Earning It

by Angela Quarles

  So I let him pass by, and I lean in a fraction and take a sniff. I know I’m weird, but screw it. Maybe I can get by on just little intakes of his scent, as if it’s some drug that’ll allow me to have an alternate, safer path with him.

  I hold up the chocolate. “I know this wasn’t meant as a bribe, but in all seriousness, you can’t talk me out of doing my job if that’s why you’re here.”

  He halts by the couch and pivots, arms crossed. His large, warrior body dominates the space, but I’ve dealt with male posturing enough not to be daunted.

  “I have no intention of stopping you.”

  “Why are you here then?” My blood races a little at that, as if I’m prodding a sleeping giant, and I’m not sure I want it awake. But I also kind of do.

  He stands there, but he doesn’t do or say what I expect—a flirtatious step forward, an innuendo. Instead, he looks down.

  And it hits me that he’s uncomfortable. Unsure. Not in control. And it throws me. Makes my heart go out to the Unsure Giant in my living room.

  Perhaps just hanging with him a little won’t cross a professional line. I’d been weak yesterday during our date, so maybe I can reestablish the ground rules. “I’m making mac and cheese. You want some?”

  His head snaps up, and there’s a quick flash of relief in his eyes before he shields it.

  “Thanks. I’ll pass.” But he heads for the kitchen, as if he’s been here a number of times and this is something we do every night. He settles down onto the stool at my breakfast bar, which totally illustrates how tall he is. I have to hike up onto it. “We’re on a JERF restriction until Saturday.”

  “JERF?”

  “Just Eat Real Food. Too much artificial stuff in that, but…” He groans at the sight of the box of mac and cheese open by the stove. “You got deluxe? Shit.”

  “Yeah, none of that powder mix for me.” I pour the box of noodles into the boiling water and stir.

  He pins me with a steady but searing gaze. “You’re definitely testing my willpower, Pepper.”

  And then I don’t know what to do with my hands, with my body, because I’m not sure if he’s telling me something more here. Luckily the boiling pot gives me direction, so I hustle about the kitchen as if I’m channeling Gordon Ramsay and it’s super important to get this dish done right. The whole restaurant’s future is on the line.

  Having him sit here on my stool in my apartment makes him real in a very weird way. “Do you want something to drink?” Shit. All I have to offer probably won’t fit his food restriction. “Water?”

  He takes a longing look at the mac and cheese box, but says, “That’d be great.”

  I grab a glass. For a minute the small kitchen is filled by the clunk of ice pinging the sides and then the hum of the refrigerator as the cool filtered water streaks into his glass.

  Because small talk can smooth all bumps, I ask, “Are you guys ready for the game Saturday?”

  He crosses his arms on the counter and leans forward, watching me bustle around the kitchen. I feel as if I’m on a stage.

  “We’re ready.”

  He says this so confidently. And maybe he’s right. Maybe I’ve been quick to judge him. Quick to pigeonhole him into a ‘type,’ but he’s been stubbornly showing me in small ways that there’s more to him than high school jerk turned warrior turned jock.

  I hand him his glass of water, and he nods his thanks. He isn’t Phil, who was full of swagger. The man lived and breathed hockey, and I’d just been filling in his “off time.” I think he also found it convenient to date a sports medicine doctor. Saved on co-pays. But not every athlete has to have an ulterior motive for dating me, or even flirting with me.

  “Is this a qualifying game for the division playoffs?”

  He takes a sip. “No. More like an exhibition game, though hardly anyone will be there to watch except for our friends and family. We don’t have a lot of other hurling clubs in the Southeast, so this is one of the few times we get to actually play against another team. We flew to Atlanta earlier in the season to play their top team, and we play Tampa and Orlando, but we’re all so new to it that we’re evenly matched for the most part. But New York teams are top-notch. It’ll help to compete against a tougher team than what we’ll face in the playoffs.”

  “What got you playing? You’re not even Irish-American, are you?”

  “Aiden is.” He laughs and takes a sip of water. “Aiden played at his college and wanted to keep playing, but there was no team here…”

  “So he strong-armed you guys into playing?” I do another stir of the noodles and tap the wooden spoon against the side of the pot. Yeah, I’m a regular Gordon Ramsey.

  “Something like that.” He stares to the side. “I was just back from being discharged as a SEAL and looking for something to get involved in. Something that would keep me in shape as well. I saw a notice in the weekly paper…”

  “And the rest is history.” The noodles are soft enough, and I drain them and stir in the cheesy goodness. I divide out some for me into a bowl and put the rest away. When I sit down at the counter, his bulk taking up most of my vision to the side of me, he makes another teasing comment about resisting my dinner, but this time I look closer.

  Yeah, he would’ve helped himself to the meal if it wasn’t shortly before the game. Yeah, he really appreciates the goodness of deluxe mac and cheese. But it’s not at all hard for him to resist it. He can just do it. No problem. Because he wills it. I admire that quality more than I’d like to admit.

  What could happen if I give in to this attraction? Maybe it won’t make me lose my way. But what if it does, and I cross that line again?

  As I settle in and try not to be self-conscious as I eat, it’s hard to ignore that his thigh is right next to mine. I can feel the heat from it as if it’s already pressing against me.

  And now it is pressing against me.

  Chapter 11

  Luke

  I’m probably pushing it, with the thigh press and all, but I can’t resist. I can resist that mac and cheese, but I can’t resist Pepper apparently. And I’ll take her however I can, even if it’s just my thigh getting action.

  God, I’m pathetic.

  I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish by coming over here. I have no agenda other than to see her again. Honest. I just…couldn’t be at my place tonight, experiencing its monotony, when I could be here and feeling…something. I can’t forget the taste and feel of her against me from our date last night. When she knew I was Luke and not Rick. Dropping her off and not waiting to see where the night could go was one of the hardest things I ever did. The truth is, the night had gone so well, in a way I wanted to end it before I could spoil it.

  I also wonder if I’m throwing myself into this situation because part of me still holds out hope that I can put myself into the mix with her, and something positive will shake out of it. Boy that was a lot of mixed metaphors, but there it is.

  Bottom line—I want to know if I could have had something with Pepper if I hadn’t messed up so much with her.

  She hasn’t moved her leg.

  Soon, she finishes her portion of mac and cheese, and I’m using that term literally. I’d watched in fascination as she carefully—with surgical precision—divided one third of the gooey noodles into a bowl and placed the rest in an airtight container for the fridge.

  She sets down her spoon. “So…will you tell me what happened back in high school now?”

  I clear my throat. “I told you, it was Tad.”

  “Yes, but why did you take the blame?”

  Sitting next to her, with my thigh pressed against her and both of us pretending it’s not the next step to…something…has me digging deeper. Anything to delay the moment when it becomes clear nothing else will happen with us. And I’ll have to leave.

  But thinking about that incident in high school is difficult because it brings up all my memories of my old man. How he’d insist I compete in that science fair every year, and h
ow he’d beat me when I didn’t win. To him, it was worse than just my failure. I’d lost to a girl—Pepper—every year.

  I never resented her, though. Science wasn’t my strong suit. Her projects were better. That last year I’d even screwed up the nerve to ask her out despite her being one of the rich girls. Our high school was so large, I only saw her once a year. This was my last chance.

  “I’d stepped away and left Tad in charge of our row of tables.” What I didn’t say was that I’d left to use the last of my tip money from bussing tables on St. Armand’s Circle to buy her a Diet Coke and a hot pretzel. She always got that combo every year. Figured it’d ease the way to asking her out. “When I came back, I…” I hesitate, but she’s a grown woman. She doesn’t need shielding any more. “I found your project destroyed. Tad had written in chalk all over it. I saw you coming, so I did the only thing I could think of.”

  She pulls in a sharp breath. “You erased the words by pouring Diet Coke over it.”

  I look down. “Yeah.”

  “What didn’t you want me to see?”

  I grit my teeth. God, I really don’t want to say this out loud. But they weren’t my words. They were Tad’s. “Know your place, bitch.”

  She jerks in her seat. “Seriously?”

  I nod.

  “Jesus. I knew Tad was a budding misogynist. But…wow.”

  Yeah. And Tad, who knew I had a crush on her, just stood there chuckling as I took the blame and my project was thrown out by the officials. That night, the beating had been the worst.

  It was also the last beating, because after that, I started to work out. Drew up a regimen and a plan, and I left him right after graduation. I never regretted taking the blame, even though it resulted in the extra brutal beating, because it had been the right thing to do.

  The night’s gotten way too serious, though, so I ask the one question that’s been burning in me since I walked in. Because she just doesn’t look the type.

  I prop my elbow on the counter and lean toward her. Tension slowly takes over her as if she’s poised herself to what’s happening between us without moving a muscle.

  “Comic book heroes, huh?” A framed poster hangs in her foyer. And it’s from a comic, not a movie.

  There’s that chin lift. And because I can’t help myself, I allow my gaze to drift over to her beauty mark and then down to her lips. A delightful shade of pink rises from the top of her blouse and up her neck. I harden a bit, remembering her flush the other day when I made her come. Four times.

  “I don’t remember you being into comics in high school.” But my voice holds no censure, as if she hadn’t established her credentials early enough to be credible. I’m genuinely curious.

  “I love to read, but I had no time for it when I was getting my MD and doing my residency. It was all I could do to stay awake, memorize everything, and stay on top.” She shrugs, and I hate that she’s dismissing herself, as if her interests, or how she got there, aren’t important.

  “One day I found a comic left in a waiting room while I was doing my residency. I read it, and at first I thought it could just be a way for me to quickly ingest a story during my crazy schedule—get some reading in, you know? But then I fell in love with the form for its own sake. And, well…”—she gestures toward the poster—“who wouldn’t love Rogue?”

  Her hands knot tightly in her lap. Waiting for my judgment.

  That fierce protectiveness rises in me and makes me want to help her shore up her own defenses, even if it shuts me out. I reach over and rub a thumb over her knuckles, willing her to relax.

  “So that’s who that is. I look forward to learning about her. Unfortunately, my comic education only extends as far as watching the next Marvel movie when it comes out on the big screen. Isn’t she part of the X-men?”

  She nods and smiles. “Speaking of…”

  We’re not going to make it to the credits for Deadpool. We started out innocently enough—popping popcorn (plain for me), fussing around looking for blankets, and arranging our pillows on the couch—but there was a quality to all the innocence, as if we knew more than watching a movie could happen here and were going through all these maneuvers to bide our time and see if the other was on board before fully committing.

  First, we shared a blanket, a royal blue one with some kind of stitching in the corners. Pretty, if you like that kind of thing. Then we kept inching closer until I had my arm around her shoulder and she was snugged up against my side. Then I threaded my hand through hers.

  Deadpool says, “Love is a beautiful thing. When you find it, the whole world tastes like Daffodil Daydream.”

  We were both unmoving under the blanket, but now that stillness has more weight. Deadpool continues to seemingly talk straight to me by telling me to hold onto love and not to make mistakes.

  Now each quiet pause in the movie amplifies our awareness. I can hear her heightened breathing. The anticipation tightening her muscles before the next crescendo of the music score drowns our breaths out. Not that there’s a lot of quiet pauses in this movie—it’s pretty kickass. Both action and dialogue, which would normally snag me, but it can’t compete with Pepper. Not even when the hot chick from Firefly pops onto the screen.

  “Hey, it’s Inara.”

  “Who?”

  “Okay. We need to rectify this lack in your life. Firefly?”

  “Never got a chance to see it.”

  I make a mental note to change that.

  Our conversation is like this, like we’re both glad to be talking about things other than the tension building between us. “Oh damn, nice hit,” or “Shit, what did he just say?” Things like that.

  The tension skyrockets, though, when things get hot and heavy between Deadpool and the Inara chick. I shift under the blanket. I think her hand shifts closer.

  Shit. I give in and lean down to her temple. I hold myself still, my lips just an inch away from her beauty mark. Her breath hitches. I brush my lips across that dot of temptation.

  She’s rock still, and I’m psyching myself up to move away, pretend for her I’d misjudged the situation, when there’s movement under the blanket. Next, there’s a death clutch around my neck—her hand has my T-shirt twisted into a fierce grip. Then she’s yanking my head down to her, and our mouths bump into each other.

  Oh yes.

  I angle around and plant my elbow on the back of the couch and cradle her head with my other hand. With my fingers and my thumb resting against her cheek, I guide her in for a more controlled but no less desperate kiss, my heart pounding as if I’d just finished log PTs.

  Just like the other day at my apartment, we’re attacking each other with our lips, our hands. I stroke my tongue inside and groan. God, she tastes…tastes like…I don’t know what, but it’s Pepper, and it’s intoxicating. And I want it. I want her.

  But I hold back, taking my cue from her for how far she’s willing to take this.

  She tugs on the snap at my jeans.

  Well, okay then.

  I angle my hip away to give her whatever room she wants to take. And she takes. Her hot little hand makes quick work of my zipper, and then she grips my cock. Proving that for Pepper I have the control of a high school kid, I nearly come.

  Jesus, this woman.

  I drag her backward until I thunk against the cushions and she’s stretched out along me, the blanket now partially entangled with our limbs. She strokes me once, twice, but that’s not going to end well for either of us, so I flip our positions. I prop myself on an elbow and drag my mouth across her jaw to the soft shell of her ear. Her hands grip tight on my hips, as if that’s all she can handle right now. I nibble her delicate lobe, letting a tiny breath of air tease her ear, and she gratifyingly shivers.

  I brush my hand down the side of her neck and across her arm, reaching back to her hand still at my waist. Her eyes are intent on mine as I thread my fingers in hers and bring her hand to rest above her head. I lean away and take in her flushed-with-pleasur
e face, her eyes trained on mine, and her chest rising and falling below me.

  Did I mention she wears these close-fitting blouses that just do it for me? The tailored primness showcases her fantastic tits and drives me wild. This one’s a cool blue, and the way she’s lying, the buttons look as if I could just brush them, and they’d burst open.

  I return my gaze to hers and slowly lower myself down her body. She can stop me any time, my gaze lets her know. She nods jerkily, and I press my lips to the space between her cloth-covered breasts, right on the straining top button. She closes her eyes, and her body slowly arches up.

  I’ll take that as a yes to continue.

  I nudge the cloth of her blouse with my nose and just as I thought, a little persuasion from my teeth and the button is undone, but the mechanics aren’t going to work this way. I meet resistance to my goal in the form of a bra. I release my grip on her hand and trail my thumb along the skin above her blue bra. My plan? Keep her distracted enough that she doesn’t move her released hand—I don’t need her hot little fingers gripping my cock and ending this way too soon. I tuck a thumb under the edge of her bra and caress her skin. God, she’s so soft.

  At first my plan is succeeding. I’ve got her bra pushed down enough that my questing finger can drag across her nipple. It hardens, and she moans. She’s lost in the sensations, and I’m focused on her pleasure and on each detail of her skin. Her scent. Her sounds. But that focus has only served to rocket my need for her higher.

  It’s all I can do not to rock my cock against her hip.

  To take this to another level. Fast.

  So I picture the first day I had to swim the required time in the waters off Coronado and was so numb with cold I feared my balls would harden into icy blocks and sheer off.

  But God, her sounds. Her scent.

  And possibly because I had to resort to a mind trick to keep myself from just pushing her legs apart and plunging inside, she’s able to move her hand.