by Avery Flynn
Her hand felt cool against him as she wrapped her fingers around his hard cock, moving her hand up and down his length. “I’m just gonna take a closer look,” she said as she dipped her head down and sucked his swollen head into her mouth.
He rocked his hips forward, desperate to sink farther inside her warmth, but she smacked his ass, the sound a crack in the otherwise silent house.
“No moving.” And without waiting for any response, she went back to licking and teasing the tip while her hand remained wrapped tight around the shaft.
It was torture. The best fucking torture he’d ever experienced in his life. Each touch of her tongue created a shot of electricity jolting through his body. Then she began to stroke her hand up and down his shaft, following with her lips until he was buried in that lush mouth of hers. She kept him there, watching him with her big blue eyes, almost challenging him to move as she did things with her tongue along his length that had him clenching his jaw tight in an effort not to give in to the urge. He was going to lose that battle. They both knew it. But it wasn’t going to happen like she expected.
“Get up,” he said, the words coming out harsh and clipped as he fought to maintain control.
With one last stroke of her hand, she pulled back and released him before standing up. “You ready for the exam room?”
“It’s too late for that.” He grabbed her by the hips and turned her around so she faced the wall. “I’m going to fuck you right here just like this, and every time you walk down this hallway, you’re going to remember how damn good it was.”
…
For a whole half a second, Fallon thought about arguing, about wresting control back. Then he slid his hands over her hips, up her sides, and cupped her breasts as he leaned forward, his breath hot against her ear.
“Spread your legs.”
Questioning it wasn’t even part of her thought process anymore, not when he used that voice—the one that promised so many dirty things that would feel so damn good. She widened her stance and pushed her ass back toward him, expecting the next thing she’d feel was his hard dick sliding inside her, filling her up. Instead it was his fingers. First one, then another, moving up and down her slick folds, circling her entrance, and rubbing her clit.
“Fuck, you are so wet for me already, aren’t you?”
She pushed against his fingers, desperate for relief from the aching need in her core. “Please, Zach.”
“What do you want, Fallon?” he asked as he rolled and tugged her nipple between his fingers.
“I want to feel you inside me.”
He must have heard and understood the desperation in her voice, because the next sound wasn’t his rough voice teasing and tormenting her with more questions—it was the sound of a foil packet being opened.
“Time for a choice. Do you want me to fuck you now or lick that sweet pussy of yours?”
She didn’t even have to think about it. “Fuck me.”
She needed to feel him deep inside her, experience that sense of fullness she could only get from him. It wasn’t about getting the dick. It was about Zach. She needed him. She loved him.
The realization hit her just as he pushed forward into her, scattering the thought into the wind as her body responded to his. She arched her back, rotated her hips, pressed against him, taking him deeper.
“You feel so good, Fallon.” He kissed his way up the back of her neck as he fucked her. “I love—”
Whatever he was going to say next turned into a groan of pleasure as he sank deeper, changing the angle just enough so that he slid against the tight bundle of nerves inside her entrance with every thrust. Then he dropped one hand lower, brushing his fingertips across her hard clit, circling it as he continued to fuck her, deep and hard.
It was all so much, he was everywhere with his chest pressed against her back, rolling an aching nipple between the fingers of one hand, and caressing her clit with the other. Still, it wasn’t enough.
“Harder,” she begged. “I need.”
He gave her exactly what she wanted, thrusting deep and with enough power that she was sure her hands were going to leave dents in the drywall. She was okay with that. She was beyond okay with that as the pressure built inside her, setting off a buzzing vibration in her core.
“Oh my God, Zach, I—”
And her orgasm shattered the world around her, taking away her ability to do anything but feel as wave after wave of pleasure washed across her.
“I will never stop loving the feel of you coming all around me and squeezing my dick tight,” he moaned as he increased his pace for one, two, three strokes before coming with her name on his lips.
…
Hours later, Zach watched the lights from the passing cars crisscross Fallon’s ceiling. She was cuddled in next to him, her breaths soft with the occasional mumbled words because, of course, she’d be giving people what for in her dreams as much as she did in real life. That wasn’t something he’d been expecting to like about her. Hell, when she’d first showed up outside of his house, his general judgment of her was as a bossy bitch.
Nice? No, but neither was he. Well, mostly. Lady Luck didn’t just have an impact on how he acted on the ice, but how he acted off of it, too. Again, unexpected.
Obviously, something was going on, a reason why he couldn’t stop thinking about her and why seeing her in the stands wasn’t about winning games anymore. One thing he’d learned in locker rooms was that a player didn’t fuck with what worked. He and Fallon worked. Did that really need to be defined? Not tonight. But as he smoothed his palm across the silk of her hair spread across her back, he knew it already had, even if he couldn’t form the words in his head yet.
Chapter Twenty-One
Zach didn’t want to move. Even with the sun coming in through Fallon’s bedroom windows like a laser beam, he just wanted to stay in bed with her and ignore the rest of the world. Lucy, though, had other plans. When her number flashed across his phone’s screen for the third time in the past thirty minutes, that was all the confirmation he needed that she wasn’t going to stop until she talked to him. He loved the woman, but damn, could she be a pain in the ass sometimes.
He swiped his thumb across the screen. “Good morning to you, too.”
“About time you answered.”
“What’s up?” he asked, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t wake up Fallon, who was dead to the world beside him.
“It’s your parents.”
That news hit him like a stick to the face, and he sat straight up in bed, completely awake. “What now?”
Lucy let out a heavy sigh. “I had a media source reach out to tell me that they’ve sold their story to one of the gossip rags. It’s going to be out today, four-page spread plus a video interview that’ll be streaming.”
This was what they’d meant when they’d hit him up during the road trip. No doubt they’d wanted him to be a part of the interview, probably would have been a bigger moneymaker, then. That it was airing all of their misdeeds and his stupidity in trusting them wouldn’t have mattered to them when there was cold hard cash on the line.
“Sometimes you have to get creative.” He swallowed back the bile that phrase brought up.
“What?” Lucy asked.
“That’s what my mom said to me a few weeks ago when they hit me up for cash.” He lay back against the pillows, closing his eyes and trying to imagine any outcome that wasn’t a total shitstorm. “Is there anything we can do?”
“Tell your side of the story,” Lucy said. “My understanding is that they’re spinning it so that you were the cruel son who turned away from them even after everything they did and the sacrifices they made to get you to where you are today.”
He would have laughed if his entire chest hadn’t been kicked in. Just when he thought they couldn’t sink any lower. “Assholes.”
“Pretty much. So I can set something up today with the Harbor City Post. You’ll get to share your side of things.”
Oh yeah. That sounded like a great idea, almost as good as scoring on his own net. Even picturing the outcome from that made his gut twist and his hands turn clammy. “You mean shove my biggest personal failing out onto center ice so the whole world can see what a trusting fool I was?”
“You’re supposed to be able to trust your parents.”
“Yeah, well, we know how well that worked out for me.” Frustration and fury swirled together like an angry hurricane inside him, and the need to strike out, to tell the world to just fuck off had him ready to yell. Then Fallon’s cool hand came to rest on his chest. He had no idea when she’d woken up or how much she’d heard. Even though she knew the story already, having to revisit it in front of her and see the pity in her eyes was like shoving a salt lick into his open wound. He let out a harsh breath. “I’m not doing any interviews, Lucy.”
“Zach, if you’ll just listen to reason you’ll see—”
“No, Lucy,” he interrupted. “I’m not doing it. My public humiliation isn’t for sale.”
His parents had already bartered it away, and no amount of spin was going to change that. The best he could hope for was that they’d realize this was their last opportunity to milk him dry and that it would all blow over. With the way the Ice Knights were playing now, he wasn’t worried about losing his spot on the roster, but his rep as a leader within the team would take a huge hit if he admitted what an idiot he’d been. Why trust someone with such obvious bad judgment?
Lucy let out a sigh that all but screamed, This is the wrong call. “Okay, I’ll see how we can spin ‘no comment’ to make you look like less of a jerk.”
Yeah, being seen as the most-hated man in Harbor City hadn’t bothered him before—at least, not that he’d ever shown—why would it now? “Thanks for the heads-up, though. I appreciate it.”
After hanging up with Lucy, he laid his phone down carefully on the nightstand because all he wanted to do was throw it across the room. That, however, wasn’t going to do anything but possibly put a hole in Fallon’s drywall. Her arm snaked across his chest, and she snuggled closer, her warm, naked body fitting perfectly against his. He dropped his arm so it curved around her back as if that were the way he’d been doing it forever.
“You okay?” she asked, her breath soft against his shoulder.
“Fine.” Always. No matter what. He refused to give in to the dread pooling in his gut. “I can take the lumps.”
She planted a hand on his chest and pushed upward so she was staring down at him, a righteous fury hardening her features. “But you shouldn’t have to. Your parents are lying.”
“Nothing new there.” In fact, it was all too familiar.
“But you shouldn’t have to pay for it.” An angry flush bloomed at the base of her throat. “Why are you protecting them?”
“I’m not.” Because she’d grown up like she did, in a family where the rules of play were defined by love and support, he could understand her confusion. “I don’t feel like having the entire world know that my parents stole millions from me before I caught on.” Dumb athlete, trusting the wrong people. “That the people who were supposed to raise me and take care of me saw me as a paycheck.” Because that was the only value they thought he brought to the table. “That I was too trusting and too stupid to realize how the world worked.”
“Really?” Fallon rolled back into a sitting position, narrowing her gaze at him as she pulled her teal comforter up over her tits. “Everyone just uses everyone else—that’s how it works?”
“Yeah.”
She scooted farther away on the bed as she laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. “Is that what this is?”
“No.” He reached out, taking her hand in his and bringing it to his mouth for a kiss as he drew her close again. “It’s different.”
“Exactly.” She jabbed him in the chest with a finger. “Your parents’ way isn’t right, and you have to fight against it. Don’t let them do this to you. Don’t let them win.”
Wouldn’t that be nice if the world worked like that, but it didn’t. “They can’t do a damn thing to me anymore, because I won’t engage with them.”
Letting her head fall back, she let out a frustrated growl. “You are the most frustrating man I know, and my last name is Hartigan, so that is really saying something.” Then she let the comforter drop and straddled him, still giving him the stink eye. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
Okay, he didn’t understand where this was going, but any time she sat on him naked, he was in a better place than when she wasn’t. “Why’s that?”
“Because otherwise I’d want to keep arguing instead of this.” She leaned down and kissed him as she brought his hands up so they covered her tits.
Zach wasn’t fooled that Fallon had given up on the argument, but he wasn’t about to turn down this momentary truce with the woman who seemed determined to prove to him that there was something better out there in the world—even for someone like him.
…
Hours and orgasms later, Fallon was in the shower and he was still in bed wondering if he had it in him for one more round before she had to leave for work. The quick answer to that was hell yes. The real answer, though, was that while he did, he wanted to make sure his girl was fed and ready to go before she had to deal with a long shift in the hospital emergency room helping others.
He got out of the bed and walked over to the bathroom door that was open enough for him to get a good look at her naked and soaped-up body through the steamed-up glass shower door. The view made his brain stop for a second as he contemplated his options. For once, though, he wasn’t going to be a selfish bastard.
“You hungry?” he asked as he grabbed his jeans from the chair where he’d tossed them last night.
“Starving,” she said. “But I’ll grab a protein bar or something to eat in the car on the way to work.”
Sure, he was spoiled by a team nutritionist, but she was a nurse and should know better. “That’s not good.”
“It’s better than me having to cook. Anyway, it’s my week to grocery shop, and I haven’t gone yet. Our fridge is probably filled with odds and ends but nothing yummy.”
Yeah. No. That wasn’t going to happen. He pulled on his jeans. “I’ll take care of it.”
“You cook?” she asked as she turned under the showerhead, giving him a delicious view of her from the back.
“I am a man of many talents.”
“I can testify to that, but I don’t want to put you out.”
He’d noticed that about her, that while she was always ready to help others, she rarely took time for herself and hardly ever asked for help. It was past time she experienced something different, and he got to show her how he felt, even if the words weren’t something he was ready for yet.
“I got this for you,” he said, meaning far more than just about the food. “Meet me in the kitchen when you’re ready.”
…
Scrubs on, and hair tied back into a braid, Fallon followed the smell of something totally delicious down the hallway and into the kitchen. That was where she found Zach wearing only his jeans while he stood in front of the stove. Up until today, it was a room she avoided at almost all costs. However, if this was what she’d find every time she walked in for a cup of coffee, she’d be visiting it a whole lot more often.
“About time you showed up,” Zach said as he picked up the pan on the stove, turned off the gas burner, and then poured the pan’s contents onto a plate, which he picked up and handed to her. “One veggie omelet, half a bagel, and a slice of ham.”
Mouth watering—and not just because of the shirtless hottie in front of her—she took the plate and sat down at the small table. “Where did you find this?”
“You had everything in your fridge.” He sat down across from her, his own plate filled with two omelets, the other half of the bagel, and another slice of ham.
“We did?” She looked over at the fridge, trying to picture what was inside the shut Frenc
h doors. “I swear every time I open it, there’s only a half-empty bottle of catsup and a little of this and a little of that. Finn and I live off of the leftovers from the weekly family lunch.”
Was she proud to admit that? No, but it was true. Between her crazy schedule and Finn’s, they were a grab-and-go house.
Zach shifted in his seat and kept his gaze locked on the plate of food in front of him. “That’s where years of having to fend for yourself in the kitchen comes in handy.”
On its own, that sentence didn’t carry much weight, but considering the baggage of growing up with his total monsters-of-the-year parents and being broke as hell now, there was no way that Zach wouldn’t consider the admission one of vulnerability. The fact that he’d uttered the words to her meant more than just about anything. He trusted her. It was at that moment that whatever remained of the wall around her heart crumbled into dust.
Acknowledging the importance of it, though, would just make him uncomfortable, so she pushed forward with the food talk. “You cook a lot?”
He nodded and took a bite of his omelet. “Can’t afford to go out, and I grew up doing it.”
“Where were your parents?” The bastards.
“At work or meeting with hockey coaches.” He cut his ham with hard, efficient slices of his knife. “They had the goal of making me a hockey star, and nothing was going to get in the way of that.”
She could picture ten-year-old Zach, frying up bologna sandwiches and boiling water for mac and cheese all alone in a quiet house. Comparing it to the absolute chaos of the Hartigan kitchen when she’d been growing up, the difference was stark. For all of the mental complaining she did about the in-her-business nature of her family, there’d never been a day in her life that she’d doubted their love for her. She couldn’t say the same for Zach, and it was heartbreaking.
Of course, Zach picked that moment to look up from his plate, catching what had to have been a look of pity on her face. Instead of snarling at her per usual, though, he reached across the table and used her fork to cut off a bite of omelet. He held it up to her mouth and fed it to her, his smile a little forced, but she couldn’t fault him for the effort—or for how yummy the omelet tasted.