Page 83 of Playing for the Hat Trick
And he’s just standing there, watching me like I’ve hung the stars. Like making me laugh was the whole point.
God help me—I think it was.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jason
The Post-Fuck Hospitality Clause
There’s a thigh on me.
A bare fucking thigh—draped casually across my stomach like I’m her mattress and emotional support animal rolled into one. An arm slung over my chest as if she owns me. Her hair’s under my chin, her breath slow and even, and I swear she smellslike my shampoo. Which means at some point last night, she used my stuff without asking.
Which shouldn’t be hot.
Newsflash: It absolutely is.
Scottie Crawford, queen of “I’m not staying,” passed out on my couch before the coffee even brewed. Her exact words—“I just need a shot of caffeine, and I’m outta here”—were punctuated by a yawn she tried to disguise as a breath. News flash: she stayed.
Now she’s curled up against me like this is something it’s not—like we’re a thing. As if mornings start this way all the time. Her hair doesn’t smell like my pillow, and her knee isn’t resting on mine. We didn’t just make a thousand rules to avoid this exact moment.
Except last night was not soft. Or focused—and thank fuck it wasn’t a dream.
It was sweat and steam and fingernails on my back. Her lips pressed to every inch of me like she was writing her name in heat. She’d kissed me like she meant it, fucked me like she needed it, and then fell asleep like I hadn’t just had a complete mental and physical systems shutdown mid-orgasm.
Honestly? I’m still rebooting.
I don’t even know what happened to me. One minute we were arguing, the next she was in my lap, riding me like a goddamn pro athlete—and I mean that literally, because hello, Olympic hips—and now here she is, wrapped around me like it’s always been this way. Like I’m hers.
And, yeah, my brain is short-circuiting from that alone.
But then I blink up at the ceiling, bracing for it. The aftershock. The ache. The burn in my knee, the one that usually arrives like clockwork after I so much as walk up a flight of stairs too fast—let alone go full sex marathon with the woman who drives me out of my fucking mind.
Except . . . it’s not there.
I shift my leg.
Nothing.
Stretch it out cautiously. Flex my quad.
Still nothing.
No pull. No twinge. No pain.
I stare at the ceiling like it’s got the answers, like maybe this is one of those dream sequences where everything feels too good to be real, and then I wake up, and she’s gone, and my body’s still broken.
But she’s here. She’s breathing against me, warm, real, and . . . it seems like I’m not broken.
Which might be the scariest part of all.
Not when I carried her. Not when I stood in the shower for ten minutes holding her up with one arm and washing her hair with the other. Not when I walked across the apartment barefoot and towel-wrapped, half-hard, and fully fucked out, just to make her tea—which she refused because she needed coffee.
And now?
My knee feels . . .fine.
I look down at her, at the way her fingers twitch slightly in sleep like she’s dreaming of something tense or important. Or maybe she’s dreaming of me. She did call me a smug bastard—or something like that—somewhere between orgasm number two and three.
