His eyes went wide. “Mildly attracted to you?”
“That’s the part you zeroed in on?”
He stared at her, then after a long, heated beat, straightened and said … nothing. Which was hot in itself and made her rush to fill the pause.
“We’re healthy, reasonably attractive adults who aren’t yet friends so we can’t use that as an excuse. But you’ve got your standards and I don’t want to mess with your game prep.”
“Yet, you throw it out there. The notion that if I wasn’t so hard on myself, we’d be going at it like bunnies.”
Not having hang-ups about sex often meant she was more honest about it than people expected. She wasn’t a nymphomaniac, but she had needs.
She’d seen Reid looking at her. She’d felt his lips, his tongue, his attraction wrapped in a hot, hard package. He had kissed her with both tenderness and abandon, and then threw out some Walt Whitman as if it was nothing.
Walt. Whitman.
In any other situation, with any other guy, this would be a done deal.
Now it was out there—the knowing about how he kissed and tasted and felt. The bullet had been released from the barrel and was hovering midair in slo-mo, waiting to be either slapped from existence like a Wonder Woman move, dodged a la Keanu in the Matrix, or embedded deep into her sensitive, receptive flesh.
She knew which option she’d rather have.
The bullet was waiting. Her body was ready.
“I admire your restraint,” she said with a whole lot of fucking restraint.
“It hasn’t occurred to you I might not be all that into you.”
“Not in the slightest.”
He laughed, a deep boom of a sound that shocked both her and Bucky, who ran around in a tight circle and started barking.
Reid pointed at him. “Quiet, you.”
Bucky stopped immediately. He was definitely improving in his relations with humans.
Reid squatted and petted his friend, getting a face lick in return. Looking up, he snagged Kennedy with another shocker of a grin. Someone else was also improving in his relations with humans.
She could be in big ass trouble here.
“It must be great to go through life with such confidence,” he said. “I’m envious.”
“I’m not confident about everything. Neither am I blind. It’s okay that you can’t act on this but there’s no need to pretend there’s nothing happening here, oui?”
“Oui?”
“What do I have to do make you speak hot, dirty French to me, roomie?”
As he drew up from his crouch, his gaze seemed to coast up her body, incinerating her skin inch by inch. He inclined his head so his eyes were close to hers. All that deep, sink-into-sex blue.
“D'accord, vous gagnez.”
Her breath caught. “What does that mean?”
“It means, you win. When the season ends, I’ll break my fast with you.”
Oh, wow. Break my fast. That was a thigh-clenching statement if ever she’d heard one. The thought of being on the receiving end of Reid’s first time in forever …
Except that would be months away and she wasn’t a slow burn kind of girl. Hit it fast, early and maybe often, then move on. That was her MO. She wouldn’t be waiting around for Reid Durand to grace her with the favor of his penis.
“As attractive as that offer is, I don’t think it’ll work. One, it’s unlikely I’ll be here and two, even if I was, it’d be too weird.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ll either be friends or enemies by then and I never sleep with either, or I’ll probably have slept with someone you know in the meantime, so it would be awkward for you and this other person. I could never do that to you.”
His brow darkened. “What other person?”
“Maybe someone on the team or—”
“My brother?” A thunderous expression set his mouth hard.
It hadn’t occurred to her, but it had obviously occurred to him. Tres interessant.
“Now you mention it, he is pretty cute. Cut-rate Durand but if I can’t have the prime beef, I’ll go for the next best thing.” Evil, Kennedy Clark, so evil. “And then, you and me? Off zee table, miss-your.”
She patted his arm with all the condescension one could put into it and took a little final enjoyment of that hard bicep. “But like I said, probably won’t happen. I’ve got to go to work. See you later!”
19
Reid’s phone buzzed. Right Wing Masshole: You busy?
He couldn’t help the expletive.
“What’s wrong?” Kennedy pressed pause on the serial killer documentary they were watching on Netflix. Well, Kennedy was watching it. Reid was employing his excellent peripheral vision skills, drinking in her pink-varnished toes and slim ankles and forcing his brain to take it no further.
He had tried being rude.
He had tried being distant.
He had tried kissing her hot, sweet mouth.
Now he was going with the age-old let’s-pretend-this-is-normal strategy. So far, it was working.
Just kidding. It was so not working. Two weeks of Kennedy in his space and he was a wreck. Bast had been sending texts every ten minutes asking after his dick, usually followed by gifs of eggplant explosions. Someone had gone to the trouble of creating that shit. Now this fresh hell.
“Foreman is texting me.” Reid had been in Chicago for three months. Had practiced and played with Foreman. Had roomed with him for away games. Had been on the receiving end of his fist. This was the first time the man had sent him a text.
“You mean Mia’s Foreman?”
Mia’s Foreman. That sounded about right. He texted back, Probably.
The phone rang. Fuck. The asshole had done the sneaky check-in with that text and now Reid had no choice but to answer. He hit the accept call button though acceptance was far from his mind.
“Yeah?”
“Some of the guys are coming over in thirty minutes or so. Thought I’d extend an invite.”
“Why?”
Foreman muttered something unintelligible, seemed to confer with someone else—a female someone else—then, “Because I’m a nice guy.”
“I’ve already eaten.”
“Good because I’m not offering food. Though Kershaw and Jorgenson usually order pizza because they’re fucking garbage cans.”
At Reid’s snort, Foreman pounced. “Have I amused the unamusable Reid Durand?”
“Don’t get carried away.” He caught Kennedy’s eye. She had paused the cheerleader-cannibal manual, and was now leaning on her palm, smiling like one of her favorite serial killers.
“I would but my dog sitter is busy tonight.” Kennedy had something on, another side gig at a community college with an art class.
“Bring the dog,” Foreman said. “I’d like to see him again. I miss my own.”
Boxed in and no way out. “Thirty minutes, you said?”
“Yup. I’ll text the address.” Then he hung up before Reid could. Fuck-er.
Kennedy fluttered her eyelashes. “You got a play date with your buddies?”
“It wasn’t clear what exactly would be happening, but yeah, I have a play date.”