by Meg Maguire
She wandered to the couch, flopping onto the cushions and finding them still warm from Patrick’s body. Two people together, both doing what they love... Only if one of them got paid well. Passion and professional satisfaction were ideal, but not necessarily realistic.
Still. Passion. She remembered Dylan’s kisses, praying that tomorrow night she’d discover their lack of chemistry had been a trick of her nerves. Could she live without the excitement a guy like Patrick offered? Was a guy like Patrick only exciting because he was a bad idea?
She sat up to bring her mug to her lips, then slopped coffee down her front at the jarring din of her doorbell. “Damn.” She hurried to the intercom and pushed the Talk button. “Hello?”
“It’s Patrick. I think my timing belt just snapped.”
Lord in heaven. Of course it has.
“Can I come up where it’s warm while I figure out who to call?”
“Sure.” She buzzed him in.
At the counter, she squeezed a paper towel around her shirt to wring out the coffee. “Beats getting whacked in the nose,” she told herself. Patrick was getting appreciably less dangerous, if not much more fortunate.
He knocked a minute later and she let him in.
“I’m really sorry,” he said, stripping off his gloves. “I knew I was on borrowed time with that belt. It’s been squealing for a week from the temps, but I was hoping I could deal with it when I got my next check. I made it half a block and—snap.”
“That sucks. Can it just be replaced?”
“Not sure. I’m out of my depth. I’m good for small repairs, but it might’ve really screwed my engine.” He rubbed his face with a sigh. “I gotta call around and see if I can find a friend-of-a-friend who’ll float me the repair costs until Jenna pays me.”
“I could call my little brother,” Steph offered, hanging up his jacket. “He’s a mechanic.”
“Oh yeah?”
She nodded and fetched her phone. “He’s out in Worcester, but you could at least explain to him what it looks like under the hood. He could probably tell you what the damage might be.”
“That’d be great.”
She dialed Tim, catching him in the middle of a riot, to judge by the noise.
“Hang on!” he bellowed. “I’m testing my surround sound!”
A moment later he was back on, and she explained the situation. Thinking Patrick could use someone to hold a flashlight, she bundled up alongside him at the door. Down the hall and into the elevator, then out into the winter cold. They walked down to the corner where his truck was parked at a hasty angle.
So much for a quiet, early night in her warm apartment, likely capped off by succumbing to inappropriate thoughts about Patrick Doherty in the safety of her bed, solo.
Their breath fogged in the early darkness, and she held Patrick’s Maglite while he told Tim about the truck and poked around under its hood. A familiar scene.
Steph’s toes were starting to sting when Patrick sighed and said, “Well, shit. Uh huh. Yeah, I figured. But it doesn’t sound like I totally effed the engine, right? Yeah, that’s something... Listen, man, thanks so much for talking me through this. I’ll let you get back to the game. What’s the score, by the way?”
Steph pictured her little brother in his bro-cave apartment above their parents’ garage, and was left momentarily homesick.
“Nice. I— Uh huh. No shit, for real? I’ve got a job after eleven... Are you kidding? I’d give you my first born, if I had one. That’d be amazing.”
Steph shot him a questioning look, but he wasn’t paying attention.
“Awesome. Nine it is. I will, thanks. Lemme give you my number.”
A minute later Patrick hung up and grinned at her. “Your brother’s going to come out and take a look for me tomorrow.”
“All the way from Worcester?”
He dropped the hood. “He said it’s his day off, and he owes you for something to do with your windshield?”
Ah, yes. The slap shot that had sent a street hockey ball through her first car’s rear window nearly a decade ago. “About time.”
“So the only issue is how I’ll get back here in the morning.”
“Oh.”
“There’s trains to Newburyport from North station. But I dunno how long it takes, or if I could get back here early enough tomorrow morning...”
“Yes,” she sighed. “You can sleep on my couch.”
He beamed in the streetlight. “Really?”
“Sure.” She got them moving toward her building. “It’d be cruel to send you home when your truck’s right here. Especially since this might not have happened if you hadn’t given me a lift. But I have to be at work by noon.”
“Me, too. Hey, that’s great.”
She held the door for him. “I’ve shared rooms with some real weirdos over the course of my career. I’m sure I can handle putting an electrician up for the night.”
Back in her apartment, Steph woke up her laptop and they ordered calzones. “Ninety minutes’ wait,” she said. “I guess we’re not the only ones who feel like delivery tonight.”
“I’m in no rush,” Patrick said. “Got no place to go, and no way to get there.”
As they settled on the couch, she smiled at him. “You must be cursed.”
“Why?”
“Every time I turn around, another mishap’s befallen you. You’re like a misfortune magnet.”
He smiled, a shy, sweet little grin. “How do you know it’s not good luck? Look where I get to spend the night.”
Her heart gave a flutter, one she’d do well to ignore. She suddenly wished she had a TV so there’d be something to hold their attention aside from this relentless attraction. Her expression must have mimicked a different kind of misgiving, as Patrick frowned.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll knock it off—all the flirting. It’s probably not cool, now that you’re stuck with me all night.”
She didn’t confirm or deny. Let him think that was what intimidated her, and not the sheer force of what his proximity did to her body.
This time tomorrow, she might be at dinner with Dylan again. Sitting across a table at a beautiful restaurant, with the most urbane man she’d ever kissed. But would she feel this? Would there be this pleasant queasiness filling her belly with nerves and hope? Would she feel this heat brewing just a bit lower—this hot, antsy curiosity? She knew she wouldn’t. She had a tendency to fall hard and fast for guys, lustful crushes that ignited like fireworks, and accordingly fizzled with matching speed.
No more fireworks, she’d promised herself. You couldn’t warm yourself by them, or kindle them, or shed any real light on your own needs. Bright flashes of pure excitement, but then what? Just smoke drifting across the grass, just memories.
Just one last show, that mischievous voice whispered. One more blazing, crackling, sparkling finale before she went home for good, to snuggle up by the dependable flames of a serious relationship.
You fed yourself that lie once already. Too tacky, anyhow. Not fair to Dylan, and definitely not fair to Patrick. He knew the score and he wanted her anyway, but she understood now, he needed more from a woman, deep down. More important still, he deserved it. He deserved a lot of things, her thanks among them.
“Your flirting’s been nice,” she told him, and met those blue eyes. “You’ve made me feel really...I dunno. Attractive, I guess. Which is odd, since I’m always a sweaty mess when I see you.”
“I like how you look.”
“I know you do.”
He smiled, guilty. “Oops. I’m flirting again.”
And I’m enjoying it far too much. Patrick Doherty, sleeping in her tiny apartment... Thank God she didn’t have any alcohol in the house. Why did it feel so warm in here, anyhow?
“I ought to shower,” she said, standing. Escaping. “Sorry I don’t have a TV or stereo yet. Feel free to check your email or whatever,” she added, pointing to her laptop.
He nodded, semi-listening by th
e look of it. His eyes were moving over her in a curious, distracted way, though she couldn’t guess what he was finding so alluring—she was dressed in a coffee-stained thermal top and lined winter track pants. Not exactly the standard-issue seduction uniform.
“You look very...interested,” she told him. “Don’t you even think about trying to join me in the shower.”
He blinked, lucidity returning. “What? Jeez, what kind of a creep am I coming off as?”
“Not one who’d likely try that, but I figured I’d warn you, just in case.”
“Don’t worry—you haven’t left me any room for doubt about...you know. Us. Ever happening again.”
“Okay. Good.” As nice as being flirted with felt... “Just want to make sure nothing’s ambiguous.”
“Nope, clear as a bell.”
She offered a tight smile, then rummaged for clean clothes and shut herself in the bathroom. She studied her reflection as the water heated. She looked all...intense. Not quite the crazy-eyes Patrick had accused her of having last week, but something. Like a cat, acutely aware of a mouse in the room. Crazy sex-eyes. Worst poker face ever. She could tell Patrick with her words all night long that she wasn’t interested in messing around with him again, but her eyes and complexion would always give away her body’s true intentions.
She showered and dressed in lounge pants and a camisole and button-up sweater, rendering herself as shapeless as possible. Deodorant, but no perfume. Good. Then she wrecked the anti-seduction somewhat by putting on mascara for no reason whatsoever. She twirled her damp hair into a bun and shut off the fan and lights.
Patrick had her laptop open on his legs, watching the news by the sound of it. He cast her a quick glance and smile and she went to toss her dirty clothes in the hamper. She studied him from behind, his head and shoulders silhouetted by the glow of The Daily Show. How easy it’d be, to date Patrick. How familiar. How comforting, physically; how stressful, fiscally. How like déjà vu.
He laughed.
It rang in her body like a gong—a rich, resonant sound that hummed through her nerve endings, fingers, the very ends of her hair. Pheromones she could understand, or a certain man having the exact sort of face that melted a certain woman’s heart. But a laugh. She’d never been turned on by somebody’s laugh before.
She joined him on the couch and he set the computer on the TV stand so they could both watch, backing it up to the beginning. Each time he chuckled, another brick of her resistance crumbled away.
It’d feel so good to simply sling her legs across his lap, feel him toying with her toes or rubbing her calves. Last week she’d only had designs on his body, but here she was, fantasizing boyfriend-girlfriend scenarios.
Patrick Doherty...you’re far more dangerous than I ever suspected that day you hit me in the face with a door.
If he tried to make another move on her tonight...
She didn’t know what she’d do.
Before she’d been held back by what Dylan would think of her, should he somehow find out that she’d messed around with another man between dates. Before, she’d cared. But the voice of her stubborn, BS-proof self was getting louder the more obvious her attraction to Patrick became, and her new, Jenna-coached self was fading to a shadow of abstract, nagging shoulds.
Her stubborn self said, It’s none of Dylan’s business who I mess around with. He bought me an expensive dinner, but that doesn’t give him dibs on my hands or mouth or any other part of my body.
Why, if she found out Dylan was messing around with another woman right now... Well, it’d sting, in a knee-jerk, ego-slap way, but come on. They were both actively playing the field. She couldn’t rightfully call foul. And what was good for the gander better goddamn be good for the goose. She’d muscled her way through enough double-standard sexist bullshit in the fight world. There was no way she’d be making room for it in her personal life, no matter what dating etiquette might have to say about it.
When she was out with Dylan, she’d play by Jenna’s rules, she decided. She was representing Spark on those dates. But Jenna hadn’t sourced Patrick for her. And it was up to Steph to choose between mandates and instinct. And she’d never cared much for being told what to do.
She pulled off her socks, arranged a couple pillows behind her, and laid back with her calves flopped across Patrick’s lap. He eyed her, not doing anything at first. Then he leaned forward to angle the laptop so she could keep watching, and curled his big hands around one of her ankles.
She smiled to herself. It’d been ages since she’d been this way with a guy. Familiar. Intimacy as natural and easy as breathing.
She’d lounged around in hotel rooms and fighters’ apartments with casual boyfriends on the road, but those hook-ups hadn’t felt like this. There’d been an edge to them, a mutual and mischievous opportunism dictated by everyone’s transience, everyone’s complete focus on the fight. Those flings had offered a release and escape from the stress of the physical grind, but not this ease.
Patrick made her feel as she hadn’t in ages, not since she was eighteen, nineteen, twenty. A time before all the traveling, when hanging out with a guy this way held the promise of something real. Does he like me? I think I like him. Maybe this could be something. On the road all you got was, He seems like a decent guy. His body’s insane. This’ll hold me until the match is over.
Patrick’s fingertips rubbed her shin through her pajama pants, the contact so subtle, so sweet...yet it made her blood quicken, rousing that restless sensation in her belly. She watched his face, knowing he wasn’t taking in the show anymore—he hadn’t laughed since she’d put her legs on him. He was practically holding his breath, no doubt dying to know if this was an invitation or some cruel tease.
She pulled her feet back enough to rest her heels in the valley between his thighs—nowhere near his crotch, but the message was plain, the line crossed. His gaze moved to hers and he swallowed. With a tiny smile, she nodded.
He looked to his hands. He slipped one inside the hem at her ankle, rubbing her bare skin. His thighs tensed, and his expression changed. No one showed their excitement quite as nakedly as Patrick. She could see it in the way his lips parted and how heavy his lids looked, his entire person radiating hot distraction, as though summer had come to his body.
He met her eyes and swallowed. “You just torturing me, or did you actually change your mind?”
“I changed my mind.”
“How come?”
She smiled goofily, and gave him the short answer. “The way you laugh, I think.” Drawing her legs away, she sat up, edging closer. Goddamn, his body was exciting. Funny how she spent her workdays rolling around with all kinds of men, and some gorgeously built ones at that, yet none of them did what Patrick could. None of them got her hot like this, simply sitting on her couch, looking all big and cozy and capable.
She rubbed his shoulder, his arm. Memorized his stubble and the shape of his lips, and finally the color of his eyes.
As his fingertips found her jaw, those bluest of eyes closed. He cupped her face and their lips met, the contact sparking in a way a deeper kiss with another man hadn’t even come close to. There was an elemental rightness to the way their faces fit, the way his skin smelled, something that didn’t come along every day—or every year, for that matter. To let it pass them by would be unnatural. Cruel.
She took their kiss further, tasting him. The fingers cradling her jaw tensed, their possessiveness sizzling against her skin. He felt it, too. She could tell from the way he held her, how his breaths had turned harsh and labored. This rare connection he opened in her...she did the same to him, and feeling this wanted... It felt nearly as good as the wanting itself.
They kissed for ages, two antsy bodies wriggling closer, needing more contact, wherever it could be found. She clutched his sweater; he freed her damp hair, tangling his fingers in it.
He moaned between kisses. Such an open display of excitement, when Steph had grown used to masking her most
primitive reactions, lest an opponent spot a weakness. She’d do anything to keep hearing those sounds. Those hungry, helpless groans and grunts. And she could imagine other sounds...ragged orders in his deep voice, rising murmurs of “Yes” and “Please” as she brought him closer to—
“Steph.” It was a whisper that demanded no reply. Just her name, needing to be heard, a plea or admonishment or an expression of disbelieving awe. Instinct told her, Touch him. Run your palm down his belly and discover how hard he is from wanting you.
But she didn’t. She didn’t even get the chance, as Patrick made the move for her.
That strong hand on hers—not forcing, but not begging, either. Leading. He pressed her palm between his legs with a gasp, chased immediately by his withdrawal. “Sorry.”
She dismissed the apology with a slow stroke, telling him she wanted this, too. And that she wanted him this way—eager and impolite. After a breath, his warm palm covered her hand again, following its motions, then urging them.
She’d been with too many guys who did this—grabbed a woman’s hand and put it where they wanted it, eager animals unwilling to wait for gratification. She liked a pushy guy, once sex was underway and consent was implicit, but resented being rushed. It felt utterly different with Patrick. There was desperation in his touch, not merely impatience.
He broke away, peeling the sweater over his head. Steph did the same, and they didn’t stop there—in a minute flat she was down to her panties and bra, Patrick to his shorts and undershirt. Steph’s tiny apartment felt like a sauna, the bitter January cold merely an illusion.
She clasped him again, rewarded with that warm palm on her hand. He draped the other arm behind her shoulders, a hot, firm weight that hinted at how it’d be to have him on top of her.
