Hot as Puck(34)

“I have a game tomorrow night. In Seattle.”

“Tuesday night, then,” she says.

I wince, the knowledge that I have to wait another forty-eight hours to get more of Libby physically painful. “You promise? Tuesday night you’re all mine?”

“I promise,” she says, kissing me on the cheek as the elevator doors open. “And I promise you’re not going to die.”

“If I do, I’m blaming you. I want ‘pussy deprivation’ etched into my headstone, Collins. And I want you to leave orchids or some other pussy-resembling flower on my grave daily as a gesture of penance. Seriously.”

She laughs, kisses me again—this time on the mouth, a quick good-bye peck that leaves me aching for more—before crawling into the elevator on her hands and knees and tapping the ground floor button. “See you Tuesday.” Her fingers flutter, the doors slide shut, and she’s gone.

With a sigh, I stand, pizza in hand, and think about my shitty practice yesterday. I think about abandoned puppies, people who enjoy Phil Collins music, gummy candies with pockets of liquid inside, and other disgusting and disturbing things, doing my best to get my hard-on under control as I start down the hall, feeling frustrated, thwarted, and miserable. If only I hadn’t been so fixated on the erotic benefits of the goddamned Jacuzzi, Libby and I would have ended up at her place and I could be making her come right now.

Fuck!

I love Laura, she is my dear friend, but right now I would like for her to develop a disease that would send her home to bed for the night. Nothing too awful, of course, just enough to keep her out of my hair for the next eight to twelve hours while I do wicked, wonderful things to her little sister.

The little sister she is insanely protective of, and who she would probably beat me into a bloody pulp for introducing to the fuck buddy lifestyle.

The thought is enough to take the edge off, and by the time I round the corner to find Laura outside my door, scrolling through something on her phone, the pity party in my pants has subsided.

“Hey, I was just texting you.” She grins as she spots the pizza. “Bless you, you sweet, wonderful man. I’ve been jonesing for cheese all day long. You’re the very best.”

“I aim to please,” I say, guilt lifting its grubby head inside of me. I am not the very best. I am the jerk who forgot we were meeting up tonight and almost did obscene things to her innocent sister in my bathtub.

Laura leans in for a hug, but pauses before her arms are all the way around my waist. “Where were you just now?”

“What? Why?” I ask, wondering if I’ve got lipstick on my face or some other telltale sign that might give my near-tryst with Libby away.

“You smell funny,” Laura says, her eyes narrowing.

I laugh tightly as I dig into my pocket for my keys. “Thanks, Laura.”

“Not in a bad way, just different. But sort of familiar.” She leans in, sniffing my shoulder as I open the door, making sweat break out beneath my button-up. “Like flowers or—”

“I stopped in a flower shop to get something to send to Sylvia,” I lie. “She wasn’t happy about me having all her shit delivered to her office by messenger yesterday, so I figured I should try to make amends. No reason to get on her bad side just because we broke up.”

Laura chuckles. “It’s cute how you think you’re going to stay friends with your exes even though that never ever happens.”

“People stay friends with their exes.”

“People do, but you don’t. Name one woman you’ve previously dated who doesn’t run the other way the second she sees your pretty face,” Laura says, grunting smugly as I search my memory banks and come up empty. “See. You can’t be friends. Once you love ’em and leave ’em you might as well give up, Cruise. You’re too much of a heartbreaker to end up on the ‘still friends’ list.”

I open the door, frowning as I hold it for Laura. “But I’m not an asshole about breaking up. At least not all the time, or even most of the time.”

“Of course you aren’t.” Laura pats my chest as she breezes inside and slips out of her coat. “You’re just an intense experience for women, I think. Like dry red wine. You either love it or you hate it.” She hangs her coat on the antique hooks my interior decorator scattered all over the wall inside the door and turns back to me with a finger held up in the air. “No, you’re like vodka. Once you puke it up, you never want to drink it again. You don’t even want to think about vodka or look at it or remember that vodka exists.”