Beautiful Player (9 page)

“I like going down on some girls. Not everyone I’m with, and not for the reason you’re thinking. It’s intimate, and not
every woman is totally relaxed about it, which makes it hard to have fun. I don’t know, for me a blow job is like a hand job, but feels way better. But giving a girl head? I feel like that’s a little farther into a relationship. It requires trust.”

“I’ve never done either. They
both
seem pretty intimate to me.”

I stopped, quietly thanked the bartender when he put the beer down in front of me, but had no idea how to restrain the weird victory surging in my blood. What was that even about? It wasn’t like I was going to be her first head. It wasn’t like I could go there with her. Besides, Ziggy was so up front about what she wanted . . . with a tightening of my gut I realized that if she wanted me that way, she probably would have already said it. She would have walked up to me, put her hand on my chest, and said,
“Would you fuck me?”

“See?” she asked, leaning closer to grab my attention. “What are you thinking about
now
?”

Tilting my bottle to my lips, I said, “Nothing.”

“If I was a violent woman, my palm would be smacking your cheek right now.”

This made me laugh. “Fine. I was just thinking that it’s a little . . . unusual for you to have had sex before but not given anyone oral sex, or been on the receiving end.”

“I mean,” she started, leaning back a little on her bar stool, “I guess I kind of gave this one guy a blow job, but I literally had no idea what I was doing, so I ended up just going back up to the face zone.”

“Guys are pretty easy: you stroke up and down and we shoot.”

“No, I mean . . . I get that. I just mean for
me
. How to do it and breathe, and not worry that I would bite him? Have you ever walked through a china section at a fancy store and you have that panicked moment where you’re totally sure you’re going to flail suddenly and break all of the Waterford crystal?”

I leaned over, laughing. This girl was fucking
unreal
. “So you’re worried when you have a dick in your mouth you’re just going to . . . bite?”

She started laughing, too, and then before I knew it we were doubled over at the prospect. But almost at the same time, we died down a little and I realized she was staring at my mouth.

“Some guys
like
teeth,” I said quietly.

“ ‘Some guys’ . . . like you?”

Swallowing, I admitted, “Yeah. I like girls to be a little rough.”

“Like, scratching and biting and stuff?”

“Yeah.” A charged thrill ran through me just hearing her say those words. I swallowed heavily, wondering how long it would be before I’d be able to get the image of her
doing
those things out of my head. “How many guys have you been with?” I asked.

She took a sip of her iced tea before answering. “Five.”

“You’ve never given head but you’ve had sex with
five guys
?” My stomach dropped into an abyss, and although I
knew my irritation was wildly hypocritical, I couldn’t rein it in. “Holy shit, Ziggs,
when
?”

She rolled her eyes, actually laughing at me. “I lost my virginity when I was sixteen. The summer you worked with my dad, actually.” Covering my mouth with her hand when I started to protest, she added, “Don’t even start on me, Will. I know you probably lost yours when you were thirteen.”

I closed my mouth, sat up. She’d guessed right.

With a knowing smile, she continued. “And
please
. I’m sure you’ve had sex with hundreds of women. Five is not that many. I slept with a few guys over the next couple of years and then decided I was doing it wrong. It wasn’t very interesting. I had one boyfriend in college for a little while but . . . I feel like I’m broken. Sex is kind of fun until the actual
sex
part. Then I’m like, ‘Hmmm, wonder if I have enough cells plated to run the dose response curve with the tool compound tomorrow.’ ”

“That’s pathetic.”

“I know.”

“Sex is
not
boring.”

She studied me, and then shrugged. “I don’t think it’s
supposed
to be boring. I think it’s boring because most guys my age have no idea what to do with the female body.” She looked away, and I almost told her to come back. I was growing addicted to the buzz I felt when she was looking directly at me. “I’m not blaming them. That’s some complicated stuff down there.” She waved a hand over her lap. “It’s just been so long since I met anyone who made me want to see what
the big fuss is about.” She looked at my lips before blinking away and studying the wall of draft beers on tap.

I blinked down to my beer in front of me, turned it in little circles on the coaster. Of course she was right, and so many women I knew had sex for reasons other than getting off. Kitty once told me she felt close to me after we fucked. She said it right as I’d begun mentally cataloging my fridge. I felt so much closer to Hanna right now than I’d ever felt to Kitty before, during, or after sex.

Something about her made me feel hungry, like I wanted to be as honest and calm about everything in my life as she was. I wanted to know Hanna, to hear her thoughts on
everything
.

I paused, my fresh beer partway to my lips, and registered that I’d thought of her as Hanna. It sort of felt like letting out a long-held breath.

Ziggy
was Jensen’s sister.
Ziggy
was the kid I never knew.

Hanna was this uninhibited, self-possessed woman in front of me who I was pretty sure was going to effectively wreck my world.

I’d come to a decision: if I was going to monopolize Will’s time and insist on training with him, then I would have to actually . . . you know . . .
train
for something.

I’d decided to get serious, to stop thinking of it as a game and start really treating it like an experiment. I started going to bed at a decent hour so I could get up and run with him and still get to the lab early enough for a full day of work at the bench. I expanded my running wardrobe to include some quality workout gear and an extra pair of shoes. I stopped thinking of Starbucks as a food group and cut back on the complaining. And with much flailing on my part and much reassurance on his—we signed up for a half-marathon in mid-April. I was terrified.

But it turned out Will was right: it
did
get easier. Just a few weeks in and my lungs had stopped burning, my shins had stopped feeling like they were made of brittle sticks, and I no longer felt like vomiting by the time we
reached the end of the trail. In fact, we’d actually been able to increase our distance and move to his normal trail along the outer loop. Will said if I could handle the six miles a day and get up to eight-mile runs twice a week, he wouldn’t need to train additionally without me.

It wasn’t just that it started to feel good. I’d started to
see
a difference, too. Thanks to genetics, I’d always been relatively thin, but never what you’d call
fit.
My stomach was a tad soft, my arms did that weird jiggle thing when I waved, and there was always this damn little pooch over the top of my jeans if I didn’t keep that shit sucked in. But now . . . things were changing, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

“So what’s happening here?” Chloe asked, eyeing me from inside my closet. She pointed a finger at me and swept it around. “You look . . . different.”

“Different?” I asked.

The point of Project Ziggy actually wasn’t to spend as much time as possible with Will—even though he was quickly becoming my favorite person—but to help me find balance, to have a life outside the lab. In the past couple of weeks, Chloe and Sara had become an important part of the effort, dragging me out for dinner or coming over to just hang for a few hours at my apartment.

This particular Thursday evening they’d brought takeout and we’d somehow migrated into my room, where Chloe had taken it upon herself to go through my closet, deciding what could stay and what absolutely had to go.

“Different good,” she clarified, and then turned
to Sara, who was stretched across my bed, thumbing through some sort of financial file for work. “Don’t you think so?”

Sara looked up, eyes narrowing as she considered me. “Definitely good. Happy, maybe?”

Chloe was already nodding. “Was just going to say that. There’s definitely some kind of glowy thing happening in your cheeks. And your ass looks
amazing
in those pants.”

I looked at my reflection, checked out the front and turned to see the back. My ass did look pretty happy. My front wasn’t too bad, either. “My pants are a little loose,” I noted, checking the size. “And look, no muffin top!”

“Well, that’s always a plus,” Sara said with a laugh, shaking her head, then going back to her documents.

Chloe started putting things on hangers, shoving others into plastic bags. “You’re toning up. What have you been doing?”

“Just running. And lots of stretching. Will is big on the stretching. He added sit-ups to our routine last week, and let me be clear on how much I hate those.” I continued to study my reflection, adding, “I can’t remember the last time I had a cookie, and that feels like a crime.”

“Still training with Will, huh?” Chloe asked, and I couldn’t miss the look that passed between her and Sara. The look that said I’d just dropped a giant nugget of awesome in their lap and they were going to talk it to death and then dissect it until I begged for mercy.

“Yeah, every morning.”

“Will trains with you
every
morning?” Chloe asked. Another look exchanged.

I nodded, moved to pick up a few errant things lying around. “We meet at the park. Did you know he does triathlons? He’s in great shape.” I snapped my mouth shut, realizing it probably wasn’t safe to be as obliviously unfiltered with Chloe as it was with Will. I knew her well enough at this point to know she didn’t let very many things slide.

And indeed, she lifted a brow and reached up, pushing a thick wave of dark hair behind her shoulder. “So, about William.”

I hummed, folding a pair of socks together.

“Do you see him outside of this daily running date?”

I could feel their attention like heated laser beams on the side of my face so I nodded, not looking over at either of them.

“He’s very handsome,” Chloe added.

Danger danger,
my brain warned. “He is.”

“Have you seen each other naked?”

My eyes shot to Chloe’s.
“What?”

“Chloe,” Sara groaned.

“No,” I insisted. “We’re just friends.”

Chloe snorted, moving to the closet with a handful of clothes draped over her arms. “Right.”

“We run in the mornings, meet up for coffee sometimes. Maybe breakfast,” I said, shrugging and ignoring the way my honesty meter seemed to flare into the red zone. Lately we’d been having breakfast together almost
every morning, and talked at least one other time during the day. I’d even started to call him for advice on my experiments when Liemacki was traveling or just busy . . . or just because I valued his scientific opinion. “Just friends.” I glanced at Sara. Her eyes were trained on her papers but she was smiling, shaking her head.

“Bullshit,” Chloe all but sang. “Will Sumner doesn’t have any women in his life that are
just
friends, outside of family and the two of us.”

“This is true,” Sara reluctantly agreed.

I didn’t say anything, just turned and began searching through my drawers for a sweater. I could feel Chloe watching me, though, could feel the pressure of her gaze against the back of my head. I’d never had a lot of female friends—and I’d definitely never had one like Chloe Mills—but even I was smart enough to be a little afraid of her. I got the distinct impression that even
Bennett
was a little afraid of her.

I found the cardigan I’d been hunting for and slipped it over my favorite
Firefly
T-shirt, doing my best to keep my expression neutral and my head free of anything Will-related that ventured outside of the friend zone. Something told me these two would see through that in a second.

“How long have you guys known each other?” Sara asked. “He and Max go way back, but I’ve only known him since I moved to New York.”

“Same here,” Chloe added. “Spill, Bergstrom. He’s too smug and we need some ammo.”

I laughed, grateful for the semi-shift in topic. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, you knew him when he was in college. Was he a giant dork? Please say he was in the chess club or something,” Chloe said, hopeful.

“Ha,
no
. I’m pretty sure he was the guy who turned eighteen and all of the moms wanted to bang.” I frowned, considering. “Actually, I think I might have heard that exact story from Jensen. . . .”

“Max said something about him dating your sister?” Sara asked.

I chewed on my lip and shook my head. “They hooked up once over a holiday, but I think they just made out. He met my oldest brother, Jensen, on their first day of college, and then he lived with us and worked with my dad after graduation. I’m the youngest, so I didn’t really hang around with them that much other than at meals.”

“Stop evading,” Chloe said, narrowing her eyes. “You have to know more.”

I laughed. “Let’s see, he’s the youngest, too. He has two sisters who are way older than him, but I’ve never met them. I get the feeling he was sort of mothered a lot. I remember hearing him talk one time about how his parents are both physicians, and they divorced long before he was born. Years later, they met up at a medical conference, got drunk, and reconnected for one night . . .”

“And boom. Will,” Sara guessed.

I nodded slowly. “Yeah. But his mom raised him. So,
his sisters are twelve and fourteen years older than he is. He was their little baby.”

“Well, that would explain why he thinks women were put on this earth to cater to him,” Chloe added, flopping on the bed next to Sara.

That didn’t sit right with me, and I sat down, shaking my head. “I don’t know if it’s that. I think he just really,
really
likes women. And they seem to like him, too,” I added. “He grew up surrounded by women so he knows how they think, what they want to hear.”