“Bar fight when I was twenty-three.” He sucked in a breath. “Any more questions before I undress you?”
“Did it hurt when you got your tattoo?”
“I don’t remember.” He lowered his mouth to hers. “I was pretty wasted at the time.” He silenced any further questions with a kiss that deepened by slow excruciating degrees. The kiss was sweet, gentle, but Jane wasn’t in the mood for sweet and gentle. She pushed him onto his back and climbed on top of him, like a mountain she’d conquered before but was looking forward to exploring again. The kiss turned hotter as she unbuttoned his shirt. With his wrists crossed above his head, he watched her from beneath lowered lids as she ran her hands and mouth over him. When she bit his shoulder, he brushed her hair from her face and brought her mouth back to his. He turned her onto her back and stripped her naked while feeding her kisses. Everywhere his hands touched, his mouth followed: her shoulder, her throat, her breast. They lay naked in each other’s arms, and when she could stand it no more, she slid a condom on his hot erection and straddled him once again. As she lowered herself, he thrust upward and buried himself deep within her.
“Jane,” he gasped, “hold still a minute.”
She squeezed her muscles around him and a groan rumbled in his chest. His eyes slid shut, and when he opened them again, raw lust shone up at her, hot and intoxicating. He slid one hand behind her neck and the other to her hip. He pulled her face down to his, and he held her still as he gently kissed her lips. His tongue lightly touched hers, and he created a soft suction as if he were sucking the juice from a peach. As if she tasted sweet and very good to him. He slipped his hand up her back and spine, then down to her hip, stroking her, creating fire inside and out. She tore her mouth from his as she quickened the pace. His blue eyes gazed up at her, shining with his passion. He whispered her name like a gentle caress. The heated tension inside her tightened and coiled until she came apart in hot uncontrollable waves of pleasure.
Her orgasm gripped him hard and his fingers sank into her hips as he drove into her again and again, thrusting harder until he too felt the same ecstasy he’d just given to her.
Jane collapsed on top of Luc, and he held her tight, his breathing labored. Crushed her to his moist chest as if he didn’t plan to let her go anytime soon.
“My God,” he said, his harsh breath next to her ear. “It’s better than the last time. And that time was pretty freaking-A fantastic!”
She agreed but was too winded to speak. Something had just happened. Something different. Something better, somehow. Something beyond physical pleasure. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“Jane.”
“Hmm?”
“Nothing.” She felt him kiss her hair. “I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t passed out.”
She smiled and buried her nose in his neck. The thing was in the way he held her, touched her. She didn’t fool herself that it was love. But it was something. She’d take that something and run with it, because whatever it was, was a whole heck of a lot better than nothing at all.
Chapter 16
Lights Out: Pulling an Opponent’s Jersey over His Head
The next evening, when Jane walked into the locker room of the Joe Louis Arena, her emotions were still in chaos. Luc had spent the night in her room, and they’d had breakfast in bed before he’d left for the game-day practice. He’d kissed her at her door and touched her hair and told her he would see her later. But would he be happy to see her later?
“Hi, guys,” she said as she moved to the center of the room.
“Hey, Sharky.”
While the players strapped on their gear, she hurried through her pants-dropping speech. She glanced at Luc, who was in deep conversation with the goalie coach and didn’t seem to know she was even in the room.
She shook Bressler’s hand. “Good luck with the game, Hitman.”
“Thanks.” He dropped his chin and studied her face. “You look different tonight,” he said.
She’d brushed her lashes with a little mascara, covered the dark circles beneath her eyes, and put on some pink lip gloss. She hoped that’s what he noticed, and not her serious case of afterglow. “Is that a good different?”
“Yeah.”
Fish and Sutter joined the captain and complimented her too. As she moved toward Luc, all the horrid fears and the wonderful high of falling in love mixed and tumbled in her stomach. Luc stood in front of his stall still talking to the goalie coach, and as she approached, he cast a sideways glance at her. His gaze held hers for several heartbeats before returning to the coach.
“The Czech always shoots top shelf,” the coach said. “If he scores on you, that’s where he’ll aim.” He flipped over a page on his clipboard. “And Federov will cut across the ice and shoot at you from his sweet spot near the left face-off circle.”
“Thanks, Don,” Luc said and turned to Jane when the goalie coach walked away.
“What were Fish and Sutter saying to you?” he wanted to know.
He towered over her in his gear. “They thought I looked different tonight.” She would have told him her after-the-afterglow theory, but she didn’t want to get him started down that path.
“Were they hitting on you?”
“No. You big dumb dodo.”
He looked around and waited for Daniel to move past before he said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh.”
He lowered his voice. “I think you should kiss my tattoo before every game for good luck.”
She scowled to keep from laughing. “I think I’m being sexually harassed.”
He grinned. “Absolutely. What do you say? Wanna kiss my tattoo?”
“Not a chance,” she said and turned away before anyone overheard the conversation. She headed up to the press box and took a seat by Darby. He told her that he was making some headway with management on her behalf, and he told her of a defender they hoped to acquire before the March 19 deadline four weeks away.
“Caroline said she’d go out with me when we get back into town,” he told her after they’d talked business.
“Where are you taking her?”
“Columbia Tower Club, like you suggested.”
She looked at his chili pepper tie hanging halfway down his chest and smiled. If Caroline decided to make Darby Hogue her next fixer-upper, she had her work cut out for her. Jane took out her sticky notes, wrote some reminders, and stuck them in her planner. And as soon as the puck was dropped, she pulled out her laptop.
Luc was definitely in his zone, stacking his pads or dropping to his knees and catching shots fired high. He played his angles brilliantly, and Jane had a hard time keeping her attention on the game, and not just on the Chinooks’ goalie.
That night on the team jet as they headed to Toronto, she sat within the light shining overhead and wrote her column for the Seattle Times. Throughout the flight, she felt Luc’s gaze on her and glanced across the aisle at him. He leaned against the side of the plane, his hands behind his head, watching her work. She wondered what he was thinking and decided it was probably best not to know.
She still hadn’t figured out the something that had been different with their sex the night before. She wondered if she’d imagined it, but when he came to her hotel room that night, took her by the hand, and led her to his room, she thought for sure she felt it again. She spent several hours in his bed trying to figure it out. Unsuccessful that night, she tried again in Boston, New York, and St. Louis. By the time they set down again in Seattle, she was tired of trying to figure anything out and decided not to overanalyze every word and touch. She was just going to go with it for as long as it lasted.
She’d fought falling in love with Luc, and she’d lost. Against her better judgment, she was having sex with him. Great sex. Fabulous sex that put her job at risk, but she knew she wouldn’t stop no matter the consequences to her career or her heart. She was in love with him and didn’t have a choice but to be with him. And over the next few weeks, her love grew and expanded until it filled every part of her. Body and soul. She was in too deep to get out.