Page 30 of Branded
My gaze dropped again, saw that there was a little—no, a lot—of action happening beneath his sweats, and…my mouth went dry.
What was happening to me?
Smitty cleared his throat.
He actually had to clear his throat.
This time my eyes flew up and stayed up and right, holy shit, I’d been caught looking at a coworker’s dick. And yeah, were we only sort of coworkers because I just did some basic computer work and he, meanwhile, was part of the group of players who did the important stuff (like actually play hockey for the professional hockey team)?
Still, there was probably something against fraternizing with my coworkers, especially when that fraternizing came with dick-staring.
Right.
A breath.
Since I was unable to hold those deep brown eyes but couldn’t allow my gaze to drift south to his dick again, instead, I allowed my gaze to drift to the thick black beard lining his jaw. I wouldn’t have thought I could appreciate facial hair, not when I imagined it was scratchy and sort of icky—like, didn’t it hold crumbs and shit?
But his looked big and thick, and it elicited thoughts of where else he was big and thick and?—
Shit, my eyes were drifting down again.
“Are you…?” He trailed off, cleared his throat. “Is this too much? I mean, me being here?”
“No!” I hurried to say, and it wasn’t.
In fact, since we’d talked and I’d sat next to him, helping him complete that personality quiz, comparing his answers to the ones I would make—and finding that the majority of the answers he’d chosen would be the ones—that knot in my belly that usually tangled itself further and grew and grew and grew until it seemed to be swallowing me from the inside out the longer I spoke with someone wasn’t there.
It wasn’t gone.
Not by a long shot.
I’d gone to my office, struggled my way through a meeting with Luc and then one with several members of the coaching staff and the statistician, and it had been present the entire time.
Knotting and twisting, filling the back of my throat.
Making it a challenge for me to push through and be a valuable member of the team. Luckily, talking about my program and its functions was a little easier than small talk or well, any other kind of talk.
It’s why it had been easier with Oliver, even when we’d first begun chatting online.
A common interest.
Something I knew down to the very bones of my being.
I knew it so well that I didn’t really have to think about what came next. It was…well, not easy, but it was something I could do easily enough that it didn’t turn me into a giant ball of exposed nerves with a tongue that didn’t work with whatever words did manage to escape that useless muscle in my mouth not making a lick of sense.
It just…wasn’t twisting me into knots.
I’d seen a glimpse of his vulnerable underbelly, and he’d given it without preamble, and…hell, I had to respect him for that.
Had to like him for that.
Which…presented a multitude of problems.
How could I like him?
Besides the whole sexy lumberjack thing he had going with the plaid suit and the thick beard and the big dick swinging in his pants, it was that vulnerability and willingness to show it that had me wanting to know him better.
“Kay?”
