"You know, you should really be down here with me."
She closes her lips, and her throat moves up and down before she sits up straighter. "Drew I—"
"Doing pushups, Brooke," I laugh. "You're supposed to be leaning in, remember?"
Her cheeks turn that pink again, and now I know I was right before. She felt it just like I did. Just like we always do.
"I can't work out in these clothes," she says, gesturing to her outfit.
"Well, you could always take them off."
Her mouth falls open, and I try to hide my smile as I get into a pushup position.
"You would like that, wouldn't you?" she quips, which shocks me in itself.
I push off my hands and sit back on my knees. "Yeah, actually. I would." Her cheeks blush although she doesn't say anything. "But you know that already."
She shifts in her spot and tilts her head sideways. "Why though?" she asks, narrowing her eyes at me.
I answer with a quick smirk, then shrug my shoulders. "You're hot."
She throws the piece of thread she's been balling between her fingers my way. "Shut up."
We both let out half a laugh. "What? It's true." She rolls her eyes, and I resist every urge I have to stride toward her and lift her so we're standing toe to toe, chest to chest, before I add on. "And maybe that night stuck with me."
Brooke moves her head up and down, dropping eye contact. "Yeah," is all she says.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" I ask, cupping my hand by my ear and leaning closer.
She peers up at me, her volume raised with concision. "I said, yeah." She runs her nail along the thread of her jeans, mumbling under her breath something entirely too close tome too.
I want to push. To make her say it again. To make her scream it. But I don't. Because that's where I'll lose her.
"It'll be nice to spend some real time together today," I try to say casually, just a hockey player making polite small talk with a team employee. But I mean every word.
She answers by rolling her tongue over her teeth. "This is work, Drew."
I sigh, then mock her. "I know that, Brooke." Leaning all the way forward, I drop my weight back onto all fours. I walk my hands out so I'm in the push-up position, then catch her staring at my arms as they strain against my weight.
"Always with the excuses, Mystery Girl."
15
Brooke
"Alright, so the guys are good with that?"
Levi looks at Drew, who must agree because he stands to leave, but I don't hear his response. Instead, for what must be the tenth time since this meeting began, I have to stop myself from nodding out and all but falling asleep.
Drew's mornings are boring as hell. And holy shit, I'm tired. Not only did I wake up way before an already ridiculously early wake-up call, but I've spent most of the morning masking my true thoughts and feelings about this man. I swear everything he does is sorcery—casual gestures and routine behaviors, somehow received by my brain as meticulous foreplay.
It was hard enough having to sit on the back of his bike—his fuckingDucati, with its sex appeal and steady vibration—without trailing my fingers toward his crotch. But then to see him throw heavy weight around, sweaty and shirtless with his tattoos on display, talking to me about how that night—ournight—meant something, had me ready to fucking lose it.
Luckily, breakfast was a nice reprieve. I ate fruit, he packed in like three thousand calories, and we both chatted with some of the other guys in the lounge. Film afterward wasn't bad either. It was actually interesting hearing them analyze what looks like regular hockey to me in almost a foreign language.
But then came practice.
It's bad enough that I already feel like I'm walking into some sort of erotic club every time I see the team on the ice. These men make flying across frozen water look easy with stick handling that gets me wondering what else they can do with their hands. And the hitting? Who knew that was such a turn-on? Not to mention the goddamn stretching. But add Drew to it all after the foreplay—I meanmorning—that we had, and this dry spell is feeling more like a drought.
