He eased her down slowly, savoring the aftershocks that caused her body to tighten for a moment. “Fucking incredible,” he muttered. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
Olivia reached for him, placing her hand on his shoulder, pulling him up her body.
He lay down against her, loving the way her hips cradled him, the way his skin felt pressed against hers. He kissed her, allowing his tongue to seek hers. Her lips were soft, but her tongue dueled his between gasps for air. “I know you wanted that as much as me,” she whispered. “But now I want you in the same way.”
Anders grinned. “But I have so many more of those I want to give you.”
Her eyes were filled with something he couldn’t express. Desire. Longing. Desperation. He wasn’t sure.
“And I want more,” she replied. “But the next one I want to come from you filling me with this.”
She reached between them and placed her fingers around his dick, giving it slow pumps that matched the way she’d fingered herself.
“Your wish is my command,” he said, reaching for the condoms. Within a moment he had one on and was situated back between her legs. “Here? Like this?”
Olivia propped herself up on her arms. “Just like this. I want to watch you slide into me.”
He lined his cock up with her already swollen entrance. His beard had chafed the sides of her thighs, and the thought that she would still feel it, feel him, in the morning perversely thrilled him. “Ready?”
Olivia bit her lip and nodded.
Anders nudged in an inch, easing back before sliding in a little further. Fuck, the way her swollen lips moved against him, the way she greedily accepted him.
Olivia gasped. “You feel so big already.”
“It’s because you’re already so aroused. Feel it, Olivia. Lie back and take all of me. Let me stretch you and fill you and release everything I’m feeling in you.”
She did as she was told, and he moved so he was lying down on top of her, his large body covering hers. As she threw her hands around his neck, his mouth plundered hers. Her legs wrapped around his waist as he slid his hands beneath her ass to hold her in place, to open her to him so he could finally and fully slide all the way inside her.
They came together in a maelstrom of movement, of friction, of excitement. Anders’s thrusts, with her encouragement, came faster and harder. He slammed home against her, sheathing himself as deeply as he could. His balls began to tighten, a line of pure energy slammed down his spine. Sweat formed between them.
“Oh, yeah, Olivia.”
“Don’t stop,” she gasped. “Please. Don’t stop, I’m so close.”
The shock in her voice was everything he needed to refocus. This was about her. Not him. This was about the beautiful, lush woman beneath him realizing she was worth every effort. He thought briefly about the lineup for the previous match, with the youngster from the minors anxious to take his place. But it wasn’t enough.
“Olivia,” he commanded. “Let go. Let it take us both.”
Her eyes opened and her gaze landed on him. The intensity in them was more than he could deal with. Her mouth opened into an O of surprise, as her body clenched and bucked against his. His name fell from her lips as she tightened around him, and he felt his own orgasm barrel through him.
And as he gained his breath, his face pressed against the warmth of her neck, he lamented that, like a well-played hockey game, their time was running out.
3
Olivia sat back in her office chair and wondered how the heck it was the middle of February already. It had been dark when she’d dragged her butt out of bed to get an early start on the day, and it was still dark now. The distillery was silent. Jake, her older brother and master distiller, hadn’t yet made it in to start the first run of the day. And she hadn’t heard the playful early morning chatter of Emerson, their company CEO and eldest sibling, and Connor, her partner who was currently acting as a catchall for distribution and supply chain while building his own consulting business; Olivia could hear them each day when they came up the stairs to the offices on the mezzanine that overlooked the copper stills.
How much had happened in the seven months since her father had died from a heart attack in the office down the hallway?
Her mother dying so long ago, when Olivia had been eleven, had left a mix of memories of a woman who used to love dancing in the kitchen and decorating for Christmas in mid-November. But their father’s death had been so visceral, it had felt as though a piece of herself had died. She missed the smell of his dark roast coffee, and the way he whistled to songs on the radio rather than sing along.
Then there had been what followed.
There was a saying about everyone getting their fifteen minutes of fame. But Olivia was adamant that an amendment should be made. Everyone would get their fifteen minutes, but it was fifty-fifty odds as to whether you got fame or infamy.
Hers had been infamy.
Hers had been the face of Dyer’s Gin Distillery that had taken the fall.
And while she loved Jake and Emerson, she hated that they had remained reasonably unscathed while she had been left bedridden.
In what world was it fair that an act of God, an uncontrollable summer storm, could be held so viciously against her. She looked at the online ratings for the distillery.
Yup. Still two stars.
That was the metric that she wanted to increase. It was the first thing that popped up when anyone searched for the distillery.
And it had been trashed by one particular groom.
Robert Harding.
He’d rallied people online to spam all the review sites about them with terrible comments. Vile, horrible things that weren’t true. Trolls had gotten involved. It had shifted from the distillery to her. Deeply personal and graphic things that had bled onto her personal accounts.
The thought of the man’s name made her shiver.
When her father had called her at two in the morning to tell her that the events hall had been devastated, her first thought had been Robert and Gina’s wedding. The hall had been completely set up. All the flower arrangements that had been made by Gina’s aunt were in place, given the building would be cool overnight. All the tables were set. All the wedding favors placed upon each individual setting. The place cards that had been handwritten by Robert’s niece were in place.
Poor Gina.
Olivia had called every major hotel within the city to see who might be able to host their event. There had been one less than stellar venue with space big enough available. But she’d put them on notice that the room might be needed. She’d also made a backup plan to host a scaled-down version in the distillery tasting rooms, but Gina and Robert would have had to cut fifty guests from their list.
Using her public relations undergrad degree, she had pulled together a crisis management plan for Gina and Robert’s wedding, the distillery, and future brides and grooms.
At six in the morning, she’d called Robert with a plan. It hadn’t helped that the man clearly had a hangover from hell, but it hadn’t gone well.
Olivia scoffed at the turn of phrase.
“Hadn’t gone well” was an understatement of fairly epic proportions. He’d raged. Shown up at the distillery to check the evidence of destruction for himself. Perhaps calling the police wasn’t her father’s smartest move, but it was Robert’s own fault he had gotten arrested instead of leaving like they’d asked. When Robert had gotten so angry and frustrated that he’d lashed out and hit the police officer, they had no choice but to detain him. And that detainment had made him miss his actual wedding service.
That was the day anxiety and fear and depression had taken over her life. It had started small. Reluctance to communicate with the families. Feeling ill at the idea of coming into work. Dreading Sunday evenings. And then, one day it felt impossible to move. While her head had screamed with all the things she needed to do, she couldn’t get off the sofa. Worry turned into negative self-talk, dre
ad had turned into numbness as she closed herself off from the reality of it all.
Her father had staged the intervention, by which point she didn’t have the energy to care about what happened next.
Even though she knew the cause of the poor reviews, it didn’t make it any easier to fix it. But if she could somehow raise those stars, if she could flood the sites with positive ratings and lift the average, she was certain she’d feel better about herself.
She heard laughter and quickly switched tabs on her browser so her sister wouldn’t see what she was looking at.
“Morning, Liv.” Emerson dropped a box of cinnamon rolls on the desk. “I made too many for breakfast, thought you might have skipped it since you said you were coming in early.”
“Thanks. They look great,” Olivia said. Smelled great too. But the twenty pounds she’d gained in the last year were still sitting at her hips and round the tops of her arms that she kept covered. Her efforts to make a dent in them were doing nothing more than keeping her weight exactly the same.
So, no matter how mouthwatering the buns were, she’d practice a little bit of self-control and stick with the yogurt and granola she’d brought from home.
Emerson flicked her pin-straight hair over her shoulder. “You’re welcome. Where are you at with the social media plan for the renovation?”
The renovation would start in the summer. Just a few more months until the distillery could finally step out of its current production constraints. It was a gamble, but they were all on board to extend and rebuild the damaged event venue and turn it into the new distillery. Then, they’d convert the old distillery into the new event venue. It meant production could continue for pretty much the whole renovation.
“I’ve got the project timeline from the architect and blocked out the key phases. I’ve set up time over the next few weeks to get into each area of the distillery to set up shoots for all the before videos and photographs. Jake is taking a bit of persuading to appear in any of them, though. So if you feel like kicking his ass for me, that would be awesome.”
Emerson laughed. “I love him to pieces, but I swear to god, all he cares about is flavor profiles. I’ll talk to him. Will you be in them?”
Olivia shook her head. “I think I’ve appeared in enough media posts in the last twelve months. And I’d hate to draw the trolls back.”
Emerson placed her hand on Olivia’s arm. “It’s over, Liv. And it was a handful of idiots who went out of control trolling us. I know it was life changing for you, I’m not trying to diminish it. But it was the minority. And I think they’ve crept back into whatever hole they crawled from. Our social media has been pretty clean for the last few months.”
What Emerson said made logical sense. But as Olivia’s therapist had reminded her, she didn’t always respond from a place of logic. More often than not, fear still led her decision-making. And Emerson’s minimized description sat uncomfortably in her gut. Expressing why she found the comments hurtful was hard. Olivia knew her voice would go up half an octave. That she would sound irrational. That in the big picture, what had happened to her had been small. But depression and anxiety were almost impossible to explain to someone who hadn’t experienced them first hand, lived with them.
Half the problem was that most people had, at some point, felt a bit down, a bit out of control, a bit stressed. And they often conflated those experiences with true anxiety and depression. In their opinion, it was about shaking this off, changing her frown upside down, digging deep for some motivation.
It was hard to explain the sensation that, at her worst, she could have sat in the distillery while it burned down around her and she still wouldn’t have been able to find the energy to move, even though her brain would be screaming at her to get the hell out of there.
“For the record, that did sound like you were diminishing it,” Olivia said. As she yanked the lid off the box of cinnamon buns, the scent of freshly baked sugar and cinnamon hit her. And here she was, eating her feelings again. They said step one was naming your problem. She didn’t feel like hitting step two, so took a large bite of the bun.
Emerson grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry, Liv. Let me try again. I would love to see you back on our social media pages because you are really good at engaging people in our products with your videos. And I think it’s horrible that a few assholes were able to rally trolls to come at us like that. But it has been several months since we’ve seen that kind of interaction on any of our platforms. So, I pray they’ve gone away in the hope that you can get back to doing something you are so good at.”
Olivia raised an eyebrow. “Better. Apology accepted. I’m sorry this is still such a sensitive spot.”
“It is what it is. You can take as long as you need to feel better.” Emerson reached for another cinnamon bun.
“How many of these did Connor eat?” Olivia asked, holding up the cinnamon roll. Before meeting Emerson, Connor was a macro-counting meal prepper.
“Two, but he scraped the icing off. He’s a heathen.”
Olivia laughed. “That’s the best bit.”
“Yup. He was pretty grossed out when I scooped it up and doubled the icing on my cinnamon roll.” She looked in the direction of the hallway. “Don’t tell him I ate another one. He’s already grossed out by my breakfast choices.”
Connor’s frame filled the doorway, a broad grin on his face and a green smoothie in his hand. “It hurts my teeth just watching that.”
“And it hurts my tastebuds just looking at that swamp juice in your hand. We should buy stock in that green powder you use.”
Connor shrugged. “Morning, Liv. When you get a sec, I had an idea for a flash Valentine’s campaign.”
Olivia nodded. “I’ll finish this and come see you.”
“Wait,” Emerson said, pretending to be offended. “Why didn’t you tell me about this brain wave?”
Connor raised an eyebrow. “I was in the shower when it happened.”
Color flushed Emerson’s cheeks. “Wait, I was in the shower too.”
Olivia covered her ears. “La, la, la. This is too much information.”
Connor laughed. “I can multitask.”
Emerson stood and playfully slapped his arm. “Do I want to know when this multitasking happened?”
“Well, I definitely don’t want to,” Olivia said. She watched enviously as Connor slipped his arm around her sister, how his hand held her close. Anders had held her the same way at Christmas, and she’d seen the same look of possessiveness in Anders’s eyes that Connor had for Em.
Damn, jealousy had a really bitter taste.
“It was just as you stepped out to dry off, and I thought about how I could show you how much I love you on Valentine’s Day.”
“Nice save,” Emerson said, stepping up onto her toes to kiss him chastely.
Olivia put her fingers to her mouth, pretending to vomit, and Connor grinned.
“Do you think we could stop this lovefest, that quite frankly should have stayed in your apartment, and get on with some work?” Olivia said.
“On it. Think about the videos, Liv. You’d be great,” Emerson said as she left the office with Connor.
You’d be great.
Would she? She still didn’t have the easy confidence she used to. There was only one time in the last nine months she’d felt confident, and that was in a hotel room with a hockey player who was good with his hands and even better with his mouth. He’d become the bar every other guy she came into contact with had to measure up against.
And he was what seemed like a million miles away.
Anders stepped out of the limo in front of the Cheesman Park home, never more grateful that his brother had married a Denver real estate agent. Only she would have been able to find him a partially furnished rental home like this with a few hours’ notice.
The neighborhood was completely silent, unsurprising for four in the morning.
Traded.
He ran his hand along his jaw. He�
��d been traded without a contract extension agreement. Denver had wanted him so badly, they were willing to run the risk he wouldn’t sign with the team long term, just to get him into their organization before his free agency kicked in. Or at least, that was what his agent had told him as he stood wrapped in a towel in the Canyon locker room after a solid win.
A little bit of research had told him the Denver Rush were down two centers right at the peak of their run for entry into the playoffs. A quick call with Karl had confirmed it. They were desperate.
And the Canyon organization had been coolly complimentary. They’d assured him they were grateful for what he’d brought to the organization, that it was purely a business decision, and wished him well. His teammates had been split. He’d overheard Scott Boland, the Canyon’s goalie, question who the hell could fill the gap on center ice. Meanwhile, defensemen Dmitri and John had barely shook his hand, not that he cared. If the two of them had worked harder, they might have been headed to the playoffs too, just like Denver was.
After that, he’d been on autopilot. Two hours in his condo to throw together what he thought he’d need in the short term while the rest of his belongings were shipped. Offers of a hotel had been accepted until he’d spoken to Karl and ultimately Sarah, who’d made him a better offer. A rental house a couple of minutes’ walk from theirs in the upscale neighborhood.
A private jet, courtesy of the Denver Rush, complete with dinner and a beer, followed by a limo, had brought his tired and totally overwhelmed ass here.
He didn’t have the energy to process exactly what the move meant. Only that Denver needed a center to continue their playoff run. Even the concept of making the playoffs was beyond his current mental faculty. He’d resigned himself to another playoff season cheering for his brother, and now he would be a part of that action for the first time in his major league career if the Rush kept up their current streak. He loved that he was in playoff contention but was nervous about playing for the same team as his brother. When they’d played on the same junior league team, Karl had never quite separated being an older sibling from being a teammate. Blurred roles weren’t healthy for either of them.
Love In Moments: An opposites attract hockey romance (Love Distilled Book 2) Page 4
