He sucks in a gasping breath, and his lids flip open on a deep groan.
“Sorry about that,” I say.
He blinks a bunch of times and looks around, apparently confused. He groans again and touches the side of his face where the bruise is.
“You okay?”
“Uh, yeah. Fine. Took a nap.” He grabs the edge of the doorframe and tries to hoist himself up. Half a second later he’s back on the floor, this time lying on his side, one leg completely straight and the other one pulled up closer to his chest as he groans.
“You don’t seem fine.” As far as observations go, it’s a pretty obvious one.
It takes him a good minute of deep breathing, during which he breaks out in the sweats, before he can manage to right himself.
It’s getting awkward with how long it takes him to recover, so I do what anyone else would do in such a situation, despite his having been a huge asshole to me. “Can I help you get into your apartment? It might be more comfortable than sleeping out here in the hall.”
He clears his throat, but it doesn’t do anything to help with the gravelly quality of his voice. “I’m waiting for my brother’s company to leave.” He motions to the sock on the door.
“Is your place the sex pad or something?”
“Only when Nolan’s on a roll.”
Nolan must be the brother. “So he uses your apartment for sex?” That seems . . . awkward. More awkward than our underwear battle.
“He lives with me.”
“Oh.” Huh. Maybe I’m wrong about him being a womanizing douche. Maybe he just has the douche part covered.
“I’ll wait out here until his flavor of the night leaves, which will hopefully be soon.” He leans his head against the door and closes his eyes. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Almost midnight.”
He cracks a lid. “I’ve been out here for hours. I told him the sleepovers had to stop.”
“It’s nice that you’re willing to give him privacy for his fuckfest or whatever, but I think it’s safe to let yourself in at this point, don’t you?”
He flings a hand out in the direction of the elevator and lets it flop to the floor. “I lost my card down the shaft; otherwise I would’ve let myself in a long-ass time ago.”
Seeing him like this frames him in a different light. It doesn’t make me dislike him less, but I feel kind of bad for him. He’s obviously badly injured, and being stuck out here in the hall all night would suck a lot.
“Do you want to wait it out at my place until Screwpalooza is over? You’re more than welcome to lie here all night, but I don’t think it’s going to be comfortable, and considering how late it is, you may be here until morning. Unless you’d rather me help you back down to the lobby so you can get a new card.” He doesn’t look like he’s in any kind of shape to do more than lie there, but I figure I’ll give him options.
He rolls his head toward the elevator and then in the direction of my door. “Your place is closer.”
That one detail seems to be his tipping point. He tries to pull himself up. It’s an arduous task, based on the amount of grunting and moaning he does. He stays upright with the help of his crutches and the wall while I unlock my door and let him in. He heads directly for the couch, spins around with an impressive amount of grace, and lowers himself gingerly.
He manages to get the upper half of his body supine and on the cushions, but he can’t seem to do the same with his legs.
I’m still standing near the front door, unsure how bad an idea it is to have invited this guy into my space. I don’t know anything about him, other than the fact that he has a brother who apparently holds the womanizing title and that he’s been a jerk to me.
I watch him struggle for another minute before I finally offer him some assistance. He seems reluctant to take it but eventually acquiesces.
I start to lift one leg, but he shouts, “No!”
I drop it back to the floor, and his shoulders curl in on a groan.
“Shit. Sorry.”
He sucks in a bunch of deep breaths. I can’t decide if he’s being overdramatic or not. Or maybe he’s on drugs. Who the hell knows? I’ll be locking my bedroom door and sleeping with my phone under my pillow tonight, that’s for sure.
“Both legs at the same time,” he finally croaks.
“What’s the magic word?”
He cracks a lid and glares at me from a single eyeball. “Please.”
“Look at you, using manners and shit.” I manage to get the lower half of his body on the couch. He barely fits. As it is, his feet hang over the armrest. “I’m going to get you a glass of water and a painkiller, okay?”
“Just the water is good. Thanks.” His eyes fall closed, and he crosses his arms over his chest. Despite his red face and the fine sheen of sweat dotting his forehead, he’s still a good-looking asshole.
I leave him there, somewhat assuaged by the amount of pain it causes him to move. I grab him a pillow and blanket, then stop in the kitchen to pour him a glass of water. I make it a plastic tumbler, since his coordination seems questionable.
By the time I get back to the living room, where he’s sprawled across the couch, his breathing has evened out. I set the water on the coffee table and drape the blanket over his huge body. His feet still poke out, but at least he’s mostly covered. I gently slip a hand behind his head and lift enough to slide the pillow under his neck so he doesn’t wake up with a terrible crick. Well, no worse than the one he’ll probably already have, considering how I found him in the hallway.
He hums in his sleep and frees one of his hands from the blanket. His fingers wrap around my wrist, lapping each other. I suck in a breath at the unexpected contact. A zap of electricity pings through my arm, like static.
His eyes flip open, locking on mine. They’re hazy and glassy with pain and exhaustion. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” My voice is all breathy, like I’ve been running laps.
“I didn’t want you to be this nice.” He lets go of my wrist, and his eyes slide closed.
I don’t know if I misheard that, or misunderstood it, or if it’s supposed to make any kind of sense at all.
Regardless of how helpless he is, I lock my bedroom door before I go to sleep.
I get up at eight the next morning, impressed with how well I slept for having had a virtual stranger in my living room all night. The fact that he’s injured helps. I pad down the hall and peek into the living room.
There’s no longer a giant of a man sprawled out on the couch. The blanket has been tossed on the floor. Awesome manners this guy has.
I shake my head, annoyed, and continue on to the kitchen. Once the coffee is percolating, the drip, drip, drip inspires the need to pee, and I rush down the hall to the spare bathroom, the urge sudden and strong.
I wrench open the door and come to an abrupt halt when I find my neighbor, one hand braced on the vanity as he relieves himself with a loud, low groan. It sounds like part relief and part agony.
I can only attribute my knee-jerk response to surprise. And my reaction is to scream. Because that’s what a person does when they find a massive, very well built man unexpectedly relieving himself in their bathroom.
My piercing shriek startles him, and he twists in my direction.
I back out of the bathroom and slam the door shut, but it does not erase what I’ve seen. My jerkwad neighbor is well endowed. Not in a terrifying “Do you shoot porn?” kind of way but more of a “That would be a welcome stretch.” It also appears that he was trying to manage relieving himself while dealing with morning wood. I didn’t realize that was possible.
A bloodcurdling scream and a low thud follow as I slam the door. Since the noise didn’t come from me, it means it came from him. Obviously I scared him as much as he scared me.
“Shit. What the hell do I do?” I ask the wall as I press my ear to the door. I can hear groans and whimpers from the other side. “Are you okay?”
“No
.” The single word is followed by more groaning.
“I’m coming back in,” I warn. It’s not like I can leave him in there anyway. I have to get ready for work.
I turn the knob and peek through the narrow gap. He’s still on the floor. I push the door open farther and cringe. He’s managed to pee all over the seat. And he may have sprayed the vanity. Gross. At least it doesn’t seem to be all over the floor too.
I notice a few more details now that I’m back in “feeling bad” mode instead of “panic and shock” mode. Once again he’s in only a pair of boxer briefs. These ones are bright yellow with CAUTION written all over them, like the tape they use at crime scenes. He was fully dressed when I left him on the couch last night.
From across the hall his body is a lot to handle visually, but this close, good God, this man is stacked. Muscles layer over muscles, everything tight and defined. He’s just . . . a lot. And he takes up a considerable amount of space in this bathroom.
Based on the way he’s breathing like an angry bull, he’s also in pain. That still doesn’t explain where the rest of his clothes went. I’ll come back to that, though.
“What do you need?” Apart from a shower, most likely.
“I can’t reach my crutches.” He motions to where they lean against the wall on the opposite side of the vanity. It’s not particularly far, but I’m assuming his level of pain makes him incapable of getting to them.
I reach over him and flip the toilet seat down first, then grab the crutches and position them on either side of him. It’s awkward, since he’s facing the toilet, and I’m forced to stand behind him. My feet are sort of touching his, which is weird, but there’s not much I can do about that. He braces on the handgrips and swears a blue streak as he slowly hoists himself up.
As someone who is trained in injury rehab and physical therapy, I should know what to do, but usually the people I’m treating are wearing more clothes and haven’t scared the shit out of me or insulted me on several occasions. Also, this guy probably weighs twice what I do. I slip my hands under his arms to . . . I don’t know . . . provide support?
“What’re you doing?”
“Helping you?” I’m fully pressed up against his back. His incredibly defined, very warm, very hard, muscly back.
“By humping me from behind?” he grunts.
I step away, because screw him. He stumbles and loses his hold on one of his crutches, forcing him to use the counter to brace his weight again. I hope his hand is in his own pee.
“Will you sit down before you break something?” I snap.
“I’m trying. You’re all up in my personal freaking space.”
“I’m not even touching you anymore! And I was helping. God, why are you such an asshole?”
“Because I’m in pain! Why are you such a morally defunct home-wrecker?”
“What?”
He spins around, and again it’s more graceful than I’d expect for someone his size, in his condition. I temporarily forget the home-wrecker comment when he bashes me in the shin with the end of his crutch. It might be covered in rubber, but it hurts like hell.
I drop to the floor and clutch my shin as he sits on the closed toilet seat. “Ow! Seriously?” This is what I get for being nice to someone with a pretty face and the personality of a praying mantis.
My current position puts me right between Jerkwad’s spread thighs. I’m also almost at eye level with his CAUTION crotch. As distracting as his underwear is, I finally understand why this guy is in so much pain. “Holy shit! What the hell happened to you?”
The inside of his left thigh is a mottled mass of mostly black, purple, and a lot of blue spanning all the way down to his knee.
“I hurt myself.”
“How the hell do you get a groin injury like that? What were you doing?” I’ve never seen one this bad—not even in my textbooks from college, or the videos I’ve watched online.
“Fucking around, obviously.”
“Sex caused this?” Jesus. What kind of shape was the woman in if he’s this messed up?
He rolls his eyes. “Not sex. I was playing hockey.”
“You play hockey?”
“Yeah.” He looks at me like I’m an idiot.
“What kind of hockey?”
His lip twitches. “The professional kind.”
I can feel my eyebrows pop. “Like NHL? For Seattle?”
“Yeah.” He seems as though he’s waiting for some kind of reaction.
It would’ve been nice if my brother had told me my neighbor was also his teammate. Although maybe I should’ve put two and two together. Then I remember the hit we saw yesterday. “Are you Winslow? Number fifty-two?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, by the look of things you’re going to be watching the action from the bench for a while. You need to ice this.”
I move in closer, the physiotherapist in me taking over as I brace my hands on his knees and inspect the bruising. I smooth my hand up his hard thigh. The muscles tense under his warm skin as I palpate around the edge of the discoloration with my thumb. This is a really bad injury. The kind I’d love to have a hand in rehabilitating.
“Ow! What the hell are you doing?” Jerkwad growls.
“Don’t worry. I’m a professional.”
CHAPTER 9
MAYBE I WAS A LITTLE WRONG
Bishop
I’m in a lot of pain, the kind that makes bile rise in your throat, gives you the sweats, and puts black-and-white dots in your vision. Partly because I haven’t taken any pain meds since last night, and also because Rook’s sidepiece is on her knees between my legs.
She’s dressed in one of those tanks with straps I can shred with my fingertips and a pair of sleep shorts that rival those running ones she parades around in when she’s getting her paper in the morning. Her nipples are peaked against the thin fabric. And there’s cleavage. So much cleavage.
My body is trying to react to her state of semiundress and how close her face is to my dick. It’s fucking agony. And also a serious moral dilemma. I’m pissed that my body is responding when clearly it should not.
“Puck bunny isn’t a profession, sweetheart,” I grind out.
Her head snaps up, eyes meeting mine. They’re clear and blue like the ocean. I can see the allure. My dick agrees that she’s hot, since I’m still halfway hard even though it’s viciously painful.
“Excuse me?” Her grip on my thighs tightens, which means she’s digging her fingers into my bruises.
It makes me woozy. I grab her wrist, because I need her to stop touching me for a number of reasons, ethical issues and pain being at the forefront.
“You think you can jump from one player to the next, and no one is going to give a fuck? Christ. You might as well be sucking on my balls with how up in my space you are. Where the hell is your moral compass?” Okay, that was extra graphic, but seriously, her nose is almost pressed up against my junk, she’s so close.
She uses my thighs to push to a stand, which feels pretty damn awful. She’s not particularly tall, so her nipples are pointing right at my face. “What the hell are you talking about? Who are you to call me a puck bunny?”
“You’re banging the team captain, who has a fucking wife and kid, and now you’re all over my jock.” I motion to my crotch.
“Banging the . . .” Her brows furrow and her nose scrunches up. She makes a gagging sound and then throws her head back and laughs. It’s a nice laugh, even if it’s full of sarcasm. “Oh my God. Rook is my brother, you asshole!”
“Yeah, right.”
She rolls her eyes and grins widely, pointing to the dimple high on her cheek. “See the resemblance?”
“Not really. No,” I say truthfully, because I haven’t paid enough attention to Rook’s face in the time I’ve been on the team, which hasn’t been long. Also, on the infrequent occasions I do make eye contact with Rook, both of us are usually scowling.
Her hair smacks me in the face as she spins on her h
eel and stalks out of the bathroom. I loathe admitting I stare at her ass. She returns less than a minute later with a framed photo and a few pieces of paper. She tosses the papers at me—they turn out to be envelopes that read STEVIE BOWMAN.
“Is this supposed to mean something to me?”
“Stevie is my name.” She points at her chest, which draws attention to her cleavage and her pert nipples. Her tank is white, and even though it has one of those built-in bra things so there’s an extra layer of fabric between her nipples and my eyeballs, I can still see the outline of her areolae. They’re small and delicate, and the whole thing would easily fit in my mouth. Why the hell can’t I stop thinking about sex?
I roll my eyes. “Nice try. Stevie is a guy’s name.”
“I’m named after my dad.” She holds the framed picture an inch from my nose.
It’s too close for me to make out the actual faces, so I take it from her, somewhat forcefully. It’s an older photo, based on how young Rook is, but beside him is the woman standing in front of me, hair light blonde instead of pale pink. They’re both smiling, and I see now the resemblance she was talking about.
I look up at her and then back down at the picture. “Shit. You’re Bowman’s baby sister?”
“I’m hardly a baby.” She crosses her arms, pushing her tits up and highlighting her cleavage.
“Yeah, I can see that.” I force my eyes back up to her face. At least I feel slightly less bad about noticing how hot she is.
“I can’t believe you thought I was his, what . . . mistress?” She flips her hair over her shoulder and sneers.
I throw my hands up in the air. “Well, what the hell was I supposed to think when you show up in the middle of the night looking like something the cat dragged in, being all evasive and noisy and shit?”
“I wasn’t being evasive.”
“You could’ve said you were Bowman’s sister from the start, though. It would’ve cleared up a lot of shit.”
A Favor for a Favor Page 6
