Natalie
The thing about coaching a bunch of twelve-year-old girls is while they will laugh until they cry when you do something stupid like tripping over your own skates, once you get up, they flock around you for the group hug of the century. Which is what I’m getting now, and it’s almost worth the bruised ass I’m going to have.
I need this.
I need to keep my mind off Vaughn Vassar and pay attention to what I’m doing, because ouch! Rubbing my glute while the girls peel off to help pick up the pucks from our practice, I skate over to the bench where George is waiting for me, a wide grin stretching her mouth as she pinwheels her arms in slow motion, bugging her eyes in feigned terror.
“Laugh it up,” I say, planting my hands on the boards in front of her. She’s doubled over, red hair standing up like flames around her freckled face as she gives in to hysterical laughter.
George isn’t a regular coach for my team but comes in to do some one-on-one with our goalie when she can swing it. I was thinking how lucky I was that she could make it tonight, but watching as she swings her arms around again, wheezing out what I’m guessing is supposed to be me shrieking as I went down… hmm.
Finally coming up for air, she wipes an honest-to-God tear from her eye and sighs. “That was classic, Nat. I haven’t seen a flail and bail of that caliber from someone over eight in like… ever.”
I sigh, waiting for the rest of it. Because, there’s totally more. If she’d been the one to wipe out, I’d have sprayed her with ice and razzed her for the next two hours. “Mmhmm. Just get it all out.”
Cocking her head, she sticks out her bottom lip. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be teasing you after a sprawling, starfish wipeout like that.”
Yep, it was a good one.
“Bet your ego has a booboo, huh?”
It’s smarting right about now. Correct.
“I mean, splat.”
Deep breath.
“Think you’ll be able to make it off the ice without another wreck?” Making a show of craning her neck, she scans the rink. “I see one of the tot’s skating trainers over there.” Flashing me an impish wink, she adds, “Just wait here and I’ll bring it to you.”
“That all you got?” I ask, laughing right along with her.
After a day spent trying to convince myself that what happened with Vaughn last night was enough for me when I know it wasn’t—laughing feels good.
“For now, but give me an hour and a couple beers.” She plops down on the bench and digs around in the enormous messenger bag she drags around everywhere. When she finds her phone with the spiderwebbed glass, she adds, “Diego and Pete are already at Belfast, and Ted said he’d try to meet us when he’s done with the peewee practice.”
The beer and company sound good. I haven’t seen George’s oldest brother Pete and his husband in months, and Ted is a fun guy. But Belfast?
My belly does a little twisty thing that I’d like to think is more nerves than anticipation, but that skip in my pulse and breathless feeling is all about me knowing that Vaughn likes Belfast.
I’ve already run into him there once.
No one could blame us if we just happened to end up in the same bar.
What would be the harm?
Dang it, I know the harm. Which is why I’m not going.
No more accidental meetings, and definitely no accidentally-on-purpose ones either.
Only, even as I think it, I find myself scanning the windows between the rink and the main hall. Ugh, and that’s totally a pinch of disappointment at seeing the glass free of broody NHL players.
George raises a brow. “What, is it Ted?” She lowers her voice, even though the girls have already gone into the locker room and the Zamboni has started its first loop around the ice. “So he likes you, so what? I already told him to forget it. The hockey fanboy is too strong with him. But he’s fine just being friends.”
“Wait, what?” I shoot a look toward the hall leading to the other rink. “Ted?”
“Yeah. Ted. Light-brown hair, nice eyes, hangs on your every word. Always offering you a ride home from practice. Asks you to grab a drink every time he sees you. Ted.” Shaking her head, she throws the phone into her bag and slings it over her shoulder. “Okay, so it’s not Ted. There isn’t a game tonight. What’s up?”
A part of me wants to tell her. Spill the whole shady story right here. George is one of my closest friends. She’s been there through my best days when we were winning championships in college and my worst when the doctors told me I was done playing. I love her. I trust her. But… This thing with Vaughn isn’t something she understands. And I’m already confused enough about my own feelings without bringing hers into the mix.
“Earth to Natalie?” she sings, waving at me like I might have lost her in the two feet of space between us. “You okay?”
“Sorry! Sorry.” I meet her eyes and give her the closest thing to the truth I can scrounge up. “Actually, I didn’t get much sleep last night.” So true. So, so worth it. “You guys have fun tonight, but I think I’m just going to go home and crash.”
For a minute, I think she’s going to call me on my lie, but she pulls me into a hug instead. With a last smile, she heads out and I duck into the coaches’ locker room to grab my shoes. Then drop my skates at the sharpening hutch. I check the schedule pinned to the wall, to see who has ice when.
Killing time, I realize with another guilty pang. Waiting to see if Vaughn might turn up. If maybe he found another excuse to be where I was. To see me again. But he hasn’t… and that’s a good thing.
I know it is, even if I can’t stop thinking about him.
Chapter 12
Vaughn
I’m not a prick.
That’s the excuse I’m going with as I take the short walk up to Natalie’s door, my pulse jacked like the puck’s about to drop.
We had sex. Hot. Wet. Blow-your-mind sex.
And I’m not looking for a repeat.
I’m not.
I’d have to be a total fuckwad if I showed up here intent on backing her against another wall and catching her breathy moans with my mouth when it’s been less than twenty-four hours since we agreed we were only going to do it the one time.
This is about making sure she’s okay after last night. Because despite what our track record would suggest, I don’t get the feeling casual is her style. So it would be shitty not to check in.
It’s not about seeing her again. It’s about doing the right thing.
I won’t even go inside. Hell, maybe I won’t even have the option. Her lights are on, but it’s Friday at ten p.m. She’s young. Single. Has a life full of family and friends.
She’s probably not even home.
I rake my hands through my hair. What was I thinking showing up at her place like this?
I should have called. Texted.
Scratch that. I have no idea how her notifications are set up and wouldn’t want to risk my mug popping up on her screen while she’s hanging out with her douche brother playing Scrabble. And yeah, Scrabble, because that’s a hell of a lot easier to swallow than the more likely scenario where she’s out at some bar getting hit on by every dude with luck enough to share space with her.
I swallow past the fist stuck in my throat at the idea of all those guys moving on her when she’s—
Damn it, she’s not mine.
I ought to leave. Turn my ass around and go home. Get some rest for the upcoming games.
Rest I don’t need because I’ve already napped today.
And let’s be real, the chances of me catching a single wink when I’m thinking about Natalie out with all those assholes scheming to get into her pants? Next to none. Not good on a night before a game. Not fair to the rest of the team. So maybe I’ll wait for her to come home. Make sure she gets in okay and she isn’t upset about what happened last night. And then I’ll go.
Christ, I don’t want her to be upset about last night.
An engine revs in
the distance, and I take a last look over my shoulder. A few friends are huddled together at the end of the block and a guy on a bike is talking into his earbud mic as he pedals by, but no one seems interested in the bigger-than-average guy standing on Natalie Baxter’s stoop.
Not yet anyway.
I knock and suck a long breath through my nose, telling myself to chill the fuck out. I’m going to see her. Eventually. And until then—
The door swings open and… I’m so screwed.
“Vaughn,” Allie whispers on a shaky breath, the deep blue of her eyes pulling me in. “What are you doing here?”
Yeah, what am I doing here?
Because it sure as hell isn’t making sure she’s okay after last night.
Not the way I’m cataloging every fucking detail about her. The exaggerated rise and fall of her chest beneath a white tank top, the Wisconsin sleep pants hanging just below those sexy hip bones I want to scrape my teeth over. Her pretty little naked toes and soft bare lips.
I take a step forward, put my hand on the doorframe to stop myself. “I’m a total fuckwad.”
A surprised laugh huffs past her lips. “Why’s that?”
Jesus, she’s pretty. “I can’t even remember what bullshit excuse I had for coming over here.”
“But it was bullshit?” She doesn’t seem too upset that I’m here. In a twisted way it would be easier if she did.
“Didn’t feel like it at the time. But yeah.”
The corners of her mouth tip up the barest degree as she leans into the open door. That hint of a smile changes her whole face, giving her a sexy, playful edge that has me planting my other arm on the frame and gripping it so hard my knuckles turn white.
“Allie.” Her name comes low and rough, and pushing out the next words is like forcing gravel and glass past my throat. “Tell me to get out of here and I’ll go.”
My gut knots as I wait for her to do it. Say it. Tell me to get off her stoop and leave her alone.
She swallows, looking away. “And if I don’t?”
It takes a beat before that quietly posed question processes. One painful pump of the organ in my chest while I brace for an impact worse than two hundred pounds of defense coming at me with everything he’s got. But when her words register, the ones I’m not expecting, my head snaps up, and every muscle I’ve had on lockdown since the second she opened the door busts free.
I bury one hand in the soft curls behind her neck as we come together in a hard, clashing kiss that’s all deep, sliding tongues, grasping hands, and shuffling feet as we move inside.
“I tried to stay away,” I say against her mouth, my breath ragged and strained.
We can’t get close enough.
“I tried to want you to.” Her fingers knot in my hair, tugging just right. “But it’s no use. I was calling you when you knocked.”
I pull back to search her eyes. “Yeah?”
“Sorry.” She really looks it too.
“Not sorry,” I growl. And then we’re kissing again, harder, hotter.
I push her tank up and thumb the tight bead of her nipple with one hand while sliding the other over her perfect ass to pull her closer. Her hips tip into the contact and she whimpers.
That sound.
I want it again.
Bending my knees, I get the contact I’m after, my cock rubbing against the thin cotton of her sleep pants. And yeah, it’s fucking fantastic.
Her hands grip my shoulders as she meets me stroke for stroke. Moaning and sighing, grabbing my ass, my arms and chest. Pushing to her toes and arching into me. Hooking her leg around my hip and making a whimpering noise that says she can’t quite get where she needs to be.
In the next breath, I have her off the floor, pressed against the wall next to the door, her body aligned with mine so when I slide my tongue into her mouth and grind my hips into all that warm softness, she gasps.
I do it again and again, unable to stop to give myself a second to contemplate how far off the rails my plans have gone.
I can’t think about anything except how fucking good she feels in my arms. How sweet those little sounds she’s making are. How bad I want inside.
“Need to fuck you,” I grunt at the feel of her pussy spasming against me.
“I’m on the pill,” she gasps, meeting my eyes and searching them with a vulnerability that wrecks me.
“I’m clean.” Thank fuck I’ve been tested, because the idea of getting inside her like this has me ready to blow my load right now. “You sure—?”
But then she’s kissing me again, devouring my mouth and moaning when I take back control to devour hers.
I hook my thumbs in the waist of her pants and panties and shove them down her hips as she hikes one leg free while attacking my fly.
And then I’ve got her by the backs of her thighs, tank top shoved above her gorgeous tits, sleep pants caught around her left knee. I line up, teasing my head through her slick folds as she trembles. “So wet for me.”
“Vaughn, I need you.”
She has no idea what that does to me. What she does to me.
Our eyes meet, holding as I push into her in one deep thrust that has her breath rushing past her lips.
“Okay?” I ask, holding where I am because she’s still so tight, I want to give her a chance to adjust.
She nods, lips parted, cheeks flushed.
“Baby, you feel so fucking good.”
I can feel everything. Each flutter and clingy grasp of her body around me. All that slick, snug heat. I can feel her heartbeat. Or maybe it’s mine. The only thing I can’t feel is where I end and she begins.
“So good,” she echoes against my lips, that desperate touch turned soft as she feathers her fingers over my jaw and down my neck. Like all we needed was this.
I start a slow rhythm, sinking as deep as her body will let me go, thrusting against that spot. Every time I bottom out, her pussy clenches around me. Every time I drag myself back, she clings to me with greedy pulls. And every time she looks into my eyes, I’m gone for her that much more. I don’t know how we’re going to stop this when having her heart beating against mine feels so right.
I can’t think about it. Not now. Not when I’m buried inside her and her breath is washing over my neck in soft puffs and her fingers are threaded through the mess of my hair.
Pulling out almost to the tip, I shift my angle and slide back in.
“Vaughn!”
That’s the spot. My name fills the air with a mix of breathy pleas and silent gasps as I work us both toward the edge.
She’s almost there. “Need you to come for me, baby.”
Using the wall for leverage, I hold her with one hand and slip the other between us to rub my thumb over her clit.
And that’s it. Her soft cries fill the space around us as she clamps down on me so good and so hard. I’m barely a stroke behind and then I’m coming inside her, filling her with the part of me I’ve never shared with another woman.
Pressing my forehead to hers, I breathe her in.
“Allie,” I say, pulling back to meet her eyes. So soft and blue. So trusting, when she shouldn’t have trusted me at all. “Baby, I’m sorry, but I’m not letting you go.”
Natalie
My brain and body are still reeling from what Vaughn just did to me, so it takes a second for the words to filter through the haze of sex clouding my mind. But then…
“What?”
He means not this minute. Not tonight. And that’s good, because I don’t want him to let me go tonight. He’s still inside me and already I want him again. Only the gruff apology in his voice warns this isn’t about tonight.
“I know it’s not what we talked about.” He tucks a bit of hair behind my ear. “I know it’s fucking complicated. But I’ve tried, and I can’t stay away from you.”
My heart does one of those little flips, because it’s what I want to hear. Just not what I need to hear. This thing between us is a temptation I can’t afford. Ne
ither of us can, but for completely different reasons.
Carefully, he sets me down, keeping one hand at my hip as I find my footing. He untangles my tank top and pulls it down to my waist before helping me with the sleep pants and panties pooled around one ankle. How is this man so tender and careful with me, and so shut off and forbidding with everyone else?
I lean back into the wall with a sigh, but neither of us is ready to break the contact. The quiet intimacy. His jaw is rough with stubble beneath my touch, square and stubborn and beautiful. His fingers are light, tracing the divot at my navel. “Vaughn, think about what you’re saying.”
Turning his jaw into my palm, he drops a kiss there.
“I know this isn’t something we can keep. There are too many reasons we can’t go the distance. You want a life that isn’t dictated by the NHL, and I can’t afford to fuck things up here if I want a contract with Oregon next season.”
“I wouldn’t want you to.” I know what hockey means to him. What it means to anyone who’s made it to this level in their career. But I need to be as smart as he is, and remember that a life of being prioritized second to hockey is a life I can’t let myself live. Not even with a man who affects me the way he does. “I don’t want to talk about this. Can’t we take tonight and—”
“That’s what I’m saying.” His hand covers mine and pulls it to rest against his chest. Such a nice spot. “What if we take this time we have. Tonight… and all the nights until the season ends?”
My breath catches and I slowly shake my head. The risk to his career is too much. “What do you think is going to happen when the guys find out about us? Things are just starting to turn around for you with the rest of the team.”
“Honestly, I’m starting to think our chances of keeping this quiet might be better if we give in. I’m losing my shit every time I see you and think I can’t have you. Every time one of my teammates pulls you into a hug, pretending they don’t want anything more than to be friends—which is bullshit, by the way. And the way you’re looking at me. Baby, I fucking love it, but if anyone catches that look, we’re done.”
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