Delay of Game

by Catherine Gayle

  It was still pitch black in Cam’s bedroom other than the faint moonlight coming in through the window, so God only knew what time it was. My legs were twisted with his, my right arm was draped over his abs, and I had somehow buried my head in the space between his chest and shoulder.

  He hadn’t put a shirt on before we went to bed, either. He’d just changed from jeans into some long gym shorts, the kind he wore when he and Dana went to work out with their boxing or whatever it was they always did together. The smattering of hair on his chest scratched lightly against my cheek and nose.

  It felt amazing, the way we fit together, like we were two pieces of a puzzle—a risky thought.

  But I wasn’t the only one of us grabbing onto the other. His hand—the whole big, strong thing—had settled on my ass as if there was nowhere else it would make sense for it to be. And because of the whole tangled mass-of-limbs situation with our legs, my nightgown had edged up higher and higher until the hem was nearly at my waist.

  I didn’t have any panty material to speak of providing a barrier from his hand since, as usual, I was wearing a thong. This one was lacy. Come to think of it, I’d bought it before that ill-fated date with Brad so I’d have something new that made me feel sexy in case things had gone well.

  If I’d thought it through before leaving my house tonight, I would have changed into some briefs—some of my period panties—and probably at least a pair of shorts or something to cover them with. I hadn’t been thinking at all, though. I’d just been itching to leave that big empty house, and had let a mild bout of insanity take over.

  Cam’s palm was on my ass cheek, skin to skin, scorching me.

  The recognition of how we were jumbled together had jolted me wide-awake, but Cam was still sound asleep. His deep, even inhalations lifted his chest, and the exhalations fluttered my hair away from my forehead. His hand squeezed my ass just a little, tugging me even closer to him until I was practically on top of him. The inside of one of my thighs brushed against him, and his shorts didn’t hide a damn thing about how hard he was. Or how big. It wouldn’t take anything for him to be ready for a long night of sexytimes.

  Goddamn fucking hell, this could not be happening between us.

  Then he bent his arm, sliding his hand over the satin covering my back. My skin zinged at every point of contact, electricity surging between us.

  It felt good having him touching me like that. No, scratch that—it felt fucking amazing to have him touch me, which was all the more reason I needed to extricate myself from that position and find a way to keep it from taking place ever again.

  I hadn’t come here for a booty call. I’d come because I was a neurotic mess and he was the only thing that made me feel sane in the whirlwind that was currently my life.

  I tried to roll away from him, but his other arm came around my back, and he tightened his hold. Even in sleep, he had to be as strong as the Incredible Hulk. I squirmed a little, trying to free my legs, and one of them finally jerked free from the pile. I accidentally kicked Buster, though, since I’d been so concerned about getting away from Cam that I’d completely forgotten about the fact that his dog was at our feet. I didn’t kick him too hard, but he barked and jolted Cam awake.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, his voice gruff with sleep. I had hoped he wouldn’t wake up until I’d somehow pulled myself free, but Buster had made sure it was too late to do anything about that now.

  “Nothing’s wrong.” I tried to roll away again now that he was awake and could cooperate with my attempts. “I was just trying to get back to my side of the bed.”

  He dropped his hands to his sides almost immediately as though I’d burned him. Maybe he felt the same inexplicable heat everywhere we touched then, too. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too.” Not nearly as sorry as I was about the fact that he wasn’t holding on to me anymore. I might not want to be falling for Cam, but I sure as hell enjoyed the sensation of touching him. I’d never had the pleasure of skimming my hands over Captain America’s torso, but if I ever got that opportunity and it was even half as nice as Cam’s, I’d be a drooling mess in no time.

  I disentangled my legs and slid back to the opposite side of the bed, instantly mourning the loss of contact and shivering from the lack of Cam’s body heat. He rolled over to face me as I went. I could barely see his eyes in the dark, but I could feel them on me.

  Staring.

  Hard.

  So hard he stole my breath. It felt like he was devouring me with them. I might like that—being devoured by him. Except for the fact that he was out of bounds.

  Fuck, I needed to look away so I’d stop thinking about all the things I’d love to do to him and love for him to do to me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t turn my head. I couldn’t close my eyes. I was completely mesmerized by the way he was blistering me with his gaze.

  “I was dreaming about you,” he said. “About touching you.”

  “It wasn’t just in your dreams.” It had been in my dreams, too. And we had been touching.

  “I know.” His voice was hardly more than a croak, as if he was in physical pain. “I still feel the ghost of your skin on my hand.”

  I could still feel the ghost of his hand on my ass. I wanted the real deal again. “Would it be awful of me to ask you to touch me again?” I asked, ignoring the sirens going off in my head, telling me to back off and stay back. I couldn’t do it, though. I saw the yellow caution tape, the barrier that said Do Not Cross, and yet I was ripping it in two and stepping into forbidden territory.

  “Don’t tease me, Sara.”

  Cam Johnson was a man I would never dream of teasing.

  “I’m not teasing.” Also, I wasn’t thinking. I mentally put a pillow over the stupid sirens and stifled them.

  Right now, here, in this moment, I didn’t care that he was a hockey player. I didn’t care that he was one of my dad’s players. I didn’t care that I was pregnant. I could ignore the fact that if I went through with this, I would be doing to my father exactly what my mother had done—sleeping with one of his players. Okay, maybe not exactly, but still.

  I had to ignore all of that, because I would go crazy if I couldn’t feel Cam’s hands on me again.

  I lifted up onto my elbow, still on my side, and reached for him with my free hand. With the backs of my fingers, I grazed his jaw and cheeks. He didn’t pull away, so I splayed my hand and furthered my exploration. The pulse in his neck thundered beneath my fingertips, and I moved down over the sinewy, corded muscles in his shoulders and chest.

  A low moan rumbled from inside him, urging me on.

  The ridges and planes in his abs were endlessly fascinating to me, rippling and rolling beneath my touch. I traced a circle around his belly button with one finger, over and over again. He sucked in a breath as he trapped my wrist in his grip, preventing me from moving lower still.

  “Touch me, Cam.” I needed to learn the strength of his hands, the power of his thighs, the gentleness of his lips. I needed him. I didn’t want to need him, but I couldn’t ignore the sense that whether I wanted it or not, I very much did need him.

  He didn’t let go of my wrist even though I was straining to get it free so I could explore his body some more. “I will touch you,” he finally said. “But first I need you to understand something.”

  His tone was as serious as the expression in his eyes always was. No nonsense. Quietly intense. Eternally focused.

  “Okay.” I was so winded with need and lust and anticipation that my words were barely a whisper in the breath of space between us.

  “I don’t do one-night stands or casual flings or friends with benefits, or any of that other bullshit. I’m not going to be okay with fucking you and moving on like nothing ever happened between us. I won’t walk out of the picture like the asshole who got you pregnant, and I won’t make it easy on you if you decide you want to shove me out of your life, instead.” He shifted his grip until our palms were touching and his fing
ers were laced with mine. “For me, it’s all or nothing. I can’t half-ass this. If we do this, I will pursue you like no man has ever pursued you before. And even after I’ve caught you, I plan to continue pursuing you like my life depends on it. If you’re not prepared for that, if you’re not ready to be treated as something special and treasured and precious, then I need you to roll over, go back to sleep, and pretend none of this ever happened.”

  SARA DIDN’T RELEASE my hand.

  She didn’t freak out.

  She didn’t roll over and show me her back.

  She didn’t tell me to take a fucking hike or that I was full of shit, and she didn’t scoff at the idea that I would pursue her.

  She definitely didn’t go back to sleep like a small part of me had been praying she would.

  Instead, she leaned across the space between us and kissed me—something I never expected, but that a huge part of me had been hoping for, for what felt like an eternity.

  Her lips were soft and pliant, deliciously warm, and they moved over mine with deliberate purpose. She moved toward to me, rolling me onto my back and coming down over me so that her breasts pillowed on my chest, and she sucked my lower lip between hers, using her teeth to tug it down until her tongue could gain entry.

  She tasted both sweet and dangerous at once, like everything forbidden, like dark chocolate and red wine and smooth dark coffee, like taking a bite of sin while standing just this side of the pearly gates.

  What the fuck was I thinking? I shouldn’t have told her I’d been dreaming about her. I should have just apologized and rolled over and done my damnedest to forget the sensation of having her wrapped all around me like that. I should have gotten out of bed and made myself a pallet on the floor, so she could still be in here with me but I wouldn’t be able to pull her into my arms like that again.

  I had no business getting involved with Sara Thomas, but I’d just told her I was going to do a hell of a lot more than simply get involved with her. And I’d meant every fucking bit of what I’d said.

  She pulled herself fully onto me, straddling my waist with her thighs. Her hands went to either side of my head, her small left hand still clutching my right, and she pushed herself up so she was looking down over me. Cautiously, tentatively, I slipped my other hand onto her thigh. The silken texture of her nightgown glided beneath my fingers, and she shivered.

  I bent my knees, and Buster voiced his displeasure at being relocated from his comfortable position by my feet with a series of barks.

  “Shit.” I brushed some hair away from Sara’s face, tucking it behind her ear, and I flipped us over so she was on her back against the pillows and I was leaning over her now. Buster darted out from under the blankets and barked indignantly at me. He was about to get a hell of a lot more indignant. I kissed the tip of Sara’s nose. “Don’t move.”

  When I climbed off the bed, Buster yapped and raced out of the bedroom in front of me, as if he expected me to take him outside. But I just closed the door. He liked to be in the middle of everything way too much. I couldn’t think of anything that would kill the mood quicker than that little bastard trying to help.

  Sara was up on her knees on the bed when I turned around, the faint moonlight pouring through the window and bouncing off her satin nightie, enhancing all of her curves in a way that made me groan. It looked like liquid gold, the way it moved over her.

  “He’s going to feel left out,” she said.

  “He’ll have to get over it.” I sat down on the edge of the bed, and she inched close enough to me that I could touch her if not for the fact that she was behind me. Every cell in my body was screaming for me to push her back onto the bed to how I’d had her only a moment before, to slide that gold nightgown up her body and replace it with me. But I didn’t want to rush this.

  “I can’t help but think we’re crazy,” she said. “For this.” She didn’t let that stop her, though. Her hands came down on my shoulders, and she kneaded my muscles. She couldn’t take away my tension. Nothing would relieve that but finishing what we’d started.

  “I’d rather not think about that.” Thinking would give me too much time to regret what I hadn’t even done yet.

  She slipped her hands up my neck, and her thumbs worked at a spot just behind my ears while she used her fingers to massage my scalp. “Okay. No thinking, then.”

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting her to do, but it wasn’t this. She lowered her head and kissed me where my neck met the back of my shoulder, swirling her tongue in circles before nipping me lightly with her teeth.

  I sucked in a breath and fisted my hands in the bedding beneath me. It was the only way I could prevent myself from spinning around on her and taking things into my own hands. I wanted to give her this chance to take the lead, to see what she would do.

  Her lips followed the same path as her fingers, up the side of my neck and behind my ears and back down the other side. My pulse was already pumping as fast as it did after skating a hard shift, as intensely as after a fight.

  “Lie down for me,” she murmured in my ear.

  I would do anything she asked of me right at that moment. I shifted so my head would land on the pillows, and I slipped back, reaching for her almost before I was fully flat.

  Sara shook her head. “On your stomach. I want access to your back.”

  I groaned, but I rolled over. My dick was hard enough to karate chop a fucking board. I put my arms under a pillow, gripping it tight, and turned my head to the side so I could breathe.

  As soon as she straddled my hips and sat down on my ass, whatever ability to breathe I’d thought I had was gone. Her hands were like a drug, dangerous and addicting as she slid them over my back. The massage she gave me was too gentle, too sensual, too engrossing. She didn’t limit herself to using her hands—her elbows, lips, tongue, teeth all got in on the game—and she took her sweet, torturous time about it.

  She reached my waist, and I thought maybe her torment would be at an end, but she shifted her hips back and tugged at the waistband of my shorts. I had to grab the rails of the headboard to keep from putting an end to her sweetly delivered agony and beginning what I had in mind.

  “God, your ass is so tight,” she said. Her hands kneaded and squeezed my cheeks, which only turned me on more. With her tongue, she licked a path down the center of my back, all the way to the top of my crack.

  That nearly pushed me over the edge. I flipped over, dislodging her in the process, and reached for her.

  Sara shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “You’re killing me.”

  Her lips curled up in a seductive smile, and she finished removing my shorts. She tossed them onto the floor and bent over me, and her hot, wet mouth took me inside, and I nearly arched up off the bed.

  My hips rose up to meet her, and she used her hands in conjunction with her lips and tongue.

  “Fuck, that’s so good,” I said, or groaned, or something. I kept holding on to the headboard because if I let it go, I would fist my hands in her hair and drive my hips into her, keeping that sweet mouth right where I wanted it until I came.

  This was her game, though. This was her show. And that was not how I needed to go about pursuing her the way I’d promised I would.

  She slipped one hand down to massage my balls, gently tugging until I groaned. Then she slid her hand back farther, using a fingertip to circle my anus like she’d done earlier with my belly button, and I was done for.

  I nearly came right then and there.

  No woman had ever touched me like that before. I don’t know if it was more because I wasn’t prepared for the sensation or more because I was just really that sensitive there, but I had to put an end to her agonizing attention or I would make a fool of myself.

  I reached down to take her face in my palm, and she came up for air with a Cheshire cat grin. She was definitely going to fucking kill me. I might not even make it through the night.

  “Come here so I can kiss you,”
I said.

  She slithered up my body in that slinky nightie, and I pulled her down to my chest and rolled over her until I was pressing her into the bed. I crushed my mouth to hers, tasting myself, tasting sex, tasting life, tasting everything that I could ever imagine wanting or needing, all of it on her tongue.

  Tiny, breathy sounds kept coming from her throat, somehow turning me on more than I already was. My hands glided down her body, smooth over the gold satin. I drew her legs apart, and she wrapped them tight around my waist and held on, not allowing any separation.

  It was as though she wanted to be close to me as much as I needed to be close to her. No, I needed to be inside her. Part of her. I needed us to be one.

  One heartbeat.

  One breath.

  One.

  I COULDN’T GET over how he could be so big and strong and yet he was so gentle with me. Every time he touched me, it was so tender, almost reverent.

  He shook me to my core.

  Cam smoothed his hands up my sides, his thumbs hooking beneath the hem of my nightgown and drawing it up over my head. The satiny fabric combined with him bracing his weight on his elbows allowed it to move easily. He stopped kissing me long enough to slip it over my head and toss it to the floor, where it joined his shorts.

  He trapped my wrists while I still had them overhead and guided my hands to the headboard. “Hold on. Keep your hands there, because it’s my turn.”

  I shivered from the promise in his eyes, but I took the rail directly above my head with both hands and gave him a nod.

  Gradually, he eased off me, and I ached for him to come back. My skin was overheated, slick with sweat, and without him covering me, the cool night air left me shivering. I followed him with my eyes as he shifted toward the foot of the bed and lifted one of my feet to his mouth.