Tomboy (a Hartigans romantic comedy)

by Flynn, Avery

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was an hour until the official start of the clinic’s second carnival fundraiser, and it was total chaos. There were a handful of volunteers’ kids who were already running through the clinic, which had been transformed into a circus midway, with balloons and tickets for games. There were clowns everywhere, along with balloon animal makers and face painters for the kids-oriented circus-themed clinic fundraiser, but no Ice Knights—and definitely not one in particular.

  There were about a million things still to do before the doors opened, and they would be getting done a lot faster if Fallon didn’t keep looking behind her to check the doors every twenty-three seconds, hoping to see Zach walk through.

  What had she been thinking with sending that pic last night? That wasn’t something sorta-friends and one-time fuck buddies did. Those people didn’t flirt with each other—and she sure didn’t because flirting was definitely not her thing. And now she was going to have to see him again? Without the glass surrounding the hockey rink between them, or from the safe distance of her side of a texting conversation? This was going to be a disaster.

  Fallon tied the knot on a helium-filled balloon and handed it out to a waiting six-year-old in pigtails and kept her nothing-to-see-here-move-along-folks smile on her face. It fooled the grade-schoolers, but judging by the curious looks Harper and Cameron were giving her, she wasn’t slipping one over on the adults.

  “Harper, you did a great job organizing this. Another couple of these, and we’ll be able to fund the food pantry for the entire upcoming fiscal year,” Cameron said. “It really helps that our overhead has been so low for these events because of the volunteers. How did you get all the clowns to work for free?”

  Harper nodded toward one of the clowns across the waiting room they’d turned into a station where the kids would be learning to pull scarves out of the sleeves of their jackets. “I used to date the goofy one with the red hair and the kazoo.”

  “Interesting choice,” Fallon said, taking in the guy with a Bozo Knows All T-shirt and rainbow suspenders.

  Harper leaned in close and dropped her voice so their boss wouldn’t overhear. “Sometimes I had him wear the nose to bed.” She shrugged. “Come on, everyone has their thing. Don’t judge.”

  Yeah, Fallon was not going to be the one to do that—especially not after the pic she’d sent Zach last night that he’d never responded to. That wasn’t awkward at all. An embarrassed heat burned her cheeks, and the balloon she’d been trying to tie shut slipped from her grip, shooting off toward the ceiling like a rocket of shame.

  “You okay?” Cameron asked, looking up from the countdown to-do list on his clipboard. “You seem kinda nervous.”

  She was, and it was a weird-ass feeling. Incoming traumas at the ER? Handled. People needing a comeuppance for being jerks to her friends? Done. Seeing Zach Blackburn after a night of orgasms that could never be repeated and sending a stupid selfie in his hoodie like someone trying to get back into his pants? Where was the never-ending hole she could fall into?

  “Could it be because there’s a particular hot hockey player who’s coming today?” Harper asked.

  Unsuccessfully willing the butterflies in her stomach to chill the fuck out, Fallon tried to remain calm. “I’m not sure he’s gonna make it.”

  “I am,” the other woman said, her attention focused on the clinic’s doors. “And he brought friends.”

  Fallon whipped around so fast that the tail of her braid thwapped her on the face. Way to play it cool, girl.

  Zach strode toward her as the kids and adults between them parted like the sea—all except for Cameron’s five-year-old daughter, Bianca, who stood on a step stool with a stethoscope around her neck and too-big latex gloves on her hands.

  “You gotta pick me up,” she demanded, totally nonplussed that she was staring down a professional athlete known for some of the hardest hits in hockey. “The floor is lava, and I have to pee.”

  Zach froze, his eyes wide. The four guys behind him—Caleb Stuckey, Alex Christensen, Ian Petrov, and Cole Phillips, who made up the rest of the Ice Knights’ first line—stopped dead in their tracks, too. They looked around at one another, terror and confusion on each of their faces. Did none of them have nieces and nephews? Not that she did, much to her mom’s annoyance, but still, Bianca was a kid, not a radioactive spider.

  Bianca held up her arms. “Save me.”

  Cameron was hustling over to get his daughter, but before he could get there, Zach scooped her up and tucked her under his arm, which Bianca took to be her cue to stick her arms straight out and make airplane sounds. Then, he started heading their way.

  “Good thing I have lava-proof armor on,” he said to the little girl once they, and the other hockey players, made it across the room and he handed Bianca to Cameron.

  The girl inspected him as she wrapped her arms around her dad’s neck. “Why do you have a stick in your eyebrow?”

  Zach ran his fingers over his only visible piercing. “It’s a metal bar.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  He shrugged those broad shoulders of his. “A little.”

  “Are your ears pierced?” Bianca looked up at her dad and let out a long-suffering sigh. “Louisa’s ears are pierced, but Daddy says that I have to wait.”

  Zach looked over at Fallon, and her heart did a little hip-hop-skip thing, which meant she really needed to schedule a physical because there was no reason for it to do that. She may not be getting it on with half of Waterbury like Frankie before he met Lucy, but she knew well and good that one night of hot sex did not mean anything. Her current shortness of breath and a racing pulse had to have a medical explanation because, otherwise, she was in a world of shit, and she refused to accept that. The bitch of St. Vincent’s ER did not develop crushes—especially not on a hot hockey player who only hung around because he thought she was some sort of Lady Luck.

  Girl, have some pride. Don’t get sucked in.

  “Your dad seems like a smart guy,” Zach said, his gaze sliding over to Fallon for half a second—long enough for a sexy wink—before returning to the little girl. “I’m sure he has his reasons.”

  “I like your shirt,” Bianca said, her voice loud and clear. “Daddy says the Ice Knights finally pulled their heads out of their butts.”

  Of course, all of the chatter in the clinic downgraded from a loud roar to a quiet chatter in the half second before Bianca made her pronouncement, ensuring her voice carried to every corner of the waiting room. Zach’s eyebrow went up, but his smile didn’t waver. Behind him, the other players let out muffled chuckles. Cameron’s face turned a shade of red that Fallon was pretty sure needed to be documented on a patient care chart.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  “Nah,” Zach said. “It’s good to know our heads are back where they’re supposed to be.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Caleb said, the brawny defenseman whose nose seemed to have borne the brunt of an on-ice brawl or twelve. “My pretty mug has always been in the right place.”

  “Pretty?” scoffed Alex, a forward with the hair of a shampoo model and a perfect smile that would sell a million tubes of toothpaste. “Do we need to tell Coach you need concussion protocol?”

  “So funny.” Caleb snarled. “Just remember I lost a tooth for you.”

  “Boys,” Cole Phillips, one of the other forwards, said, smacking both of them on the back of the head at the same time. “Be nice, we’re in public.”

  With another mumbled apology, Cameron hustled off to the bathroom with Bianca, leaving the seven of them standing near the helium tank.

  “Thank you so much for coming.” She said it to all of the men, but she couldn’t look away from Zach.

  He was in an Ice Knights long sleeve T and jeans, but it wasn’t what he was wearing so much as how he was wearing it. Seriously, someone must have turned on the heat because it was getting steamy in here.

  “No worries,” he said, a sinfully knowing smi
le curling his lips because of course the man knew exactly what he was doing to her. “Can I talk to you for a minute? In private?”

  Play it cool, girl. She’d had her naked fun time with him already, and he was now officially out of her system. Really. 100 percent. They were just sorta friends now. The kind who sent stupid late-night selfies. OMG, what had she been thinking?

  “Sure,” she said, managing to pull from deep reserves somewhere in her toes to make herself sound like she was in total control at the moment as opposed to having a squadron of butterflies zoom around inside her every time Zach looked her way. “I have to give you your wet suit anyway.”

  His eyes rounded with surprise. “Wet suit?”

  “It’s October,” she said. “Kinda cold for an outdoor dunking booth without one.”

  “Blackburn, I am buying all the tickets for that one,” the center Ian Petrov said with a laugh. “Be warned, I was starting pitcher for my high school baseball team.”

  Zach closed his eyes and mumbled something that sounded a lot like fuck me while the other men laughed.

  “Come on guys, let’s get you set up in your booths,” Harper said, her eyes beaming as she gave the four men a collective and very appreciative once-over. “Which one of you wants to give away goldfish?”

  While they walked out toward the back parking lot where the booths were set up, she and Zach headed toward the staff break room. It looked the same as always, two small circular tables, a little kitchenette in the corner, a fridge in another corner, and a huge dry-erase board on the wall with a thermometer drawn on it, showing the progress on their fundraising efforts. Whenever there was an all-hands meeting, the room fit twenty. Still, it seemed small with him in it. The scent of his soap surrounded her, the anticipation of knowing he was there brushed against her skin, and there were so many horizontal surfaces that it gave her all sorts of ideas that she most definitely did not need to be having.

  Desperate for some air, she went over to the table with the wet suit on it and picked it up. “So, this is on loan, but since your height and weight stats are on the team’s website, we figured it should fit.”

  “What about my hoodie?” he asked, taking the wet suit from her grasp and dropping it back on the table. “How does that fit?”

  “Yeah, sorry,” she said, the words coming out breathy. “I need to wash that and give it back.”

  Damn. He was close enough that she’d barely have to reach out to touch him, trace her fingertips down his muscular chest, tug up his shirt, and twirl her tongue around his pierced nipples.

  As if he could read her thoughts, he moved nearer, winding the end of her braid around his finger. “That’s not what I want to know.”

  Electricity snapped in the air around them, stealing her breath as every nerve in her body focused on him.

  “I spent the entirety of the plane ride home with a hard-on,” he went on, desire darkening his eyes until they were nearly black. “I was wondering if the hoodie went low enough to cover your ass, or if it would stop just short, giving me the perfect view of the bottom of that sweet butt of yours.”

  “It goes down to my thighs.” Brilliant. A response for the ages, girl.

  “So I’d have to ask you to pull it up for me.” He lowered his hand to her soft cotton shirt, inching it higher and higher. “I like that, too. That way I could have a nice long look at you from all angles.”

  The mental image of that—of standing in front of him only in his hoodie, lifting it ever so slowly, showing a new sliver of skin a breath at a time had her squeezing her legs together in an effort to find relief. One night. That was what they’d agreed on.

  “Zach,” she asked, just barely hearing the urging of her better judgment anymore. “What are you doing?”

  He stroked the pad of his thumb over the skin above her jeans. “Asking you very important questions.”

  Her entire world collapsed into that small place on her body where he was touching her, leaving a trail of want behind. “Why?”

  “Because.” He dipped his head down and nipped her earlobe. “I want to fuck you again, and at some point, I want to fuck you in that hoodie.”

  She was supposed to have gotten him out of her system, but she hadn’t, and if they did this, she wasn’t sure she would. There was something about Zach; hidden under all those layers of attitude and defensiveness, she recognized some place deep in herself.

  “It was supposed to be one time.” Honestly, she didn’t know if she was talking to him or herself at that point.

  “Is that all you want it to be?” he asked, his voice rough and urgent.

  “No.”

  “Then why can’t we?”

  It was a question she might have been able to answer if he weren’t so close, but he was, and her body overruled the logic of her brain. She gave in to the urge to touch him, to feel his warm skin, lifting his shirt and skimming her palms up his unyielding chest.

  “This isn’t a good idea.” But God did it feel good to touch him.

  “You’re right. It’s a great one.” His hands were on her ass, cupping her through her jeans. “Does that door lock?”

  “No, but the bathroom does.”

  Her feet were off the ground the second the words were out of her mouth, and he was carrying her into the employee bathroom. The second they were inside the small room, he kicked the door shut and flipped the lock. They were both breathing hard, their eyes a little crazed. Then, he was kissing her as her hands roamed his body with an urgency she couldn’t explain as it washed over her. When he broke off the kiss, there wasn’t time to question the need making her core ache, because he spun her around so she faced the bathroom counter.

  “I will make up for the quickness of this later,” he said between kisses and nips down her neck.

  “What makes you think there will be a later?” she asked, a question that probably would have carried more weight if she wasn’t pressing backward and rubbing her ass against his hard cock.

  “Because,” he said, pushing her back enough that there was room for his hands on the button and zipper of her jeans. “You want me just as bad as I want you.” He shoved her jeans down past her ass, palming it and squeezing with just the right amount of pressure. “Don’t you, Fallon?” He let go of her butt, sliding his palm around her hip and slipping his fingers under the elastic of her underwear, but not going any farther. “I’m gonna find out in a second just how much you want me, so you might as well give it up now.”

  He brushed his fingertips across the top of her pubic bone, smoothing the tight curls there, so close to her sensitive clit that it was the best kind of torture. “Yes, I want you.”

  “Good.” He glided his fingers through her wet folds, one on either side of her clit, moving up and down but not touching her most sensitive spot. “So soft and wet for me already. Do you want to come now or while my cock is deep inside you?”

  Fucking A. He turned her brain and legs to Jell-O, and then he wanted her to make decisions.

  “Inside.” It was the only word she could get out as she rocked against his fingers, arching her hips in an effort to get him to touch her in just the right spot.

  “So impatient. You’re lucky we’re so pressed for time, because I had the entire five-hour plane trip last night to think about all the things I wanted to do to you.” He circled her clit so slow it wasn’t even close to fair. “How many ways I wanted you to come on me and with me.” He sped up, pressing harder against the sensitive spot. “And just how damn bad I wanted to see my wet dick sliding in and out as I fucked you slow and hard.”

  Holy hell. She was going to come just from listening to him.

  “Zach,” she moaned, sounding desperate and needy and not giving a shit. “Please.”

  “I got you, Fallon.” But he didn’t. He let her go and stepped back.

  It was almost enough to make her cry out in frustration. Then she heard the crinkle of a foil wrapper being torn open and the unmistakable sound of a zipper going do
wn. Watching him in the mirror, she shoved her jeans and underwear down to her ankles, spreading her legs as wide as she could, and planted her hands on the bathroom sink while arching her back and pushing her hips out as far as they would go.

  “You look so good like that.”

  She looked up at his reflection in the mirror, and a shiver of anticipation went through her right down to her toes. “Stop looking and fuck me.”

  “Now there’s the bossy woman I know.” He smoothed his hand over the curve of her ass.

  She shivered in anticipation and pleasure as she felt the smooth head of his cock rub against her before he pushed inside. Not all the way—just a taste. Then his hands were on her hips, and he yanked her back as he drove forward, filling her until it was all she could do not to scream out just how damn good it felt. Then she felt his fingers brush her clit as he leaned over her so his mouth was near her ear.

  “You feel that? How good we fit together.” He circled her clit with his finger. “You’re so wet and tight, so close to coming already, aren’t you? Did you play with yourself last night after you sent me that pic?”

  There was no point in lying, even if she could when he was inside her, making her body respond to his every thrust. “Yes.”

  “And did you come all over those fingers?” he asked, mimicking what she’d done to herself last night.

  “Yes,” she said, the words coming out low and needy.

  He picked up the pace, pushing into her hard and sure, filling her up until he was so deep. “Will you let me watch sometime, see how you work that clit?”

  “Yes,” she cried out as the tension building in her core tightened and spun, taking her higher with each thrust of his hips and circle of his fingers.

  She had no idea what it was about his words as he fucked her that did it for her, but her entire body was vibrating and reaching toward release until finally her climax hit, momentarily wiping out the rest of the world except for Zach fucking her hard until he came a few seconds later.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Zach had not planned on screwing Fallon in her clinic bathroom while a bunch of kids were outside waiting to send him crashing down into a tank of water. Then he’d gotten into a room alone with her and she had her hair in that braid again, was wearing an Ice Knights T-shirt—not one with his number on it—and something primal inside of him came roaring to the front. It wasn’t just that he wanted his hands on her. It was that he only wanted his hands on her. The fact that she was wearing Pavel Gerkin’s number, even though the guy was sixty if he was a day and his number had been retired, made him jealous.