Offside (13 page)

She laughed and grabbed it from him.
“I am not size eighteen.”

“I thought it looked a little big,” he
mumbled.

“I do like the color, though.” She
shook her head, muttering, “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” as
she rifled through the rack. Finally she pulled out another one, a
pink and yellow print. “I suppose I should try it on.”

They moved to the back of the store
where there were a couple of small change rooms and she disappeared
behind a curtain. Matt leaned against the wall, holding the bottle
of wine in the paper bag, imagining her getting naked only a few
feet away.

Finally the curtain drew back and he
straightened, ready to see her in the bikini. But she was dressed.
He frowned. “Didn’t it fit?”

“It fit fine.”

“You didn’t show me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I wanted to see it.”

She lowered her chin again and gave
him that look, that Honey look that was sweet and sexy and a little
snarky. “Apparently you’ll get to see it soon enough.”

She turned and headed to the front
counter and he stalked after her so he could pay for the suit too.
Also against her protests.

“Jesus,” he said. “I can afford it.
It’s not like back when we were kids.”

Eight years ago, he’d been a poor
college student, living off his parents and a hockey scholarship,
and she’d been the spoiled daughter of a Los Angeles billionaire
hockey player-slash-businessman. She’d thrown money around like it
reproduced overnight in her wallet and he’d been uncomfortable with
it.

After the tussle over who was paying
for the bikini, they left that store and returned to his car in the
parking lot, then drove to his apartment building. He entered the
underground parking with his swipe card and found a spot near the
elevator.

“Nice building,” she said inside the
elevator, which
was
pretty nice, he supposed, all granite,
stainless steel and glass.

“It’s okay. Feels too much like a
hotel for me, but it’s something.”

They rode to the fifteenth floor and
he led the way to his apartment.

Again, funny how things had changed.
Earlier when he’d picked her up, he’d been taken aback by where she
lived. A small four-story building that was basic and that was
putting it nicely. A small one-bedroom apartment, attractive and
comfortable but a far cry from the luxury she’d grown up with. He’d
been invited to her parents’ place where she lived back then only
once, but at the age of twenty his exposure to that kind of wealth
had been limited. Even though his brothers had all had lucrative
contracts at that time, none of them lived like that.

Now here he was in a pricey high-rise
apartment while she lived modestly. He got the feeling she didn’t
have a lot of cash and that too made him curious.

He watched her look around then stroll
over to the big windows that looked out toward the ocean and the
sunset.

“This is one of my favorite times of
day,” he said, dumping the bottle of wine and the bag with the
bikini onto the bar that separated kitchen from living room.
“Sunset.”

“It’s amazing.”

The sun was low to the horizon, a
bright golden ball, tinting the clouds and sky peach and purple and
pink.

Usually he loved to look at it, but
tonight he looked at Honey, watching her profile as she gazed out
the windows. Her nose was small and straight, and long eyelashes
fluttered when she blinked. She had her sunglasses on top of her
head, holding back her long straight hair, which was tousled into
messy strands from their bike ride.

His gaze wandered down over her throat
and chest, lingering on her breasts outlined by the snug black
hoodie she wore half-zipped, the T-shirt beneath looking
well-washed and soft. He wanted to touch it. He wanted to feel the
soft curves beneath it. He wanted her underneath him.

Fuck. He closed his hands into brief
fists. “I should order dinner. What would you like? We have a
concierge service here and they’ll get meals delivered from a bunch
of places. We can get pretty much anything you like. Except
sushi.”

“Why not sushi?”

“Because I hate sushi.” He
grinned.

“Ah. Okay.” She smiled. “It doesn’t
matter to me.”

“Shrimp?”

Her smile went crooked. “Yeah. I like
shrimp.”

“I know.”

Her eyes shifted away from his and he
pulled out his cell phone and moved away from her to place the
order. When he finished, he said, “I’ll open the wine. Have a
seat.”

He dug around in a drawer for a rarely
used corkscrew, opened the wine and poured some into a glass for
Honey, then found a beer in his fridge for himself. He returned to
the living room to find her sitting on his brown leather couch,
still gazing out the windows. The colors of the sky had deepened
even in that short a time, lights flickering out on the ocean in
the lowering dusk.

“Dinner will be about an hour.” He sat
beside her.

“This apartment is awesome.” She took
the wine he handed her. “And huge.”

“Yeah. Three bedrooms, which I don’t
really need.” He shrugged. “I’d like to have a house eventually.
You’re just never sure how long you’re going to be in one
place.”

“How long did you sign
for?”

“Three years. One year no-trade
clause. It wasn’t the greatest, but I was happy with the money and
the chance to play here. I just haven’t had a chance to prove
myself yet.”

“You will.”

“I sure the fuck hope so.” He changed
the subject and they chatted easily about the things they’d seen on
the bike ride until their food arrived.

She rose too and helped him unpack the
containers from the bag and set them on his dining table, a sleek
modern style in dark wood. He retrieved cutlery and plates from the
kitchen, and they spent a few minutes transferring their dinners to
plates and sitting down. Just before he sat, Matt moved across to
the living room to start some music on his sound system. The first
song queued up was Calvin Harris’s “Feel So Close”.

Honey looked down at her plate. Big
shrimps, scallops and chunks of either lobster or crab—maybe both—
nestled in the creamy sauce and linguine. “What did you
get?”

“Prime rib. Here, have a piece of
garlic bread.”

The food was hot and fresh and really
good despite having been delivered, his beef tender and
juicy.

“Once again, I’ll never eat all this,”
she said. “Especially after that huge sandwich for
lunch.”

“There’s dessert too,” he said. “Save
room.”

“Oh my god.”

But she was digging in and eating and
making sexy little pleasure noises as she did so, which made him
think, of course, of sex, and sex with Honey, and the noises she’d
make with him inside her...Jesus. He was getting hard. He gave his
head a shake.

When they finished, he leaned back in
his chair. “Dessert now? Or the hot tub?”

She too, leaned back and laid her
hands on her belly as if she was fat, which she was far from. “I
don’t think I want to put that bikini on after eating all
that.”

He snorted. “Oh please. Come on. We’ll
have dessert afterward.”

She nodded and set down her glass.
“Where’s your bathroom?”

He handed her the bag with the new
suit in it and directed her to the main bathroom while he went into
his bedroom to put on a pair of board shorts. He pulled a couple of
big beach towels from the closet in the hall and was ready with one
for her when she emerged.

She’d pulled her hair up with an
elastic band and fastened it on top of her head in a messy knot,
pieces sticking out from it and hanging around her face. He took in
the halter-necked top of the suit, the cleavage of her sweet tits
revealed in the V shape, then his gaze moved down over the smooth
curves of her waist and hips to the tiny bows at the sides of the
bikini bottom.

His dick immediately hardened. Again.
Fuck. This was not good. He cleared his throat and handed her a
towel. “Here,” he said. “The suit, uh, fits, uh good.”

She wrapped the towel around her body
and tucked the end between her breasts, saying nothing.

“We can take our drinks down,” he
said. “Let me get a koozie for my can. And we can put your wine in
a travel mug.”

“Classy.”

“That’s me.”

They lucked out and nobody else was at
the pool, which was located on a terrace on the third floor. The
hot tub sat silent in the corner and he headed over there to the
switch that would activate the jets. They left their towels on two
nearby chairs.

“This is nice here too,” she said,
looking around.

Palm trees and pots of flowers gave an
exotic feel to the pool deck, and the furniture wasn’t cheap
plastic, it was nice wicker with padded seats. Small lights shone
up into the palms and provided ambient lighting around the hot
tub.

They stepped into the bubbling hot
water and he tried not to stare at her half-naked body, he really
did. Okay, he didn’t try very hard, but he knew he should.
Whatever. The little bottom barely covered her ass, and her legs
were long and slender. He knew this. He’d had those legs wrapped
around him. A long time ago.

She took her time submerging herself
into the water, taking one step down into the pool, then another,
then standing there with her hands clasped in front of her chest.
He dropped down onto the seat that ran around the tub.

“How do your legs feel?” he
asked.

“Um. Fine, at the moment. I probably
won’t feel it until tomorrow. I think my ass is going to be
sore.”

He almost groaned at her driving his
attention back to her sweet little ass. The bottoms of her cheeks
made his hands itch to reach out and touch. Christ.

Then she bent her legs and lowered
herself slowly until the water was at her chin. She floated over to
the side of the pool to sit. The side far away from him.
Damn.

They talked a little as the water
bubbled around them, warming and relaxing their muscles, and drank
their beverages. Honey leaned back, closed her eyes, and stretched
her legs to float out in front of her, which pushed her tits out of
the water and made his dick even harder. He stared at her, his
entire body burning hot, and not from the water. He took a big gulp
of his beer.

Did she know what she was doing to
him? Fuck!

“Honey,” he rasped.

Her eyes fluttered open.
“What?”

“If you stay like that with your tits
shoved up in the air, I’m not going to be responsible for what
happens next. Just sayin’.”

She blinked and lowered herself back
into the water with a splash. “Um. Sorry.”

“Fuck.” This time he muttered it
aloud. “You know how hot you are.”

Her lips parted and she stared at him.
“Not really.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake. You can’t be
fucking serious.”

“You don’t need to swear that
much.”

“Yeah I do. I’m a hockey
player.”

That earned a laugh from her and he
shot her a rueful grin. “Seriously, Honey. You know you’re
gorgeous. Give me a break. In that little bikini, you’re making me
feel like I’ve got a hockey stick in my shorts.”

She choked on a laugh. “A hockey
stick! Come on, dude, even you aren’t that big.”

He had to smile. Dammit.

Then she swiped her tongue over her
bottom lip, and if she didn’t look so confused he would have been
certain she was being deliberately seductive. Most girls he knew
would be. But he had a feeling she was genuinely
puzzled.

“Honey. You’re not an innocent girl,”
he reminded her. “You know what you do to guys.”

Her head gave a little jerk. “Maybe
once, a long time ago. Not anymore.”

“Oh Christ. You can’t be that
dumb.”

Her eyebrows jerked together. “Well,
thanks a lot.”

This was another thing girls did
—pretended they didn’t know how fucking hot and sexy they were.
They tried to get guys to notice them and make them all hot for
them, then pretended innocence and modesty.

She sighed. “It’s true, Matt. I know I
used to run around in skimpy clothes—”

“Or no clothes,” he reminded her,
which then made him want to punch himself, because that was
uncalled for.

She swallowed. “Or no clothes. I did
the hair and makeup thing, got breast implants, all trying to be as
sexy and attractive as I could.”

His head jerked back at the mention of
implants. Holy shit. When had that happened?

“Because it drove my parents nuts,”
she continued. “And yeah, I attracted attention from guys. But when
I went away to college, I stopped getting hair extensions, stopped
with all the makeup and the mani/pedis, started wearing jeans and
sweatshirts. And guys stopped looking at me.”