For a minute, I stood there under the jets, cock still in hand, still hard. My orgasm hadn’t satisfied me. I still felt as if I needed to run a few miles or lift something too heavy. Some way to burn off this energy, even if I couldn’t do it the way I wanted.
None of those were a possibility. It was late, and in a few hours, Jerrica would be here picking me up. That blonde hair and those long legs would be in my house, because while I could make her wait in her car, I wasn’t that much of a dick.
I would make coffee, offer her breakfast that wasn’t on Neva the nutritionist’s approved list, and manage some small talk.
Thinking of small talk managed to send me to sleep.
Jerrica was early. Not only was she early, but she was bright and breezy and had a smile on her face that had me smiling straight back.
If I truly was an arsehole, I would have put her down for being so sunshiny at this time of day and made her feel small, but that was the stuff of men who were the same sorts of dickheads as the men my mother had latched onto. I’d told Jerrica we couldn’t happen. We both knew where the line was.
“Are you always early?” I let her into my house, noticing how she appraised the entrance hall, which had changed since she’d last been here. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Her smile was bright, her blonde curls bouncing as she shook her head. “I’m usually on time. Zara was up early and woke me instead of Amber and Nate.”
“Another bad dream?” I knew the current youngest Morris was having a series of nightmares.
“About the pond and swamp monsters. I think Nate’s going to be spending the afternoon taking her pond-dipping there. Can I smell coffee?”
“You can. And there’s croissants. Is it too early for you to eat?”
By the look on her face, it definitely wasn’t.
“Do you have butter and jam?”
I wondered if her expression was the same when she was close to orgasm.
“I do, but don’t tell Neva.”
Jerrica laughed. “Neva scares me.”
“Neva scares most sane people. She’s actually okay.” I led her through to the kitchen. “She and Amber are good friends, I think.” Some of the squad thought they were as scary as each other. Amber was known to be harsh with her treatments and had never been shy of administering a bollocking when someone wasn’t following her advice. Rowan had suggested she might mellow with being pregnant, but that hadn’t happened; she was even more brutal, although she’d now started her maternity leave.
“I needed to mention something to do with her — and Dee and Genny, too. Amber wants to have an afternoon tea, which will involve fizz for everyone bar her. Is there an afternoon and evening where you’re not going to need me to drive?” She looked almost hesitant to ask. “I don’t have much of a social life, Jesse, so I’m not going to be asking this often.”
“Look, just let me know when it is, and if I need to get somewhere I’ll sort something out. But if you’re doing that at Nate’s, I’ll do a barbecue here for the lads.” I poured her a coffee, remembering that she took milk but no sugar. “I don’t expect you at my beck and call.” There was only one room where I liked my woman to follow what I said, and even then, with one word they could pull all the control back. “If you have something to do, just let me know you’re not available.”
“Thank you, I will. And thanks for the coffee.” She sipped at the drink, even though it was piping hot. “Are those the croissants?”
Her eyes lit up again. I checked myself at the jolt of pleasure I got from just doing something nice for her.
“They need about five minutes in the oven. I’ll put it on.”
“Are you having one?”
I shook my head. “Not today. I’m getting breakfast at Kitty’s after we’ve finished training.” Kitty ran a café across the way from the training complex that specialised in protein rich, healthy foods. Kitty’s degree had been in food and nutrition, so she’d clicked with Neva, and we’d ended up with the benefit of a café nearby that stuck to our diet plans. Our winger, Nicky, hung around there all the goddamn time, sometimes helping serve if Kitty was short staffed, so it had ended up becoming a bit of a haunt. We enjoyed taking the piss out of Nicky when he pulled on a Kitty’s Café shirt, making sure our orders were hugely complicated and knowing full well he’d come back with what we usually had.
Nicky had less of a social life than me. I’d never known him have a girlfriend or to hook up, which didn’t mean he didn’t — because most of the team would think the same about me. But what I was absolutely sure of was that Nicky and Kitty definitely had a thing for each other; they just hadn’t worked it out yet.
“I’ll see you in there. I’ll get some writing done while you train.” She walked over to my fridge. “Is it okay to get the butter out?”
My back tensed to the point where I thought it might snap. I forced myself to blink.
Jerrica would’ve been in my fridge when people had been hanging out here, but not like this. Not when it was just me and a woman in my house.
“Sure.” I busied myself, sticking the croissants in the oven, finding the pre-workout supplements I added to my shakes before training and checking my phone, even though the only notification was that someone had liked a social media post that the company I paid to sort stuff like that out had posted a few minutes ago.
“What is it that you’re writing at the moment?”
