Page 8 of Edging Coach
As the door clicked shut behind us, I knew bringing him into this hotel room was a mistake. A huge mistake. Fuck, what were we doing?
We were returning to the scene of the crime. Facingoff just steps away from the bed where he’d made my soul leave my body. I was holding his gaze in the same soft, warm light we’d been in when he’d told me to get on my knees, and… yeah, this was a colossally bad idea.
Devon crossed his arms and shifted his weight, and I tried not to think about how hot he was with his hips canted like that. “So… what is there to talk about?”
A lot of things. I knew that. But those light-brown eyes were boring into mine, and I forgot words. I forgot everything except the way those eyes had burned with hunger and lust as he’d told me,“I’m going to fuck your face, and then I’m going to fuck your ass.”He’d inclined his head just a little and asked,“Yes?”
My voice had been little more than a strangled croak as I’d whispered,“Fuck, yes.”
His grin had nearly knocked my knees out from under me. His next command and that downward nod absolutely had. Even now, facing off long after the smoke had cleared, I could still feel the carpet biting into my knees and his fingertips drifting beneath my chin as he’d grinned down at me.
In the present, unaware of the memories he was conjuring up, he dipped his head in that same way he had just before he’d asked for confirmation that I was onboard. This time, instead of checking in that I consented to being fucked six ways from Sunday, he asked, “Coach?”
Coach.
Right.
Because he was Devon Jarvis, and he was a player on the hockey team I coached, and the last thing I needed to think about was everything he’d done to me.
The last thing I needed was to be getting hard thinking about those things.
No, scratch that—the last thing I needed was for Devon’sgaze to flick downward, right to my crotch, and for his eyes to narrow as the corners of his mouth turned up.
Fuck my life, we had to stop this before?—
“If you hadn’t turned out to be my coach,” he said evenly, closing some of the distance between us, “would you have hit me up again?”
I avoided his gaze as my face heated. As I tried to find my breath, damn it.
“Well?” he prodded gently, a playful lilt to his voice. “Would you?”
I swept my tongue across my dry lips and made myself look at him across the too-narrow space. “You saw what you did to me. You don’t think I’d have asked for a rematch?”
Devon was the one to lick his lips this time, and fuck if that didn’t scramble my brain all over again.
“Iamyour coach.” I sounded far too nervous for a coach talking to a player. “Which means a rematch—it’s off the table. It has to be.” Why did I sound like I was pleading with him instead of laying down the law? What was wrong with me? Why were his lips so mesmerizing and?—
“But if you weren’t,” he murmured, “you would?”
I didn’t dare answer. I’d already said as much, and every admission of what I’d enjoyed and what I’d wanted would make it harder to walk away from this without doing somethingstupidlyirresponsible.
Voice hollow, I said, “We can’t.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Frustration knotted behind my ribs, but it melted beneath the heat in Devon’s gaze.
My teeth threatened to chatter for some reason as I said, “It doesn’t matter, though. We…” I swallowed. “We can’t.”
“We shouldn’t,” he acknowledged, though he didn’t seem the least bit deterred.
“We can’t,” I insisted weakly.
Oh my God, I needed to get a grip. Consummate professionalism collided with years of loneliness. The need to hold on to my job clashed hard with the need I hadn’t been able to define until this man in front of me hadmetthat need last night. I still couldn’t define it, if I was honest; all I knew was that something about the way he’d talked to me, touched me, absolutely manhandled me had satisfied a nebulous craving that had been driving me insane forages.
“I can see it in your eyes,” he said, looking right into them. “If I told you to kiss me right now, you would.”
My breath stuttered. The professional hockey coach who gave a shit about his career would’ve said,“We can’t do this, and we’re not going to do this.”
