Face-Off

by Nancy Warren

  “How pretty your neck is.” He kissed her again. “Long and elegant, like a dancer’s.”

  “My neck?”

  She didn’t sound like it was the greatest compliment of her life.

  “Among other things.” He ran a fingertip along her collarbone. “I probably need to get you out of these clothes to confirm how pretty everything else is.”

  She snorted. The most unladylike thing he’d ever seen or heard her do. “It’s not all that exciting.”

  “You let me be the judge of that,” he said, and then, because he couldn’t resist, he pulled her in and started kissing her again.

  He thought he could kiss this woman all day and all night and never grow tired of it.

  While they were mouth-to-mouth, he slipped his hands under the hem of her dress, raising it and reaching under. Her skin was warm and soft and as he touched her she made soft little sounds in her throat, like unspoken words of encouragement. He felt his blood start to heat as his hands trailed up to the edges of surprisingly sexy panties.

  He’d planned to go so slowly, take it easy, but he sensed a heat coming off this woman, and a need that he felt in his caveman’s heart. Abandoning caution, finesse, he turned her so her back was to him, dragged down the zipper, exposing her back and the lacy strap of a black bra. And her long, beautiful neck.

  He kissed his way down, from bump to bump of her spine. He could feel her excitement, feel her moving against him as he followed the zipper’s path with his lips, breaking contact between his mouth and her skin only long enough to slip the dress off her shoulders and let it drift to the floor.

  He turned her around, took her mouth again. She still wore those crazy green-and-black shoes, and nothing else but a lacy black bra and panties. He had her bra unsnapped and sailing into the corner of the room in seconds, and then he pulled back to look at her.

  “You are beautiful,” he said, meaning it with every fiber of his being.

  “No, I’m not,” she sighed. “I’m so ordinary.”

  There was such sadness in the words, but how could she even think that about herself? Her neck was long, her shoulders elegant and her breasts high and firm. Her belly was slender, but slightly rounded as a woman’s should be. Her stomach didn’t sport a six-pack, but then he’d never thought a woman’s belly should be indistinguishable from a guy’s, not that he’d ever said that aloud.

  She reached for his shirt and he helped her pull it off, then pulled her close again, enjoying the rub of her skin against his. “Am I too hairy for you?” He felt like an animal with a pelt, but she buried her face against his chest, licked his nipples.

  “I love it,” she said.

  He pushed her back on the bed, toppling her so she fell laughing onto the mattress. He traced the waistband of her panties then dipped inside for a tantalizing touch of her soft sweetness.

  All he did was touch her and she gasped, her back rising off the bed. And it was as if a bomb went off inside him. He needed to touch her, lick her, take her. He wanted to take her every possible way he could think of and maybe they’d invent a few new ones.

  He was panting, already wanting to pound himself inside her body when he hadn’t even begun to pleasure her yet. Steady, boy, he warned himself. He tried to remember that he’d planned to take this slowly, but then he hadn’t known that Sierra would be so unbelievably responsive, or that her eyes would half close and she’d look at him the way Cleopatra must have looked at Anthony. Or that her skin would smell like honey and taste like rain-washed waves.

  She was, in a word, gorgeous. And real.

  He stripped her panties off because he simply had to see her, taste her.

  While he was at it he stripped the rest of his clothes off too so they were both naked.

  When he joined her on the bed, he could see her eyeing him, her eyes big and trusting and sparkling with excitement.

  She reached over, ran her hands over his hairy chest, then down over his belly. Her hand was so small and yet so sensuous when she touched him. Before he’d even realized her intention, she’d closed her hand around him. He felt the slight quiver in her fingers, excitement or nerves, he had no idea, but it was like a hot, vibrating glove and he knew that if she clutched him like that for much longer he’d embarrass himself.

  So he flipped himself on top of her, kissed his way down her body until she was squirming, then he pushed her legs apart and put his mouth on her. Right there. Right where she was so hot and honey-sweet.

  She cried out when he licked her, and once he got her going, he practically had to hold onto her hips to keep her earthbound.

  When he pushed his tongue all the way up inside her, she grabbed his head, clutching his hair with her fingers and pretty much screaming as her orgasm shook her. Her inner walls spilled honey on his tongue and pulsed around him as the aftershocks shook her.

  SHE. COULD. NOT. BELIEVE. What. Had. Just. Happened. To. Her.

  Each thought word was more like a pant.

  Oh, oh. Oh. He was so good. It was all she could think. He was soo good. Naturally, he’d had decades of practice with supermodels, but right now she didn’t care. It was as though he’d been designed with no other purpose than to give her pleasure.

  He was kissing his way back up her body and her skin was so supersensitized that she experienced little shocks of pleasure everywhere his tongue touched her.

  When he got up close enough to kiss her, she tasted her own pleasure, and wondered how she’d ever got so lucky as to find herself in this amazing man’s bed.

  Sierra had never thought of herself as a tiger in bed. Hah. More like a stuffed animal when she’d been with Michael. Now, tonight, she wanted it all. She wanted to try everything she’d ever dreamed of, every passionate, crazy, fantasy she’d ever imagined.

  Jarrad had probably done it all a thousand times, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t imagine a man more fun to try things with.

  His hands were all over her. Jarrad touched her as though he loved the feel of her. As though she were the most amazing woman in history.

  When he’d kissed her mouth for so long she was light-headed, he moved south. Kissing her chin, her throat and her chest. He spent a long time on her breasts, kissing and sucking them.

  She tried to hold on to sanity long enough to remind him of the importance of protection, but he was already reaching for the night table and she relaxed, knowing that he might take chances on the ice, but he wouldn’t take chances with her.

  The sound of the tearing condom wrapper reminded her that she hadn’t anticipated sex in a long time. Hadn’t wanted a man inside her as much as she wanted this one in longer than she could remember. Maybe ever.

  In a second he was ready, and she opened for him as he pushed slowly inside her.

  The long, slow friction was heaven. And hell. She wanted him inside her so badly, even as she realized he was a big man, and holding himself back so as not to hurt her. But she was so hot, so needy, that she couldn’t wait. She pulled him into her even as she thrust up against him.

  “Oh, honey, you feel so good,” he groaned. Oh, he had no idea how good she felt. Her body was melting from the inside out, and the more he thrust into her, the more she wanted.

  She was mindless, crazed, and he soon caught her mood and joined in, not taking it easy but giving her everything he had.

  She cried out, she was exploding, gripping and grabbing at him as they surged and bucked against each other, hard and strong and needy.

  With a helpless groan, he followed her, stretching the incredible sensations out with a few long, slow strokes that left him shuddering until he fell limply on top of her.

  A drop of sweat splashed onto her breast. “Oh, baby,” he said. He turned onto his back, pulling her with him, she snuggled against him, loving the tickly feeling of his hairy chest against her cheek and the sound of his heart pounding beneath her ear.

  When they’d both calmed a little, she said, “I saw your commercial tonight on TV.”
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br />   He grimaced. “My condolences. I’m no Robert DeNiro.”

  “No. But you are the kind of man who is so famous he can move shaving cream.”

  He didn’t seem to get her point. “They called it Ice. Can you imagine anything more lame?”

  “Jarrad, you’re a celebrity.”

  It was a moment before he answered, and what he said was, “I’m a washed-up hockey player.”

  Wow. She’d been so caught up with her own insecurities she hadn’t even thought about what it must be like for him, to have risen so high and now be retired before he was ready.

  She rose on one elbow. “You are not a washed-up anything,” she informed him. “Right now you are a hockey coach. Who knows what you’ll end up being?”

  “That’s easy for you to say. Your work has meaning. Every morning when you wake up, you know you’re changing lives. You are helping kids learn stuff and grow up to be good citizens. That is so much more important than shooting a puck down the ice.”

  She started to laugh. First a low chuckle that she tried to smother, then a snort emerged and finally she could hold it back no longer. She let out a huge howl of laughter.

  “You are laughing? At my loss of career?”

  “No. I’m laughing because I was so demoralized when I found out who you were that I would have canceled our date if I’d had your number.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  He rolled over, pinned her. “I am so glad you didn’t have my phone number. Look what I would have missed.”

  She didn’t even want to think about what she’d have missed.

  “It’s just that, you’re, like, some celebrity that I’d see on TV and think, ‘Wow, he’s cute,’ but not someone I’d ever meet in real life. I want to know what the real man is like.”

  “Okay. Ask me anything.”

  “Anything?”

  “Yep.”

  “Promise to answer honestly?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “If you promise not to share anything I might tell you with anyone else. Especially anyone who might, say, carry a camera and a notebook and snoop on people for a living.”

  “Promise.”

  Now that she had his word he’d tell her anything, she had no idea what she wanted to ask him. She gazed up into those gorgeous green eyes and wondered if anything ever dented his armor. And there it was. Her question.

  “When’s the last time you cried?”

  He sucked in a breath. “You don’t want to start with an easy one? Like my astrology sign?”

  “Nope.”

  Besides, all the easy stuff was on the internet. He was a Taurus, she already knew that. His sign was the bull, which seemed perfect.

  He flopped on his back and stared at the ceiling, but kept a hand resting on her thigh so she still felt connected to him, warmed by his touch.

  “When my father died,” he finally said.

  Her sympathy was immediately aroused. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It was so sudden. He was alive and joking last time I saw him, and then boom. He had a massive heart attack and he was gone.” His voice thickened. “I never got to say goodbye. Never got to thank him for teaching me to skate.”

  A tear rolled down the side of his face and she felt her own eyes fill.

  “Never got to tell him I loved him.”

  She kissed him. “He knew,” she said softly. “He knew.”

  For a moment they lay there, her head on his shoulder and his arm wrapped around her. And for her, he wasn’t a shaving-cream-commercial celebrity or a former NHL heavyweight, he was a man who missed his father. And who could open his heart to a woman.

  “So,” he said after a while. “Are we going to lie around blubbering or are we going for round two?”

  Her body sparked immediately in response. “I pick round two.”

  “That’s my girl.” And he rolled over and kissed her. And let his hands roam all over her as though he couldn’t ever get enough.

  “Is there anything in particular I can do for you?” he asked in a low, sexy voice. “Yes.”

  “What’s that?”

  She smiled the smile of a woman who is with a great lover.

  “Everything.”

  6

  SIERRA WOKE UP WITH A START, barely aware of what had woken her until she felt the unmistakable sensation of a man’s lips on the back of her neck. She smiled, half in and half out of sleep, feeling the delicious sense of a body well-loved.

  When his hands reached around to play with her breasts she realized she was naked. And that she’d fallen asleep.

  “I fell asleep,” she said, turning to face him. “I didn’t mean to. I should probably get going.”

  His eyes were slumberous and sexy. “You should stay for breakfast,” he mumbled. Now that the back of her neck was unavailable, he kissed his way across her shoulder, heading for her breast.

  “Breakfast? I can’t stay the whole night.”

  He stopped in his tracks and glanced up at her. “Darling, you already did.”

  Only now did she realize that it was light outside. She squinted at the fancy clock on the bedside. It was eight in the morning.

  A strangled sound came out of her mouth. “I can’t stay the night.”

  Amusement faded from his eyes and for a second she got a glimpse of the tough player who’d once terrorized opposing teams. “Why not? Somebody waiting for you at home?”

  “What?” She rubbed her eyes, and, as his meaning sank in, she snapped, “No, of course not.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t—” She stopped, not sure how to explain her confused feelings, threw her hands up. “I just don’t. Not any of it.”

  He still regarded her somewhat warily, but the sharp suspicion had faded. “Well, you sure did last night.”

  “It was different last night. It was dark and I thought it would be simple to slip into bed with a stranger and then slip out again and go home.”

  He stroked the side of her face with his finger, this tough guy with his delicate caresses. “But you’re not built that way. I could have told you that.”

  “How could you know?”

  He shrugged. “Gut instinct. A lot of women are interested in guys who play hockey. You get a sense of who wants bragging rights and who wants something real.” A sudden frown darkened his eyes. “At least, most of the time you do. Sometimes we all get fooled.”

  She suspected he was thinking of the ex Mrs. Jarrad McBride and she really didn’t want the shadow of a swimsuit model darkening this bed, especially not while she happened to be in it. Naked.

  “I didn’t even know who you were until I saw that commercial. Then I had to look you up on Google.”

  “I know.” He stroked the side of her waist where it curved, traced it to her hip and let his hand settle there, warm and comforting.

  “You must have thought I was stupid.”

  “Nope. I thought how nice it was to have a conversation with someone where I was just a guy she was getting to know.”

  “I can’t believe how well I got to know you.” She shook her head. “This time yesterday, I didn’t even know you existed.”

  “Now you do.”

  She rolled over to face him. “I guess you’re right,” she agreed. “I’m not really the casual-sex type.”

  He kissed her nose. “Believe it or not, neither am I. I tell you what. Since I accidentally made you stay all night, how about I take you for breakfast?”

  “How does that make me staying over here any better? If we go for breakfast?”

  “Doesn’t. But I’m hungry. I can’t think when I’m hungry.”

  “Well…” But it wasn’t like she had anything pressing to do at home. Laundry that could wait. And besides, after all their night-time activity, she was hungry too.

  “Okay. But I need to shower first.”

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Jarrad.”
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  “What?” He threw up his hands all Mr. Innocent. “It’s a great way to save water. I’m all about saving the environment.”

  Because he was adorable and made her feel so good, how could she resist?

  HE MIGHT HAVE TAKEN her to a fancy place for dinner but she discovered his taste in breakfast was more of the diner variety. Naturally, everyone knew him in Tracy’s, where the choices for breakfast were pretty much bacon, eggs, sausage, pancakes and steak and eggs. This wasn’t a place that would serve, say, muesli and yogurt, or an organic fruit compote.

  Oh, well. She supposed a good dose of cholesterol wouldn’t hurt her once in a while.

  The coffee was good and strong, and while Jarrad launched into the West Coast Trucker which pretty much seemed to contain every single item on the menu times three, she stuck to bacon and eggs. Jarrad waded through all of his and still managed to eat half her hash browns.

  “I don’t know where you put all that food,” she said, amazed.

  “Sex,” he said around a mouthful of potato. “It’s fuel for sex.”

  She did not know how he did it, but even the stupidest comments like that one made her hot. She knew she only had him for a couple of weeks so she was determined to enjoy every minute.

  Simply being here eating breakfast in a diner while wearing her black dress from last night made her feel gloriously wanton. She might as well wear a neon sign that said, Got Laid Last Night. Not that anybody spared her a second glance, but it was cool nonetheless.

  She tried to cross her legs and felt a muscle twinge. “Ow.”

  “What’s the matter?” he asked immediately. “Did I hurt you?”

  “I don’t think it was you. I think it was the hockey.”

  He seemed enormously relieved that it was hockey and not the aftermath of his loving making her wince. “You need to practice every day. Then your body will get used to skating and you’ll get better fast.”

  “Jarrad, I have a job. I can’t practice every day.”

  “Sure you can. When does your team meet up again?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Okay. Come on. I’ll give you a private coaching lesson today. We’ll see if we can get you caught up enough that you can go after a puck without clinging to the boards.”