Page 5

HALLIE

A handful of days after Solace took me to the bus—I wouldn’t let him take me home—from our night in the gym, I swore my legs still shook whenever he walked into the office. Or the kitchen, or whatever room I was in at the time. His looks never changed, always watching, always careful, unless we were alone. Then they grew heated and, well, so did everything else.

Not that we hid anything—the team and WAGS and office knew something was going on between us—because he seemed to gravitate toward me, or just plain stalked me every time I moved. But he never touched me or kissed me in plain view out of respect of my plea not to jeopardize the job I still wasn’t sure if I loved or hated, except that it allowed me more time near him.

Nor had I forgotten that he told me he loved me that night, though he hadn’t said anything similar since. I appreciated that…maybe. Solace’s silence confused the shit out of me. As always, no pressure, a respectful distance while I made up my own mind. Until we were together—then he was the filthiest, dirtiest player out there.

Forcing my thoughts back to my work for the day I topped up my coffee in the kitchen, all too aware he leaned against the wall opposite, shrinking the small room.

“You gonna come home with me tonight, beautiful?” he asked in a low voice.

I checked over my shoulder to ensure that we were alone, but no one else socialized around us, for once. A rare moment. I unscrewed and rescrewed the top of my coffee thermos for something to do.

He offered the same thing every night since we had sex in the gym, but I hadn’t had the courage to say yes to him yet. The disappointment on his face that night had been brief, but it was there when I asked him to take me to the bus in a voice that wouldn't stop shaking. I wasn't sure if I was going to cry or explode, but everything with him, as per usual, was so big and huge and overwhelming.

I needed time to myself and I wasn’t ready to capitalize on whatever this was fast becoming. Because I’d been here before and my heart broke. So yeah, I was scared it would happen again.

Same environment, same puck bunnies in attendance.

Or at least, close enough.

“I thought we didn’t do this at work?” I murmured, stalling for time with the top of my thermos again.

Solace detached himself from the wall in my periphery and stalked closer. His enormous, inked hand closed over mine. “You’ll break it if you do that, you know,” he murmured. “And then I’ll owe you more than a dozen pairs of your favourite tights.”

I blinked up at him. “Why do I need a dozen?”

His smile was downright sinful. “So I can destroy them whenever the fuck I want, beautiful.”

His fingertips grazed my cheek before he cupped the back of my neck, massaging there firmly, keeping his touch gentle. I loved that about him, that he knew not to scare me when I asked him not to, but that he seemed to know when to push that boundary for both of us.

The sex was incredible. Life rending. Amazing. After him, there would be no one else. I knew that. Yet I couldn't bring myself to believe that he wouldn’t be like the last player who toyed with my heart so freely.

“We weren’t doing this at work, remember?” I said softly, tilting my head back, though I didn't quite pull away, letting a warning tone slide into my voice.

Solace nodded, though he didn’t stop. Nor did I expect him to, really. “I remember. I also remember telling you I loved you, and that you’re mine.” His tone held a fierce edge to it, engaging a battle of wills in a quiet space.

My heart stopped for a fraction of a second then restarted. I coughed a little and he took the opportunity to draw me closer, liberating my thermos and catching both my hands in one of his.

“Please, not here,” I begged.

His eyes darkened. “Tonight, and I’ll make you beg for something else.”

Before I could stop him, his head dipped and his mouth covered mine in a deep kiss that left me shaking on my feet.

“You shouldn’t?—”

“I don’t want to not have you when I want,” he muttered against my mouth.

I shook my head, my curls hitting my cheeks. “I’m not your toy, Solace,” I whispered back.

“But I want to play with you,” he countered.

My heart shattered in my chest. I tugged my wrists free of his hold and miraculously, he let me go. “Toys get replaced. Set aside. I’ve been the toy that was left. You know that.” I turned my head away, horrified when my vision blurred.

His hand at my neck turned my head back. Damnit, I couldn't escape him at all. “You’re not who I’ll ever be bored of Hallie. I promise.” His dark eyes bored into mine, and I so desperately wanted to believe him.

“What if you just don’t know yet?” I couldn't take that heartbreak again. I knew I couldn't. “The last time… it hurt so bad.” I couldn’t believe I was saying this to anyone, let alone him.

A cough at his back stiffened his body. “What do you want?”

“Just the coffee, Solace,” a sugary sweet voice I knew that I knew too well floated over us like a cloud of sticky cotton candy.

I broke back from Solace with a gasp to find two gold talons curled into his bicep.

She can get her fingers around his shoulder better than I can .

My rational thought was obliterated as I found his eyes, the discontent there. He shrugged her hand off, his mouth turned down.

“This is my girl's coffee. The other stuff’s over there,” Solace dismissed her without another look.

It can’t be. Don’t check.

But I had to, peeking about his shoulder. Kylie Smart, the same OW in my relationship with Travis smiled back at me, baring fangs I swore had been sharpened since the last time I saw her years ago. Somehow her body looked more toned, more golden. Even her hair was blonder. The line of her jaw stood out as more angular.

I had no idea how that was possible, but the girl who gave me so much grief and cost me a broken heart as well as a broken relationship stood in the same damn room as me, and just had her claws in my man.

My man.

I shouldn’t have looked.

“Hallie,” Solace murmured. Concern and authority laced his voice. “Talk to me.”

I shook my head, pushing at his chest then his shoulder when he wouldn’t budge. “Let me out.”

He sighed and stepped back, his fingers trailing my wrist. “Tonight?”

I shook my head, kept my eyes on my floor and scurried back to my desk, setting up my work for the afternoon behind a towering in tray that thankfully allowed me to hide from everyone else. Kylie didn’t approach me. I called that a win, but then the doubts crept in. I walked away from Solace. She had her hands on him. The familiar tendrils of panic latched into my heart, all too ready in shred mode as I sat frozen at my desk, and didn’t leave.

I hid. Because I couldn’t see that, not again.

Solace didn’t approach me for the rest of the day. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Nor did I see him when I headed for my bus, my single footsteps my only company for once.

When I got home to my cat, Mica, my hands shook so much I could barely feed her. Shaking and crying stupidly over something that happened so long ago. Something I thought I’d managed to extricate myself from.

Stumbling into my room without turning on a single light, I sat on my bed, thumbing through my phone. Travis’s number sat right below Solace’s. I held my breath as I ran the pad of my finger over the screen. Calling him would be ludicrous. We didn’t part on good terms, and calling him now would look like begging.

Shaking my head I tossed my phone onto my bedside table, then remembered to charge it. I yanked my clothes off over my head, slipped into bed without eating to Mica’s greatest disgrace, and tried to fall asleep.

Sometime after midnight, I half woke from a dose of a half-dream, half horrendous nightmarish memory about a puck bunny in a pink dress and gold nails wrapped around Solace to realise I hadn’t sent him a message to say I’d gotten home safely. I rolled over, knocking Mica off the bed. She mewled piteously and leapt off the mattress. Her feet pattered across my floor as she slipped out of the bedroom door to find somewhere else to sleep for the rest of the night, leaving me alone and feeling more guilty than ever.

I flicked the screen on my phone and nearly blinded myself. Two AM. It was way too late for me to message a man and risk waking him. Especially someone like Solace who went home the last thing at night and got up hellishly early to be there when I opened the office too. I couldn’t wake him now, if he even cared after the way I blew him off.

Fresh tears tracked my cheeks, the overwhelm of the whole week leaving me shuddering and alone through the coldest hours of the night. I pressed my cheek to the cold pillow, and tried not to remember the night that the last hockey player brought home a puck bunny to the bed we shared because he’d been drunk enough to forget I lived there too.

* * *

I opened my door the next morning—well, the same morning, really—grumpy, tired and bitching about leaving my thermos in the Chimera’s kitchen. I was still muttering about it while pushing Mica’s head back in the door so she didn’t escape and so distracted that I nearly screamed at the behemoth standing right on my freaking doorstep.

“Holy shit, Solace.” I thwacked him with the back of my free hand and hurt myself. That earned him another glare that he fully deserved. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought you said you weren’t a screamer.” He surveyed me with a tired smile, though his eyes travelled over my body hungrily. No change there. His rumpled clothes were, though. “No tights today, huh?”

I cocked a hip, pleased when Mica’s fluffy head finally squished back in where it should be, and my door locked. “Someone wrecked my best ones.”

He braced an arm over my head, pushing my freshly filled coffee thermos into my hands. “I promised you I’d get you more.” His eyes searched mine.

I swallowed and stared back, unsure what this was exactly as I spotted his yellow sports coupe parked right out front of my rental townhouse. “Thank you for getting me coffee.” Then my mind thunked into place without its usual caffeinated morning lubricant. “Wait, have you been out here all night?”

He shrugged. “I wanted to make sure you got home alright.”

I gaped at him guppie style. “I woke up at two in the morning and felt so guilty. If I’d known, I would have—” I closed my mouth with a snap.

His eyes glittered at me. “Hallie, are you telling me I should have been camping out here all week rather than pining for you at home and edging fuck out of myself when I couldn’t have you, beautiful?” The predator in him rose to full heat.

I backed into my door, flattening myself to the scarred wood, but there was no way around him. “Solace, you’re too much, sometimes,” I murmured, my breaths coming short.

“Only sometimes, huh?” He caught my chin with his knuckles and grazed his mouth over mine. “Did you eat last night?” That came out as a demand.

I bit my lip and shook my head. “No.”

He nodded. “I didn’t think so. I watched you go inside, and the place stayed dark. My heart fucking shattered, Hallie. I came so close to pounding on that door until you answered, but I didn't wanna scare you.”

My vision of him blurred. “I wish you had.”

“Christ.” His arms dropped, folding around me and my thermos. Mica pawed and mewled at the door from the other side frantically. “Hell, I’m scaring your other pussy.”

I giggled in his arms, resting my head against his chest. The rhythmic beat of his heat, strong and slow, settled me as I breathed at the same rate. My arms tightened around him. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have slept rough because of me.”

“But I did.” He tangled his fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp. “You know why.”

I nodded, knowing what he’d say and weirdly, I didn’t need to hear it anymore. I’d kind of come to accept who he was and how we were in the last hours, though my heart still bore the scars another man left in the same place.

“This is scary to me,” I whispered. “It hurt so much last time.”

“Not gonna happen,” he said firmly, crushing me to him.

“Coffee cup,” I choked out, managing a breath when he released me.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, pulling my clothes right. “Have we got time to get you some breakfast before we go in?”

I stared at him, my mouth falling open. “But you have training this morning. Then practice. And a commercial that films at nine.”

He grinned at me. “Beautiful, you know my schedule better than I do.”

I shrugged. “I kind of know the whole team’s schedule. It’s my job.”

He frowned, and I hurried to remove it from his face, smoothing the deep lines with my fingers.

“No, it's not that I don’t stalk your schedule. I do… Actually, I always have. And your stats. You know, when you beat Newtown? That was your best game of the season. We were trounced. Seventeen saves, Solace. That put you at a .937, you know that? I mean you guys were coming off a buck’s night, and Coach was furious, but whatever. It made you top of the league, saves percentage wise. You still can’t be beat.” I stopped rambling when he stared at me, bemused. “What?”

“Why aren’t you my PA? Or on our management team? Why are you wasted running over whatever the fuck you do hiding behind paperwork all day long?” His soft voice rocked my world on its axis.

I nibbled my lip. “You really mean it, don’t you?”

He didn’t have to ask what I meant, knowing I wasn’t talking about work. “Yeah, Hallie. I do.”

My eyes shuttered as I sucked in a long breath. “Okay. Let’s try this thing.”

“Yeah?” The way his voice lifted left me grinning.

I pushed his shoulder with my thermos. “Breakfast, Solace. I’m talking about breakfast.”

His laugh stayed with me all the way to his car, his hand wrapped around mine. In the end we got drive through with sparkling tea and egg and bacon wraps that I drooled all over, knowing it wasn’t part of his nutritional chart.

Solace threw the whole schedule out the window literally, driving us to the Point that overlooked the bay and the ships coming around the top of the headland.

His arm slung around my shoulder, we ate in relative silence, me snuggled into him, picking cat fur off my bottle green skirt when I ran out of things to do with my hands. After a while he sighed and covered my fingers with his, stopping my incessant picking.

“You know, I have to take you shopping,” he said in a tight voice.

“Why?” I frowned at him and down at my skirt. “I like this one.”

“Yeah, so do I,” he said ruefully. “But if I have to watch the team stare at your bare legs today, I’m not gonna be much of a defender for them, beautiful. Just you.” He kissed the tip of my nose, then my cheeks and finally my mouth, long and slow and deep, laying the seat back until his body covered mine and his hand slid beneath my skirt.

I moaned softly into his mouth, digging my nails into his arms. “We need to get to work,” I murmured, gasping as he flicked my panties aside.

“Yeah, in a bit.” He frowned down at me. “I spent the whole fucking night in this car, you know,” he said slowly, running his fingers through my pussy lips, collecting the copious amount of moisture there. “Worrying about you.” He kissed me hard. “Desperate for you.” Another kiss. “All I wanted was to fold you in my arms, kiss the shit out of you, and know you were safe. Mine,” he growled, a taste of his darkness descending over his eyes.

I opened my mouth to object that his discomfort wasn’t all my fault, but that was as far as I got.

Two thick fingers speared straight inside me, working fast and hard. Fluid coated the insides of my thighs as I cried out into his mouth that crushed mine. My hips bucked up. I arched, knowing I’d come for him in less than a seco?—

His hand withdrew and he gripped the inside of my thigh painfully, pulling the tender flesh up. Then he released his grip and smacked me with an open palm. The sound ricocheted around the inside of his car.

“Don’t you leave me wanting you like that. Scared for you. Fuck, beautiful,” he muttered dangerously. “I spent the night with a broken heart, not sure you’d want me again.”

“Me too,” I whispered, wincing when he slapped the inside of my other thigh, spotting how far down his finger marks would be. “Whoa, stop,” I panicked. “They’ll see.”

“No,” he ground out. “I fucking well won’t stop. Today you wear my marks. Today you’re mine, Hallie. If they see, then they fucking see .” He slapped me again, this time right on my pussy.

I screamed, arching back as his hand clamped around the stinging, swollen flesh. “Solace, please?—”

“Is that what you want, Hallie, for me to give you relief?” Dark eyes glittered above me as his fingers sank deeper into my swollen, tingling flesh. “Beg for relief, Hallie. Beg for Solace.”

My mind swirled as I parted my legs wider, words tumbling from my lips. “Please. Please, can I come, Solace. Please–” I gasped at another slap, this one softer, more playful.

“Rub against me,” he ordered. “Show me how much you want it.”

I whimpered, arching up to push myself against his fingers. There . That spot, right freaking there. “Oh, God,” I cried, working my hips frantically. “Please, Solace,” I gasped, tipping my head back, needing his mouth on mine.

His gaze bore into mine as his hand drifted away. “No.”

I froze, mid-air hump. “What?”

“No.” His smile was full of sin and an edge of cruelty I'd seen there before. “Fuck, girl. I might love you, but last night hurt. Today you ache for me, and tonight we fix this. Is that understood?”

I stared up at him, remembering his pledge that first night we walked to the bus together.

I’ll teach you denial. How to cry for me.

As if called upon, a single tear dripped free from the corner of my eye. Satisfaction lit his face as he leaned down and licked it up.

“Fuck, you taste good,” he murmured, finally caving and giving me the kiss I needed, holding my legs open but not touching me. “Tonight, beautiful. I promise. We will work this through together, okay?”

I nodded, sobbing out a gasp as he traced the marks he left on my inner thighs. “You won’t let me change or wear tights, will you?” I asked, already knowing the answer and dreading it.

“No.” That same smile played at the corners of his lips, possessive. Obsessive. “You are mine, beautiful. Now they’ll know it.” He straightened my seat, winding my seatbelt around me and tucked my hair tenderly behind my ears, all the while tracing the marks he left on me.

“So goddamn beautiful.”

Somewhere in my heart, a warmth replaced the ache left there by fear so long ago. It was like if he kept saying it, I might actually start believing him.