I had sex with Tate Adler and I liked it. A lot. More than I have ever liked sex before.
Oh my God, this is a nightmare.
10
Tate
“What the heck are you doing?” Lex asks me as he stumbles down the back stairs and into the kitchen, in workout gear, sleep likely still blurring his eyes. “It’s like, the crack of dawn.”
“I’ve got to do some work at the farm before class,” I lie. In truth I took an early morning cleaning session Vickie offered me. The gig is an hour away, so I have to get up early. “And my room is so damn stuffy with this summer weather that won’t end. I couldn’t sleep much.”
He looks almost guilty at that. He’s the rookie and you would think that means he has to take the smallest room in the hockey house, but we decided to play a shootout game after the first practice to decide who gets stuck in the third floor room with sloped ceilings, one tiny window, and that was barely big enough for a double mattress and a desk. I lost.
He glances at the mop, bucket, feather duster and other cleaning supplies at my feet while I finish the last of my coffee. “You don’t have cleaning supplies at the farm?”
“We’re out so I picked these up last night,” I say. “To bring by today.”
“Oh. Okay.” Lex shrugs. “I’m off for a run.”
“Don’t overdo it, rookie. We have practice tonight and if you’re lagging, Coach will notice,” I warn him.
He nods. “Same goes for you. I heard you walking around the house half the night. These creaky floorboards hide nothing..”
“A lot on my mind.” I shrug and put my empty coffee mug in the sink.
“You won that weird bet against those sisters. Shouldn’t you be worry-free?” Lex questions.
I just had mind-melting sex with one of those sisters, also known as my blackmailer, so the idea of being worry-free is hysterical. I start laughing. Great. Now he’s looking at me like I’m looney tunes.
“It’s complicated,” I say when I regain my composure. I pick up my cleaning supplies and head out the door. “See ya at practice.”
I toss everything in the back of the truck and start on my way. I really do not want to work today—especially this job—but I can’t afford to turn down work. After what happened at Maggie’s I wanted to quit, but the fact is we are now officially two months behind on the mortgage payments on the farm. The dunk tank stunt helped though. I make a mental note to remind Jace to drive that cash down to the bank today. I don’t have time between working, classes, and practice.
I think of Maggie the entire drive to the gig, just like I thought about her nonstop since our post-market sex two days ago, which is why I haven’t been sleeping much. I lay awake at night and think of her. The way she felt, the way she sounded, the way she looked when she came—because I made her come.Hard.And she returned the favor. And now the mental juxtaposition of how great it all felt and how wrong it actually was has my head spinning. It doesn’t help that I can’t say a damn word to anyone about it. I just can’t. My teammates won’t get it. My brother will lose his mind and possibly tell the family and the only other person I would normally confide in I don’t talk to anymore.
Hank Knight had been a long-time employee of our farm. He was about five years older than me and started working for us when he was fourteen. I thought he was the coolest kid ever and looked up to him like an older brother. He dropped out of high school in his senior year and started full-time with us. And when I went away to boarding school for hockey, I actually kept in touch more with him than anyone else at the farm. But then a few months ago, after the fire in the barn, we didn’t have enough money to keep paying him, no matter what I did with accounting. We let him go. I have been avoiding him ever since. I heard he works at the Biscuit now, so I avoided it all summer. He wasn’t there after the exhibition game earlier this week, but since we go there after all the other home games during the season, I know I’m bound to run into him. Still, it’s obvious I’ve been avoiding him, so I can’t exactly call him up and ask his advice.
But damn, I know Hank would be able to give me some solid advice. Maybe he’d know the exact words I need to hear to make me stop thinking about her and the sex. Because the more I think about it, the more I find myself searching for a way to let it happen again. And it can’t happen again.
I pull off the highway and focus on listening to the soothing voice on Google Maps as it directs me to the house I’m cleaning. I get there five minutes early and sigh as I’m grabbing my stuff. I upgraded my costume to a Zorro-type mask from the bandana I used to use because of how easily Maggie yanked it off my face. Can’t have that happen again. I always cover my face because my mug is on the university website more than a few times on the athletics page, and it makes the paper sometimes. Last year the university had a billboard with the team on it. I can’t risk being recognized.
I make my way to the door and ring the bell, bracing myself for whatever comes next. I’ve been lucky—really lucky—with my assignments because the women have been flirty and fun and sometimes even embarrassed but never aggressive or inappropriate. Mike Danvers, my former teammate who told me about Manly Maids, said he had a few who stuck their hands in his underwear. He let a few of them too. I was not going to turn this into something like that. It wasn’t that some of these women weren’t hot—they were. But cleaning half-naked for money and sex for money were two different things. I wanted to keep it legit. Mike was a senior on the team last year and wasn’t on a scholarship so he did the Manly Maid gigs to pay his way through school. He’d done it all four years of school and graduated last year debt-free.
The door opens, and I almost fall over. The woman who is standing there is probably about seventy. Her long, white hair is pulled back in a bun. She’s in a pair of pink polyester slacks and a white blouse with pink peonies all over it and a pink cardigan. She is also wearing pink slippers. “Uh. Hi ma’am I’m… I…”
She smiles brightly. “Oh good! I was hoping you’d be a brunette. When do you take off your shirt?”
“You…ordered a maid?” I ask because I thought for sure I had the wrong address.
“Not just any maid, amanlymaid,” she says still smiling like she is the gentle old gran in a cookie ad or something. “And boy, did they deliver.”
Her blue eyed gaze slowly rolls up and down my body. “Won’t you come in. You’ll remove some of those clothes though, right?”
“Yes ma’am,” I say. She moves to the side and I step in. I put down my supplies to pull my shirt over my head. She sighs and then claps when I drop my pants too. Oh God, this is going to be an interesting one, I think, and then I hear another set of footsteps.
“Nana! Who is at the door?”
A pretty woman, who looks like a thirty-year-old version of the flirty, dirty grandma, walks into the front hall and screams like I’m a cat burglar. Granny turns around. “Calm down, Patty. Has it been that long since you’ve seen a half-naked man that you’re scared of him?”
