Page 19

NINETEEN

Rowan

It’s heartbreaking to watch Alaska win game six in double overtime. The guys played so hard but it just wasn’t enough.

So now we’re on to game seven, where it’ll be do or die.

Everyone is fairly dejected as we head back to the hotel, and I go straight to my room. I want to shower and relax. Blake scored two goals, but I know some of the guys are talking about having a few drinks, so I figure I won’t see him tonight. I don’t think we had a plan in place for scoring two goals and losing…

I’ve just gotten out of the shower when I hear a knock on my door and I pad in that direction, peering out of the peephole.

Blake .

He’s obviously as sexually motivated as ever.

I quickly open the door and tug him inside before anyone can see him. “Hi,” I say. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going drinking?”

He arches his brows and slowly looks me up and down. “You think I’d rather go drinking with the boys than go down on you? Seriously?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure… I didn’t think two goals would come with a loss .”

“Tell me about it.” He sinks down on the edge of the bed, all playfulness suddenly gone. “I’m sure my dad is having a field day with this.”

“Hey.” I walk over and sit beside him. “This was not your fault. You played your ass off. You didn’t draw any of the penalties. You scored two goals. You were out there for a long time—this really isn’t on anyone. You guys played hard as a team. They played a tiny bit harder. But it’s not quantifiable. It’s just part of the game.”

“I know.” He leans forward, resting his forearms on his thighs.

“How about a massage?” I ask softly.

“You do enough of that at work,” he says. “You don’t need to do it when you’re relaxing.”

“But I want to.” I stand up and let the robe I’ve been wearing slowly fall off my shoulders, down my back, and eventually puddle at my feet. “And I promise—I don’t give naked massages at work .”

“Fuck, I hope not. No one would ever want to do anything else.” His eyes darken as he looks me up and down again. “You are fucking beautiful.”

“Thank you, but for this to work, you have to be naked too.”

“That’s not a problem.” He stands up and quickly sheds his clothes.

“Now, face down on the bed,” I say. “Go on.”

“But I can’t see you if I’m face down,” he protests.

“No… but you’ll be able to feel me.”

He lays down and I crawl onto the bed after him, straddling his hips. There’s a faint red spot forming on one of his shoulders and I run my hands over it. “This from that hit in the first overtime?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Does it hurt?” I put a little pressure on it.

“Not much, no.”

“We can ice it later if it gets sore.”

“Okay.”

I start working my knuckles in the center of his back, making my way down his spine. There are a few pops as I increase pressure, and I slowly work my way back up. I press my fingers into a knot I can see beneath one of his shoulder blades and dig in, knowing it’ll be sore but hopefully he’ll get a little relief too.

“Fuck, baby, that’s nice.” He reaches down where one of my knees is pressed against his hips, rests his hand on the side. “Your skin is so soft. I love touching you.”

“I like touching you too.” I move to the back of his neck, digging my fingers into the fleshy parts just inside his hairline. I feel the goose bumps break out on his skin and lean down to press a light kiss on the area I’m massaging.

“Mmm. Kiss me some more.”

I drop down and adjust my position so I’m lying fully on top of him. He’s bigger than I am, and when I scoot down a little, I can kiss his neck, shoulders, and arms.

“Here?” I whisper, skimming my lips across the curve of his neck. “Or maybe here…” I drag my lips to the back of his shoulder. “Or is this a better spot?” I lightly suck on the side of his neck.

“Mark me, baby.” He rumbles out a laugh.

“And how will you explain that to your teammates when they see it in the locker room?”

“I don’t have to explain shit.” He abruptly flips over, taking me with him and landing on top of me so our positions are now reversed. “My hickeys are no one’s business but my own. And now, after an amazing massage, I owe you an orgasm or five.”

“Five?” I bat my eyelashes. “I love when you talk orgasm to me.”

He dips his head and fuses his mouth to mine. No matter how many times we do this, the butterflies in my stomach always make it feel like the first time again.

Our tongues do a slow, glorious tango, mouths moving together with practiced precision. I will always love how he kisses me.

“I know I owe your pussy a good licking, but I just want to be inside of you,” he breathes against my mouth.

“I want that too.” I hesitate, but the next words come out before I can stop them. “I’m protected against pregnancy. We don’t need a condom unless you’re actively fucking other women because I haven’t been with anyone in months.”

“It’s been a while for me too.” He lifts his head so he can look into my eyes. “You’re sure?”

“I want to feel you bare inside me.”

He crashes his mouth to mine, kissing me hard and deep and as passionately as anyone ever has. And while he’s doing it, he slides into me with one firm, smooth thrust. He bottoms out and everything stops. The kissing, our bodies, probably the entire world. Everything is nothing, reduced to the two of us, bodies linked together, eyes and hands locked.

There’s so much I want to say, but that would mean venturing into dangerous emotional territory. And right now, I don’t want to think. I just want to feel. Enjoy.

“Your pussy was made just for me,” he grinds out between kisses.

“Then make it yours again.”

I’m not sure what that means or what he takes it to mean, but he pulls out and drives into me with so much force I can’t discern whether it’s painful or the most erotic thing I’ve ever experienced. Each thrust is harder, deeper, faster—until I can’t breathe or think or do anything but… let him .

Just like I always have.

Our hands are still linked, and he manages to get them over my head so I’m completely stretched out beneath him, and then he takes me even harder. Rougher. With practiced strokes that make me feel more alive than I have in years. I’m so wet, I can hear him sliding through my slickness, and it just makes it hotter.

“Fuck, you’re so tight.” He’s broken out in a sweat, we both have, and our bodies are slapping together in time to his thrusts.

“Blake!” I squirm, fighting against his hands because I want to move, touch him, reciprocate somehow, but he’s got me pinned and all I can do is continue to take it.

“Come for me, baby… let me feel that perfect cunt gush for me.”

His words, his cock, the way he’s holding me—it all culminates in a plethora of sensations. My body rears up to meet his, our eyes lock once again, the coiling in my belly gets tighter and tighter… and then the dam breaks, my orgasm crashing over both of us. He rides it with me, slamming into me with continued and unexpected ferocity, until we can’t wring another ounce of pleasure from each other.

Satisfaction washes over me in the aftermath.

I’m positive I’ve never been so well-fucked, not by him and certainly not by anyone else.

“If you could bottle that, you’d be a billionaire,” I say, relishing in the warmth of his body still covering mine.

“If I could bottle it, that’s all we’d ever do—fuck and bottle.”

I smile at the thought and then a disappointed sigh escapes me when he finally releases my hands. He rolls onto his back and brings me with him, so I’m nestled against his side. Then we just lie there in silence, legs intertwined, heartbeats gradually returning to normal. He strokes my arm, occasionally pressing soft kisses on my forehead and along my hairline.

“You make me want to be a better man,” he says quietly.

I want to lift my head, look at him, try to read into that statement—but I’m far too sated and comfortable to actually do it. So I run my hand along his chest in slow circles instead. “What makes you say that?”

“When I’m with you, I don’t care about what my dad thinks, or what’s going to happen when the playoffs are over, or what’s next in my career. I can just be me. I’m not a minor leaguer who never made it, or a college dropout, or anything else—I’m just Blake.”

“Are you not Blake the rest of the time?” I ask softly.

“There’s very few times I can be Blake,” he admits. “With my sister, my mom, a handful of friends… but it’s rare.”

“How come?”

“Because almost no one knows me. I stopped letting people get close a long time ago. My dad sees me as this failure who didn’t live up to his potential. I know some of my college teammates do too. The younger guys on the Rebels kind of feel bad for me, like I’m the guy at the end of his career who’s never going to make it to the big-time.”

“Don’t you have close friends, though? Like Bodi?”

He shrugs. “Bodi’s the only one I call a genuine friend, and there’s a couple of guys from back home that I don’t see very often, but that’s about it. There are people who act like they’re my friend, guys I meet at the gym in the off-season… they want me to train them so they can say they train with a pro athlete. But they don’t care about me. And as long as they pay well, I don’t care. They just don’t qualify as friends.”

“I’m sorry.” I nestle closer, unsure what else I can say. It sounds so… lonely. And I don’t remember him being lonely when we were kids.

“Not your fault I’m a fuck-up.” He huffs out a sigh. “It’s been that way since college. I was always chasing something… that elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you know? No matter how hard or how fast I ran, or what direction I went, I never got there.”

“But this is the pot of gold…isn’t it? The Phantoms? The NHL?”

“If I play so well that they miraculously offer me a contract for next season, yes. If not, then it’s all just another dead end.”

“Then you go out there and make sure they notice you—so they have no choice but to offer you a contract.”

“If anything, I’ll get invited to training camp, where I’ll have to prove myself all over again.”

“But you can do it. You’re strong and talented and have a good head for the game. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

“Every guy in the league has those attributes—and more. And a lot of them are younger, stronger, faster.”

“You can’t worry about that. You focus on what you can control.”

“I’m trying, darlin’.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help—training or whatever—let me know.”

“I don’t want to think about all that,” he says after a moment. “I want to hold the beautiful woman I just made love to and think about how many times I’m going to fuck her before breakfast.”

“You can do both, you know.”

“Not if I’m going to make you come five times, like I promised.”

“You need to rest. Five times in one night is for the off-season.”

He chuckles, but then we’re quiet again.

The weird thing is, it’s not uncomfortable. It’s like we’re picking up right where we left off. It makes no sense, and yet, it feels right.

A few minutes pass, and I feel him shift. He uses his hand to lift my chin so we’re facing each other, and I swear the look in his eyes is the kind of thing fairytales are made of—worship, adoration, and things I’m too scared to try to analyze right now. “I don’t know if I’ve said it before now,” he says in his deep voice, “but I’ve really missed you.”

My heart melts.

This guy is so, so dangerous. I don’t think there’s anything I can do to stop whatever this is that we’ve started.

And tonight, I’m not even going to try.

“I’ve missed you too.”