After dressing in flannel pajamas, she crawled between flannel sheets pre-warmed by a heating blanket, and pulled a down comforter up to her chin. Exhausted, and confused by Jean’s appearance, she found it hard to fall asleep. She spent a restless night trying to shut out how it had been…an Olympian and in love with Jean-Claude Merseau, whom she’d known since she was fifteen.
Chapter 3
Jean frowned with disappointment when, over the top of Sam Roberts’ head, he saw Riley slipping away. He’d had a hell of a time finding her, and now, excited and eager to see her again, he’d been shocked by her cool response to him. As soon as he could gracefully excuse himself from the resort owner and his overly sexed, clingy daughter, he would push through the partygoers to look for her. Jean hadn’t noticed a ring on Riley’s finger or the telltale lighter skin of one having been there, but that didn’t mean much. She could be in a serious relationship with someone without being engaged. Or married to someone who belonged to a church where jewelry was shunned.
The thought of either of those things surprised him by causing his spirits to sag.
Fact was, he’d made a point of connecting with his long-ago love because he missed her. Missed her sharp sense of humor, her superb skill as an athlete at the top of her game. Plus, they’d been friends. Not just lovers, but the kind of friends who felt safe sharing their innermost thoughts. He knew her so well that, even after being apart for several years, he’d sensed her embarrassment when her people made a big deal out of his gold medal without mentioning her bronze.
He’d stepped in to give her the recognition she deserved. There was a time when, in a reverse situation, she would’ve done the same for him.
As the conversation with Sam Roberts and his daughter at last wound down, he said, “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve enjoyed our conversation and hope we can talk more again, but I need to start training early tomorrow while the snow’s still good. I look forward to seeing you more while I’m here.”
He searched the crowd and located the woman who assigned rooms at the resort. “Mrs. Jensen, do you know where my friend Riley O’Ryan is housed?”
The round woman with the kind face who held a half-empty glass of champagne said, “I do. Since she, like you, is an Olympian, we put her in a cottage. Number three. The one reserved for bronze medalists…and rarely used.”
He laughed. “And that is where?”
Now she laughed. “Right next to yours, the cottage for gold medalists. Used even less. But she rises early and may already be in bed. I hope you don’t wake her. The team worked to exhaustion overtime yesterday on a difficult rescue, and the start of a new group of people over the holidays is always tiring.”
“Wouldn’t think of waking her. If the lights are off, I’ll just tiptoe away and catch up with her tomorrow. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Thank you for choosing Angels for your training this winter. California snow levels haven’t been great for a few seasons, and your name has already increased the number of our guests.”
“That’s good to hear. Glad I could help.”
Walking through the light snow, he located the cottage. He grinned…he’d lied to the kind lady. Even though the lights were off, he rapped lightly on the door, hoping against hope that Riley was awake and would open to him. There was so much he wanted to know about her. So much he wanted to tell her. It was the kind of friendship he’d never had with Margo.
As he waited in the chilly air with snow dusting his jacket with its individually unique white flakes, he imagined Riley warm and comfy in bed. Unbidden, thoughts of the lighthearted foreplay they’d once shared made his face heat up, signaling he was the one experiencing embarrassment now.
Exploring and tasting each other’s naked bodies had always swelled into an intense and bonding arousal that made sliding into the tight secret place in her beautiful body explosive. On the ski slopes, she was powerful and all business, but at night in his arms, she was one wild, hot, responsive woman, taking and giving everything she wanted and he needed, leaving their groins slick with sweat when they collapsed after climaxing.
For him, orgasms temporarily erased any interest in fucking, yet she would sleep curled next to him in the aftermath, as if the deep connection with him remained for her.
Cut it out, Merseau, if you want to sleep tonight.
His thoughts sobered when she didn’t come to the door, and he turned to go to his cottage yards away. In the years since they’d lost touch, despite his efforts to find her, the skating world had been great to him, but his personal life had been crap. Buckets filled with it. Despite bringing relief because that searing ugliness was behind him, it also left an emptiness aching to be filled.
And so he was here, at Angel’s Resort in California, when he should have been training on Switzerland’s Matterhorn or some other more difficult trail than Satan’s Domain.
* * * *
Snug in her flannel nightwear and under down covers, Riley heard the rapping, sensed who it was, but didn’t answer. If it was a resort emergency of some kind, they would phone her or pound hard and loud. She didn’t need the kind of grief that seeing Jean again had brought. Still, memory upon memory cascaded, ruining her solitude…
Chapter 4
Years earlier…
They met on the high school ski teams. At sixteen, they really got to know each other because they rose at dawn to train before school, then until dark after school. The boys and girls teams traveled together to meets via school buses the next two years.
Soon, she and Jean sat together on the bus, and started placing in events. She was outstanding, but there was no doubt that Jean, eight months older, was just enough better to be considered superb. He was also patient and eager to help Riley when she struggled with some technique Coach Minuchin wanted her to change or groove in. In return, she’d pointed out a few things for him, especially about girls.
One afternoon, when they were juniors, as they sat lacing up their boots, she said out of the corner of her mouth, face down as if intent on her laces, “Kelly-Belly over there likes you, you know.”
“Kelly likes me? You’ve got to be kidding.” He grimaced at the idea.
“Nope. Just watch how she always gets as close to you as she can. Sits near you on the bus, sometimes even squeezes between us if we sit on the long seat across the back. She’s almost hip to hip with you when Coach hands out electrolyte water and protein bars during practice.”
His face flared red, and she knew she had him. It fired up her need to rattle this always unflappable guy.
Someone else had come up with Kelly’s derogatory nickname—which, thankfully, no one ever used where she could hear. It reflected her paunch, due to being overweight. She was the weakest member of the girls team, and rumors said her mom had insisted Coach accept her because it would help her coordination and bring down her weight. So far, everyone still waited for even one of those things to happen.
“She likes you…Kelly-Belly likes you,” Riley teased in a sing-song voice.
Suddenly, Jean’s hand was on her chin, turning up her face as he crouched beside her. “And you, Riley O’Ryan? Do you like me?”
Out from under sooty lashes, his green-eyed gaze bore into her, while his full lips hovered. She stared, riveted on that mouth, and for the first time she wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Wished he would, so she would know what it was like with him. Kissing other guys had never turned her on the way she imagined Jean would.
Unnerved, Riley snapped, “Don’t be silly, Jean-Claude. Of course I like you. We’re friends.”
Only friends? So why did her heart trip extra beats and her tongue tremble in her mouth? Suddenly, her crotch stirred and drenched her panties in what she recognized as a prelude to sex. She hoped to high heaven it hadn’t gone through her ski pants. Shaken and embarrassed by her body’s reaction to him, she wrenched her face out of his hand and tried to concentrate on her lacing.
When they stood, ready to ski, he whis
pered, “Just friends? So how come you just put two laces through the same hole in your right boot when you looked at my mouth?”
Thoroughly rattled, not knowing what to do, she looked down and saw he was right.
“Oh, yeah. We’re definitely ‘just friends.’” Jean-Claude laughed and started down the most difficult chute while she knelt to fix her boot.
That had been the beginning of their long slide into love.
Then, at the state championships when they were seniors, Jean, his dark hair heart-wrenchingly mussed from having pulled off his ski cap, leaned down from the awards stand so a judge could slip the blue ribbon holding a gold medal for the downhill over his head. He winked at Riley in the audience while the host school’s band played their Mountain Senior High School’s song.
Eventually, it came turn for the women’s giant slalom, and Riley was the one receiving a gold. Once again, sounds of their song rang through the gymnasium rafters. An elated Riley, clutching her bouquet of fragrant green cedar sprigs, pinecones, and red poinsettia leaves, grinned down at Jean in the audience. He waved his bouquet back at her in a salute of gold winner to gold winner. Later, he’d told her that his heart had been in his throat at how strong yet beautiful she looked with her full smile and her dark eyes aglow.
Afterward, they hurried to their rooms to shed ski clothes and clean up, then don party clothes and hurry to the ski resort’s largest ballroom to celebrate.
* * * *
Riley wore a blue dress that flowed around her knees and thighs as she walked toward him in the lobby. On her lovely feet were shoes that glittered bright and sensual. Her honey-and-cream-colored hair floated across her back. The waves of curls in front seemed to nuzzle the soft mounds of her breasts.
Seeing her again, a rush of warmth unfurled in Jean’s chest as his dick tightened pleasantly in his slacks and his balls alerted. The urge to take those breasts, naked and hot, into his mouth and suck was powerful.
“You look stunning,” he said, unable to keep the gravel—which his damned male sex hormones had created—from his voice.
“You look pretty good yourself.”
Riley’s wide smile rocked him, and a fierce need to touch her made Jean slide a proprietary arm around her shoulders and walk her toward the place where rock ‘n’ roll issued in hard beats and a table heavy with food awaited.
He looked into her dark brown eyes and her smile lit him up. “Hungry?”
She bumped a hip softly against his thigh and, in a sultry voice filled with sensual overtones, said, “I’m starving, ‘friend.’ I’m just not sure that what’s on this table will satisfy me.”
Jean choked on the soft drink he’d swept up from that same table. Her blatant invitation surprised him all to hell. Although what she’d called their “friendship” had deepened to something more over the last few months, they’d never had sex no matter how much he’d wanted to do it with her. Their training, the competitions, and school work had been so intense they were always exhausted and hadn’t even made out much. Besides, their coaches were particularly alert to any hanky-panky between the underage teens that were their responsibility. But they’d just hit eighteen and were legally adults.
When he’d recovered from her remark, he brushed his lips across hers, withdrawing before she could respond because his engorged dick would embarrass him by making one thigh look fatter. “We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”
“I do believe we will…if you’re willing.”
That almost destroyed him. He’d been willing to break her hymen ever since Riley had teased him about Kelly, who hadn’t made the team and wasn’t here. His very first erection had happened with Riley, and she had no idea how often he’d “dated” himself because he had no chance for her hand to do it for him.
She stayed glued to him as they filled their plates with thin slices of tri-tip and barbecued chicken thighs, of cheeses and breads, fruits and salad. They sat at a table with other team members and relived their individual competitions. Since their school had swept the awards, they joked and laughed, spirits as high as the mountain itself, while fresh snow fell silently outside and they partied warm and happy in the ballroom.
Lights in red, green, gold, and blue created a soft glow around the section of the room open for dancing. One by one, their friends finished eating and headed there.
Jean took her slender but strong hand and pulled her from her chair, his gaze locked on hers. “You’re a beautiful woman, Riley O’Ryan. Will you dance with me?”
She went without answering. Like all the other couples, they gyrated separately and uninhibitedly over the gleaming hardwood floor prepared with spackle for the evening.
The DJ who’d been hired for the event—a dark-skinned guy probably in his middle twenties who wore his hair clipped on the sides and piled high in tight curls on top of his head—fed CD after CD into the player. Gradually, he amped up the sound. Everyone looked happy and eager to celebrate no matter whether they’d done well or not in the meet today. Soon, people were squashed together, and the effect of his excitement in a hot and steamy room caused Jean’s arm pits to dampen his shirt.
The music grew so loud that Mr. Evans, the tournament coordinator, insisted the DJ tone it down.
Toward the end of the evening, Riley lifted her long hair and let it sift through her fingers as she looked into Jean’s eyes. She exaggerated the roll in her hips as she danced. The mood of the music had changed, slowing and making her look sensual and womanly despite her strong, athletic body. She extended her arms out to her sides, palms toward Jean, and shook her shoulders in a Polynesian-like invitation. Her breasts jiggled.
Jean couldn’t stop looking at those breasts, figuring they were just large enough to make a handful. He danced to her, close yet not quite touching, letting his body match her rhythm. Then he took one of her hands and flicked his wet tongue over her palm while his gaze never left hers.
She closed her eyes and moaned with pleasure.
Slowly, he twirled her under his arm several times as he watched her swing out to face him again. When he released her hand, she turned away teasingly and he gripped her hips and danced to her until he felt her butt cheeks snug against the hard arousal of his primed, ready-to-fuck cock. He wasn’t going to let her go. Ever.
When she covered his hands with hers and leaned ever so slightly forward, he knew her body clearly received the message he was sending. She ground her salacious butt against his groin to the subdued and sensual beat of the music, shivering when he kissed her neck.
He whispered, “Don’t wiggle that luscious tush against me anymore, O’Ryan, or I’m going to explode, and it isn’t going to happen where I need it to.”
He sensed that she knew as well as he did what the postlude to the dance would be.
* * * *
Waiting until the last partygoer left and the lights dimmed, Riley reached for Jean and they dashed hand in hand out of the ballroom. Even the chilly air and the snow falling on their heads and shoulders couldn’t dampen their need for each other.
Riley’s entire arm tingled from his touch. Even her tongue tingled, and happiness that she was his woman rushed through her. An electric shock shot through her body as it always did when he touched her, but this was different. It was hotter, heating her torso, her breasts, and inflaming her clit and folds until they swelled with aching.
“Your room or mine?” he asked, and her heart soared.
Inside his room, he closed and locked the door. So hungry for each other, they abandoned foreplay. Kissing frantically, tongues sucking and intertwined, she pulled him to his bed and tugged off his shoes and yanked down his jeans, all while he pushed up her skirt and slipped off her panties over her sexy shoes.
He fumbled opening a condom he pulled from his pocket, and she watched as he pinched the tip and rolled it on. Pinch the tip so it won’t be too tight and break during intercourse, echoed the school nurse’s words in her mind. He was ready, and she opened her thi
ghs. He knelt over her, bracing his elbows and hands on the bed to keep his weight off her.
She felt his cock against her opening, but it didn’t penetrate her. “Damn it, Jean, hurry. Fuck me, just fuck me,” she moaned.
“Hell, Riley, l can’t find where to get in. You have to guide me.” His hand trembled with need as he placed her hand on his stiff cock.
Desire gripped Riley and she wanted this so much. Had waited so long to do it, but she managed to envelop his hard cock, warm and damp in the condom, with her fingers. Unerringly, she led it to the dripping, swollen place where her body cried out for him to be.
He’d obviously taken Riley at her word about fucking her, jamming into her as if he belonged there.
A sharp intake of breath escaped Riley as he entered her.
He stopped. “Did I hurt you?”
It felt strange. It felt right. “No. It feels good.”
“But I thought—”
“That you’d rupture my so-called maidenhead and it would hurt? Mine probably broke a long time ago because I’m so athletic.” Worry made her pause. “Does that disappoint you?”
“I’m glad. I’ve worried about hurting you. Your cunt’s so tight. Hot and sweet,” he’d said in a voice hoarse with wonder.
“It’s supposed to be tight. You’re the first.” She groaned and hugged him closer. “You feel so good inside me. I love you. You belong in me. Only you. Always and forever.”
In only a few powerful pumps against the firm, slick muscle guarding her womb, Jean exploded, crying her name.
All the bells and whistles Riley had expected hadn’t happened. What did happen was the sweetness that was the guy she loved rolling over and through her. That he had felt more was important to her.
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