“Mmm…I have no idea. Can’t feel anything anywhere.”
I laugh. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do this on the stairs. It’s not what I’d planned for a perfect first time.”
She kisses my cheek. “It wasn’t perfect. It was better.”
“Yeah. It was.” I grin at her because even though it was crazy, it really was perfect. Just like everything else about Stephanie.
Chapter 16
Avery
My alarm screams and I promptly reach across her and slam the snooze button, then immediately hit the off button. I yawn and gently move her arm off my chest. I hate myself for it but I sit up. She pulls at me and lets out a tiny, sexy little groan of protest. It makes me smile despite the fact that I’m exhausted and bitter about having to get up at all.
Last night on the stairs blew my mind. There are no words, which is crazy because I always have words for everything. I can talk about anything and everything. My father hired a public relations coach for me when I was fourteen right after I did an interview with a local paper. When they asked me what I would want to be if I didn’t make it as a hockey player, I said firefighter. He was furious that I had an answer for what I would do if I didn’t end up playing hockey and that I offered it so quickly. Apparently there was no way I would do anything but professional hockey and I needed not only to say that but also to think it.
The PR coach was a cool, fast-talking thirty-year-old named Padma. And thanks to two years with her I knew exactly what to say in any situation, whether I was talking about charity work or play-off-ending losses or Stanley Cup–winning games.
But after one night of hot sex on a set of rickety stairs, I was speechless. Words couldn’t do sex with Stephanie justice.
And it hadn’t been awkward or weird afterward. I was never one for cuddling. Not with Lizzie, not with anyone. In fact, after the few one-night stands I’d given in to while I was in the league—there were four, to be precise—I’d kicked all but one to the curb as soon as the condom came off. And that one rolled away from me as soon as sex was over and fell asleep. There was no touching, let alone cuddling.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Lizzie. Honestly, I liked all my hookups. I had to like them enough to trust them. None of them were random strangers, like Alex’s always were. And of course I liked Lizzie a lot, but I just…I’d been trained not to express physical intimacy in public and somehow that spilled over and made it hard to express it in private too. The girls never complained; even Lizzie didn’t.
But I hadn’t felt the need to create distance with Stephanie. When we made it to the bedroom, we’d had sex again. Afterward she collapsed on top of me and I wrapped my arms around her and let her nuzzle into me as we fell asleep. Not only did I let her nuzzle, but I fucking loved it too. Who knew it could feel great and not like I was suffocating.
Now her slender, bare arm reaches out for me from under my duvet. I lean down and kiss her forehead. “I gotta get ready to catch my flight, babe.”
She groans her discontent again and curls deeper under the duvet. I smile and sneak off into the bathroom. For the first time in my entire hockey-playing life I kind of wish I didn’t have a game. Leaving her is going to suck, especially before we have a conversation on exactly what last night meant. I want to make it clear to her this wasn’t some bet to me. It wasn’t a one-night thing either. I want this—the sex and everything else—to keep happening.
I open the big glass door and turn on the shower. The first thing I did when I got in this place was get the landlord’s permission to update the bathroom. The rest of the house’s character is kind of funky and charming with its old built-in shelves and creaky stairs, but the master bath—well, I take my showers very seriously and the crappy old stall with a separate, tiny tub was not going to cut it. I took one whole side of the room and had a contractor make a huge shower with a big bench at one end, a rain head shower and two other showerheads at either end.
My father was irate. He hated that I had decided to rent this “shithole,” as he called it, instead of buying one of the multi-million-dollar places on the water with security, like Ty and Alex and other players had. He hated that I then dumped money into the place by renovating the bathroom. Of course he had done nothing but complain over everything since I chose to play for San Diego. He had wanted Manhattan or Los Angeles. In fact, he’d insisted on it. It was only the second time I’d ever ignored his business advice.
I’d lived to regret the first one, which was picking college instead of going straight into the league. I’d regretted it when two of my close friends and college teammates, Cole Garrison and Trey Beckford, suffered career-ending injuries. I realized that the same thing could happen to me and I would never make the NHL. And then in my junior year Trey had become addicted to painkillers, and rumors swirled that the entire team had drug issues. I dropped out and took my place on the Winterhawks. My father loved to remind me how I wasted three years in school and how if I’d only listened to him, I would have avoided all that and be millions richer, much sooner. He might have been right then, but after last night I knew I would never regret coming to San Diego.
Everything I had hoped for when I came here was asleep in my bed.
I step under the warm spray and close my eyes. Behind my eyelids all I see is her smooth white skin, her bouncy breasts, her round, tight ass. I still have my eyes closed, smiling at the memories, as I lather body wash over my chest, when the glass door opens and I feel a wave of cool air followed by a warm body pressed to my back.
“You always shower with a smile on your face?” her voice, still grainy with sleep, says softly against my wet shoulder.
“I’m pretty sure this is a first,” I reply.
“But something tells me this”—her arms snake around my waist and her left hand palms my half-erect cock—“is not a first in the shower.”
“No. I’ve had a lot of hard-ons the shower,” I admit as I smile bigger and gently push myself into her palm. “And this isn’t even the first one you’ve caused.”
She laughs at that. It’s breathy and raspy, and between that and her lips on my shoulder, my cock surges to its full potential. I turn to face her, run my soapy hands over her half-damp hair and tug on it. Her head tilts back, her mouth opens for me, and I press my lips to hers and bury my tongue inside her mouth at the exact same time.
Her grip on my cock gets tighter and she flicks her wrist. She breaks the kiss and smiles up at me. “It may not be the first hard-on I’ve given you in the shower, but it’s the first I’ll take care of for you.”
She rocks onto her tiptoes, kisses me hard and then disappears. My hands slip from her hair as she drops to her knees and covers as much of my cock as she can. My knees almost buckle at the first touch of her warm, willing mouth. She can only take half of me, but she’s doing a fucking perfect job massaging the rest of me with her hand. And the tongue swirls and licks and her lips pull and suck in the most perfect fucking way…
I’ve been deep throated before and, yeah, there’s a thrill to that, but it can’t compare to the meticulous work Stephanie is doing. I’m close, and an image of me pumping a hot load into her mouth while she looks up at me with those perfect blue eyes and I tug on her hair almost sends me over the edge, but then I remember the feel of her pussy.
I take a shaky step back and tug her hair, pulling her lips from my shaft with a wet pop. Those blue eyes blink up at me as I let go of her hair and pull her to her feet. I press her against the glass while I kiss her, as my body melds into hers.
“I want you to come in my mouth,” she pleads softly.
