of my ponytail, then moving down to my shoulder. I was wearing my sister’s top. It had thin straps, ones my mom wouldn’t approve of. It was too big on me, and it came down too low.
Pucked Off (The Pucked Series) Page 11