It’s a slow, languid kiss. One that has the promise to allow us to explore each other’s bodies and has made me realize how much I think I enjoy being touched and loved and learned. Each time we come together, she learns a little bit more about what I like when I kiss, what I want to feel.
What I don’t like.
Not that there’s much, apparently.
She pulls back, and her brown eyes are molten in the morning. “Good morning,” I pant, my eyes trailing back to her lips.
She sheepishly tucks her hair behind her ear, but it still becomes a curtain, trapping us in our ownlittle world. Each freckle on her clear skin deserves a kiss two times over, but she pulls back before I get the opportunity.
“I’m making coffee, and then we’re going to place some ground rules.”
“Ground rules?” I whine, sitting up on my forearms while she rolls out of bed. The warmth that she provided is gone, and I watch her walk out of her bedroom, bedraggled and still sleepy. She limps slightly, and as she turns, I can see the shape of the bruise around her knee.
That looks like it hurts.
“Ground rules,” she says sternly, leaving the bedroom door open so that I can hear her in the kitchen. I throw my head back onto the pillow, letting myself flatten out for a moment before I follow her out.
The apartment is chilly, and I try to wrap myself around her as she’s making coffee to keep warm, but she laughs, gently pushing me away as she grabs two coffee cups and hands one to me, filled with milk and sugar. My cheeks warm when I go to sit down on the stools on the other side of the island. The warmth of the coffee is everything I need to thrive as I watch her lean against the counter on the other side. “You’re so far away,” I pout, making her laugh. The laugh is alluring, pulling me further into the orbit of Eloise.
“If I were closer, would you listen to a word I’m about to say?”
I bring my mouth to my hand to hide my small scowl. She’s right. I wouldn’t listen. I’d be too distracted,which is a shame because I’ve enjoyed listening to everything she’s had to tell me. Well, after she laughed at me and my harebrained ideas to keep her at arm’s length.
A.K.A. make her leave the team.
Yeah, I think I’m just lucky she was already set on being here; otherwise, I would have missed out on this.
“But it’s our first morning together,” I mutter into the cup, sipping the creamy sweet coffee.
“We’ll have more, I’m sure,” she says, with a twinkle in her eyes that has my heart skipping a beat. She wants more.
She wantsme.
“But, ground rules first, and then we have to get ready for the day. You have a skate and I have a meeting with Olivia.” She raises an eyebrow.
“But that sucks,” I mutter.
“Again, more time later this week.”
“Promise?” I ask, watching the way her cheeks colour a light pink. She nods, and I get the distinct feeling that she doesn’t trust herself to say more than what she had planned. “So, ground rules you said?”
She nods. “I want you to sleep over when you can. But we need to make sure we each have our own spaces and we’re not crowding each other.”
I nod, trying to argue, but she doesn’t let me get a word in edgewise. “This is new to you. We’ve had at least three makeout sessions in the last few daysand you haven’t gone running for the hills, but you’re going to. Once you talk to someone outside of our little bubble, you’re going to wonder if you made the right decision. I won’t be the best person to ask, so you’ll have to find someone to talk to.”
“My sister,” I say and she nods.
“Good. Next thing—”
“Well, what if I want to—?” Her glare silences me for a moment as I take another sip of my coffee.
“Let me get these out and then we can go back to our talking points,” she pleads, practically forcing me to nod. “Right, so you’re going to talk to someone outside of our sphere when you start to freak out. The next thing—we can’t let this affect work. I want to kiss you every second of the day, but I want to make sure that we have our priorities straight. Work comes first, then games and the Cup. If something happens in our relationship that we’re not happy about, we have to have open communication. Same goes on the ice.”
She’s pacing now as she continues, “You have to tell me when you want to go further. It has to be mentioned well in advance so that I can make sure I’m ready and you are too. You’re going to want to rush in, but I want us to take it slow. I want to know that I’m doing everything I can to ease you into a relationship and sex with a woman and how different it can be from a man, but in order to do that, you need to be honest with me about what you want to try. I don’t want you to try to impress me in the first few months because your being a try-hard is hard to watch.” She winks with a teasing grin. Unamused, I take another sip of my coffee. “But every step is going to be methodically thought out, and we’re going to be on the same page. But everything boils down to communication, I guess.”
Her soft chuckle as she scratches the back of her head makes me smile.
“Any other rules?”
