Page 11 of Pucked Mountain Man
He pulls me back, kissing me with even more intensity. Somehow hungrier. He presses against me until my hip bumps the table.
“Sorry,” he mumbles into my mouth.
I shake my head and pull him even closer. Unable to get close enough for my liking.
When we finally come up for a real breath, the storm within us rages even louder than the one outside.
My phone beeps with Thatcher’s signature ringtone. It brings me back to reality. “I don’t want to be your secret fling to tide over the boredom.”
“I know,” he admits, raw. “I don’t want you to be either. I just don’t know how to do this without breaking something—Thatcher, the team, you.”
“You won’t break me,” I say.
His mouth tilts, pained. “Broken people break people.”
“You’re not broken.”
He just swallows hard and kisses the corner of my mouth, quick, like a promise. “Come on, Rockstar. I’ll make dinner. You pick the movie.”
“I thought we tied.”
“New stakes, remember. We both won.”
He releases me, and I watch him limp out of the room. I press my fingers to lips still tingling.
Outside, the storm erases the real world. Inside, I feel like I’m living in a fantasy.
FOUR
GRADY
I don’t mention the kiss again.
I also don’t stop thinking about it. Instead, we steal look at each other’s mouths when we think the other isn’t looking.
It’s all very high school. But damn, if I don’t want to relive that moment again and again.
After tossing and turning for most of the night, I’ve mostly decided it was a fluke.
Something that happened because a storm raged outside and we were hopped up on air-hockey endorphins.
When I find her in the kitchen humming “Landslide,” all excuses leave my head. I kissed her because I wanted to. It’s as simple as that.
As if simple could be used to describe anything involving Stevie.
“Want to talk about our schedule?” she asks.
“Sure.”
“How about PT, food, nap, more PT, movie?”
“Lose the nap.”Add in kiss your caretaker between food and movie.
“Someone is going to get cranky,” she says, smiling into her mug.
She’s right about that. The longer I go without kissing her again, the crankier I’m going to be.
We do the dance. I stretch. She corrects my form. We both act like our hands didn’t feel more of each other’s bodies last night.
