Misconduct (Hot Ice series Book 6)

by Lily Harlem

  While the meal cooked, I slipped into my room. Brushed my hair and pulled on a sweater. I knew from experience once the sun went the temperature dropped.

  “Here you go,” I said, stepping onto the deck and carrying a tray holding dinner and two bottles of beer. That seemed to be his drink of choice so I’d stick with it. Safe option.

  He looked up at me. For a moment it was as if he’d forgotten I was even there, in the villa. It seemed as though his mind was a million miles away.

  “I hope you like fish,” I said, setting the meal down.

  “I eat pretty much anything.” He shifted his chair ’round so he could use the table.

  I sat next to him rather than opposite, wanting to see the waves and watch the moon round the mountain. His cologne hit me again, mixing with the scent of the lilies that were in full bloom in large pots.

  Despite the knots in my stomach, I was hungry and tucked into the meal. Dustin devoured his as though he’d never been fed before. He used his knife and fork quickly, and ate in a functional manner, barely savoring the flavors it seemed, just shoveling it in.

  Like I’d previously thought. Peel back the layers and he was pure Neanderthal.

  The sounds of the cutlery and the skim of the sea on the sand were the only noises while we both demolished our meals. Eventually, plates empty, we sat in silence. But my thoughts were tumbling, the silence giving them permission to be loud. Clattering around my head like rocks tumbling down a mountainside.

  Where would he go? The hotel was full and he couldn’t get off the island tonight. There were no flights or ferries. What if some of the mugger’s accomplices had seen the direction we’d walked in and decided to follow? What if they wanted revenge? Or to steal more from me?

  No, that was a silly thought that stemmed only from the fright of the mugging. I’d been alone at the villa many times and never given security a moment’s worry.

  My brain jogged along a different path of anxiety.

  Had Dustin hated fucking me so much that now he couldn’t stand to be around me? Was that why he wanted to go? He couldn’t even bear to look at me? Was he so ashamed, so full of regret?

  Well, if that was the case, good. I’d hated fucking him too.

  I sighed.

  That was a lie. I hadn’t. It had been off-the-scale sexy. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so caught up in a moment, so acutely focused on finding satisfaction in the quickest way possible.

  “I should head off,” he said.

  I realized my sigh had been rather loud.

  “Where will you go?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”

  “You don’t have to. You could stay here.” I drained the last of my beer. “There’s plenty of room in this inn.”

  He laughed but not with humor. “You a masochist or something?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, whatever the fuck that was, between us,” he nodded behind himself, at the bed, “it was a major fucking disaster.”

  Well, that put me in my place. Now I knew where I stood—in the disaster zone. “But it’s done now. Like you said, a one-time-only thing.” I shrugged, going for nonchalant. “We’ve got it out of our system. It won’t happen again.” I pulled down my mouth, as if the whole thing had not been to my taste either. Though of course that wasn’t true, it had been right up my dirty street.

  “Is that what you want?” He leaned forward and folded his arms on the table, twisted his head to study me. Shadows slanted across his face, making the bump on his nose more noticeable as well as the indent on his bottom lip where the scar slashed across it.

  “Yes. It’s ridiculous to think there could ever be anything between us,” I said, also folding my arms but leaning back in my chair instead of forward.

  “I agree.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re not even the sort of woman I go for,” he said.

  “And I already told you you’re not my kind of guy.” I thought of Henri, suave and sophisticated with his sexy accent, smooth skin and carefully tailored clothes. Dustin was the exact opposite with his rough-and-ready style. Well, it wasn’t even a style, he just…was. He had an absolute lack of vanity, an obvious disinterest in fashion and I wouldn’t be surprised if he just kept his hair that short so he didn’t have to worry about brushing it.

  He stood, wandered into the kitchen and left me looking at the craters on the full moon. Dad had used to tell me to look for a face in the pits and valleys. I could when I was a kid. Tonight though, I struggled to determine any features. I guess I was finally growing up. It did that, money worries.

  Dustin reappeared with two more bottles of beer in his hands.

  “Here,” he said, setting one down in front of me. “It’s been quite a fucking day.” He struck a match and lit the citronella candle in the center of the table. “I will stay, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure, I said you could.” I watched the flame rise upward and a hazy glow spread over our empty plates. I was relieved that he wasn’t still planning on leaving, tonight at least.

  He sat and once again leaned forward. This time the shadows on his face were golden. “So now we’ve decided that we’ve scratched the itch to screw each other stupid,” he said, “and we’ve established that it isn’t gonna happen again, do you think you could tell me what the fuck is going on with the team?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Back there.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at the beach. “You said something about the mess you’d inherited.”

  I clamped my lips together. The team’s finances had been the furthest thing from my mind the last few hours and I’d enjoyed the reprieve from worry. Besides, what was it to do with him?

  “Of course you don’t have to tell me squat,” he said, “though it might just help, you know, a problem halved and all that.”

  “I really need to speak to my father about it all first. I think he’s had his eye off the ball this last six months. I don’t know if he had a grand plan or if it was just rolling along like a runaway train.”

  He took a sip of his drink. There was a small popping sound as he removed the bottle from his lips. “You know something,” he said. “I’m not as dumb as you think.”

  “I never said you were.”

  “You don’t have to say it, sweet cheeks, it’s the way you speak to me in the locker room and how you look at me whenever I mention the contract. You think I have nothing but cold air between my ears.”

  “No, not at all.” I’d never thought that. Dustin was witty, sharp and had never given me the impression that he was anything other than fully switched on.

  “You know my parents are both lawyers,” he said. “Until I won a scholarship for the Academy, going into law was my first career choice.”

  “Really?” I struggled to keep the surprise from my voice. I just couldn’t imagine him in a suit marching in front of jury. I was sure he’d be slung out for cursing, or spitting or throwing a woman over his shoulder and marching off to give her a good seeing to.

  “Ha, that shocked you,” he said with a huff.

  “No, not really. You would have made a great lawyer.” I wasn’t sure how sincere I’d sounded.

  “Nah, I’d have been shit, I just needed to be on the ice. I was hooked and wanted it to be my life. Luckily my parents saw that pretty early on and stopped hassling me. Worked out okay though, in the end.” He paused. “Well, up until this point it has. Right now it’s kinda going to the dogs. Vipers were all I ever wanted, that’s the team I’ve been busting my balls off for years to goaltend for.”

  I watched as he peeled the corner of the label on his bottle, his big fingers poking agitatedly at it.

  “And the money,” he said, “It’s fucking nice, yeah, but, it isn’t the be-all and end-all. And I’ve been wise with investments. I haven’t pissed it all away. Some of it, sure, I like to party, hang out with the guys, but it isn’t like that if I’m in
Austria or training. Then I’m head down, working, focused.” He ripped the label off completely and flattened it on the table with his palm. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.” I studied his fingernails. They were short and square, so different from my neatly shaped ones that were painted with MAC’s Confectionary polish.

  “It’s money, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “It’s the finances. The Vipers. Your dad left it in a bad way. That’s the whole issue, isn’t it?”

  I reached for my beer. Took a long slug and then licked the drop left behind on my top lip.

  He was watching me. “You’ve inherited a financial mess,” he said, “and it’s up to you to sort out.”

  “Do you understand about confidentiality?” I asked quietly.

  “You mean like am I gonna tell the guys I’ve fucked boss lady? No way. Confidential information. I get that.” He huffed.

  “Yes, absolutely. No one must ever know what we did.” I suppressed a shudder at the thought of Dustin telling Brick, Phoenix and Ramrod about me in the locker room and having a great guffaw as he did so. Vadmir slapping him on the back, Raven touching knuckles and Mike trying to laugh along but wondering how I could have stooped so low.

  He reached over and rested his hand on mine. “I promise, sweet cheeks, no one will ever find out about what happened on that bed, not from me anyway. And I can’t imagine you want a newsflash either. I think we’d both by embarrassed to hell and back if that dirty snippet got out.”

  “Yes. That dirty snippet, slip from sense, whatever you want to call it, stays strictly between us.”

  “Goes without saying.” He squeezed my hand.

  “As if it never even happened.”

  “Never happened. I may act like a caveman but I know when to keep my mouth shut.” He lifted his hand and made a zipper movement across his lips.

  “Good.”

  An owl hooted in the distance. The sound, like so many things here, transported me back to my childhood. I thought of Dad again. Hoped his tests had gone well and Giselle was looking after him. Not wearing him out.

  I wasn’t sure how to start the Vipers’ bank balance conversation with him when he got back to the island. Had he known what was going on? That more money had been going out in the last six months than coming in? He must have, he was an on-the-ball businessman, a millionaire many times over. But perhaps the oversight had been a symptom of him becoming unwell. Not paying attention when he should have been.

  Shit. Yes. What if he didn’t know anything and when I spoke to him that knowledge made him ill again, when he was on the road to recovery and doing so well? I’d feel terrible, like the worst daughter ever when in actual fact I was trying to stand up and do the right thing. Look after the family’s interest.

  “Jesus, you look like you have the weight of that fucking moon up there on your shoulders,” Dustin said. “Is it really that bad?”

  I sighed. What the hell. “Are you really good at keeping your mouth zipped?”

  He pressed his lips tight and nodded.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty bad. Certainly not good anyway.”

  “Why, what’s happened?’

  “Simple math. The income from the arena, you know, tickets, broadcasting rights and merchandise isn’t enough for the bills. The team is in the red.”

  He was quiet for a moment, then, “And you’re looking for ways to cut the monthly housekeeping.”

  “That’s putting it simply, yes. I need to tighten my purse strings, not be as frivolous as Dad has been of late.”

  “But attendance is good?”

  “Yes, sellouts aren’t uncommon.”

  “How about—”

  “I’ve already looked into making money by hiring the arena out when the Vipers aren’t using it, and getting some off-season attractions in place to bump up the bank balance. But I still need to do more.”

  He sat back, folded his arms.

  I couldn’t help but glance at his biceps bulging around his t-shirt. I remembered how they’d felt when I’d gripped them earlier, as he’d sunk deep inside me and groaned in a deliciously carnal way. Had I left marks on his skin with my nails? I couldn’t quite see in this dim light.

  “That’s what all of this is about, isn’t it?” He shook his head.

  “What?”

  For a moment he was silent, then, “You know damn well what.” His voice was suddenly gruff.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yeah, you do. Me. It’s money, it’s my three-year contract and how much that’s going to cost. That’s the problem.” He paused and rubbed his left temple. “Fucking hell. Maybe I’m not so bright. Took me long enough.”

  “Well, how could you have known?”

  “Because it makes sense now why you wanted to play Price. Fill my space with a much cheaper player and then trade me.”

  I stayed silent and let him sift through the facts. He seemed pretty mad at himself.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” he asked. “You didn’t insist I sit on the bench first period against the Rangers because you’d taken an instant hissy dislike to me. You were genuinely seeing how the Vipers would cope without me if I wasn’t around.”

  “Why would Dad have spent money on a rookie if he was no good?” I shrugged. “I needed to find out. That was the only way. Throw him in at the deep end.”

  “He spent the money because he saw potential. That’s what Jackson Price has by the bucket load, but he’s not there yet. He will be, I’d bet money on it. Another season.” He stood, paced to the edge of the deck and put his hands behind his head, threaded his fingers together and let his elbows stick out to the sides. “Besides, you need two goaltenders who can play, not one and a half.”

  “Isn’t that what I have now?” It was certainly a thought that had been rattling around my head.

  “No way, the kid’s good, seriously good. Just not when Todd-fucking-Carty is around. He might be pretty but he’s a fucking menace.”

  I waited for him to speak again, or move or something, but he didn’t. He stayed like a statue staring out at the inky water. The owl hooted again and a cricket started up in one of the planters.

  After a couple of minutes I gathered the plates and stacked the tray. Shit. I really shouldn’t have told him any of that. But at least he knew the truth now. That I couldn’t afford to pay his multiple zero wages, and certainly not commit to that kind of expenditure for the next three years.

  I didn’t want to not want him. That was just how it was.

  Chapter Ten

  The first thing I heard the next morning as I rose from the depths of sleep was the sound of the waves. I’d slept with the small windows on top of the French doors open, loving the melodic rolling and crashing sound as I’d drifted off and thankfully let pleasant dreams wash me away.

  I stretched and noticed how my inner thighs felt a little tender. The memory of Dustin throwing me over his shoulder, and then us fucking like possessed demons rushed back to me. There was a little nugget of shame and mortification there, but mostly the emotion was lust, a sexy, hot sweep of desire that transported me back to the moment my goaltender had shucked off his clothes and stood, for the sweetest thread of time, all dark and handsome and massively aroused before me.

  He’d been right, there was nothing that could stop us. Screwing had been the only thing on our minds.

  I glanced at the door—it was shut—then slid one hand over my chest and the other between my legs. I’d started the day feeling turned-on. There were worse things to be greeted with after an eight-hour slumber.

  My nipples were tight, my pussy a little damp. I slid my two longest fingers through my folds and then a little way into my entrance. Yesterday Dustin had just rammed home. He’d aimed and fired. No chance for me to get used to his length or his girth. He’d hit the jackpot on one determined ride to completion.

  I added another finger, shunted in roughly and tried to recreate that thick, rapid filling sensat
ion he’d given me. But it was nothing like it. Barely a tickle in comparison.

  I bit my lip and suppressed a moan of frustration.

  Then, oh, then I’d ridden him. Flipped him over and sank onto his cock. I’d taken him so deep I was sure I could feel him in my throat. My clit had captured wonderfully on his pubis and he’d jerked his hips in time with my grinding movements.

  Searching out my clit, I began to finger it, just the way I liked, rubbing and squeezing. He’d gripped my thighs as I’d fucked him, pressed his head so hard into the pillow that all of his neck tendons had stood out. He’d been at my mercy, so big and intimidating yet pinned down and being screwed by me. I’d had him. In that moment he’d been mine—but only in that one blip of time, one stolen memory, a deviation from the path of my destiny.

  I shut my eyes again, allowed heat to flood my pelvis and harnessed the first rumbles of a building climax. It wouldn’t be long. Morning orgasms were always generous to me. Whether I was with a man or alone.

  I was sure there would be a bruise on my side from where he’d flipped me. One quick flick of his hips and he had me on my stomach, captured by his body lying over me.

  He’d got my G-spot just right then. The fabulously wide domed head of his cock rubbing it over and over, pulling it down, shoving it up, generating the deep, blissful feeling that made me want to pee but not.

  I was frigging my clit faster now. I held my breath, knew the climax was just there. To tip myself over the edge, I recalled how I’d masturbated yesterday with him inside me. Combining the internal and external sensations had catapulted me into a state of ecstasy I could happily have existed in for hours. And him pumping too, no barriers, nothing except flesh on flesh, his hot seed just spurting into me accompanied by his gasping groans.

  I came. A toe-curling orgasm that I was in complete control of. I eased through to the end, enjoying how my pussy clamped down, throbbing and releasing moisture as my clit bobbed beneath my fingertips.