The Team's Milk Cow novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Leak
At 2 a.m. in the camp kitchen, the winless captain sees milk soak through Harlow's jacket and puts his mouth on her; he says he will be back if he scores.
At two in the morning the national team's kitchen belonged to me.
I was the overnight baker, hired three weeks earlier to make the bread, the protein muffins and the four hundred pancakes the squad ate before training.
The head chef slept days and left me a list on the steel counter every night.
I liked it that way.
Nobody saw me at two in the morning, and nobody saw what my shirt did when I got worked up.
I had a pituitary growth the size of a pea.
It was benign, the doctors said, and it made my breasts leak milk whenever I was stressed or turned on.
I wasn't pregnant and I never had been.
I wore pads under a baggy white chef's jacket and I worked nights so I never had to explain it.
That night I was kneading dough for the morning rolls when the kitchen door swung open.
I knew who it was before I turned around.
Everyone in the country knew his face.
Mercer Halloran, the captain, the striker, the man who had gone nine national games without a single goal.
He wore a grey training shirt and sweatpants, and he looked like he hadn't slept in a week.
"Sorry," he said.
"I couldn't be in the room anymore."
"The kitchen is for staff only," I said.
"I'll leave in a minute."
He went to the fridge and drank orange juice straight from the carton, which I decided to let go.
His throat moved when he swallowed.
He was tall and lean and his nose had been broken once and set a little crooked.
I knew I should go back to my dough.
Instead I watched a drop of juice slide down his chin.
That was my mistake.
My chest tightened.
I felt the warm rush start under the jacket and I thought, not now, not him.
I pressed my forearm against myself and turned to the counter.
"You're good at that," Mercer said behind me.
"At what?"
"Ignoring people."
"It's a skill."
He laughed, a short rough sound.
Then he came closer to look at the dough, and he stood right behind my shoulder.
I could smell his soap and the cold of the night on his shirt.
My nipples hardened against the lace.
The jacket was thin, and the milk came through it all at once.
Two dark wet circles spread across the white cotton in front of both of us.
I couldn't stop it.
I stood there with my hands in the dough and my face on fire.
"Oh," Mercer said very quietly.
"Don't," I said.
"Please don't say anything."
He didn't say anything.
He looked at the wet cotton, then at my face, then back down.
His eyes went dark, and I felt that look all the way down my stomach.
"Is that what I think it is?" he asked.
"It's a medical condition."
"I'm not pregnant, I'm not anything, it's just a gland, and if you tell anyone I will put you in a bread oven."
"I won't tell anyone."
His voice had dropped.
"Harlow, right? That's what your badge says."
"That's what my badge says."
"Harlow," he said again, like he was tasting it.
I should have stepped away.
He was the captain of the national team and I was a woman who made rolls.
There was a rule about this somewhere, and I couldn't remember it.
His hand lifted and stopped an inch from the wet cotton.
I took his wrist and pressed his palm flat against my breast.
He made a sound low in his throat.
The cotton was soaked and warm, and his hand was big and rough, and the milk kept coming under his fingers.
"Fuck," he said.
"Does it feel like that for you?"
"It feels like I'm going to die," I said, and I meant it.
He squeezed once, slowly.
I gasped and my head fell back.
The milk ran down the side of his hand and dripped from his wrist onto my floor.
"Look at me," he said.
I looked at him.
"You're going to stand right there," Mercer said, "and let me take this off you."
It wasn't a question, and I wanted it more than I'd ever wanted anything.
I nodded.
He undid the buttons one at a time, with the patience of a man who had taken penalties in front of eighty thousand people.
The jacket fell open.
My bra was black lace, soaked through, and it stuck to me.
He pulled one cup down with his thumb.
My breast spilled out, heavy and full, the nipple dark and dripping.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered.
He bent his head and closed his mouth over it.
I cried out and grabbed his hair.
His tongue was hot and he sucked hard, and I felt the milk pull out of me in long hard pulses that went straight between my legs.
He swallowed.
I felt him swallow.
I had never had anyone do this.
I had hidden it from every man I'd ever dated, and the first mouth on me was a stranger's, in my own kitchen, with flour on my hands.
"Mercer," I said.
"Please."
He moved to the other side and did the same, and I came apart.
He kept one arm around my waist and the other hand between my thighs, rubbing me through my work pants, hard and exactly right.
I rode his hand against the counter, shaking, with his mouth full of me.
When I came, I came so hard my knees gave out, and he caught me and held me up.
He lifted his head.
His mouth was wet and there was a drop of white at the corner of his lip.
He licked it away.
"Sweet," he said.
"It's sweet."
I couldn't speak.
He stood very close with his forehead against mine and a hard line pressed against my hip that he made no attempt to hide.
"I have a match in the morning," he said.
"I haven't scored in nine games."
"I know," I said.
"Everyone knows."
"If I score tomorrow," Mercer said, "I'm coming back here tonight."
His thumb moved across my wet lip.
"And I won't be doing it with my hand on the outside of your pants."
He kissed my forehead, which was somehow worse.
Then he went out through the swinging door and left it moving behind him.
I stood in my open jacket with milk running down my stomach and flour in my hair.
The dough sat on the counter, and I had never in my life been so awake.
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