Until now.
One second I was thinking about which of my teammates I was going to have to confront about making June cry, and the next second she was kissing me. Pressing that beautiful body against me and churning her lips against mine like this was the end of a romantic comedy where the two people finally hook up. She didn’t even care that I was sweaty.
And Christ help me, it was good.Reallygood. I folded my arms around her without thinking, holding her close, savoring how warm and soft and perfect she felt.
It was the kind of kiss that changed the way you looked at someone forever.
I don’t know how long it went on, two seconds or twenty, but eventually the music I’d been blasting cut off. I turned andlooked up at the AV booth, where our sound guy was waving down at us.
“I’m heading home, Rhett,” he said through the speakers. “I’ve got to power down the equipment…”
“It’s fine!” I shouted up at him. “Thanks, Jimmy!”
When I turned back to June, her eyes were wide with shock. Like she’d just realized that she’d kissed me.
“I…” she stammered.
She spun around and practically sprinted down the tunnel. I stood there, too stunned to move.
When I got back to the locker room, June was long gone. Still dazed, I stripped off my compression shorts and hopped in the shower to rinse all the sweat off.
My mind drifted.
I knew that I was a flirt. I flirted with everyone, including my teammates. The way I saw it, if a guy couldn’t tell his buddy that he had a nice ass, then they weren’t really friends. That’s just how I treated the people in my life. Because life was fuckinghard. A compliment here or there made it a little easier to get by.
Now, I wasn’t an idiot. I understood that flirting with June was different. She was a gorgeous woman, and I was—in my humble opinion—a pretty good-looking dude. When I made flirty comments to Andy, it was obviously a joke, but it wasn’t so obvious with June. There was genuine sexual tension there, however small.
But apparently it wasn’t as small as I thought, because I didn’t expect it to ever actually lead to something.
I replayed the kiss, and everything leading up to it, in my head. The way her breasts felt against my chest… Jesus. I was hard as a rock just thinking about it.
And since I was the only guy left in the locker room…
I let my hand drift down to my cock as I thought about June some more. The scalding water ran over my skin as I relived her lips on mine, churning with just a little hint of tongue. But it wasn’t just the kiss I thought about. It was the way she rolled her eyes at my jokes, and crossed her arms under her breasts, and smiled right before she replied to my flirting with her own joke.
It didn’t take long before my cock erupted in my fist, my groans echoing off the tile as I shuddered with release.
But I didn’t feel any more clear-headed about the situation after. As I drove home, I wondered what had made her kiss me. I wasn’t even flirting with her when it happened. If anything, I was feeling embarrassed because she’d caught me disobeying her instructions and skating without a sling. That, and I was angry about one of my teammates making her cry.
A situation I still intended to fix, by the way.
But more confusing than the kiss itself was how it ended. She ran away like I was Freddie Krueger chasing her around Elm Street. I’d kissed a lot of women, like I said before, but none of them had ever reacted likethat.
Every time I thought I understood women, I was reminded that I was still a damn fool.
Except this wasn’t just some random girl. It was someone I worked with. Someone I had to see tomorrow on our road trip to the west coast.
But June wasn’t just someone I worked with. Not any more.
She was something else.
9
June
What the hell waswrongwith me?
When I graduated from college, I was told by a lot of people that it would take years to get a job working for a professional sports team. I would need to spend at least five years at a college athletic program to even be considered for a pro team. Yet after just two years, the job for the Reapers opened up. And just like that, I landed my dream job.
