Page 14 of Dirty As Puck
So yeah, I’m kissing her.
For a split second, Rochelle freezes. Then she responds like she’s been thinking about this as much as I have, her mouth opens under mine, her hands fisting in the front of my hoodie. The kisstastes like coffee and something sweet, and when she makes a soft sound against my mouth, it goes straight through my groin. I harden so fast it’s painful.
This is insane. This is career suicide. This is exactly what I swore I wouldn’t do.
But I can’t seem to stop. Her lips are soft and responsive, and when I deepen the kiss, she meets me halfway. For a moment that feels like hours, there’s nothing but the heat of her mouth and the way she’s holding onto me like I’m the only solid thing in a world that’s spinning out of control.
The turbulence stops as suddenly as it started, and the plane levels out into smooth air. The spell breaks, and we spring apart like we’ve been electrocuted.
Rochelle stares at me, her lips swollen from the kiss, her professional composure completely shattered. I can see her trying to process what just happened, trying to reconcile the clinical interest she had in me five minutes ago with the way she just responded to my mouth on hers.
“That was...” she starts, then stops, like she can’t figure out how to finish the sentence.
“A distraction,” I say, because I need to give us both an excuse for what just happened. “You were panicking.”
She clears her throat and nods in understanding.
The hostile silence that settles between us is different from the professional distance we maintained before. Now it’s charged with awareness, with the memory of how she felt in my hands and the way she kissed me back like she’d been wanting it for days.
We both know that wasn’t just about the turbulence.
Rochelle retrieves her laptop from the floor and closes the research document without looking at it. Her hands are shaking slightly, and I notice she doesn’t open it again for the rest of the flight.
I put my headphones back on and close my eyes, but I can’t stop thinking about the way she tasted, or the soft sound she made when I deepened the kiss. I can’t stop replaying the moment when she grabbed my hoodie and pulled me closer instead of pushing me away.
I also can’t stop thinking of the fact that I need a release, fast.
This is bad. This is very, very bad.
Because now I know she feels it too. This pull between us that has nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with the way she looks at me when she thinks I’m not paying attention. The way she stands her ground when I try to intimidate her, like she’s not afraid of what I might do but curious about it.
Jake glances over at me from across the aisle, and his expression tells me he saw at least part of what just happened. He raises an eyebrow in a silent question, and I shake my head in a way that hopefully communicatesdon’t ask, don’t comment, don’t even think about it.
Two hours until we land in Vancouver. Then team meetings, practice, game preparation, enough structure and routine to pretend this never happened.
But when I risk a glance at Rochelle, she’s pressing her lips together absently while staring out the window, and I know we’re both thinking about the same thing.
The turbulence is over, but whatever just started between us is going to be a lot harder to navigate than some rough air.
She’s still a reporter. She’s still here to expose my life for public consumption. And I still can’t trust her.
But now I also can’t stop wanting her.
The plane begins its descent into Vancouver, and I close my eyes and try to prepare for the next few days of pretending I don’t know exactly how Rochelle Winters tastes or how it feels when she kisses me back like her life depends on it.
This trip just got a lot more complicated.
5
The Vancouver airport taxi drops me at the Travelodge on East Hastings, and I immediately regret every life choice that led me to book the cheapest accommodation I could find online. The building looks like it was last renovated during the Carter administration, and the neon sign flickers ominously in the Vancouver drizzle.
This is what happens when Sports Illustrated covers “reasonable expenses” and you’re too proud to ask for an upgrade.
But pride is better than spending another second in close proximity to Kai Morrison. Two hours on that plane, and I can still feel the phantom pressure of his mouth on mine, the way his hand felt cupping my face, the heat that shot through me when he kissed me like he was claiming something that belonged to him.
It was just turbulence panic. A distraction. Nothing more.
Except I can’t stop replaying the moment when I grabbed his hoodie and pulled him closer instead of pushing him away. Can’t stop thinking about how he tasted like mint and something darker, how his lips were softer than they had any right to be for someone so hard around the edges.
