Free The 90 Day Rule by Diane Nelson

bringing along the players, how to teach sportsmanship, staying off the gnarly topics. Being just guys. And colleagues.
    Eventually I started to yawn, Jack cleaned away the dishes and suggested he ought to get me home before my daughter and Chazz called out the cavalry.
    I dressed and finally stood by the door.
    Jack scooped the truck keys out of a dish and loomed near enough to be a second skin. I suspected what was coming.
    “I want to kiss you, Jes. Will you let me?”
    The right answer was no because if he did, I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to stave off the inevitable next question. Or even wait for him to ask it.
    Jes Cavanaugh was needy. In lust. And possibly falling in love.
    That seemed a huge step past ‘like’.
    He never gave me time to ponder the issue. Palming my face he lowered his mouth to mine, tenderly brushing my lips. It was chaste, friendly.
    And then it wasn’t.
    Moaning, he pressed me against the door, his chest crushing me as he assaulted my mouth, his tongue demanding entrance, sweeping away any resistance with sure, sensuous strokes. It left me faint and breathless, my heartbeat thready.
    He hissed, “Christ Almighty, I want you.”
    That made two of us and the Halleluiah Chorus singing backup. The only noises I made were simple gasps and moans.
    He didn’t seem to mind.
    When it appeared I might pass out from lack of air, Jack said, “I better get you home before I do something we’ll both regret.”
    I had a half hour to mull that over as he drove me slowly, reluctantly, back to town. When he wasn’t shifting, he held my left hand, his thumb doing sinful, sensual things to the palm. Suggestive things. Things that I translated to other body parts.
    For the second day in a row, he pulled in front of the apartment building. The harsh glow from the halogen streetlights and the fluorescent glare spilling out of the entrance to the building did little to mask the hunger in his eyes.
    Shutting the door I leaned in the window and said, “You’re wrong, you know.”
    “About what?”
    “Splitting infinitives.”
    “Uh…”
    “I happened to like the dangly bits.”
    When I turned away I was pretty sure he was blushing.
     
    ****
     
    Etty left a light on for me but her bedroom door was closed and I heard the rasp of snores. Deep manly snores.
    Good. Chazz had stayed over. I really needed to find my own place. And soon. Their hearts were in the right place, giving me refuge, but even I knew I was overstaying my welcome. I had the means … and now I had an excuse.
    I went about the task of making up the bed, my thoughts both scattered and intensely focused.
    A shower might have been a good idea but the aromas from the hot tub, the bite of bromine and Jack’s musky male scent combined to tantalize my nose, like a fine bouquet that lingers in still humid air. That wasn’t all that lingered. Bits and bobs of flesh remained painfully engorged, expectant in a manner totally alien to me. Skin stretched over too tight muscles, nerve endings like shards of glass broken into jagged pieces sent jabs of sensation along every slip of flesh he’d touched.
    My tongue moistened my upper lip, then retreated, the memory of his assault brutalizing my resolve.
    I pulled at the rings, no longer sure that I needed to play by rules that had forsaken me. The one slipped off—the half carat in platinum relinquishing ownership with reluctance. I set it on the end table, my oath halfway surrendered. I’d … it had given me leave to misbehave. Symbolically. That might be enough for a man like Jack Ryan.
    It wasn’t enough for me.
     
    ****
     
    Chazz chugged his orange juice and listened to whoever was issuing instructions on the other end of the line.
    I giggled at my old-fashioned notions of landlines.
    Clicking the cell shut, Chazz said, “Coach wants for me to take you to the admin building, get you registered and then you can meet with Coach Bryant and set up a schedule with him.”
    “Was that Jack, um,