“Thanks, by the way,” Oliver says quietly, snapping me from my thoughts.
Stepping next to him, I add the last of the dishes I was holding to the sudsy water. “For what?”
“Asking me to stay.”
I pick up a dish he’s rinsed and dry it, leaning a hip against the counter as I watch him in profile. The long line of his nose. His mouth pursed in concentration. The play of light on the scruff of his closely shaved beard. “Technically, the others asked you to stay. I just indulged them.”
He glances at me, a smirk on his face. “Of course. Well, thank you anyway. Despite you being a karaoke curmudgeon, I had fun.”
My heart twists. I want to yank him by the shirt and kiss that smirk right off his face. I want to make him drop the dish in his hands and hear it crack like his resolve until he’s touching me as frantically as I want to touch him.
But instead, I pick up another dish and dry it. “You really don’t need to do this. You can go home. Get some rest. We’re back at it bright and early tomorrow.”
Oliver shrugs.
I grit my teeth, battling so hard for control, to stop myself from taking what I shouldn’t. Abruptly, I slap my hand down on the faucet, shutting off the water. “You should go home, Oliver.”
He stares down at the bowl in his hands for a beat of thick silence, then glances up at me. “Why?”
I hold his eyes when he peers up, feeling the last of my control slip away. “You know why.”
Slowly, he turns, his hand trailing across the sink’s ledge, stopping just short of my hip. “I want you to tell me.”
My jaw tightens. I can’t speak. If I open my mouth, it’ll be to crash down on his. I can’t. I won’t.
He takes another step closer and says, “We agreed what happened last night would be behind us.”
“Exactly,” I answer tightly.
He smirks. “But we said that would be effective starting tomorrow.”
“Only because I hadn’t factored in Mitchell taking you hostage in your backyard and dragging you to poker in my home tonight.”
Oliver clucks his tongue. “Rookie mistake, Hayes. And you call yourself a veteran player.”
“I don’t call myself anything. I am a veteran player. I’m old and on my last legs, and you’d do well to remember that,” I snap.
He frowns. That damn thoughtful frown. His eyes scan me. “What does that mean?”
I don’t answer him. I glance out the kitchen window toward his home, wishing he’d take pity on me and go back there already.
“You think I care that you’re older than me?” he says quietly.
“Ten years older,” I tell him.
“Nine years, seven months, and six days.”
My gaze snaps toward him. Oliver’s cheeks are red. “Excuse me?”
He scrubs the back of his neck and stares down at the ground. “C’mon, Hayes. Everyone knows your birthday.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “But have they done the math to know our age difference? For someone who doesn’t care that I’m older—”
“I had a crush on you,” he blurts. “As a teenager. Like, a sexual-awakening kind of crush. That’s why I know your birthday and our age difference. I know every club you played for and every goal you scored, and I have a raging competency kink, and you have always, obviously, scratched that itch.
“So let me make myself clear,” he says, closing the distance between us, so close I feel warmth pouring off him, smell the intoxicating scent of his skin. “I do not care that you’re thirty-four. I care that you’re a massive dick most of the time—and don’t make a gloating size joke right now, I’m trying to be sincere. I care that while you’re usually a growly, cynical grump, you’re also sometimes a giant softie for the people you care about, even if those lucky people aren’t many in number.
“I care that you showed me that care. On our flight. Before the game.” His eyes drift to my mouth. “I care that you kissed me last night like you’d wanted to kiss me. Granted, probably not as long as I’ve wanted to kiss you, but—”
I yank him by the shirt and cup his cheek, my mouth whispering over his. “One last time,” I tell him.
He smiles against the first brush of our lips. “Such a good song.”
“Shut up. Kiss me back,” I grumble, slipping my hands around his waist, pulling him against me. “Focus on this instead of Hamilton for one fucking minute.”
“Aha!” he says against my mouth, before I silence him with a deep, hard kiss. Warm and soft and wet. A groan rumbles in my throat as I suck his tongue. “I knew you liked it,” he says, sinking his hands into my hair, cupping my neck.
“It’s a frustratingly catchy soundtrack,” I admit.
He groans. “Don’t do this.”
I kiss his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. “Do what?”
“Make me want you even more. Hamilton’s my weakness.”
“Lin-Manuel Miranda is your weakness,” I growl against his neck, biting it, then soothing it with my tongue. “You hummed Encanto during our entire warm-up before the game. You called him Shakespeare and Sondheim in one person. And I don’t appreciate being jealous of a musical theater dork who is, by the way, actually much too old for you.”
He drops back his head, setting his hands on my hips, slipping them around my waist and kneading my ass. I groan into his neck. “First,” he says, “forty-two isn’t that old. Second—shit.” He gasps as I tug his earlobe between my teeth. “Humming happy music helps me stay calm when I’m nervous. So don’t make fun of me for it.”
I slip my hand beneath his shirt and rub his back gently, savoring those lean muscles, his warm, firm skin. “I would never.”
He snorts a laugh that becomes a rough exhale when my hand wanders lower, along the waistband of his shorts, I tease beneath the elastic, knowing I’m going somewhere I shouldn’t. I slip my hand along the hard firm curve of his backside and glide my finger lower, teasing him. “The things I want to do to you,” I whisper against the shell of his ear.
“Hayes,” he groans, gripping me tight, until I feel him, hard and thick, wedged right against every throbbing, rock-hard inch of me. I grit my teeth and breathe through the longing that barrels through my body. It’s that or moan helplessly as he works himself against me, his cock rubbing mine with each grind of his hips. “I want you,” he whispers.
“I want you, too,” I admit, hating how breathless I sound, needy and desperate. “But we shouldn’t.”
“I know,” he says quietly, sliding his hands up my back, kneading the web of stiff, sore muscles. “Doesn’t mean I want it any less.”
I set my hands back at his hips, holding him against me, as I kiss him, slow and soft. I shouldn’t say it, shouldn’t want it. But I’m weak beneath his touch, so fucking gone. I need him so badly, all sense flies right out of my head. “Unless…”
He leans in, kissing me back, chasing me for more. “Unless what?”
“We just…scratch the itch once. Get it out of our systems.”