I gripped the paper tighter, and took a step back to keep from shoving my tongue down his scrumptious, French-speaking mouth. He laughed again, eyes sparkling with mischief.
“It basically means, ‘Take a shit. Life is short’. Like I said… Bullshit.”
“Some heirloom,” I said with a breathless laugh, too hot, and too claustrophobic despite standing in the middle of a literal palace.
“Yeah. Heirloom.”
And the way his accent massaged the word, making it slide off his tongue all round and smooth and delicious… No god, living or dead, could’ve helped the state I was in. I’d suspected it for a while but there, in his living room, it became clear that my stake in this wasn’t just professional anymore.
Which is what steered me back to the reason I’d come in the first place.
“I don’t want to keep ignoring this,” I said, returning the trinket to its spot on the mantle and facing him. “And I’m saying this as— as not just your physiotherapist. I need the scan so we can know for sure what we’re dealing with.”
The tendon in his jaw twitched. “I’m not taking myself out of the game, Reese.”
“The way you’re going, someone else is gonna do that for you.”
He scoffed, pacing the area in front of the sofa. “Fights break out all the time. It’s part of the game. I’m not the first guy to get taken out.”
I was referring to him being traded, but clammed up. If he’d agree to the scan, then there was no reason for him to ever know about that.
“It… scared me,” I admitted quietly, the words barely audible. “When you collapsed out there. I don’t like how that’s partly my fault.”
His agitation with me grew soft at the edges. “So I was right about work not being the reason you’re here.”
I honestly didn’t know anymore. The lines were so blurred. I cared about what happened to him, and a big part of that was my job. But it was also more than that. More than my job.
“I just wanna do the right thing,” I replied.
He stepped closer, the air between us charged, and the tension I’d been holding in my chest all day twisted into something hotter, something magnetic. “You always this serious, Doc?”
I let out a defeated breath, every defense crumbling as he grabbed my wrist and fell back onto the sofa, pulling me after him. My knees hit the cushions, and suddenly I was straddling him, the weight of him solid beneath me. His hands cupped my hips, pushing me down until our bodies fit together with an insistence I couldn’t resist.
He tilted his head, brushing my hair back as his lips claimed mine, slow at first, teasing, measuring, and then—hell—deciding we didn’t have time for all this subtlety. Heat spiraled up my spine, tangled with the pulse racing between my legs, and I realized the quiet truth I’d been sidestepping for too long: I cared about him. More than I probably should. More than just as the hockey player whose shoulder I had to rehab as part of the job.
The kiss deepened, teeth and tongue dancing over careful edges as I rolled my hips once. It wasn’t enough. The press of his chest, the burn in his hands as they guided me, the impossible way his body felt against mine. The grind of my hips worked upa dizzying friction against the growing bulge in his pants, and coaxed a wanton moan to spill out of me.
I arched down, one hand finding the curve of his neck, the other ghosting across the tension that ran under the skin and muscle of his chest. There was fire there, yes, but there was also something careful, a tethered sort of trust. It didn’t surprise me. Our connection was based on an implicit understanding that we had each other’s backs. That we’d reshape the rules to suit what we wanted most. And now, with me gasping for breath against his relentless mouth, we both wanted more.
He bucked his hips and drove the hard ridge of his cock for closer contact, and I silently cursed the layers of clothing that kept that from truly happening the way it should’ve. A surge of wetness pooled out of me and ruined my underwear, and still, he didn’t stop. His grip tightened as he dragged me back and forth over his hard-on, biting my lip through a strangled groan that was either his or mine, I didn’t know. And I didn’t care.
I peeled out of my jacket, and lifted my t-shirt over my head, my hair falling over my shoulders. His eyes greedily tracked my movements, coming to rest on my bra. With the lightest of touches, he brushed my hair out of the way, then dipped his head. I ran my fingers through his hair, holding on, holding him in place, as he sucked and teased my stiff nipple through the flimsy fabric. The heat of his mouth mirrored the fire raging in my core, my clit pulsing for him.
I threw back my head, rubbing myself against his dick as he savored me, rough and needy. This was it. This was what all the weeks of wanting came down to. I squeezed my eyes shut, melting into the feel of him, the light buzz vibrating through me… It grew louder, harder—
“Shit.”
When his lips finally pulled back just enough to let me breathe, I felt raw and unsteady. I could feel the lingering friction as my hips still pressed down, a cool sense of loss scaping over my hips as he released me.
“Wh—?”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it up with an apologetic look. The source of the buzzing. “Sorry.”
My laugh was a little shaky, a lot breathless. And when he made to toss the device aside, I stopped him.
“It could be important.”
He tossed it anyway, the phone landing with a dull thud beside us on the sofa. “This is more important.”
