Overnight Sensation(9)

Things could always be worse.

Heidi appears a few minutes later, looking pale and sheepish. She sits down beside me on the couch and lets out a drunken sigh.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She clears her throat. “Yeah. I don’t usually drink.” There’s a slight slur to her words.

“Because it’s impolite?”

A giggle escapes her. “Don’t tease! It’s embarrassing enough already. There’s no mess, though. I’m a very ladylike puker.”

That makes us both laugh.

“I borrowed your mouthwash,” she confesses. “Sorry.”

“You borrowed Silas’s, because that’s his bathroom. But we can do even better than that. Come on.” A glance at my phone tells me it’s midnight. In six hours I have to be up and on my way to Long Island, where the next part of training camp is scheduled to happen.

I need to sleep, and that can only happen after I make sure my unexpected guest is comfortable. Heidi follows me into the giant master bedroom, and then the huge en suite bathroom. “Wow. Nice place.”

“Thanks.” It is a nice place. Silas and I are paying exorbitant rent, although some of our teammates bought their units. We refer to this building—a hundred-year-old factory that was renovated into luxury condos—as the Million Dollar Dorm. It’s pricey, but its proximity to the practice facility is irresistible. So a significant percentage of the team lives here.

I haven’t tried to buy my unit yet, since I don’t want to jinx myself by assuming the Bruisers will keep me. Especially after the way last season ended.

“Here,” I say, fishing a new toothbrush out of the medicine cabinet. “And let me find you a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.”





Ten minutes later I tuck Heidi into one side of my king-sized bed. And then I climb into bed on the other side. I’m not sleeping on my couch—not if I have to scrimmage tomorrow under the watchful eye of coaches who are still trying to cut players.

Besides, if Heidi is here with me, I can keep an eye on her. And—bonus—the bathroom is nearby.

This will only work if she doesn’t get frisky, like she was in the cab. I shut off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. All is silent for a moment, and she stays on her side of the bed. Then I hear her sigh. “The room is sort of…”

“Turning?” I guess.

“Yessir. How did you know?”

“It’s called having the spins.” She wasn’t kidding that she doesn’t drink very often. Who’s never had the spins? “Should we find you a bucket for beside the bed?”

“No.” She groans. “My stomach isn’t sick anymore. Now it’s only my head. But I hate it. It’s like I’m turning through space.”

“You’re not, I promise.” I reach across the bed and take her hand. “See? I’ve got you.”

She squeezes my hand with her smoother one, and then she wiggles backward. Suddenly my arms are full of warm, curvy girl. Her back is to my chest, and she pulls my arm over her body and hangs on tightly to it, as if I’m the only thing tethering her to Earth. “That’s better,” she whispers.

Her hair smells like flowers. And she’s just as soft and warm as I thought she’d be, damn it.

“We’re not having filthy, dirty sex right now,” she observes.

“No, we’re not,” I say firmly.

“Because I puked.”

“Because you needed to puke,” I correct.

“And that’s off-putting. It’s not ladylike. Maybe Mama was right all along.”

“Nah.” I smile into her hair. “That’s not the reason.”

“No?”

“Nope. The reason is that having filthy, hot sex—”

“Filthy, dirty sex.”

“—is that having filthy, dirty sex with wasted girls isn’t gentlemanly. Turns out I do follow a few rules.”

“Oh. I thought tonight I would finally be a wild child. I guess I lost my shot.”

“Yeah, you did. But I still think you’re pretty wild. It isn’t often I beat Bayer and Silas at darts, three times in a row.”

“I’m handy at skeet-shooting, too.”

“No shit?” There is something deeply appealing about the image of Heidi blasting clay plates out of the sky with a shotgun.

“No lie,” she says, and the way that “lie” is flattened a little to “lah,” makes my body respond. Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s stroking my hand with her softer one. Then she sighs and wiggles a bit in my arms.

Goddamn it, now I’m hard. Of course I am. I’m lying in my bed with a beautiful girl who I’ve been staring at since the day she showed up on the team jet last spring. And her perfect lips keep repeating the words, “filthy, dirty sex.”

You’d have to be a dead man not to respond. And I’m very much alive. If I shifted my hips a couple of inches, we could be…

I hold back my impatient groan. So much for a good night’s sleep.

“Good night, Jason Castro,” Heidi whispers. “Thank you for being such a good guy.”

“I’m not,” I argue.

“No, you are. You listened to me. Earlier, when I was upset.”