He clenched his teeth and flexed his fingers in her waist. “You know it does.”
Part of his jaded mind knew she could be doing this to boost his ego so he’d stay on with Essex. But that same damaged ego really wanted to believe she did enjoy sex with him more than other guys. Only he couldn’t ignore the fact that either way, the major problem between them still existed.
“But you’ve confirmed something I already knew about myself,” he said. “Something I was trying to disprove because I wanted you so badly.”
“Which is?” she asked.
He exhaled, frustrated with the ache between his legs. “I’m not a one-night, sex with a stranger kind of guy.”
She lifted her brows and a hot little smile turned her lips. “Well, another night would be night two, and we aren’t strangers anymore.”
He laughed, but it came out as pained as he felt. “Really? B
ecause I learned more about you from Quinn in five minutes and listening to you talk to Beckett for three than I learned directly from you in bed over eight hours.”
“Oh, mon dieu de sexe,” she purred in a way that made Tate light up like a struck match, “I promise you that’s not true.”
Calling him her sex god nudged him closer to her way of thinking, but didn’t make him cave. The last week and its turmoil were still too fresh.
“You have the ability to have a short, casual relationship with a predetermined end date without heartache if you frame it that way in your mind ahead of time.”
Maybe Beckett was right. At least half right.
Voices broke the spell between them and Beckett straightened, glancing toward the lobby where a dozen pre-teen boys flooded through the doors. He groaned, released Olivia and pushed backward, gliding a short distance away.
“Club practice,” he told her.
She swung her legs over the wall toward the bench. “Okay, well…”
“Hold on.” He skated to the mat, threw the guards on his blades and curled his hand around hers. “If you wait for me I’ll drive you home.”
As soon as he said the words, Tate flashed back to there first night together and that moment when he’d tried to offer the same. Remembering the skittish look in her eyes then made him cringe internally now. Another faux pas. He walked her toward the hall that connected the lobby, the locker rooms and the lounges, expecting that any second, she’d pull from his grip and get the hell out of Dodge.
Instead, she threaded their fingers, smiled up at him and said, “I’d love that.”
Tate damn near wobbled on his skate blades.
“Wow,” she said, “You were tall to begin with, but you’re really tall in skates.”
He laughed and led her down the corridor to one of the private lounges accessible only to the Rough Riders’ staff. “You can hang here. I won’t be more than fifteen minutes.”
“This is incredible.” She released his hand and wandered toward the twenty-foot glass wall that looked out onto the rink.
The boys and their coaches were on the ice, warming up, but Tate’s gaze was on Olivia’s ass and how delicious it looked in those jeans.
She smiled over her shoulder where she’d stopped behind one of the leather lounge chairs, her hands on the back. “Is that the age of your boys?”
It took him a second to figure out she meant the kids in the summer camp. “Mine are a couple years older. Just as rowdy.”
“Look at the goalies,” she said with a smile in her voice. “You can’t even see the kids behind all that equipment. How do they even move?” Tate was smiling, but figured it was a rhetorical question so he didn’t answer. Then she glanced over her shoulder a second before returning it to the ice. “What are the colored lines for? I can’t remember.”
“They split the rink into zones of play.” He wandered up behind her. “Between the goalie line and the blue line is either the attack zone or defense zone. Between the two blue lines is the neutral zone.”
She leaned back against him, without any concern over getting his sweat on her clean clothes. The woman was beyond low-maintenance. She was so easy to be around, the maintenance seemed to come in being without her. Warmth nudged his barriers down a little more and he slid his arms around her waist, flattening his hands low on her belly. Aching to slide them between her legs, and Olivia ran one hand over his forearm, closing her fingers around his wrist.
Which reminded Tate of that night, when he’d rolled her to her stomach, pushed into her from behind and worked his hand between her legs. He closed his eyes remembering the way her back had arched, the way she’d tilted her pelvis to take him balls deep. The way she’d tightened her hand on his wrist, loving the feel of his hand moving between her legs while she gripped the headboard with the other, bracing herself for his thrusts. Using it to push back to meet him.
Her laughter snapped him back, and he focused on the ice, where a gaggle of kids lay tangled in a heap on the ice.