Page 5 of Lovefool

Sure, there’s a part of me that’s celebrating the possible death of my post-ex abstinence, but there’s another part that has to scrutinize the pitfalls of this operation and reaffirm a pragmatic approach.

I don’t want to offend this man—seeing as he holds my future in the palm of his very large hand—but I can’t just fawn and fall over without some much-needed explanation. “Are you serious?”

He narrows his eyes—the universal sign for yes, I’m serious. It’s as sexy as it is nerve-wracking.

Where was this handsome suitor when I was trying to reel weekly dates out of my ex-boyfriend? Under any other circumstances, I’d skip the small talk altogether and get straight to dessert. I.e., licking every inch of this stranger’s God-sculpted body until I overdose on his sickly sweet pheromones.

He shuffles a bit closer to me, holding up his hands in surrender when I shirk away like a cornered animal. “I don’t want this to come off the wrong way, but I know what happened between the two of you. Buford is a gigantic asshole, but he has an even bigger mouth.”

I throw my arms up in the air, momentarily forgetting that said arms were the only censor bars covering my lace-clad nipples and crotch. “Oh, great. Does everyone on the hockey team know that I’m the sad sack he cheated on?”

My admirer’s eyes gravitate to my chest on instinct, then farther down, and, surprisingly, he averts his stare with the brightest blush spilling over his cheeks. He suddenly seems interested in the two crickets that are humping each other in the middle of the floor.

“Actually, everyone on the hockey team knows that he’s a dog with no self-respect. We pity him, not you.”

Huh. I mean, I’ve never cared what any of the Minnesota Mustangs think of me, but I’m glad that my reputation seems to be salvageable after Buford’s category-five event. I lower my arms back to my private areas.

It’s not every day that my plan for vengeance backfires, much less in a way that makes my heart hiccup and my brain falter like an overworked engine. “Well, thank you. I think.”

Damn. In the span of twenty minutes, Mountain Man may have single-handedly revived my faith in the male species. A feat so grand that I thought it would take a few more…unsupervised outings…to Buford’s house until I found it in me to bury the past.

“Yeah, anytime.”

He’s so…calm. How is he so calm? He’s also not exploiting my semi-nakedness to play a game of tongue war. A respectful hockey player is about as imaginary as a goddamn unicorn.

The urgency to evacuate the premises has taken a back seat. “So…” I start, rocking back on my heels.

“Shit, you’re still in your underwear,” he says. “You can borrow my clothes. I can just stay in a towel.”

I think there’s a very sick and twisted part of me that doesn’t mind talking in the half-nude. She is beyond saving.

My lips part in an embarrassed rebuttal, but I don’t get a word out before he’s hightailing it to the bathroom in search of an oversized cover-up. When I get a glance at his back, I see a cybersigilism tattoo that spans the width of his shoulders, all curved lines and geometric shapes converging into something both ancient and contemporary in design.

In the blink of an eye, Hercules Jr. is back with the coveted necessities, and he deposits his contribution into my outstretched arms. I already know these are going to be huge on me, but it beats having my ass hanging out.

“Thank you, um…” I still don’t know this man’s name.

Bristling, the tips of his ears flare red. “Sutton.”

Sutton. Even his name is hot.

“Thank you, Sutton. I’m Lake, but you, uh, already knew that.”

He turns around to give me some privacy to change, and if my eardrums don’t deceive me, it sounds like his voice pitches an octave higher. “Don’t mention it. You’ll probably look better in them anyways.”

Honestly, I know it’s bad to make generalizations, but I was under the assumption that all hockey players were walking STD magnets who only thought with their micro penises. Clearly, the micro penis belief is unfounded.

I hold Sutton’s shirt up to gauge the overhang on this thing, and the minute I slip it over my head, it dwarfs me like a nightdress. I’m not petite—five foot seven, to be exact—but Sutton’s eye level is inches above my head. I barely reach his pecs.

I cinch his baggy shorts around my waist, losing about half my sex appeal as I don what is essentially a fashionable potato sack.

“You can turn back around now,” I tell him, feeling self-conscious.

Sutton does as I say—albeit slowly—and his pupils dilate in the low light of the bedroom, his near-black irises overridden with reverence or lust. Nobody has ever looked at me like that before—not Buford, none of my high school exes. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say all of this is a figment of my alcohol-induced imagination. It wouldn’t be the first time I zonked out after drinking one too many shots and had a hyper realistic dream about a man who could bench press me without breaking a sweat.

Sutton shakes his head. “Buford is a fucking idiot for letting you go.”

Heat curls around the back of my neck—similar to a fever burning too close to the surface. “Nobody has ever said that to me before.”