Indy laughed again, but still tried to defend the asshole. “Well, he tried not to be. In our marriage, at least. I mean, he didn’t…”
“Flirt around?” Tyler supplied, his eyebrow hiked up.
Indy nodded. “He didn’t flirt around—”
“She means fuck,” Tyler told his buddies, in case they couldn’t guess.
She took a new, slightly irate breath. “He didn’t flirt around while we were still married.”
“That you know about.”
She shot him a look but ignored his interruption. “We met young,” she explained, looking back at Sig like she wanted him to understand. “Our first year of college. He didn’t know then what it would be like, when he turned pro. When he was so successful.”
The a-hole was successful because he had a lot of good people around him, including, for a while, the highly talented fullback who stood right there in the room—James Jacob Jackson. Happy day when J.J. had been traded away.
Tyler got her point, though. Most young marriages didn’t survive a guy turning pro and finding any success at it. There was a whole lot of temptation on the road during a long season. A whole lot of easy pussy. Way better men than Garrison had failed at it.
He wasn’t going to say so, though. But of course, Sig did.
“It’s hard for the young guys,” he said with a bit of understanding sympathy that Ty knew he didn’t normally grant. Generally, Sig called an a-hole an a-hole. “A lot of them don’t handle it well for a while. No excuses, though.”
Sig’s gaze rested gently on Indy during a quiet moment when Tyler was sure all three men were remembering their younger, rowdier, randier days. Somewhat randier.
“Yeah,” J.J. said, getting them back on track. “Anyway, let’s get you moving, bro. Those ice packs still cold?”
Sig patted them. “Not so much.”
“You can use snow again,” Indy put in. Ty looked at the pair of blonds and realized they could be cousins. “I’ll get a towel. And your shirts.”
J.J. was leaning over, unwrapping the bandage from around Sigge’s leg. Ty took advantage of the opportunity and followed the pussy.
He caught up to her in the small laundry room off the kitchen. She had two shirts in her hand, warm from the dryer. He knew they were warm because he pushed up against her, nudging her back to the wall, and he felt the heat against his chest.
Well, he felt heat against his dick, too, so he could have been wrong about the shirts. Maybe it was just her.
Turned out he didn’t fucking care. While he had her where he had her, he leaned in and took her mouth.
It wasn’t a polite, get-to-know-you kiss. It was an open-mouth, spit-exchanging deal, with a good bit of lower-body rutting added in. She didn’t rut back, or even kiss back that he could tell, but she did fucking open her mouth.
And she tasted fucking great.
He lifted up after a good, long time. His breath was rough, but he thought hers was a little, too. He looked into those blue eyes, waiting for his body to stand down a little, to get convinced that it wasn’t going to get to have her at this very minute.
Though it would be damn soon.
Pushing back, he waited for her to turn and leave the room—and he liked that it took her a minute. He followed her again, taking Sig’s shirts when she handed them over and waiting while she stopped for a clean kitchen towel.
When they got back to the living room, Jage had Sig on his feet. Tyler handed over the shirts one at a time, and Sig worked his way into them. Indy brought over his ski jacket and pants but kept them in her hands.
“They’re still wet,” she said.
Tyler slid out of his leather jacket and held it up to Sig. “The truck’s warm,” he said. “Let’s get you down there.”
Sig hopped to the door with an arm around each of the guys. He turned when they got him there and put a hand out for Tyler’s woman, damn him.
He pulled her in and, again, Tyler had to think they were a pair. Blond heads bent together, nearly touching, nearly matching. “Thank you again, sötnos,” he said, and whatever the hell it meant, it made her smile. Then the bastard dipped down and kissed her—briefly, and decorously, thank God, so Tyler didn’t have to deck him.
She nodded him, or maybe all of them, out the door. Once they got Sig to the stair rail, he used that and J.J.’s shoulder to hop down. Tyler turned back and watched Indy with a hard look while she loaded him up with Sig’s ski clothes and boots and one pole. He didn’t say anything as he stepped outside but kept his gaze on hers as she closed the door on him. And even after, since her door was mostly glass, until he was halfway down the stairs and she was out of sight.
They got Sig and all his gear into the truck.
“Sötnos?” Tyler asked just before he closed the door on him.
“Ja,” Sigge drawled. “Sweet nose.”
“Sweet nose,” Tyler muttered on his way around to the driver’s door. “Guess that’s not so bad.”
Chapter Three
Indy smiled, watching from the door. Sötnos was an endearment she recalled from the years of her early childhood, before her Swedish grandparents had finally reached the limit of their tolerance for an irresponsible daughter and worse son-in-law.
She closed the door but stayed there, getting glimpses of them all as they loaded into the truck, and waited to turn the porch light off until the taillights disappeared down the drive. Then she sighed and turned to her once-again-empty house. It felt even emptier than it had when she’d come home alone in the early afternoon. She spent another few minutes on cleanup, rinsing the dishes for the washer and stuffing the cold packs back into the freezer.
She shut down the fireplace and the lights and headed up to her bedroom. Her bed would be cold as usual, so, when she undressed, she bundled up in her long flannel pajamas and her fuzzy alpaca socks. She went all the way under her covers, doing the little horizontal dance she used to warm up the sheets before she poked her head out for air.
Then she lay there thinking. Of Tyler’s voracious, aggressive kiss. Of Sigge’s gentle, sweet one. And of J.J.’s big hand gripping her ass, giving her a very deliberate, intention-laden, and surreptitious squeeze as Sigge’s lips were on hers.
She sighed, her body heated now from a wholly other source, a stirring that had been so long dormant as to be nearly unfamiliar to her. The recollection of it came back, though, as sleep eluded her and her hands sought out those places that had been nudged out of hibernation, resurrected after years of neglect.
She was out of practice, but she’d been given a lot of fodder for her imagination. A lot. Before terribly long, she slept.
And maybe a couple hours later, she woke.
Less surprised than maybe she should have been, she rolled out of bed and bundled into her long woolen bathrobe before she went to learn which of them was on her front step, pounding away.
One of them, all of them…she had a feeling she was entirely ready to open that door.
It was Tyler, and he shoved his way in the moment she got the lock turned. He pushed the door closed behind his back as she wrapped her arms around herself against the cold he brought in. He kept his fierce gaze on her while he toed off his boots and peeled out of his jacket at the same time. He sent the garment toward the coat hooks beyond the sidelight, but he missed and didn’t seem to care. His eyes were still on her.
Then he was gone, brushing past her and moving into the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” she asked to his back.
He didn’t stop walking as he answered, poking his head into the guest room and then back out. He was talking even as he went to the stairs. He took them two at a time. “I’m finding your biggest bed, and then I’m going to lay you down on it.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you!”
His hand was on the stair bannister when he paused, having already made the turn past the landing. It was the only part of him still visible until he stuck his head back around the corner and fo
cused his eyes on hers like lasers. “Yes,” he said. “You are.”
Then he was gone. She heard his heavy, urgent tread and another door open and close—her office, where she’d installed a Murphy bed for when her writing group met at the cabin. Then footsteps to her bedroom.
“I found it,” his deep voice relayed.
Okay, she had a king bed in her room. She had the space for it and, when she’d bought it, she’d thought maybe someday someone would be sleeping there with her.
He was standing at the top of the stairs, invisible but present in the extreme, waiting without patience. “Are you coming up or am I going to have to fetch you?”
“Tyler,” she said in objection.
“Got it,” he replied.
Then he was there, sprinting down the stairs and striding toward her. She gave a little yelp as he lifted her up into his arms, but before she could remind him—five eleven, a hundred and forty pounds, she was no lightweight—his mouth was on hers.
The guy could kiss. She’d learned that in the laundry room, but now he took his time about it, more sweet seduction than rushed, determined claim-staking like before. His lips were soft, enticing, and irresistible.
Her arms had come up around him automatically when he’d lifted her, but now her hold was mindful. She gripped one shoulder and almost shuddered with the remembered pleasure of a man’s bulky muscles. Her other arm went around his neck, her fingers sliding up his nape, flexing as though they were frustrated his hair was too short to curl into.
His arms contained her like it was nothing, and she was sure his arousal rather than the physical effort of holding her was what made his breath quicken. He took a leisurely time with the kiss, brushing her lips initially, sweetly, then tasting them, then opening them. Even once he was inside he was gentle about it, seeking.
Her breathing quickened before he lifted up and looked intently at her.
“I want you.”
She shook her head, reminding herself that just a few hours ago she’d sat curled up against Sigge while he’d asked to see her again. “You just want…someone.”
“No,” he said. “You.”
“I Googled you.” She had. There’d been those hours on her laptop, the long afternoon when she hadn’t been writing. It wasn’t hard to learn all she wanted to know about Tyler Lawrence, Super Bowl MVP wide receiver and player in every sense of the word. “You had a different woman on your arm in every photo.”
He was shamelessly pleased, his little grin teasing her. “You mean every photo that wasn’t about me pulling in an impossible throw, juking past a half dozen defenders, and flying over them in a balletic leap into the end zone?”
She had to return his grin. She’d seen those photos, and plenty of them. He’d earned his cockiness. “Or accepting the keys to your pretty red truck.”
“My truck is too manly to be pretty.” He leaned in to kiss her once more, serious again. “Anyway, I don’t want a different woman. I want you.”
“You could go back to your hotel, go the bar. There’ll be at least six women there more than happy for you to take them to your bed.”
“That’s not what I want. I told you what I want. Twice now.”
She shook her head. “Why?”
She was serious, sincere about the question, and he seemed to understand. He looked at her for a long moment, considering his answer. Like it was a novel thing, explaining himself, needing a reason. “You sassed me,” he finally said. “When we met on the road. Even knowing who I was.”
“I didn’t know who you were.”
“You knew enough. And you didn’t…simper. You didn’t bat your pretty eyes. You sassed.”
“Maybe I just didn’t like you.”
He smiled again, wolfishly this time. “You liked me plenty.”
She didn’t have an answer to that, because he was right. He knew it as well as she did, because his eyes darkened and he leaned in to kiss her again. Then he carried her upstairs, not struggling at all with the climb or maneuvering up the turn so he wouldn’t bang her head or her feet. He went straight to her room, to her bed. And he laid her down on it like he’d said he would and came right along with her.
His big, hard body was alongside hers. He was up on one elbow, her arm tucked under his chest, leaning over her. With his top leg pressing between her knees, he secured her. His gaze was intense, hot. “I was looking hard at you,” he said. “And you were looking back.”
But… she bit her lip, and that drew his heated attention. “Sigge asked to see me again.”
His eyes came back to hers slowly. “I’m here. He’s not.”
She took a shaky breath and let it out on a long sigh.
“What would have happened, if I’d followed you here earlier? I saw you hit your brakes. You almost came back. If that wasn’t an invitation, I don’t know what was.”
He leaned in and took her mouth until she moaned. When he lifted up again, she realized he’d opened her robe. His hand was hot, low on her belly.
“I think you want this. Don’t you.” It wasn’t a question. He slid his hand higher, under her pajama shirt, until he reached her skin, just above the elastic waist of her pants. “You’re wet, aren’t you?”
He moved his hand, fingers under her waistband, as though to find out, and she stopped him with a grip on his wrist. “No.” It was an instruction more than an answer.
His gaze meandered up, slowly, though he acquiesced to her staying hand. He was obvious about it, letting her know he could see even through the layer of flannel that her nipples were tight. That her breath was uneven. That her lips were, well…well kissed, no doubt. Needy. Wanty.
He moved his hand from her abdomen and came over her onto both elbows. He was covering her, letting her have a lot but not all of his weight. On both sides, his fingers tangled into her hair, winding it up a bit so he was holding on with mild tension. His face was above hers, his gaze hot, and his breath, too.
After long, shared breaths, he levered his body up and then slid lower, leaving enough friction that his chest scraped over her breasts, stimulating the hard peaks. He stopped when his face was at her belly. He burrowed in, nuzzling her.
Then he went lower, until, when he nuzzled, he was at her mons. And a bit lower than that, until his nose pressed at the apex of her thighs. “I can smell you,” he told her.
“Stop that,” she said, lifting a hand to brush him away. But the motion was incomplete. Her hand did nothing more than flutter back down. Not to the bed, but to his arm where it rested along her hip.
Ignoring her, he rubbed at her with his face. She moaned helplessly, just barely keeping from spreading her thighs to welcome him.
Or maybe that wasn’t her at all. Maybe it was his strong arms that kept her contained. She thought that was possible, because he lifted up to look at her, as though he’d been aware of some movement, some urgent, mindless desire that her thighs should open and let him in.
He breathed out her name and lifted back over her, along her side again. “Say yes.”
His hand was once more on her skin under her shirt. But he looked at her, waiting, his determined gaze not begging but instructing.
“Yes,” she finally said.
Then he was there, his fingers sliding down under the flannel and plunging in. On its own accord, her left knee rose to give him space. She arched for him and cried out. His fingers were so deep, and big, and…good. “Oh,” she said, and it was a moan.
“Jesus.” He was looking at her, and she wondered if she should be embarrassed to be so needy. So…ready. But he watched, interested, pleased rather than judgmental.
In an athletic move, he lifted up off his elbow, using his core muscles more than the single grip he had on her—in her. Abruptly, he unfastened two buttons of her shirt and pulled it open to bare her breast. When he put his weight back on his elbow, he had her nipple between his finger and thumb.
Experimentally, he squeezed. Then tugged. Then rolled. That last one made h
er moan again and close her eyes. He’d learned her.
“Open up,” he bade her. “Look at me.”
She felt so exposed, so…vulnerable, that it wasn’t easy. But it was harder still to stand against his will. She opened her eyes to him, and he nodded his approval.
Hazel gaze locked on hers, he rolled her nipple again, waiting for her hum of pleasure. Then he slowly slid his fingers out of her, inching them up to where she needed them most. In that same way of sussing out her most intimate secrets, he moved his fingers on her. Rubbing first, then flicking, then pinching, tugging.
It hardly mattered to her. He already had her so stoked, the way his fingers had taken her, the way he was torturing her breast, that anything at all would have worked.
She lit up immediately, arching back and then bucking once. He moved his heavy thigh over hers and leaned in a bit with his chest, securing her. Intently, his face over hers, still watching, he worked her nipple and clit and drove her to climax.
It barely took a minute. Closing her eyes despite his command, she whimpered and tossed her head. She bucked against him, loving the skillful eroticism of his fingers and the heavy bulk of his body over hers. Wallowing in it, she moaned out her pleasure shamelessly, rocking, nudging him a bit to keep at it, falling into a prolonged, long-overdue, making-up-for-lost-time orgasm.
Obliging her, he kept at it until it was too much, until she caved in to it. She pressed one hand over his at her breast, stopping his action there but not letting him go either. Enjoying the pressure of his hand there, his possession.
She did the same with his other hand, stilling him. He got the idea, though. He didn’t take his hand away but just turned it, resting the heel of it at her clit.
Then, in an action that was all him, he pressed his fingers down and in, stretching her around them again. A reminder of his place there, his ownership.
A portent of what was to come.
* * * *
“Wow,” Tyler said when she finally opened her eyes again. “Short fuse much?” He pulled just his one hand away from Indy’s breast so he could tuck in alongside her, his head next to hers. He kept his right hand in her pussy, though, so she’d remember he wasn’t done with that tight, hot cunt.
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