Beautiful Player

“Why are you so jumpy?” He laughed.

“Maybe the drive? It’s been a while since I was behind the wheel.” I shrugged, still unable to look at him for very long.

With a pat to my back, Jensen said, “I think you need a beer.”

Hanna returned, and shooed us away so she could sweep the shards into a dustpan, but not before giving me a conspiratorial holy shit look. “I told Mom you broke this and she couldn’t even remember which of her aunts gave it to her. I think you’re fine.”

I groaned, following her into the kitchen and apologizing to Helena with a kiss on her cheek. She handed me a beer and told me to relax.

At some point when I’d been upstairs f**king Hanna, or maybe when I’d been madly washing her scent off my dick and my fingers and my face, her father had arrived home. Jesus Christ. With some clarity away from nak*d Hanna and a closed bedroom door, I realized how insane we had been. What the f**k were we thinking?

Looking up from where he’d been digging in the fridge for a beer, Johan came over to greet me with his own brand of warmth and awkwardness. He was good at eye contact, bad with words. It usually meant that he ended up staring at people while they scrambled to come up with things to say.

“Hi,” I said, returning his handshake and letting him pull me into a hug. “Sorry about Jesus.”

He stepped back, smiled, and said, “Nah,” and then paused, seemed to reconsider something. “Unless you’ve suddenly become religious?”

“Johan,” Helena called, breaking our moment. I could have kissed her. “Honey, can you check the roast? The beans and bread are done.”

Johan walked to the oven, pulling a meat thermometer out of the drawer. I felt Hanna step beside me, heard her clink her water glass to my beer bottle.

“Cheers,” she said with an easy smile. “Hungry?”

“Famished,” I admitted.

“Don’t just stick the tip in, Johan,” Helena called out to him. “Shove it all the way in there.”

I coughed, feeling the burn of beer as it almost came out my nose. Cupping my hand over my mouth, I urged my throat to open, to allow me to swallow. Jensen stepped behind me, slapping my back and wearing a knowing grin. Liv and Rob were already sitting at the kitchen table, bent over in silent laughter.

“Holy shit, this is going to be a long night,” Hanna mumbled.

Conversation looped around the table at dinner, breaking into smaller groups and then returning to include everyone. Partway through the meal, Niels arrived. Whereas Jensen was outgoing and one of my oldest friends, and Eric—only two years older than Hanna—was the wild child in the family, Niels was the middle child, the quiet brother, and the one I never really knew. At twenty-eight, he was an engineer with a prominent energy firm, and almost a carbon copy of his father, minus the eye contact and smiles.

But tonight, he surprised me: he bent to kiss Hanna before he sat down, and whispered, “You look amazing, Ziggs.”

“You really do,” Jensen said, pointing a fork at her. “What’s different?”

I studied her from across the table, trying to see what they saw and feeling mysteriously irked at the suggestion. To me, she looked as she always had: comfortable in her skin, easy. Not fussy with clothes, or hair or makeup. But didn’t need to be. She was beautiful when she woke up in the morning. She was radiant after a run. She was perfect when she was beneath me, sweaty and postcoital.

“Um,” she said, shrugging and spearing a green bean with her fork. “I don’t know.”

“You look thinner,” Liv suggested, head tilted.

Helena finished a bite and then said, “No, it’s her hair.”

“Maybe Hanna’s just happy,” I offered, looking down at my plate as I cut a bite of roast. The table went completely still and I looked up, nervous when I saw the collection of wide eyes staring back at me. “What?”

Only then did I realize I’d called her by her given name, not Ziggy.

She covered smoothly, saying, “I’m running every day, so yes, I’m a little thinner. I did get my hair cut. But it’s more. I’m enjoying my job. I have friends. Will’s right—I am happy.” She looked over at Jensen and gave him a cheeky little grin. “Turns out, you were right. Can we stop examining me now?”

Jensen beamed at her and the rest of the family all mumbled some variation of “Good,” and returned to their food, quieter now. I could feel Liv’s smile aimed at my face, and when I looked up from my plate, she winked.

Fuck.

“Dinner is delicious,” I told Helena.

“Thanks, Will.”

The silence grew, and I felt silently inspected. I’d been caught. It didn’t help that Jesus’ tiny decapitated porcelain head was watching me from the sideboard, judging. He knew. Ziggy was a nickname as ingrained in this family as their father’s crazy work hours, or Jensen’s tendency to be overprotective. I hadn’t even known Hanna’s given name when I’d gone running with her nearly two months ago. But f**k it. The only thing I could do was embrace it. I had to say it again.

“Did you know that Hanna has a paper coming out in Cell?” I hadn’t been particularly smooth; her name came out louder than any other word but I went with it, smiling around the table.

Johan looked up, eyes widening. Turning to Hanna, he asked, “Really, s?tnos?”

Hanna nodded. “It’s on the epitope mapping project I was telling you about. It was just this random thing we did but it turned into something cool.”

This seemed to steer the conversation into less awkward territory, and I let go of the little extra breath I’d been holding in. It was possible that the only thing more stressful than meeting the parents was hiding everything from the family. I caught Jensen watching me with a little smile, but simply returned it, and looked back down at my plate.

Nothing to see here. Keep moving along.

But during a break in the chatter, I found Hanna’s eyes lingering on me, and they were surprised and thoughtful. “You,” she mouthed.

“What?” I mouthed back.

She shook her head slowly, finally breaking eye contact to look down at her plate. I wanted to reach under the table with my leg, slide my foot over hers to get her to look back at me, but it was like a minefield of non-Hanna legs under there, and the conversation had already moved on.

After dinner, she and I volunteered to wash the dishes while the others retired to the family room with a cocktail. She snapped me with her dish towel and I flung soap suds at her. I was on the verge of leaning close and sucking on her neck when Niels came in to get another beer and looked at us both as if we had traded clothes.

“What are you doing?” he asked, suspicion heavy in his voice.

“Nothing,” we answered in unison, and—making it worse—Hanna repeated, “Nothing. Just dishes.”

He hesitated for a second before tossing his bottle cap in the trash and heading back to the others.

“That’s twice today we’ve almost been busted,” she whispered.

“Thrice,” I corrected her.

“Nerd.” She shook her head at me, amusement lighting up her eyes. “I probably shouldn’t risk sneaking into your room tonight.”

I started to protest but stopped when I caught the sly grin curving her lips.

“You’re the devil, do you know that?” I murmured, reaching out to glide my thumb across her nipple. “No wonder Jesus didn’t want to be in your cl**vage.”

With a sharp gasp, she smacked my hand and looked over her shoulder.

We were all alone in the kitchen, could hear the others’ voices trailing in through from the other room, and all I wanted to do was pull her into a kiss.

“Don’t.” Her eyes grew serious and the next words came out shaking, as if she couldn’t catch her breath: “I won’t be able to stop.”

After staying up for a few hours to catch up with Jensen, I finally headed to bed. I stared at the wall for an hour or so before giving up on waiting for the quiet padding of Hanna’s feet from down the hall or the creak of the door as she snuck into my room.

So I drifted off and missed it when she actually did slip in, get undressed, and climb nak*d under the blankets with me. I woke only to the feel of her smooth, bare body curling around mine.

Her hands ran up my chest, mouth sucking at my neck, my jaw, my bottom lip. I was hard and ready to go before I was entirely conscious, and when I groaned, Hanna pressed a hand over my lips, reminding me, “Shh.”

“What time is it?” I murmured, inhaling the sweet smell of her hair.

“A little after two.”

“Are you sure no one heard you?” I asked.

“The only people who could hear me at this end of the hall are Jensen and Liv. Jensen’s fan is on, so I know he’s asleep. He can barely stay awake for ten seconds once that thing starts.”

I laughed because she was right. I’d been his roommate for years, and I hated that f**king fan.

“And Rob is snoring,” she murmured, kissing my jaw. “Liv has to fall asleep before him or else his snoring will keep her awake.”

Satisfied that she’d been sufficiently stealthy—and that no one would be likely to knock on the door again while we were making love—I rolled to my side, pulling her close.

She snuck in for sex, clearly, but it didn’t feel like all she wanted was a quick fuck. There was something else there, something brewing beneath the surface. I saw it in the way she kept her eyes open in the darkness, the way she kissed me so earnestly, each touch offered tentatively, as if she were asking a question. I saw it in the way she pulled my hand where she wanted it: over her neck, down across her br**sts, coming to rest over her heart. It was pounding. Her bedroom was only a few doors down the hall; she wasn’t winded from the effort. She was worked up over something, her mouth opening and closing a few times in the moonlight, as if she wanted to speak but couldn’t find air.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered, lips pressed to her ear.

“Are there still others?” she asked.

I pulled back and stared at her, confused. Other women? I’d wanted to have this conversation again a hundred times, but her subtle evasion had finally worn down my need for clarity. She wanted to date around, didn’t trust me, and didn’t think we should try to be exclusive. Or had I misunderstood? For me, there was no one else.

“I thought that’s what you wanted?” I replied.

She stretched to kiss me; her mouth felt so familiar already, molding to mine in the easy rhythm of soft kisses that grew heated, and I wondered for a fevered beat how she could ever imagine sharing herself with anyone else.

She pulled me over her, reaching between us to slide me across her skin. “Is there a rule about having unprotected sex twice in a day?”

I sucked on the skin below her ear, and whispered, “I think the rule should be that there aren’t any other lovers.”

“So we break that rule then?” she asked, lifting her hips.

Fuck that. Fuck that noise.

I opened my mouth to protest, to put my foot down and tell her I’d had enough of this circular nondiscussion, but then she made a quiet, hungry sound and arched into me so that I slipped all the way inside her and I bit my lip to stifle a groan. It was unreal; I’d had sex thousands of times and it had never, ever been like this.

I tasted blood on my lip and fire beneath my skin wherever she touched me. But then she began to circle her hips, finding her pleasure beneath me, and I felt the words dissolve from my mind.

I’m only one man, for Christ’s sake. I’m not a god. I can’t resist taking Hanna now and figuring out everything afterward.

It felt like cheating; she wouldn’t give me her heart but she’d give me her body, and maybe if I took enough of her pleasure, stored it up, I could pretend it was more.

It didn’t matter at the time how much I might regret it later.

Chapter Seventeen

It had never been like this, ever. Slow. Almost so slow that I wasn’t sure either of us could get there, or that I even cared. Our lips were only millimeters apart, sharing breaths and noises and the whispered pleas to Feel that? Do you feel that?

I did feel it. I felt every one of his stuttering heartbeats under my palm, and the way his shoulders shook above me. I felt the unformed words on his lips, how he seemed to be trying to say something . . . maybe the same something I’d been skirting around since I snuck into his dark room. Even before that.

He didn’t seem to understand what I was asking.

I’d never expected it to be so hard to put myself on the line. We’d made love—what felt like the true meaning of the phrase earlier; his skin, my skin, nothing else between us. He called me Hanna at the dinner table. . . . I don’t think anyone had ever said that name out loud in this house before that. And even though Jensen—Will’s best friend—was in the other room, Will had stayed with me to do dishes. He’d given me a meaningful look before I headed to bed, and texted me good night, saying, In case there’s any question, my bedroom door shall remain unlocked.

It seemed like he was mine when we were in a room full of people. But here, alone behind his closed door, it was suddenly so unclear.

Are there others? . . .

I thought that’s what you wanted.

The rule should be that there aren’t other lovers . . .

So we break this rule then?

. . . Silence.

But what was I expecting? I closed my eyes, wrapping my arms tighter around him as he pulled almost all the way out and then slid slowly back inside, inch by perfect inch, and groaned quietly in my ear.

“So good, Plum.” His h*ps rolled over me, one hand sliding down my ribs and back up to cup my breast and simply hold it, his thumb sweeping over the tight peak.

I loved the deep, molten sounds of his pleasure, and it helped distract me from the truth that he hadn’t given me the words I’d wanted tonight. I’d wanted him to say, There are no other women anymore. I’d wanted him to say, Now that we’re doing this without protection, we don’t break that rule, ever.