Cross Crease (On The Edge Book 3)

by Elizabeth Hartey

  Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not a saint. The farthest thing from it. Any other time, with any other woman, I wouldn’t think twice about getting busy worshipping at the altar of her pussy. It’s a gift knowing how to worship a woman’s pussy in a way she’ll never forget, and I’ve been blessed with the talent. And I never have to work at finding a willing recipient. The right glance and in no time some chick is riding my dick like a world-class rodeo champion. Don’t start with the ‘cocky jerk’ comments. Women love me, and I’m not ashamed to say it.

  I’ll also admit, without shame, I like having sex anytime, anywhere as long as it’s with a consenting woman—sometimes more than one consenting woman at the same time. But never more than once with the same woman…or women. There’s a planet full of hot choices out there. I’m not about to dine on the same meal every night, if you get my meaning. Maybe it sounds cold to you ladies. I make no apologies because I always make sure the women I’ve fucked walk away—with some difficulty—feeling like queens. But the game rules are, they have to walk away.

  I’m not interested in long-term unless it’s a hockey contract. I excised emotional sensitivity and monogamous devotion from my DNA a long time ago when it became a necessity for survival. Sex had only been a means to survive in the past, no emotions, no attachments. Just payment for services rendered. Sex for me now is the same, minus the payment: numb brain and heart but fiery physical release.

  Getting attached to someone else, expecting them to be there for you is for fairytales, not real life—unless you don’t mind being screwed over and crushed. I mind. Been there. Done that.

  Now, to get back to the hot little firecracker strutting down the beach. Pippa. Dak’s baby sister. Although, at the moment, she doesn’t look like anyone’s baby sister. The teeny weeny almost non-existent bikini she’s barely wearing is showing off all her newly acquired, brain- stupefying curves and long tan legs which would feel perfect wrapped around my waist while I pound into her. Fuck. Everything I’m thinking is so wrong—even for me. I may have been blessed by the gods in certain areas but that big of a dick I’m not.

  “Keep up, loser. Or are you chickening out?” Pip turns and continues to walk backward as she taunts me.

  “Loser? Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m coming,” I yell back. But if I were coming, she’d be the one screaming my name and dropping over the edge so hard she wouldn’t be able to walk, let alone keep up.

  What the fuck is wrong with me? I have got to get my blood cells to take a return trip from my dick back into the head on my shoulders. This can never happen between us.

  I’ve known Pip was crushing on me for years. It was apparent ever since the first time I met the nervous little girl when we were moving into our college house four years ago.

  I remember thinking she couldn’t be real, just a beautiful figment of my seriously deranged mind. A storybook princess, all silky dark hair, golden skin, and intense turquoise eyes which sent the demons in my soul running away in fear. Who the hell has turquoise eyes? Something about her rocked my world. I had to say something to her. The cheesy line I teased her with shocked me even more than the way I was drawn to her.

  But Heaven was just a kid back then, and she’s still just an innocent kid, even if she is going to be nineteen soon. I know all about her innocence because she confides in me during our late-night texting or video chat sessions. It’s devilish irony I should be the one she examines her virginity with…well, not examines. I don’t examine her virginity. I talk to her about it.

  Ever since she turned eighteen, she’s had a single-minded vocation—to get laid. She asks for advice about who she should sleep with and what to do the first time. My advice is always the same. Don’t sleep with anyone…ever. At least not for a long, long, long time.

  I can’t take my eyes off her as she wiggles her sweet, round ass with confidence down the beach—all while carrying a surfboard. If things were different, I’d love to help her out on her quest to lose her virginity. But that can never happen. Pip is off-limits, forbidden territory, a big loud no-no.

  What the hell is wrong with Dak? Why would he let her go out in two threads imitating a bathing suit? I wasn’t kidding about the scumbags hanging out on beaches who will see her and only have one thing on their minds. Like the one thing on my mind—tearing those two little strings off her and burying myself so deep inside her I’ll be lost in Heaven, literally.

  Jesus. I don’t know how things between us have gotten to this place. This isn’t my usual MO when interacting with people, especially not female people. I don’t spend time conversing with them, befriending them, or trying to analyze them.

  The only things worth analyzing, besides which way a puck is going to come careening toward the goal, are mathematically definitive computer codes. They can’t hurt you, deceive you, or leave you broken.

  But with Pippa, everything’s changed. I want to breathe her in, get to know everything about her. I don’t know how to explain it. She brings something to my life I’ve never had, a luminescence wiping away my dark past.

  Believe me, I know how this sounds. A few months ago, if I had heard any other guy spewing this schmaltz, I would’ve hurled my most recent meal and called him a little bitch. Hell, I did call my teammate, Dalt, a vagina back when he was getting all moony-eyed about Nik, and she didn’t want anything to do with him.

  Now? Let’s just say I understand his predicament. I want Pippa like I’ve never wanted anything or anybody. Problem is, although Pip claims she’s only looking for a quick deflowering, I know she’s girlfriend material with a capital G.

  I. Am. Not. Interested in having a girlfriend, in case you misunderstood my previous confession. Never had one. Never want one. By now, you must see where this is going.

  But to be clear, let me reiterate. Pip is a girl and she’s a friend but with a big slash between the two words. She is, in fact, the only girl/friend I’ve ever had. I enjoy hanging out with her like I would any guy friend. Except, in Pip’s case, a small problem has developed. Or should I say, a rather big, hard problem? I don’t drool over any guy friends when they’re walking down the beach. I don’t get hard every time I think about one of them, or dream about pounding balls deep into them. Eww. There’s a thought I’ll never be able to erase from my mind. See my dilemma here? To say the friendship lines have been blurred when it comes to Pip is the understatement to end all understatements.

  I knew I was in trouble when we got to the Andersens’ Malibu house the other night and I dropped my bags in the room which was going to be mine for the week; the room right next to Pippa’s.

  I could hear the water running in the bathroom which adjoined our bedrooms.

  I hadn’t seen her in person for months, but all I could picture was her standing naked in the shower, lathering her glistening skin with soap. In my mind, I could see the bubbles and water streaming along her curves and sliding down between her thighs into her sweet pussy. As I listened to her humming, I closed my eyes, imagining stripping off my clothes and stepping in behind her in the shower.

  As she moaned and arched back against me, I pressed my hard cock between her ass cheeks. My arms wrapped around her, one arm holding her firmly against my cock as the fingers on my other hand plunged into her and fucked her into ecstasy. I stood there, my eyes closed, having my pervy wide-awake dream. In my imagination, Pippa’s humming had changed into pleasured moans.

  Just as I slid my hand into my sweatpants to stroke my hard as fuck cock into a much-needed release, Batt, my step-brother and hockey teammate, came barreling through the door.

  “What are you doing, fucktard? We’re waiting for you to go to dinner.”

  I pulled my hand from my pants with such a quick tug it caused the elastic to snap against my skin. Batt’s whole face pinched into a questioning frown. At the exact same time, Pippa began singing Pink. And in its full a capella glory, she sounded a lot like Julia Michaels. I’ll never forget the way Batt’s mouth dropped open in shock
. But I don’t think his shock stemmed from Pip’s impressive voice. He glanced back and forth from the closed bathroom door to me.

  When his eyes finally stayed locked on me, I could almost feel the punch emanating from his narrow-eyed glare. “Are you fucking kidding me? Really, bro? Heaven? Come on, dude. She’s Dak’s little sister. Tell me you’re not hittin’ that.”

  “Fuck. No.” I faked a laugh because even my vocal cords knew I was full of shit. If Batt hadn’t walked in, I might have kicked in the bathroom door and tried to fulfill my dream.

  “It’s nothing like that.” I ran my frustrated fingers through my frustrated hair because for the past few months and the way I’d been thinking about Pippa every night, I couldn’t find satisfaction with any other chick.

  “I hope not, bro. Because it’s seriously fucked up, even for you. She’s not your usual hook-up material. She’s young and innocent. Besides, it’s not cool to hit on a hockey bruh’s sister without talking to him about it first.” He shook his head.

  “I know, bro. It’s all good.” It was completely not good. In fact, the whole situation was sheer badness and all I had been thinking about every night for months while jacking off to imaginary Pippa-riding-me-visions and then dreaming about pounding into her in ways that would make the Kama Sutra’s author blush.

  “Dak would never give you the go ahead anyway. Your reputation for the unusual ways you hook-up with women precedes you. He’s not about to hand over his baby sister to the lecherous wolf.” Batt snorted a chuckle through his nose.

  Dak didn’t know everything about my former life. But he saw my current life enough to know I wasn’t a nice guy.

  Batt, on the other hand, knew all about my tarnished past because it was his dad who found me living on the Brooklyn streets when I was fifteen—no, not living, surviving. If the Battaglias hadn’t taken me in and helped me turn my life around, I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I am today. But even though they loved and supported me like no one else in my life ever had, not even they could erase all the scars on my heart.

  Just then the water in the shower turned off. I glanced over to the door. I swear to God I don’t know why I fucking licked my lips.

  “Oh man, bro.” Batt dropped his gaze to the floor and pinched his brow between his fingers. “You. Are. So. Fucked.”

  Before the door even closed behind Batt, I knew he was right. I was fucked. I had to stop thinking about Pippa the way I was. Because I couldn’t dispute the way Dak had assessed my reputation with women and I wasn’t about to make Pip another one-night conquest.

  “C’mon, D. The tide’s going out,” Pippa drones in annoyance from down the beach, reminding me she’s waiting.

  As I look up, I tell myself she’s not just some nameless chick. She’s an angel, a sweet innocent baby angel.

  “Be right there,” I call back. I watch as Pippa drops her board in the water, stretches onto it and begins to paddle out.

  After this surfing competition is over, I need to find one of those long-legged blondes who walked by and gave me the ‘let’s fuck’ eye, earlier. I gotta get laid. It’s been too many days.

  What can I say? It’s a guy thing. You ladies don’t get it because you don’t have the same equipment. Try to cut us some slack. Us guys are zoned in on our dicks 24/7 and when they don’t get any attention for a while—like a whole week—and then a pretty ass wiggles at us, it’s like dangling water at a man who just came off the desert.

  It has to be the reason I’m reacting the way I am to Pip because there is no way my dick should be doing what he’s doing right now or ever when thinking about her. She’s a princess and…I’m no prince.

  Chapter Three

  Heaven

  Two years later

  “Wolfe is looking really good,” Nikki leans in and yells over the crowd.

  I’m mesmerized watching him. It’s such a rush seeing the way he moves on the ice doing the thing he loves most in the world. My mind drifts, imagining how his flexibility would translate to the bedroom—someplace it shouldn’t be drifting.

  I’m well aware it’s ridiculous and stupid to be lusting over my textbook bad-boy friend because there’s no doubt he’s broken when it comes to affection. Anyone who looks beyond his gorgeous exterior and amazing athletic skills could see it. Although I must admit, it’s a challenge to look beyond his magnificent exterior. This struggle has resulted in a small dilemma: whenever I’m around him, I’m not sure if it’s my heart or my vagina beating in overdrive.

  I’ve been at every home game since they brought D up to the Winds after their first-string goalie was injured. D doesn’t play every game, but when he does, he proves he’s an armed guard at protecting the net. Like he’s doing tonight against the Knights. I always sit with Nikki—Dalt’s wife—and their two kids, if they’re with her. We prefer to sit down near the ice adjacent to the Winds’ bench, rather than in the suite they have reserved for the players’ family members and friends.

  Nikki’s sans kids tonight. Dalt insisted they hire a nanny to give him and Nik more alone time. Nikki said she tried to explain to him, more alone time was only going to lead to more little intruders. But in reality, I think they’re happily working on their own homegrown hockey and soccer teams.

  Dalt was the left-winger on the Bernard team and another roommate in the infamous Bernard U. house. He was also drafted to the Winds and totally stoked when D was brought up to the team.

  “He really knows how to use his stick. Don’t ya think?” Nikki nudges my leg with hers, reminding me she’s here—along with fifteen thousand other people.

  “What? Oh…yeah. He looks amazing.” My voice is a little too breathy when I confirm her assessment.

  During the brief timeout, D’s bouncing up and down like a spring, keeping his legs buoyant.

  “And his gameplay doesn’t look too bad either.” She purses her lips and quirks a brow.

  I sit up straight and flip one side of my hair back over my shoulder: the universal female move for ‘I’m telling the absolute truth’ or ‘fuck off,’ depending on who you’re talking to.

  “I don’t know what you mean. I was totally talking about his gameplay.”

  “Uh huh. Sure you were.” Nikki shakes her head. “Heaven, I heart you like a sister, that’s why I’m going to come right out and say this. When the fuck are you going to stop chasing after that lucky SOB and finally let him catch you?”

  “Humph. It’s not like I haven’t tried. I mean…it’s not like that.” I add a forced laugh. “D and I are just friends.”

  Besides being Dalt’s wife, Nikki is also Tracey’s best friend. Tracey is my brother’s girlfriend. She and Nikki lived together while attending Bernard. Now we all live in Cali, and I’ve gotten close to both Nikki and Tracey. They know all about my White Swan status and my desire to trade in my boring white wings for the Black Swan’s dirty girl more exciting ones. But although they suspect my less than pure intentions toward D, I haven’t confirmed it. I don’t want Tracey to feel the need to keep secrets from Dak. She knows Dak would lose a nut if he found out what I was contemplating.

  Dak never misses an opportunity to tell me about D’s less than stellar reputation for having been the biggest manwhore on the Bernard hockey team and current first place contender for the title on the Winds. But I don’t need his lectures.

  I’m more than aware Wolfe’s rep matches his predatorial name. It goes beyond whoring around. He’s…um…shall we say, somewhat primal with his hookups. Dak isn’t quite so polite when classifying Wolfe’s liaisons. ‘Fuck ’em and dump ’em,’ is how he summarizes Wolfe’s harlotry.

  In college, he had a thing for getting it on in public places like empty classrooms, bathroom stalls, cars in parking lots, and as I’m painfully aware, in the living room—no matter who was around. Anywhere I guess, other than his own bed. His relationships—and I use the term loosely—have a one-night or day run only. Evidently, whenever the opportune moment avails itself.

 
; But Dak doesn’t have to worry about my relationship with D. Nothing much has changed in Wolfe’s one-night public liaisons and he still isn’t spending any one of those sleepless nights with me. He simply refuses to have any discussion which revolves around his being my devirginizing knight in shining armor. He says we’re friends and he doesn’t want to do anything to ruin our friendship. Blah. Blah. Blah.

  I don’t see why it has to ruin our friendship. It’s just two friends helping each other out.

  I can help D thaw his frozen damaged heart, and he can help heat my cold, lonely V-jay. A therapeutic exchange—tat for tit, so to speak. No one gets hurt.

  I have to get D to see me as something other than his competitive, Lilliputian friend. It’s taking longer than I thought it would to bring him to his knees—pun totally intended. Haven’t given up, though. I’m still working on it.

  “I call bullshit. Never try to kid a kidder.” Nikki’s loud remark pulls my focus back to our conversation and the crowded arena. Guess my attempt at keeping my intentions on the DL didn’t fool her.

  “Is it that obvious?” I shrug.

  “Only when you breathe.” She laughs. “And only because I’ve been there. Not with Wolfe, of course. But Dalt and I had our own problems for a while. Don’t worry. Things have a way of working out the way they’re supposed to.”

  “Thanks, Nik. And I heart you like a sister too.” I don’t get a chance to continue our conversation because the cheering in the arena raises to a deafening decibel.

  All hell has broken loose at the crease. D is using every weird contortion he has in his arsenal to hold the Winds’ 2-1 lead. Somewhere in the mad scramble, he loses his stick. He spreads himself out like a starfish to block the first two shots. In a blink, he’s up into a butterfly stance to prevent the third and fourth shots. He’s like a flexible cement wall until the whistle finally blows, ending D’s successful defense and the Winds win the game.