“No, like Hyacinth. My parents were big into botany when we were born, so we’re both named after flowers. Anyway, what about you? Why were you there that night?”
“Some girl in my class invited me, said it was gonna be a good time and there’d be booze, so I went.”
“Ahh. Very responsible of you.”
Lance laughs. “Not even a little.”
“Cinny got in so much trouble.” I take a sip of my wine. Lance has already half finished his glass.
“Your parents found out?”
“They did. She took the car without permission, and she didn’t even have a learners permit. She hit the side of the garage and dented the bumper when we came home. She accused me of ratting her out, but all the evidence was there. I don’t know why we didn’t take the train. Or walk! Plus our clothes smelled like cigarette smoke.”
“Shit. I bet it was way worse because you’re girls.”
“Oh definitely. She was so mad at me, thinking I’d been the one to tell, so she told my parents I’d been making out with some high school boy in a closet.”
Lance’s mouth drops, but it’s not shock; it’s a devious look of satisfaction. “She told them about me?”
“Oh, yeah. She was actually pretty jealous that I ended up in a closet with you. It was kind of funny. Not at the time, obviously, but later, when we weren’t in trouble anymore. Her telling on me backfired, though, because they blamed her for that too. I don’t think she talked to me for at least a month.”
“If anyone should’ve been giving the silent treatment, it’s you. She let me steal your first kiss.”
“And I’m still okay with that.”
Lance grins. It’s warm. “Me too, even if I shouldn’t be.”
“You were so sweet about it, even if you were drunk,” I tease.
I slide my hand across the table. Lance watches the movement and flips his over, palm facing up. I stroke the length of his fingers.
“So what happened after that?” he asks. “Were you grounded?”
“We both were. I wasn’t much for going out, so it wasn’t a huge punishment for me. Mostly it meant my parents didn’t go anywhere and nagged my sister all the time.”
“So you really were a good girl?”
The way he says it sends a shiver down my spine. “I guess. I mean, I didn’t go looking for trouble. I had a small group of close friends, and I wasn’t really into parties.”
“Did you like living away from Chicago after you moved?”
“It was hard to start over, but my dad had gotten a job offer in Galesburg. It was this small town, quaint and community oriented. They thought it might help tone my sister down.”
“I’m guessing it didn’t.”
“Not really. She always seems to find trouble, no matter where she goes.”
“What kind of trouble?”
It’s my turn to shrug. Cinny has never had it easy. She’s a restless soul. “She’s reactive, and she doesn’t consider the ramifications of her actions.”
“Sounds a lot like me.”
“I don’t know if I’d agree with that. I mean, sure, you’re reactive, but that’s kind of your job, isn’t it? I think you know what the ramifications are going to be before you take the action.”
“So I premeditate my bad decisions?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Now you’re putting words in my mouth. I wasn’t just referring to the bad decisions; I was referring to all decisions.”
“Ahh. I see.”
I decide to switch gears since we seem to be getting serious again. “How hard was it to move from Scotland as a teenager? Leaving all your friends couldn’t have been easy.”
Lance spins his glass, watching the wine swish. “It wasn’t that bad. Getting out of Scotland was…necessary. I had my cousins. I knew I’d get to play hockey, and there was a lot of talk about how I was destined to play professionally.”
“Clearly they were right.”
“That part wasn’t so easy. I spent all my free time on the ice, trying to catch up to the kids who’d been skating since they were born. I had to work ten times as hard. A few times I got passed over for the minors. That sucked.”
“But eventually you made it.”
“I did. I spent three years on the farm team. A couple times they almost let me go, but then someone saw some potential, and I got picked up.”
“I remember when you were drafted to Nashville.”
“Yeah?” The corner of his mouth lifts.
“I remembered what you said about how I could tell people you’d been my first kiss.”
“And did you?”
“No. It wasn’t something I wanted to share.”
Lance focuses on the table. “I guess not, after all the shit you’ve seen and heard about me, aye?”
“That’s not why. It was my memory. I wanted to keep it to myself. And it’s not like I believe everything I hear or see on social media, anyway.”
Lance looks down at his empty glass of wine. “Some of it is true.”
At my silence he glances up. He looks guarded.
“Is that a warning?”
“I don’t want you coming into this thinking I’m some white knight with pure intentions.”
My stomach twists. “What are your intentions?”
It’s a long time before he finally whispers, “I don’t know.”
A lump forms in my throat and drops to my gut. I start to retract my hand, but Lance curls his fingers, catching mine. At my hard stare he sighs.
“There’s a lot of stuff I’m probably going to have to explain along the way that isn’t going to be easy to hear.”
“I’m not a delicate flower,” I snap.
“Sure you are, pretty Poppy.” His face falls completely when I try to pull my hand away again. “I’m sorry. I’m overthinking everything, and I’m being a dick.” He brings my hand up to his face and uncurls my rigid fingers, pressing them against his cheek again. His eyes flutter shut, and he follows with a shaky breath. When his eyes open, they’re hot with want. “This feeling—what you do to me—I’ve never had it before, and I don’t want to lose it. But I probably don’t deserve it.”
He’s telling the truth. I can see it in his face.
“Why wouldn’t you deserve it?”
“A lot of reasons. I was involved with a woman last year. She played a lot of head games. It didn’t end well, and she still makes it difficult sometimes.”
“To get into a relationship?”
“Yeah. Something like that. Shit. Why is this all heavy again? Look, I really like being around you, and I want to see where this goes between you and me. Just us.”
“Okay. I’d like that, too.”
Lance seems relieved. “Great. Good.”
Appetizers arrive, so we dig in. In the time it’s taken me to get through half a glass of wine, Lance has had two.
Part of the reason I’m not much of a drinker is because it hits me hard. The other part is because of the problems it’s caused Cinny over the years. I have to assume Lance has a much better tolerance than I do since he outweighs me by about a hundred pounds.
Tonight I’m having a glass to help calm the butterflies in my stomach, but every time Lance reaches for my hand, fingers the strap of my dress, presses his knee up against mine, or pays me an idle compliment, they start fluttering around in there, making it hard to breathe.
Dinner is a long, slow event, and thankfully our conversation moves away from serious subjects and turns lighter. Lance gets a message from his friend Miller—the guy whose forehead I rubbed the penis drawing off of—and shows me a picture of his newborn baby.
“I got him that outfit,” Lance says proudly.
The tiny baby’s fist is wrapped around a massive finger, and he’s trying to eat it. The onesie he’s wearing says LADIES MAN. He’s blond and blue eyed, just like his dad.
Lance flips to the next picture, which includes a blond woman I recognize.
“Hey! That’s my yoga instructor!”
“Huh?”
I tap the screen over her face. “Sunshine teaches me yoga. Or she did until she stopped to have the baby.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess Sunny’s gonna have to take a break for a while, right?”
“I hope not too long. I miss her.”
A text message alert pops up, and the contact I saw when Lance left his phone at the clinic appears: DO NOT FUCKING REPLY. Lance expels a curse and powers down his phone, shoving it in his pocket.
“Sorry about that. No more interruptions for the rest of the night.”
I give him a small smile, but it’s hard not to wonder who that person is. I’m pushing myself to ask when Lance continues speaking.
“Anyway, I don’t know how long Sunny’s planning to stay at home,” he says. “I’m guessing until she gets bored or whatever. She doesn’t have to work if she doesn’t want to, but she’s not much for sitting around.”
“It must be hard for Miller to be away from them when you’re out of town.”
“Yeah. We’ve only had short runs so far but sometimes we’re gone for more than a week at a time. I think it’s making him antsy. I guess it’s good he cares, right? Even if it might affect his game.”
“Kids change priorities.”
“If you’re a good parent, I guess,” Lance says, then changes the topic again.
Once we’ve finished our meal, Lance decides he still has room for dessert, even if I don’t. He asks for an extra spoon, but it goes unused since he feeds me small bites of panna cotta instead. His eyes on are my mouth the entire time. I keep waiting for him to find an excuse to kiss me, but he doesn’t. Not on the lips, anyway. But his mouth finds my shoulder on more than one occasion, as well as the back of my hand, my knuckles, and my fingertips.
He keeps a hand on my back as we wait for the car at the valet and rests his free one on my thigh on the ride back to my place. When he pulls up to my house, miraculously finding a parking spot, he looks as nervous as I suddenly feel again.
“I had a really good time tonight,” I tell him.
He shifts the car into park and extends his arm along the back of my seat. “Me, too.” He doesn’t take his eyes off my mouth as he leans in and brushes his lips over mine.
“Do you want to come in?” I ask before he comes back for another kiss, possibly with tongue this time.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
My heart sinks a little, and I drop my gaze to my lap, where my purse sits. “Oh.”
“But I want to anyway.” His fingers glide across my shoulder. “Even if I shouldn’t.”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
“Because I’ll want to do a lot more than just kiss you this time.”
“That’s okay.”
“Is it?”
I bite my lip and nod. “I’ll let you do a lot more than kiss me this time.”
He fingers a lock of my hair. “You’ll let me, or you want me to?”
“Both,” I whisper.
Lance cuts the engine. “I like that answer a lot.”
CHAPTER 17
WHAT I WANT
LANCE
My palms are sweaty as I get out of the car and rush around the hood so I can open Poppy’s door before she does. I want to be exactly like my parents expected me to be: refined and with manners.
But I’m not really like that. All of that fell away after my mum moved to Connecticut. I drifted even further when I was drafted to the farm team and got my own place. I shed all the pretension, the façade of civility, and fell down, down, down into a dark hole of excess.
I spent years burying all the hurt and hate and fear. I found ways to deal with the ingrained expectation of violence. I did things I’m not proud of, and right now I feel like I need to atone for every single sin so I can have this gorgeous woman and deserve her.
I’m not sure how to do that. I’m still going to take her, though. As far as she’s willing to go.
I follow her up the steps to her door. A tremor in her hand makes me aware that she’s nervous. She turns the key in the lock and opens the door. Her smile is full of trepidation as she steps aside to let me in.
I help her out of her sweater and sweep her hair over her shoulder. Leaning down, I kiss her pale skin, and she shivers.
“Don’t be afraid. I won’t take anything you don’t want to give me.”
She turns around, her eyes wide and innocent. “I know.” She pushes my jacket over my shoulders, and I shrug out of it, letting her hang it up in the closet I kissed her in last time.
I don’t want to hide in the dark with her any more. I want to see exactly what she looks like when I take off that pretty green dress.
She laces our fingers together and tugs, so I follow her down the hall. Instead of heading for the living room, she goes for the stairs.
“You don’t want to have a drink or something?” I ask.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, do you?”
Well, this is unexpected. “Not if you don’t.”
The calves in her muscles work as she climbs the stairs. She doesn’t swing her hips, or hike up her skirt to give me a glimpse at what’s under there like a bunny would. She doesn’t act coy or demure. She just links our pinkies together and leads me to the second floor.
She opens the door, but doesn’t flick on the light. It’s unnecessary since a small lamp illuminates the room from a nightstand beside her bed, which I don’t think is even a queen.
The room is small. The walls are pale, almost white, and the comforter is minty green.
“This is my bedroom,” she announces, then blushes.
I take her face in my hands and lean down to kiss her. “What do you want to do now?”
“I want to touch you,” she says against my lips. “And I want you to touch me.”
Poppy is nothing like the women I usually end up in bed with. She’s not brazen. She’s not looking to break conventions. She’s the opposite, and I want to be exactly what she needs, except I’m not sure how.
I keep my hands where they are, holding her face so I don’t take things too fast. Beyond wanting to be what she needs, I also want this to last in case she regrets it and it’s the only time I get this close to her.
Poppy’s hands rest on my waist, and one moves up to curve around the back of my neck. I tilt her head to the side, and she opens her mouth for me, giving me the access I want. Need. Her tongue meets mine, stroke for slow, hot stroke.
I’m so fucking anxious. I’m worried this isn’t going to be like when I’m on her table—that when she touches me it’s not going to be the same, that I’m going to hate it like I do with everyone else.
When she moves her hand from my neck down to my chest, I tense and cover it with mine.
She tries to disengage from the kiss, but I slide my tongue against hers. After another minute, during which my hard-on kicks against her stomach, I let go of her hand. She slows the kiss and pulls back until she can see me.
“You can tell me if it’s not okay.”
I huff out an embarrassed laugh. “I should be saying that to you, not the other way around.”
Poppy links our pinkies again and tugs me toward the bed. “Come make out with me.”
I feel exactly like I did when I was a teenager and it was my first time. But there are some major differences. My first time wasn’t special. I didn’t actually care about the girl. She was some random hook up at a hockey party—which was intentional. I knew by then that female contact wasn’t welcome the way it should’ve been, and I didn’t enjoy it the way the other guys on the team seemed to.
I just wanted to know what the big deal was. And after that I learned sex was going to be about making someone else feel good, because it didn’t work that way for me.
As much as I want this, being with just Poppy means there are no distractions. I’m terrified of being the sole point of her focus. But I’m so tired of the emptiness. I’m tired of the endless ache, and I’m willing her to
be the one who can fix that for me.
Poppy climbs up on the bed and moves over to make room for me. She pats the mattress, looking at me expectantly. I don’t even bother to take off my shirt before I join her. I adjust the pillows and lean back against the headboard. If she were a bunny, she’d already be naked and ready to straddle me. If she were Tash, there’d be someone else involved.
Facing me, Poppy slides in close, kneeling beside me until her hip is against my knee. She doesn’t unbutton my shirt. She doesn’t put her hand on my thigh, or stroke my hard-on through my pants—all of which might actually be welcome at the moment.
Instead she skims the contour of my jaw with the back of her hand and traces my features with her fingertips. “How does this feel?
I close my eyes for a second. “Nice. Good.”
Her fingers travel the same slow pattern on my skin until they’re replaced with her lips. “And this? Does this feel nice?”
“It feels better than nice.”
“Better than nice sounds good.” Her lips move from my temple to the corner of my mouth. I turn my head and slide my fingers into her hair so she can’t take her mouth away.
I’m the one who rearranges her body so she’s straddling my lap. Her dress rides up high on her thighs. I run my hand along the bare, pale expanse of her legs, but I don’t go any farther than the hem.
I just kiss her. I’ve never really gotten used to doing that. It’s too intimate, and it invites too much in the way of hand-to-skin contact, because that’s when they’re liable to wander. But with Poppy, I don’t mind. She makes these sweet, soft sounds and arches her back, pressing her breasts against my chest. In doing this, she also presses up against my hard-on. I groan into her mouth—it’s a loud, pained sound. I’ve been hard since I picked her up.
Her hands, which I realize have been smoothing up and down my arms, freeze.
“That’s not a bad sound,” I reassure her, squeezing her thighs.
She leans back, but returns to press a kiss on my lips as she runs her fingers through my hair, her short nails dragging down the sides of my neck. Poppy traces the collar of my shirt and plays with the top button.
“How would you feel about me taking this off now?”
“I’d feel okay about that.” I run a finger under the strap of her dress. “Can I take this off now, too?”
Pucked Off (The Pucked Series) Page 20