Page 36 of Tempting the Teammate
“Oh, I think we can come up with better things to do,” Andrei said, then went silent. He looked at me from beneath a frown. “Are you into that? Or am I rushing ahead?”
“I…don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never done it. Except in my head. And I think I’m into that. Probably.”
He bit his tongue, then lifted his chin. “I don’t care either way, Griff. And I realize that I am rushing ahead. You know how risky this is.”
“I know. If anyone finds out…”
“For us, Griff,” Andrei said, his fingers curling with tension as he held on to me. “If it goes south, we’re screwed. All the years we’ve known each other, ruined. All the stuff we still want to do, gone.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” I said, panic kicking in. I’d only just kissed him once. I couldn’t stop.
His eyes were wide and glowing with his inner light. “What I’m saying is, if we’re gonna do this, let’s do it right.”
I nodded with vigor. “Yes. Right.”
He looked at me.
I figured it was still my turn to speak. My head shook in confusion. “How do we…do that?”
He laughed in that sweet, short way of his. “Maybe you should just kiss me again.”
Oh, I thought, relief bringing me to him in a single, wonderful heartbeat. My mouth pressed against his, the kiss searing us both all the way down to our hearts. I kissed him like I’d never kissed anybody else. I didn’t know where the difference lay, but I knew it felt that way. It felt right. It felt like this was exactly where my mouth needed to be and who I needed to kiss.
I silenced the welling questions and just pressed on, parting my lips in Andrei’s rhythm and kissing him deeper and hungrier as the moments passed us by. We stood there, frozen in time, in an instant so glorious and wonderful that I didn’t need to know the end of this story. I could have stopped it right there and then, stopped it all, and I would have been content.
It didn’t matter what lay ahead. It didn’t matter the road we’d covered to get here. Only this kiss meant something, and only Andrei in my arms.
He was like heat and delight folded into one, squirming in my arms to get closer, to kiss me better, to touch me more. I wrapped myself around him like he was some small and fragilething instead of an ice devil nearly the size of me. But I’d known him long before he had become a ruthless athlete.
My Andrei. Right here, pressed against me, sliding a little higher, revealing he was just as hard as I was, struggling not to moan out loud. He kissed me again, his nose resting just next to mine, his lips moving softly, savoring every sensation.
When he pulled back, it was just enough to speak, and his forehead pressed against mine. “Are you sure we’re not making a mistake?”
“If I say yes, will you keep kissing me?”
He chuckled. “Griff, if you didn’t understand this already, I don’t think I’ll be able to explain it.”
“Go on,” I said, hands feeling the sides of his ribcage.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to stop kissing you either way,” he said, pulling his head back and looking into my eyes. “Even if I wanted to.”
And that was all I needed to hear.
FOURTEEN
Andrei
It was true.All of it was true. It had been prophesied by someone calledSmutWriter, and it came true. They’d written at length how Griffin’s skin seared mine when his unshaven chin and mustache ground against my face, and it did. They’d written of the flavor that was so uniquely Griffin’s that it was impossible to describe, and it was. They’d written of the way Griffin’s muscles constricted when he held me, and they did.
And I was in heaven.
A puck had hit me right between the eyes, and I was finally in heaven.
My hands curled around the fabric of Griffin’s hoodie, and I pulled him closer, kissing him harder than before. I’d said I wanted to take it slowly, to be smart about it, careful, but I struggled already to keep myself under control.
His body rubbed against mine like he knew exactly what he was doing. I doubted he knew more than I. Though I’d slept with a few random strangers last year, it had been a while for me, and it had never felt natural. For Griffin, I doubted all the practice he’d done with his girls gave him any confidence.
His kisses were soft and slow, careful in every way, until our tongues met in the middle.
