by Vivian Lux
When I said those words, it was like a little jolt went through her whole body, from her head all the way down to her feet. She looked down, then up at me, then back down, sliding her fingers mechanically over her phone, clutching it so tightly that her knuckles were white. “Opposites attract,” she echoed, like the words had more meaning to her than some useless platitude.
“Maybe you should bring that up? At work?”
Just then the waiter brought out our dinner. Candace went silent, cutting into her meat with a thoughtful grimace on her face. I could practically hear the wheels turning in her head.
I took a bite and waited. The food was amazing, but I could barely taste it over the riot of anticipation that whirled through my head.
She finally nodded slowly, and swallowed her bite of food. “That’s a really good idea.” Then she brightened, whatever spell she had been under lifting. “Seriously, thank you, Ian. I think you just fixed a big, big problem.” She shook her head. “Ian Carter.” Her lip curled a little. “Why didn’t you mention who you were last night?”
I set my fork down. This was always an awkward question. Especially after Lisette… “I don’t know,” I lied. “I guess it didn’t really come up?”
Even I could hear how lame that was, and Candace was too smart to let it slide. “Well, now, I think there were plenty of moments you might have mentioned that. Like maybe at the bar, when the hockey game was playing.” She ticked off on her fingers. “Or, maybe when we were passing the skating rink. Oh, oh, or maybe even when I told you I had no idea how a big guy like you could possibly be any good on the ice!”
I had to laugh. “Okay, you’ve got me. I didn’t tell you, well—because I didn’t really want it to matter.”
Candace laughed, her bright eyes softening. “Honestly, Ian. Even if you had told me, I would have only nodded, smiled, and then gone home to Google you.” She picked up her napkin and dabbed at her mouth, unconsciously wiping away the traces of lipstick that still clung to her full mouth. I liked that. I liked the way the natural berry color showed through. I could easily imagine leaning over and kissing her so hard that her lips turned red again in their own right.
But I didn’t. I kept my hands in my lap like a true gentleman, and counted backwards from ten to ignore the raging hard-on I was now sporting. “Not a sports fan?” I ventured.
She shook her head. “I know, it’s kind of a talent I have, especially living in this town. But I’ve never really been able to understand hockey.”
“Do you want to understand it?” I want to understand you.
She set her napkin down and looked up at me shyly. “Suddenly? Yes.”
A rush of pride filled my chest, even though it was the corniest thing in the world.
When the waiter reappeared to take our dessert order, I wanted to wave him away. This dinner was going by way too fast. I wanted to stay here…with her. Talk to her…touch her…let her touch me…
I was so used to having women feign interest because of my notoriety. They knew of me even when they had no idea about me.
With Candace, it felt different. I felt like she was interested in me, and what’s more, she wanted to share in what interested me.
This was a new feeling. One I could get used to.
“Well, you specifically told me you weren’t interested in going to a sports bar on our first date—”
“And I stand by that,” she interjected firmly.
“But maybe on our next date?”
Her eyes softened even further. “Maybe on our next date, sure.” She paused before saying my name, rolling it around in her mouth like she was fully tasting it. “Sure, Ian.”
I reached over the table and brushed my finger down her cheek, tracing the curve of her jaw. The urge to kiss her was becoming more and more unbearable. “I don’t want to think about our next date, though,” I told her solemnly.
“Why is that?”
“Because that would mean this one was ending.”
She looked down, her lashes casting shadows over her pinkening cheeks. “If I didn’t have to work in the morning…” she began.
I groaned. “You just reminded me. Work in the morning. Fuck.”
“You have practice tomorrow? she asked.
I nodded. “First thing in the morning, actually.”
“Where do you guys practice?”
“Johnny’s Icehouse West.”
She pursed her lips. “How early is early?”
“I hit the gym at five AM.”
She winced. “Yeesh.”
“I’m going to regret this wine… And this dessert.” I signed the check with a flourish as Candace scraped the last bits of her chocolate torte across her plate. “But definitely not this date.” I reached for her hand. “I’ll see you real soon, okay, Candace?”
She closed her eyes all the way now, and sighed a breath of such beautiful surrender that I could no longer fight the urge.
I moved around the table and kissed her.
It had been a long time since the simple act of pressing my lips against another person’s could do anything to excite me. I’ll admit it. I was jaded. I had no concept anymore of the power of a simple, single kiss.
Right up until the moment I kissed Candace Hunter.
I felt like a teenager again, lost, and drowning in the rush of my very first time. The way she sought my lips, yielding, her whole body soft and pliable—my God, it made me harder than anything. The way her lips parted, tongue tracing the outline of mine, giving, giving, so soft and smooth.
It was more than I could take.
I pulled back, with a groan that sounded also like a gasp. “Fuck,” I whispered, without meaning to.
She blinked at my curse, and I mentally kicked myself for being so rough. This woman had me undone, and it was like I was forgetting everything I knew about women and sex and dating.
And I only wanted her more because of it.
“I’ll see you real soon, Ian,” she said softly.
“It’s not going to be soon enough,” I said. It was the truth.
Chapter Five
Candace
He insisted on following me home to "make sure I made it okay." But I knew what he was doing, because I wanted to do it too.
He was stretching the night out longer.
The whole dinner I felt like I was made of electricity. Everything was heightened to the point where the currents of air that swirled around his hands as he gestured and laughed hit my skin like champagne bubbles. An effervescent popping that made my toes curl. I felt like I had dissolved into jelly.
I circled my block two times before finding a parking space and was proud of my ability to parallel park while being made of jelly. I could barely focus with Ian behind me.
Even though there were two cars and ten feet separating us, I could still feel the way his gaze ignited my skin.
I threw it in park, then turned to open the door and nearly jumped out of my skin to see that he was already waiting to open the door for me. "Hi," he said.
"Hey," I swallowed. The temperature had descended into the teens, but I felt like I was burning up. "Um, I made it home okay. Thanks for making sure."
"You're not quite home," he corrected, looking towards my building.
"Do you think something awful is going to happen between here and my doorway?"
His smile was illuminated by the streetlamp overhead. "I can't take that risk," he said.
"But you're double parked," I pointed out.
He shrugged. "I'm not worried."
"Aren't you afraid you'll get a ticket?"
The streetlamp caught the twinkle in his eyes. "Not really, no."
The realization hit me a second too late. "Ohhh. Because you're Ian Carter."
He nodded. "I'm Ian Carter," he echoed.
"It must be nice to be Ian Carter," I said, slipping my hand into his proffered arm.
He looked down at where we were joined. "It sure is right now."
I du
cked my head to hide my blush as we crossed the street. My doorway was two buildings down. Now one building. Was time speeding up? How was this night going by so fast? How could it be ending so soon?
"This is it, right?" Ian asked, once we stopped in front of my building. The door was at street level, the light from the inside hallway shining down a slanted square across the sidewalk.
I stopped right in the center of it. "This is it," I said sadly.
He looked down at me. "I'll see you soon?" he asked again. His voice sounded urgent.
"As soon as possible," I breathed.
He exhaled a sigh of relief. "Okay."
"Okay." I touched his chest. "See you then."
My feet wouldn't move from the spot.
"Yeah." He didn't move either.
"Yeah." I looked up at him again.
His lips slammed into mine, the force of his kiss driving me backwards until my back scraped against the brick of my building. I gasped under the sudden assault and as my lips parted, his tongue met mine, sweeping away my hesitation with one skillful pass. He grabbed my hands, twining my fingers in his and lifting my hands upward, pinning my arms above my head with one giant hand, while with the other he roamed the contours of my body, gently but firmly, somewhere between a caressing and laying claim. My swirling head, already intoxicated by his mere presence, went into overdrive and shut down, leaving me with no thoughts, only my senses. The sight of him, dark eyes closed tight, hair falling into his eyes as he bent to kiss me deeper. The smell of him, swirling all around me, soap and sandlewood and something more primal, an earthy sweetness that I knew was his alone. The sound of him, a low growl in his throat, a guttural gasp as he pulled backwards to breathe for a moment, before yanking my scarf to the side and raking his lips down my neck. The taste of his mouth still lingering on mine, making me lick my lips greedily and wonder what else about him could taste so good.
And of course the feel of him. His hard chest pressed against mine, leaving me breathless. His fingers tight around my wrists, careful not to hurt me, but leaving me no doubt that he could lift me with ease. And his hand, touching everywhere, sending sparks from his fingers. I wondered deliriously if I was hallucinating. How could a mortal man make me feel like this?
The sparks the skimmed across my skin collected together into a dull ache, deep in my core, a vast emptiness that wanted...no, needed. The frustration boiled up into a sigh so long and loud that I couldn't believe it came from my own lips.
Ian heard me and pulled back. The places he'd been touching cooled rapidly. This made me irrationally angry.
"Well," he said.
I opened my mouth. Come inside. It was right there, the invitation to continue, to follow this to the end that we both wanted to see. All I had to do was invite him in the door.
After our first date.
This man I had literally just met.
This man I knew next to nothing about.
Shit.
Everything I knew about love, about dating and relationships, they all said the same thing. Don't sleep with him on the first date. And here I was, ready to throw that all out of the window.
I'm not that kind of girl.
I straightened up and adjusted my scarf back around my night. "Call me," I said, in a strangled whisper.
Then I turned and practically ran to my front door.
Chapter Six
Ian
So there I was, standing in the center of a deserted Chicago street with the world's biggest hard-on, wondering what the hell had just happened.
She wanted me. I knew that. I hadn't mistaken a chick's signals since I was a freshman in high school. She wanted me and I wanted her and in my experience, that meant we should be fucking like crazy right about now.
That's how it's always been before.
But, then again, I've never been with a girl like Candace before.
As I walked, bowlegged and hunched like some cowboy-Quasimodo, back to my Escalade, I tried to call back the memory of the last chick I had banged.
What was her name? I couldn't even remember.
Baylee? Kaylee? Haylee?
Something ending in an 'e' sound, of that I was certain.
Fairly certain.
Fifty percent sure, anyway.
Anyway, she was a hockey-chick, one of those loudmouthed groupies who followed the game purely for the players. She called me her "big bad bully" in bed and wore lipgloss that tasted like vanilla.
And... that's literally all I remembered.
With Candace? I remembered fucking everything. The way she ducked her head when she didn't want me to see her blushing. Fuck, the way she blushed, how it spread across her cheeks as pink and perfect as the clouds at sunrise.
Sunrise. Fuck. I had to be at practice before sunrise.
But there was no way I was getting to sleep tonight. Not in my current state, anyway.
I opened the door to my SUV and slid into the now cold interior.
I couldn't remember the last time I jerked off. I wasn't bragging when I said I didn't need to. There was always someone willing to help me out with my hard-ons, whether with hands, or mouths or spread open legs. A parade of faceless, nameless pleasure spread over seven frenetic months.
As I gripped myself in my hand, I gritted my teeth. I shouldn't be doing this. This was the saddest fucking thing in the world; me jerking it in my double-parked car, while inside the building next to me, the reason for my boner was slipping between her sheets.
Did she wear pajamas? Or sleep nude. I wondered idly.
And then, with a start, I realized I knew that answer to that question. My grip on myself eased as I stared straight ahead in shock.
Candace would wear pajamas...because she hates the cold.
She hates winter.
Her favorite season was summer.
I knew these things because she told me... and I listened.
Listening was...not my strong suit to say the least. In one ear and out the other my exasperated mother would sigh when another truancy report came home from school.
And of course I'd blow her off and go back to doing whatever the hell I wanted. Whether it was smoking, drinking or going over to the warehouse district with Brad to break windows and bust streetlights, I did whatever the fuck I felt like, because who was going to stop me? My father had bailed when I was five and my mother was caught in a single-mother guilt-spiral; too exhausted by her job and the crappy grind of our existence to have the energy to discipline her son.
I was on the fast train to juvie when Coach Randall came into my life.
I had been playing at the local rink, a real shithole that could only afford to run the Zamboni twice a month. It was on this pitted, scarred patch of ice that I learned how to skate faster than my demons. And when Coach Randall came to give a talk as part of the outreach program, my mother showed up in her scrubs to make sure I was there.
That's when he changed both of our lives in one fell swoop.
To me, he gave the training guidance I needed to channel my inner talent into real discipline.
To my mother, he gave love...then a ring...then a nice house in the suburbs where she no longer had to duck drug dealers and catcallers to get home to her son. We moved in with him when I was fifteen, and when I was eighteen he gave me the chance to try out for the Blackhawks. For the first time in my life, I had a man worth listening to...but by then I was too far gone. Stubborn and scarred from my days as a teenaged delinquent, I still struggled daily with listening to his advice. He was the angel on my shoulder, whispering in my ear, while on the other shoulder, a devil in the shape of my own ego shouted over him.
I always struggled to be able to listen to the angels.
But I had listened to Candace.
And that fucking surprised the hell out of me.
Zipping myself back up again, I threw my Escalade into drive, allowing myself one more glance in my rearview. There was a light still streaming from Candace's building.
&n
bsp; I wondered if it was from her apartment. I wondered if she was still up and thinking about me.
I would be thinking about her - my angel - all night long.
Chapter Seven
Candace
When my alarm went off at 4:15 AM, I threw it across the room, convinced that it was malfunctioning.
Then I remembered last night, and sat up in the dark, wide awake, fingers brushing the place on my lips where Ian’s had met mine.
“Holy shit,” I murmured in my darkened bedroom. “Holy fucking shit.”
There was really no other way to express the magic of last night. Everything I thought I knew, everything I had been taught at my job, had been turned on its ear. We had nothing in common, no shared interests, no mutual hobbies. But the chemistry…the chemistry…
It was undeniable.
I'm not that kind of girl.
Except...what if I am?
“Holy shit,” I repeated, my whole body shuddering as I remembered the feel of his hands on my skin, rough and calloused, brushing down my arms to twine his fingers in mine as he lifted my hands over my head to pin me back against the wall.
I had almost invited him in. I’d only known him for forty-eight hours, but I very nearly slept with him last night.
And as I lay awake afterward, I knew I couldn’t go very long without seeing him again.
I actually might be that kind of girl.
I needed to see him again.
As soon as possible.
Like...right now. At five in the morning.
As I got dressed in my tiny studio apartment, I looked out of my single window and wondered how there was traffic, even at this early hour. I hurried to the door so I could be on the road with time to spare, and only once did I wonder if he would be freaked out by me showing up at his practice this morning before work.
“I just want to see him skate,” I told the air. “I’m not stalking him.”
Any doubt I had in my head about whether this was a good idea was banished when I remembered the feel of him, hard and unyielding, sliding against my thigh to press into my belly.
At first I was surprised to see that the door to the Icehouse was unlocked. But there in the bleachers were a few bleary-eyed guys, clearly stopping in to watch practice before work. Their suits were rumpled, but their eyes were keen as they watched the action down on the rink.