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Because it had been pretty much every night since I’d managed to get the trailers here. Hell, I’d worked this late regularly before the fire. After, my job as mayor had consumed me—the need to get as much done for my people during every waking hour as I could. And there were a lot of waking hours because I’d barely slept.
Stillbarely slept.
I wasn’t sure I’d made it through an entire sleep cycle without nightmares.
Not since I’d fallen asleep in powerful arms, cuddled against a big, solid body that had given me several orgasms.
Joel took my silence as my answer and I didn’t know what conclusions he drew, but I knew hediddraw them based on the emotions swirling through his green eyes. “What time do you head home?” he asked softly.
Something else I wasn’t going to answer.
No one knew that my couch, my office, was home.
Though, it probably wouldn’t be a surprise. It wasn’t like I kept my workaholic tendencies secret.
I wanted to look away from him, to find the stars in the sky again, study the perfect roundness of the moon shining so brightly overhead. I wanted to focus on the sticks of burnt trees in the distance, the faint brightness from the rink lights gleaming, diffusing through the large plate glass windows out onto the asphalt of the parking lot around the corner of the building. I wanted to look anywhere except for Joel and his green eyes—irises a deep green like the scalloped leaves of an oak tree in summer. Before they’d dried out and turned golden.
Though there were specks of gold in Joel’s eyes, too.
I’d noticed them when he’d slid his cock inside me, when his lids had gone half-mast and he’d watched me take him, studied my face like it was the most complex puzzle on the planet, one if he only solved would cure cancer and resolve world hunger.
All that studying had paid off.
Because he’d watched me closely enough to know every single thing he did to me.
Which stroke was better, which tempo, how hard or gentle, when to switch angles. Fucking me had been that puzzle. Getting me to orgasm the answer.
Something he’d done more than once.
Tonight, though, I saw that gold and I knew it wasn’t because he wanted to fuck me—he’d made that clear while I’d laid in his bed the morning after we’d fucked, his disgust illuminated in the light of a single bedside lamp.
So, I figured the glinting specks in his eyes were him happy hockey was back, and I just happened to be a warm body he could share that joy with.
Joel lived for the sport.
I knew that. Had seen it plenty of times in his tenure with the Rush.
Just like I knew he was sitting next to me in that moment because I was convenient and there and in his…emotional splash zone.
He’d leave.
He’d do it sooner enough—sooner, probably, if I actively inflicted myself on him.
Then I could get back to my washi tape and my planning and my communing beneath the moon and stars.
I clicked my pen, slid my foot in so I could rest it on the bottom step, and fixed him in place with my trademark Mayor Look.
“How does the roster look this season?”
Thirteen
Joel
Istudied her, wondered why I’d never noticed the fragility in her before.
On the surface, she seemed like her normal self.
Beneath that? Something incredibly delicate.
