Page 11 of Pickled
“I could have.” His voice was a whisper too. “But I didn’t want to…” His hand, hesitant at first, slipped beneath my arm, his fingers splayed against the curve of my waist. A jolt shot through me, and I looked up, getting lost in his dark brown eyes.
The pulsing between my legs, not my brain, was running the show. My body wanted to touch his body. I relaxed and stepped a little closer. Our faces were inches apart, the heat from his chest searing into mine. I gulped. His hand, which had been resting solidly on my waist, squeezed my side.
An involuntary moan of desire slipped from my lips. He squeezed again but this time pulled my body to his. That was all it took.
I melted into him.
Our lips finally met, and the kiss was soft and tender, but his grip on my body was hard. Hard enough that it would leave bruises, and I liked it.
My legs trembled as I pressed myself against his erection. All I wanted was Gideon inside me.
The alarm on my watch chimed, and I jumped back like he was on fire. “I can’t. I have to go. I’ll leave you a note if someone messages about the cat.” For a moment, I’d forgotten that I wasn’t a rich socialite about to have an afternoon delight with her sexy neighbor. I was a single mom whose daughter was waiting to get picked up at day care.
“Piper.” He followed me to the landing. “What’s going on?”
My bare feet slapped as I ran down the marble staircase away from him. “I have an appointment.” I rammed my feet into my sandals.
“What kind of an appointment?”
It was a personal question, but then again, his lips had just been on mine, so I supposed it was a valid one. “An important appointment.” I opened the door. “But Gideon.”
“Yeah?” He ambled down the stairs.
“You need to think of a better name than Cat.”
The slow smile transformed his entire face. I blinked, committing the moment to memory. I needed to forget all abouthim because this memory was going to be dangerous. For the first time in a long time, I wanted something more from a man, and the hot hockey player next door was never going to be able to give it to me.
5
GIDEON
With each curvein the road, my heart pumped a little bit faster. Approaching the mailboxes felt less like retrieving mail and more like gearing up for overtime. It had been three days since I’d seen Piper, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her laugh and the way that her neck smelled, like vanilla mixed with her sweat. That sounds weird, but what can I say, I don’t make the pheromone rules.
There was one good thing about my cat squatter: he gave me an excuse to go home right after practice. I still hadn’t given the little bastard a name as I was delusional enough to think a family was still going to claim him.
You only name something if you plan on keeping it.
Naming him would be an admission that I was going to take care of the clawed menace for the next fifteen years. And I didn’t do attachments like that.
Before she pulled the proverbial parachute the other day, Piper promised that she would let me know if someone responded tothe post. Part of me was pissed she’d cut things off, and the other part was just plain confused.
At least if she’d pulled a true Cinderella and left a shoe behind, I’d have an excuse to drop by unannounced. Fighting the urge once again, I pulled into my garage and tried to forget about the woman who lived one driveway away.
I opened the door to the house and was met with silence. “Hey, kitty,” I called out. At the sound of my voice, he crashed through the hallway and down the stairs like he weighed two hundred pounds, not just two. I thought cats were supposed to be light on their feet, but this cat was part kitty, part Godzilla.
He skidded across the floor, sliding into my feet. This time, when I picked him up, my fingertips couldn’t circle his body. Was it possible for a kitten to double in size in three days? His purrs vibrated my entire hand. A sudden urge to cuddle him came over me, so instead, I set him on the ground.
He wove around my feet and dug his dagger claws into my jeans, treating my leg like a cat tree.
I managed to extract him and dropped into my recliner, but I wasn’t there two seconds and dagger paws hopped on my chest, purring as he head-butted the scruff on my chin. Luckily, he’d decided to keep his claws tuned up on the fancy Italian leather sofa and not on the vintage duct-taped chair. I scratched his head as he rubbed his face on mine. “What do you want to watch, little guy?”
I scrolled through my saved list until I found the most recent Toronto Tigers game. They were coming to the fishbowl this weekend, and I wanted to study their plays. Cat curled up on my chest, and I absentmindedly stroked his head. I skipped tothe middle of the game, where the Tigers scored their first goal. It was easy to pick Ace out of the Tigers’ lineup—he danced around the other players. I slowed the playback, watching as the team executed the play perfectly. They were good. Ace and I hadn’t faced off against each other since I left, and our upcoming match-up had been a sports news headline for the past week.
After finishing the game, I went outside and checked on the potatoes slow roasting on the grill. Inside, I seasoned a New York striploin.
A past girlfriend joked about me beingmeat and potatoes guy. She meant it as an insult, but I didn’t take it that way. Growing up, our mom had been a simple cook. Our meals were basic, and having two teenage hockey players over six feet tall, our grocery bill must have been astronomical. Mom did her best to make us healthy food on our parents’ small income. Unfortunately, back then, Ace and I had hated it.
Ungrateful bastards.
