Page 6 of Puck Me Sideways

Hallie:Lacking spank bank material?

Solace:That mouth will get you into trouble tomorrow, beautiful.

The next message was a picture of the cat on a queen sized bed with plain white pillows and a gray and white coverlet.

Hallie:That’s all you get. Don’t be pushy.

Solace:I appreciate the gesture. And the pussy.

Hallie:

I laughed outright. The sound echoed across the empty parking lot.

Solace:I earned that. Goodnight, Hallie. I’ll be in early tomorrow.

Hallie:Goodnight Solace.

Hallie:Thank you for following me. I did like it.

I closed my phone, grinning like a fucking idiot as I climbed into my car, lapping the city once before I headed home and showered in cold water. My hand stroked myself to a denied orgasm that left me sagging against the icy tiles in a hot mess as I thought of the girl who faced me despite her fear and didn’t run.

Maybe she should have run. We’d see if she did tomorrow.

CHAPTER THREE

HALLIE

I avoided the training centre and the gym for the next week, and though I knew Solace followed me to the bus each night, he never walked beside me again after our heart shattering, panty-staining conversation.

Though each night I sent him a picture of my doormat, or my cat, or my slippers. And once, my bed.

And each night he replied the same way.

Solace:Thank you, beautiful. I’ll be in the gym early in the morning.

No pressure, nothing. Somehow, weirdly, I felt more protected than ever.

Which left me back in the office, doing my job and being kind of…normal. Only I wasn't, because every time one of the team came in, I checked.

And not once, not one single time, did Solace enter the office in the last week. After touching me, the way he spoke, taunting, teasing…so much more than a simple water cooler flirtfest.

Or was it? Maybe this was his brand of flirting, and I bought too much into it. But I didn't think so. I doubted the other boys asked for shots of their casual fling’s beds, or checked they got home. Maybe they did. I hadn’t been part of enough healthy relationships to know.

All I did know was that Solace Hunter offered the best and worst distraction of my short lived career and if I didn’t get my head out of the locker room, I wouldn’t have one.

A head, or a career.

I stared at the green cells on my spreadsheet. I had no idea what the data set was meant to be or how long I’d been looking at it. The information merged the longer I tried to focus and couldn’t. When I grabbed for my coffee not only was there a scant inch of liquid left in my oversized thermos, the whole lot had long gone cold.

A quick check on my screen told me it was past lunchtime. That’s how long I’d stared fruitlessly at the screen pining over a muscular Chimera who I couldn’t have anyway. Sighing, I pushed back from my desk and ignored the gaggle at the water cooler who had probably congregated there since their training session ended after morning tea. That was when the team’s photoshoot for this week’s media started, and the social gatherings across the office took off.

I’d become mostly immune to the comings and goings after my recent habitual Solace check, annoying as that had become. And it seemed that Janelle had indeed been inducted into team WAG sometime in the last week by the team’s captain, Huxley Radfield, while I let myself be distracted by a certain defender of my own.

But he’s not your own.

And I wasn’t—nor would I ever be—his.

The thought was so ridiculous I couldn’t even try to play with it. Solace had his pick of any woman he wanted. He could flirt, or whatever, all he liked with me but at the end of the day I was a barely graduated marketing nobody. An overweight, lonely girl who lived alone and ignored her cat too often.

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