"Tell me you got the gift basket too," he said against my ear, his first words since he'd returned to my arms.
"Yes," I managed, and he left, returning in seconds with the condoms. Before he could climb onto the bed, I took hold of his pants. "Take them off."
He did, with a great cacophony of snaps, but left his boxer briefs on. Ignoring my half-hearted protest, he settled on top of me. His mouth took mine again and his hips pressed down, and the feel of his erection, tantalizingly covered, against me left me whimpering against his lips.
His bare legs entangled with mine felt so good I tried to take off his shirt, wanting every last inch of him naked against me.
He pulled the shirt from my hands and said, "No," then kissed me again, even harder, as if trying to make me forget.
I tried to forget, but his refusal to take his shirt off, even here, confused me and I couldn't keep from puzzling over it. I was about to ask him why when he drew back and with an extra-hard thump of my already pounding heart I realized his eyes had filled with pain and fear.
He climbed off me and stood beside the bed. "You want me to take it off?"
Not sexy, not the way he said it. It was a challenge, and I was afraid but sat up and said, "Yes." I had to know.
He pulled the shirt over his head.
I took him in at one glance but couldn't accept what I saw. The magazine-perfect abs. The powerful arms. The strong chest.
The livid scar across it.
The scar ran from just below his left nipple to a few inches before his right armpit, taking a jagged upward course. The vicious swath through his body wasn't new but hadn't faded to white age either. It had to be from...
I raised my eyes to his, and he said, "The car crash," his teeth clenched against the words.
"But you said you were fine." I couldn't understand. How was this fine?
"I didn't deserve to be fine."
The self-hatred in his voice ripped a hole in my heart. "It was an accident." I swung my legs off the bed and put an arm around his waist. "It wasn't your fault."
He stood silent, the muscles beneath my arm rigid with tension, and I sat staring at the scar. How awful to live with such a vivid daily reminder of what he'd lost. On impulse, I leaned forward and kissed it.
A shudder tore through him and I pulled away, horrified. "Did I hurt you?"
He said no, but his tone, and the anguish radiating from him, said yes. He hadn't drawn back, though, so I kissed him again, safely below the scar, and he slid both hands into my hair.
I wrapped my other arm around him. "I'm sorry I tried to make you take your shirt off before, for massages. I didn't know."
"It's just easier that way. People ask too many questions."
I nodded, then thought of the wide-open dressing room. "Does the team know?"
"Yeah. But just about the scar, just the accident part. Nothing else."
The fathomless sadness in his eyes brought back the first time I'd touched him and the reflected pain I'd felt, deeper than anything I'd ever sensed before. "There's more to know?"
He nodded, fear joining the pain and sadness in his eyes.
My throat ached with sympathy. "If you want to tell me, you can. If not, I understand."
"I don't know if I can."
But he wanted to. I could hear it in his voice, a desperate need to let it out. He'd held me safe when I'd needed to let my emotions go, and now I returned the favor, smoothing my hands over his back and promising, "It's okay. I've got you. I'm here for you."
After a few moments he began to talk, and I pressed kiss after kiss to his body, following the scar across his chest, and listened to the awful pain beneath his words.
"I thought she liked me playing. I really did. She always said she did. She loved the attention, I know that. Loved when I got recognized, got special favors, all that stuff. She took full advantage of that, no question."
Another kiss, and understanding at his fury over what he'd seen as my use of his name.
His hands tightened in my hair. "Once the contract stuff was worked out, I'd never been so happy. Finally, finally, I'd get to play in Toronto. We were driving to her parents' place after the big party to celebrate my new deal, and she just said it."
He didn't speak again for several kisses.
"She told me to quit."
The shock of it, of telling a man like Forrest to quit hockey, broke my kissing rhythm.
"Yeah." His short humorless laugh hurt to hear, and I rubbed his back.
"I thought she was joking at first, but she wouldn't stop saying it, saying I needed to grow up and be a man."
I didn't understand how quitting hockey would make him more of a man. I looked up at him, and the pain and indecision in his eyes told me we were at the part he was afraid to tell.
Before I could say anything to support and encourage him, he bent into me, pressing his head against mine. So quietly I could barely hear him, he said, "She said I needed to be at home for her and the... the baby."
My heart skipped a beat. Baby?
"I said, what baby? And she said she'd just found out, and I had to quit hockey so I could stay home and take care of them."
I pulled him closer and kissed his chest again.
"We'd talked about kids, and we both thought we shouldn't have them while I was still playing. Her dad traveled all the time when she was little and she didn't want that for her children. We'd decided that when I retired, I'd start the hockey school and then we'd have kids."
"Makes sense," I said softly.
He went on as if he hadn't heard me. "I tried to tell her I could play for the three years of my contract, or even one year. I'd always dreamed of playing for Toronto. I said we could afford for her and the baby to go everywhere with me, but she started saying that hockey was stupid, that she'd always hated it and had wanted me to quit since we'd met. When I told her how much it meant to me she called me selfish and said I should care about her more than hockey. I did, but I still didn't want to quit, and when I begged her not to make me she was horrified I'd be so emotional. I didn't know what to do."
He paused so long I wasn't sure he was going to speak again, and I'd kissed more than halfway along his chest when he said, his voice back to the dreadful neutrality he clearly used to avoid being too emotional, "So I said I would."
Shock froze my thoughts. I raised my face to him, trying not to show my reaction, and he said, "Yeah. I know. I promised her I'd quit. But I didn't know what else to do. She was so worked up, and with the... I didn't want her to make herself sick. I was going to bring it up the next morning, make her see why I had to play, at least one year, with the Hogs."
I returned to kissing him so he wouldn't see the dawning understanding and sympathy in my eyes. He'd planned to talk to her, but...
"She was so happy." His words came faster and faster as he neared the end of the story. "At least I made her happy then. We didn't talk for a while and I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew..." He swallowed hard, his body jerking against me. "The next thing I heard was sirens, and she was gone."
Tears burning my eyes, I tightened my arms, splaying my fingers to touch as much of him as I could, and let my lips linger against his skin.
"Afterward, I expected someone to mention the baby but nobody did. I guess she hadn't told anyone. And people just assumed I'd keep playing, and that she'd have wanted me to. Even her parents thought she'd have wanted it." He shuddered again. "I knew better, but..."
But you kept playing. And it's haunted you every second since, hasn't it?
"Do you... you must think I'm a monster."
His hesitant tone hurt my heart, and I shook my head at once, not wanting him to think I'd had to consider it. "Not at all. Hockey's what you do, what you are. You're meant to play."
He bowed his head again to rest against mine. "I hate myself. I can't quit but I can't play either. It's tearing me apart."
With two more kisses, I reached the end of the scar.
I murmured, "I'm so sorry, Forrest," and he drew me to my feet and wrapped his arms around me.
"I've never told anyone," he whispered, and I kissed his cheek then held him tight, longing to ease his pain. No wonder the team's psychologist hadn't been able to help him.
His near-naked body felt glorious pressed against my complete nakedness, but I tried to keep my mind and parts further south from focusing on it, not wanting to ruin the moment. It's much tougher for a man to hide his arousal, though, and it was soon obvious our closeness was having the same effect on him.
I raised my head to see what he wanted to do, and he wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and kissed me. Our sweet first kisses and the hunger of the later ones merged into something I felt from my hair to my toenails, awakening both my heart and my groin along the way.
The kiss lasted for eternity, the passion building without crowding out the sweetness, until he swept me up into his arms and lowered me onto the bed. After slipping off his underwear, he turned away to roll on a condom, leaving me staring at his strong shoulders and muscular back. Sheer perfection.
I had a brief hideous flash of self-doubt comparing my physique to his, but it lasted only until his return to the bed, because he made it wonderfully clear how he felt about my body.
In contrast to his earlier silence, he now spoke nearly non-stop. He murmured compliments into my ear, growled whenever I did something he particularly enjoyed, and told me again and again how much he wanted me.
He asked for feedback as he caressed me, and we laughed together when my passion-addled brain lost the ability to speak properly and I could only beg him to keep going. I'd never laughed like that in bed before, and I loved it. Warm and teasing, hot and hungry, steamy and so sweet, he took me higher than I'd ever been and he was with me all the way.
When he was finally poised over me, ready to give us what we both craved, his eyes held such tenderness my heart felt too small to contain it and all I could do was hold his gaze and tighten my arms around him. After a moment he kissed me, sweet and deep, and slid into me the same way.
We both moaned at the delicious connection, and he murmured, "Let go. Feel."
I wound my legs around his hips and did exactly that, forgetting everything but him. At first agonizingly slow, he moved faster with each thrust, and my hands roamed his sleek strong back, nails digging in as his every movement sent delight through me.
He held my face in both hands, bracing his weight on his forearms, and kissed me again and again, and the waves of sensation grew closer together. Closer and closer and then overlapping, building. My cries muffled against his mouth, I spiraled higher and higher until I tore my lips from his, gasping for breath.
Our eyes locked, and the hunger in his pushed me right to the brink. I tightened my legs and pulled him harder against me, needing more, and he obliged, driving deeper into me with ever-increasing speed. Shudder after shudder shook me and I hung there, so close, longing for release but not wanting it to end.
He kissed me, deep and searching and soul-shattering, then whispered, "Come for me, Tess."
The ecstasy that ripped through me at the passion and emotion in his voice drove me over the edge. I arched up into him and obeyed, writhing beneath him as nearly intolerable pleasure flooded me.
He growled his satisfaction and thundered into me, faster and harder and deeper than before. With my nails locked into his back and my heels against his taut buttocks pulling him in, I cried out for even more and he gave me everything I could ever want.
As I whimpered and panted, still riding the final waves of my climax, he stroked into me again and again, sweat bursting onto his skin beneath my hands, then drove in hard, burying himself in me with a groan that sent the biggest shudder yet shrieking through my body.
For one long blissful moment we clung together, the only sound our ragged breathing.
Chapter Sixteen
When he pushed away from me and left the bed, I thought he planned to deal with the condom, but he didn't even seem to notice it, too busy dragging his clothes on with indecent haste.
I sat up, pulling the rumpled sheet to my neck to hide myself. "What's wrong?"
"I..."
The pain and horror on his face knocked the wind from me. We stared at each other for a second, then he stumbled away. Ignoring my gasped "Wait!" he reached the door and was gone.
I sat, stunned. We'd been so good together. A shock sizzled up my spine at the memory of just how good we'd been, and I closed my eyes as it shimmered through me.
My mind filled with an image so vivid I felt I could reach out and lay a finger on it. A vast wasteland, desolate save a few stunted plants, lay on one side of a riverbed that cut like a scar through the landscape. The wasteland side of the riverbed was dry, but fresh clean water flowed down the other half and the land on that side was a green paradise. A man, head bowed, stood in the wasteland, not seeing the beauty right across the river.
My eyes snapped open and I scrambled to my feet, kicking at the sheet entangling my ankles. I grabbed my pencil case and sketchbook and threw myself back to the bed, afraid to lose any aspect of the first clear inspiration I'd had in ages.
As I drew, other things burst into my mind, images and ideas and even whole pieces. Though I sketched at top speed, I lost some, and I mourned them even while delighting in the others. I drew and made notes until the torrent of ideas abated, then slumped back against the headboard, drained but exhilarated.
Some would likely prove to be unworkable, and some I'd known were unworkable even as they arrived. But they'd still all arrived. I hadn't been thinking them up, I'd been taking them down, catching them as they arrived from somewhere I'd never imagined existed.
I stretched to release the tension in my neck, and my body's languorous tiredness brought back the other momentous occurrence of the night. I'd never quite understood why people referred to sex as 'making love', but I did now.
I'd have expected some post-coital awkwardness between us, but his reaction went far beyond anything reasonable. Why had he fled?
*****
I barely slept, wracked with confusion and sadness and flashes of overwhelming desire and most of all with dread of seeing Forrest again, especially in the hotel's lobby at five in the morning with all the others there. Would they recognize what had happened between us?
Luckily, all but one were too groggy to notice my arrival, much less how Forrest turned away without meeting my eyes.
Unfortunately, the one was Corey.
He slid his arm around my shoulders before I realized his intent, suffocating me in his cologne, and called, "Hey, Gump, your lady friend's here."
Forrest stiffened, then turned toward us. He stared at me, and I stared back, shocked by his pallor and the dark circles beneath his twitching eyes. Had he slept at all?
"Ouch, man, you look terrible," Corey said. "Not good enough for this cute little thing." He squeezed me harder against him. "Although you're looking a bit tired yourself, Tess. Up too late, were you? Both of you?" He shook a finger at me. "Weren't misbehaving, I hope."
I pushed Corey's arm off me, struggling for words. How dare he make such insinuations in front of the team? That he was right only made it worse.
Magnus stepped in before I could speak, which no doubt saved my job. "Corey, if that's your best flirting it needs work, don't you think?"
His light tone held only a hint of censure, but Corey muttered a grudging "Sorry" before walking off to join another player, who didn't look delighted to see him.
Magnus drew me away from the group. "Is there any way I could sit with you on the plane? I could use your advice."
Forrest was watching us, I could feel it.
Magnus gave me a gentle smile. "Of course, if you need to be with Forrest I understand."
I'd noticed Magnus' perceptiveness before; he'd obviously seen the tension between Forrest and me and was offering a way to avoid it. I smiled at him, so grateful. "No, I'd be happy to sit wit
h you."
As it turned out, I was. We sat together on the bus to the airport, and I soon understood a lot more about the team and Forrest's place in it. Magnus told me story after story of past players and how the team's dynamic changed with every arrival or departure. He told me, too, how much every player needed to trust the others. They didn't have to be buddies but they had to leave their differences in the dressing room for the good of the team. The phrase 'the good of the team' figured in almost every story, but it wasn't cheesy. I knew he believed it.
The team had chartered a flight back to Toronto, and we walked straight onto the plane, no waiting around. Far nicer than my flight the day before and the nearly two hours I'd spent in the Toronto airport's dull grey-on-grey boarding area.
I took the gum Magnus offered and braced myself for the takeoff.
"I hate this part too." He patted my arm.
"I have an ear infection," I began, but before I could explain he said, "And you're flying? It didn't rupture yesterday, I hope."
I shook my head. "I got lucky." My cheeks warmed at my choice of words, but if Magnus noticed he didn't comment. I felt certain Magnus noticed a lot more than he let on.
In no time, we were in the air, and I grinned at him, relieved. "It's nearly healed, I think. Way better than yesterday."
"Great." He smiled back. "Then you can enjoy your breakfast."
Once the flight attendants had cleared away our trays, he said, "Now, I think I did something to my left shoulder last night. It doesn't hurt, but it's tight."
He faced the window at my request and I moved across his shoulder, looking for the spot. I knew I'd found it before he told me, knew by the solid knot beneath my fingers.
"Want me to try to loosen it?"
"If you don't mind."
"Not at all."
Pushing aside my memories of the first time, and the last time, I'd touched Forrest, I set to work. Midway through, I looked up to see Forrest returning to his seat from the washroom. Our eyes met, and the jealousy and pain in his caught at my heart. Then he jerked his head away and continued down the aisle.
Toronto Collection Volume 1 (Toronto Series #1-5) Page 41