Page 76 of The Au Pair Affair

“Right . . .”

“Seriously, though, I’m starving,” Chloe said, reaching to the other side of Tallulah to squeeze Lissa’s shoulder. “Eat trash while you talk trash, I always say.”

As the game wore on, Tallulah decided hockey fans were nuts.

Graciously violent was the only way she could describe them.

Good thing she wasn’t one of them.

By the end of the second period, Tallulah was screaming at the referee to find a new occupation.

The Bearcats won their home opener 2–1.

Tallulah took a sleepy Lissa home and got her into bed, turning off the lamp and closing the bedroom door behind her. She should have gone to bed, too. There was no reason to wait for Burgess to get home from his postgame press conference.

In fact, it was a bad idea all around.

What sheneededto do was embark on a cold shower.

But she couldn’t bring herself to take off Burgess’s sweatshirt. Or stop sniffing the collar.

Keyed up and exasperated with herself, Tallulah went inside her bedroom and firmly closed the door, even engaging the lock. She stripped off her jeans, sweatshirt, socks, shirt, and bra. But instead of retrieving a nightshirt from her drawer, she pulled the sweatshirt back on.

Bad idea.

That soft, fleecy material skimmed down against her naked skin like a lover’s fingertips, that winter scent giving her a lightheaded feeling. She lay down in bed, stretching her legs under the covers and getting into her preferred side sleeping position, but she couldn’t get comfortable, no matter how many times she turned over. And then she realized she was turning over on purpose, so she could feel the rub of material on her sensitive skin. Every time she blinked, she saw Burgess stopping two opponents in their tracks with nothing but his stationary body, and she sighed in surrender, slipping her fingers down the front of her panties.

Unsurprisingly, she was already wet. Warm.

She’d been this way since the game started, hadn’t she?

There was no one in bed with her. No reason to lie.

Burgess turned her on—badly—and his effect on her only seemed to grow more potent the longer she stayed out of his bed. The more time she spent around him, the harder it was becoming to maintain a friendly, professional distance and keep her hands to herself. The effort she’d put in had taken a toll, and now? Her body was demanding relief. Her knees drew up under the covers while her fingers worked circles into flesh made slippery bya hockey game.

No. A hockey player.

Her chest shuddered up and down as she pressed and rubbed her clit, her heels digging into the mattress, toes flexing, anticipation fluttering in the lowest region of her tummy. Oh. Wow. This was going to be fast. She bit down on her lip and squeezed her eyes closed, picturing Burgess in the locker room, unlacing those padded pants, drawing his sweaty jersey up and over his head. Suddenly she was there, too, obviously having evaded security and he was pinning her to the locker, wreaking havoc on her mouth with his own, his hands on her breasts, dragging lower and riding the curve of her backside into her jeans. Gripping. Lifting her.

The locker rattled.

No. Wait.

That rattle was in real life.

It was the front door of the apartment.

“Shit,” she whispered, rolling face down to muffle her panting mouth with the pillow, two fingers delving into her body now, pumping once, twice...

But the effectiveness of her fantasy was wearing off, because the real-life man was trudging past her bedroom door, in the flesh.

Flesh.

Don’t think of his flesh.

It was too late.

And the truth was, shewantedto give in to the demanding attraction. Just once, to stem the restlessness. It was the middle of the night. No one would know. Burgess had made it abundantly clear that he’d like to take her to bed. While that would not be happening, because it wouldn’t come without the price of commitment... maybe she could get just a taste? It had been approximately nine thousand years since Tallulah found herself hungering for a specific man, and this hunger far surpassed any that she’d experienced before. The rush, the proof she could still trust enough to feel the pull of need, was a relief. An intoxicating, exciting relief... and she desperately wanted to explore it.

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