by Ellen Devlin
“You wouldn’t think twice if you were knocked over like that on the ice by another player. It would make a highlight reel that would be seen by people that were already hockey fans. This will be seen by a whole lot more people. It’s good for you, Tom. And for the team. And for the sport, for that matter.” She paused. “Plus, you look freaking hot in those board shorts, and I can guarantee you are now the object of many, many fantasies, not just mine.” She ended speaking cheerfully and with a huge smile.
Tom stared at her for a minute, realizing his anger had evaporated, and then barked out a laugh. “I have no idea what the hell just happened. Is there some reason you’re not in marketing?”
Chris leaned back, giving Paige a look that said, “See?” Paige just sat there, not quite sure what she had just witnessed.
Tom got up and said, “Well, on that note, I’m gonna hit the road. Thank you again, you guys. The week was amazing.” He turned to Paige. “Sorry about that, Paige. Do me a favor and check with me first next time, please? I get a little touchy with that kind of thing. Clearly.”
Paige got up, hugged him tight, and said, “Definitely. I’m so sorry, Micky! You know I didn’t mean to upset you.”
He squeezed her back, picking her up off her feet, said, “I know. You’re just an idiot,” and kissed her on the top of her head before putting her back on her feet.
She looked over to Chris. “Really? Nothing, Chris? He called me an idiot.”
“If the shoe fits…”
Liz winced. “Ouch. Hey, Paige, can you give me a ride home? I took the rest of my stuff back to my apartment this morning, so it’s just me.”
Tom stopped on his way to the door and turned around. “I can take you.”
“Are you sure? It’s out of your way. You live in the other direction.”
“I don’t mind.” He smiled at her, and his eyes had just the hint of a twinkle to them.
“Well, then, never mind, Paige. You’re off the hook.” She said quick goodbyes and walked out the front door with Tom.
After they left, Paige looked at Chris and asked, “How did you know?”
He shrugged. “It’s what she does. I think maybe you’ve never noticed because when you two are together you’re most often talking with each other. But I’ve seen her turn a conversation around like that quite a few times just because she’s looking at things from a different perspective. She’s an optimist and somehow makes that infectious. I don’t understand it, but I knew it was going to happen tonight.”
“How?” Paige pressed him. She was feeling oddly like she didn’t know her best friend as well as she thought, and wanted to figure out what she was missing.
“Just the way she looked. She gets this look on her face, like she’s about to say, ‘But can’t you see how wonderful this thing is?’ It’s hard to explain.” He laughed. “But I knew there was no way Micky was going to stay mad.”
***
When they got past the front window and into shadow, Tom put his arm around Liz. A few more steps and they were at his car. He turned and leaned against the door, pulled her to stand between his legs, and bent his head down for a kiss. It started softly, with their lips brushing together, but as soon as she brought her hand up and tangled her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck, Tom parted his lips and touched hers with his tongue. He put his arm around her waist, tilted his head, and deepened the kiss. He was moving slowly, exploring the inside of her mouth with his tongue, taking his time to do it properly.
His pulse was racing and he was already hard, but this time he had expected to react intensely to her, so he wasn’t feeling frantic. She took a step closer, and he pulled her so she fit snugly against his body.
Liz’s heart was beating out of her chest from the time his lips touched hers. By the time they were sliding tongues against each other, she just didn’t want the moment to end. The gentle slowness of the kiss, the feel of his arms around her, the smell of him…she could have stood there all night, drowning in that kiss. When she stepped closer, and he pulled her tight to him, she could feel every inch of his arousal against her. She felt her heart skip, and blood flowing faster, her own arousal making her head spin. She gripped his hair just a little tighter and pressed harder into the kiss.
He growled. God, she already loved that sound. She broke off the kiss with difficulty and took a deep breath. She tried to speak quietly, but it came out a kind of croak. “We’re still in their driveway.”
“So we are.” Tom looked down at her. “I was doing okay until that last minute, but now I’m feeling like it would take too long even to get to the backseat of my car. You’re a minx.” He kissed her quickly. And then again. And one more time.
“Shit. Get in so I can take you home before I’m not just kidding about that backseat thing.”
Chapter Eight
Paige knocked on Liz’s door, but judging by the bass coming through, there was no way she would be able to hear it. She used her key to let herself in, along with Chris and Tom. As she had expected, Liz was dancing around her apartment, singing along to “It’s Raining Men” by The Weather Girls at the top of her lungs. When Liz saw the new arrivals, she danced over to them, pulling Chris and Tom in to join her, still singing, while they laughed at her. She was singing and flirting with both of them while Paige turned down the volume, shaking her head.
“Hey, guys. I really am almost ready. I just got distracted because that song simply demands both singing and dancing.” She called to Paige as she went into her room to finish the last few things, “Speaking of which, Paige, when are we going dancing again? It’s been forever.”
“Too true. Soon. We’ll figure out a time.”
Tom had wandered over to look at Liz’s computer, which was connected to her speaker system, and was checking out the playlist. The song had ended, and the next one had started—“You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC. He started reading off artists. “Billy Joel, Disturbed, Bruno Mars, ZZ Top, Taylor Swift, Queen, Metallica, Elton John, Paul Simon, Imagine Dragons, Led Zeppelin, Black Eyed Peas…” He looked up as Liz came out of her room. “You realize that this reads like you’re a schizophrenic, right?”
Laughing, she said, “I prefer the term, ‘eclectic.’ It’s much nicer.”
“There’s another playlist here called ‘Irish Folk Music’ and a really large collection of classical music too.” He stared at her with one eyebrow raised.
Chris said, “Don’t try to understand her, Micky. It just leads to headaches.” He had a small grin on his face. Even though Tom and Liz had shown no signs of being interested in anything beyond friendship, there was a definite difference in Tom when she was around. He seemed more relaxed and laughed more often. Chris wasn’t sure what it was exactly. It might be just because Liz had a way of putting people at ease, but Chris suspected there was something more, and he enjoyed seeing his best friend happy.
Liz left last as they headed out the door for dinner, with Tom right in front of her, and she slipped her hand under his t-shirt, wrapped around to his front, and quickly dipped the tips of her fingers just under the waistband of his jeans before pulling her hand back to lock her door. Tom turned around and caught her eye. She gave him a playful wink, and he smiled.
***
A few days later, Tom took Liz to an early movie, finally following through on his original plan after their first dinner with Chris and Paige. They sat together in the dark theater, with his hand on the back of her neck, playing with her hair, and stroking up under her ear and down to her shoulder, and her hand on his leg, gently stroking from the inside of his knee to around mid-thigh. Later, neither one of them remembered much about what the movie was about.
They stopped by a local pizza place afterward and picked up dinner to go, heading back to her apartment. “Normally I would ask you what you thought of the movie, but honestly, I missed quite a bit of it, because I was having a hard time thinking past the nerve endings on the back of my neck.”
He chuck
led.
“So,” she continued, looking across the table at Tom while eating a mouthful of pizza, “tell me about your family.”
“Sure.” He looked a little surprised. “What brought this up?”
“I figured enough time has passed.” She smiled at his confused look. “I needed to wait long enough after taking advantage of you that first time. If I started asking really personal questions right away after that, it would have seemed very stalker-esque.”
Tom chuckled. “So now you figured I’ve let my guard down? Two can play that game. How about you tell me about your family?”
Liz laughed. “Absolutely. But you go first. I’m all ears.”
Tom told Liz about his parents and siblings in Minnesota. He was the oldest, named after his father, who had grown up in eastern Canada. Liz laughed when he slipped into an imitation of his dad: “‘For the love of all that’s holy, Tommy, it’s a sweater, not a jersey!’”
The next child was his brother, younger by two years, followed by three sisters, the youngest being only twenty-two years old and just out of college. “She got a full ride scholarship at UConn. She’s brilliant,” he bragged. His brother and one sister were married, and there was already one grandchild. “I don’t get to see any of them very much, but Mom sends pictures of my niece. Alyssa is still too little to be skating yet.”
Liz laughed and translated in her head that the baby wasn’t old enough to walk. She was watching and listening, occasionally asking a prompting question to keep the information flowing. Tom was exuding joy talking about his family, and she was soaking it up like she was basking in the sun. It was wonderful.
After a while, Tom stopped and said, “Okay, enough. What about you?”
She smiled. “Not nearly as much fun. Parents deceased many years now. One was a heart attack, the other complications from long-term illness. One older brother, currently incarcerated for at least six more years for federal narcotics violations, among other things. We were never close to begin with; clearly less so now.”
His face looked stricken, as she had expected. She reached across the table to take his hand.
“Please don’t be sorry. You know my chosen family quite well. Chris and Paige are family to me. I’ve got a great life, Tom, and I’m really happy. I promise.”
Tom looked at her closely. She was smiling, showing every sign of being completely serious.
“That’s why you wanted me to go first.”
She brightened, pleased that he understood. “Yes! You would have changed the way you told me about your family if you had heard my story first, and I would have missed out. I loved watching you talk about them. It’s like I got to sneak in and share your joy.” She paused. “Yikes, does that sound all stalker-y?”
Tom laughed. “No, it’s not entirely creepy.” He winked. “Just a little creepy.”
“Joy is wonderful that way,” she said with a slightly faraway look. “It doesn’t diminish with sharing. If something wonderful happens for my friend, I can jump in and surf on their happiness. Nothing has been taken away from me. More happiness for them doesn’t mean less for me. It’s not like pie.” She looked back at Tom, coming back into focus. She put her hands on the table, stood up, smiled, and said, “So do you want pie?”
Tom realized he was staring at her. Again. Because she had caught him completely by surprise. Again.
“Do you really feel that way? About happiness?”
She blinked. “Of course. Jealousy is a whole lot of work. It’s much easier to mooch off the happiness of my friends if they’ve got extra floating around when I’m a little short. At heart I’m terribly lazy.” She winked at him playfully.
“I have not noticed laziness,” he said. His eyes were taking on a different look as he stood up and walked over to her. “So far, you have seemed very…industrious. Enthusiastic, even.” He was standing over her, very close, looking down.
His height and size were intoxicating to Liz.
He ran his hand up her arm and then tilted her chin up to meet his gaze.
His blue eyes were gorgeous, thickly framed with dark lashes, and Liz felt her heart start to race just from looking at him. The corner of his mouth was curled up in a half smile, playful and sweet.
“I don’t know how you do that to me,” she whispered.
“Do what?” he asked, still smiling that half smile. He rubbed his thumb across her cheek.
“Make me forget everything with a look,” she said, closing her eyes and turning her face toward his caress. She opened one eye to peek back up at him under her lashes and then closed it again and sighed.
Tom bent down and kissed her gently. And one kiss became two, and two became too many to count. Tom pulled back and chuckled deep in his chest. He cupped her face in his hands and said, “I don’t know how you do that to me, Liz.”
“Do what?” she asked, still smiling from their kisses.
“Make me forget everything with a kiss,” he said. “I might as well be eighteen again whenever I touch you.”
“Really?”
“Really. I intended to give you one quick kiss that first night.” His voice got husky. “Just one. But I couldn’t do it. One wasn’t enough. One is never enough with you.”
“I really hope you don’t have any place you need to be real soon.” She ran her hand slowly up the inside of his thigh.
He closed his eyes, and his voice was considerably lower when he said, “Me too, because I have no fucking idea about anything besides where your hand is right now.”
“This hand?”
He growled as she squeezed gently.
“Or this hand?” She added her other hand and squeezed gently with that one.
He growled louder, put his head down, and spoke into her hair, breathing hard. “Do you want to go to the bedroom?”
She unbuttoned his shorts, and he heard the zipper. And then his breath caught as he heard her say, “No, I don’t think so.”
Liz pushed him gently backward until he was leaning against the counter. He was so gorgeous. Impossibly so. And she’d never had a good, proper look at all of him. It was time to change that. She pulled the t-shirt up as far as she could and let him finish taking it off and then ran her hands over his chest, through the soft hair, touching every beautifully defined muscle.
She brought her hands down his strong arms, and kissed and bit softly along his chest and stomach as she intertwined their fingers, and traced the trail of hair that began at his navel and ran down into his shorts.
She pushed his shorts down over his hips and to the floor and stood back to look at him. He was in boxer briefs, with his erection barely contained. She stepped forward again, sliding her fingers under the waistband of his underwear, and brushed against the tip of his hard cock.
He twitched and hissed in his breath as she ran her fingertips through the slick fluid already beading there.
Liz pulled the waistband away from his body so there would be room to release him and pushed the fabric down over his hips, kneeling down as she dragged his underwear to his feet, taking her time, gazing as she went.
His breathing was deep and measured, and when she looked back up to his face, she saw he was watching her carefully, hands gripping the edge of the counter.
“You look amazing,” Liz said quietly as she leaned in and kissed and placed little bites at his hips while drawing one hand back up his inner thigh. Looking back up at him again, she cradled his scrotum in her palm, rolling her fingers gently, enjoying both the feel and the look on his face. She put her other hand flat on his abdomen, just under his navel, and moved down and then around until the skin between her thumb and forefinger was cradling the base of his shaft.
Tom made a groaning sound.
She slid that cradle upward the entire length of him, watching as she went, tilting her head as though simply looking on this part of him in wonder.
Reaching the head of his hard cock, she used her hand to spread his slickness over him, lubricating t
he top of his shaft, stroking and teasing, until Tom’s knees shook. He took a gasping breath and moaned, “Oh, Christ, Liz. Please.”
She looked up, met his eye, and kept eye contact as she took him in her mouth.
Tom wasn’t sure he was going to live through this, much less continue to stand upright. He tried to hold himself still, allowing her to control everything, but after several minutes of receiving her oral attentions, he felt his hips begin shifting in rhythm with her movements and felt pressure building.
When he suddenly felt cool air rather than warm mouth, he was certain he wasn’t going to live through it. His heart was pounding, and every nerve ending was screaming for release. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Please, Liz.” His voice was strained and rasping.
He felt her gently pull his right hand away from its death grip on the edge of the counter.
“Open your eyes.” She was standing in front of him and had taken off her shirt and bra. Bare from the waist up, she was holding his hand in both of hers. Kneeling down in front of him, she brought his hand and carefully wrapped it around his erection. “Tom.” Her voice was throaty, and her eyes were dark. “I want to watch. Please.”
“Oh, God.” He couldn’t have stopped himself even if he had wanted to. “Oh, Liz.” He wasn’t going to last more than a few more strokes.
The sound he made at climax had become her favorite sound in the world from the very first time she heard it. It was the most deeply male sound she could have ever imagined. Tonight he yelled her name while making that sound; it had been erotic beyond reason. Watching the entire event had been exquisite. The fact that somewhere in the middle of talking with him she had realized—beyond doubt—that she was falling in love, had made the entire thing so much better. And so much worse.
Tom sank to the floor to sit with her, every part of him shaking. He stared at her for a few moments, breathing hard, at a loss for words. He put his head down on his knees, still breathing hard. She sat, arms crossed on her knees, chin resting on her arms, just watching him.