Page 94 of Unrecognizable Player

My whole body feels like it’s glowing with the compliment.

“How come you never considered taking over the family business?”

I snort. “No way. I love my dad’s cooking and the restaurant can be fun, but I could never work there full-time, it’s just not my thing. And I’ve always had the violin. How about you? Didn’t your dad ever want you to take over the store?”

He keeps looking down at his plate when he talks. “As soon as he saw I was good at hockey, that was the focus. The store keeps us afloat, but hockey can give us a completely different life.”

“Or working in a bank.”

“Exactly.”

“Or working in hockey in some other capacity.”

“Yup.”

“Have you heard anything from the internships you applied for yet?”

“Not yet. But people have started hearing back from the bank ones, so I think I’ll get something from them pretty soon.”

“What will you do if you get accepted by J.P. Morgan or someone like that?"

He shrugs. “I’ll have a little time to think about it. I won’t have to accept right away. Though most people probably will.”

“That doesn’t matter though, right?”

“Right.”

I don’t know what I want. If he works at some fancy bank, he’ll be here, or in the city, close to me and my family and Queens and everything I’m used to. But if he gets the Vancouver one that he really wants, then he’ll move away. For eight whole weeks. And they might offer him a full-time position. And then he’ll move to Canada. And what am I gonna do? It’s probably hard to get a long-term visa to live in Canada as an out-of-work musician. And I can’t ask my parents to pay for a grad degree so I can keep on studying. Canadian universities are probably really expensive for non-citizens.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asks.

“Nothing, I was just thinking.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Wondering what you wanna do tonight.”

I never thought someone who looks like him could blush, but there he is, blushing.

“I’ve been cleared by the doctor to ‘exercise.’”

“You have a big game tomorrow, is there anything you’re not supposed to do the night before?”

He shakes his head, my stomach flipping. “As long as I get to sleep at a reasonable hour, I’m good.”

We wash the dishes side by side in a companionable silence before taking turns brushing our teeth.

I automatically go to his room now and get into his bed. The smell of his sheets becoming familiar. The pillows molding to the shape of my head.

When he lifts the sheets and climbs in beside me, the heat of his body engulfs me and I automatically move towards it. His arms finding me and pulling me in.

His mouth tastes like our toothpaste. His skin clean from his post-practice shower.

My heart pounds in my ears as we kiss and grind lazily, as if our bodies have gotten so used to nothing happening beyond a kiss that they’ve stopped hoping.

But Alexei’s been cleared and it’s safe for me to finally give him an orgasm.No pressure.

We peel each other out of our t-shirts, then the sweats we usually sleep in. Kicking them off under the blanket. Alexei’s hands are warm when they find my waist and start sliding under the waistband of my underwear. I sigh into his mouth and he grinds a little harder against me. Feeling him hard for me gives me the confidence boost I need to slide my hand under his waistband and squeeze his ass, like I’ve wanted to since the moment I caught Alice ogling it.

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