Delay of Game

by Tracey Richardson

  “Protect you?” Eva spat out the word. “I suppose she didn’t explain that either.”

  “No, she didn’t. But it’s obvious she knows who’s behind it. Whether she actively helped or just turned a blind eye, I don’t know.”

  “Either way, she’s betrayed you big-time, Nik. And she was the one with everything to gain. Think about that.”

  “I know. I accused her of screwing me to get my job, but she turned it around and said I screwed myself. Because I couldn’t resist you.”

  Eva hoped that last part was true. Inside she felt it was, and yet Niki always managed to hold something back, to keep her deepest thoughts and desires private. One minute she might return Eva’s kiss her as though her very soul was trying to fuse with Eva’s, and the next…Well, the next she was being cautious. Or she was running away again. The pushing and pulling routine was enough to drive her nuts if she let it.

  Slowly, Eva said, “What do you want to do next?”

  Niki leaned against the tree. “I don’t know. I need time. Not only to think, but to keep my eye on Lynn.”

  “I don’t know that there’s much to see anymore. Her little game’s over because she got what she wanted.”

  “Then what’s the link between her and Alison and Dani?”

  That was easy. “They all have reasons for wanting you off the bench I guess. Lynn probably enlisted their help, and they were only too eager to give it.”

  “But why would they give a shit whether it was me or Lynn coaching the team? What difference does it make to them?”

  “Sweetheart, you’re the best at what you do, that’s why. They probably feel that with Lynn at the helm, they’ve got a shot. Or at least, a better shot. You know Lynn’s not half the coach you are.” Only after she said the words did it occur to her that she had referred to her own team as they. Had she felt this disconnected to her team, this much an outsider, all along? Or was it since she’d learned Alison was up to her old tricks again? More than that, was her heart aligning itself to Niki in every way possible?

  “Eva, will you keep an eye on Alison and Dani?”

  “Of course, you know I will. But we’ve got nothing on them, and getting a confession would be like getting Russia to confess its athletes are the biggest dopers on the planet. Let’s hope this whole thing is over.”

  “What if Dani and Alison are still trying to find out my team’s strategies and things like who’s injured?”

  “That was all probably part of their plan to get you off the bench. To make it look like you were trading information for sex with me or something. I don’t know. Come here, baby.”

  Niki stepped into Eva’s arms, buried her face against her heavy winter coat. “It’s so unfair, everything that’s happened.”

  “I know it is.” She kissed Niki’s temple. “But the Games will be over soon. You’ll have your life back and all this will be in your rearview mirror. The people who love you and believe in you, that won’t change because of this. And you never did care what the general public thought anyway. This whole thing is a blip, a footnote in your life. Don’t let it define you.”

  “Huh. How’d you get so wise?”

  “I had a good teacher. You. And maybe I finally grew up a little.”

  Niki looked up at her, the darkness failing to conceal the bright blue of her eyes. “You surprise me sometimes.”

  “Good. I like keeping you off-balance. But there’s one thing that shouldn’t come as a surprise to you.”

  “What’s that?”

  Eva gently captured Niki’s mouth with her own and kissed her with all the feelings that simmered below the surface, with all the things that made her crazy for this woman she never should have let go in the first place. She deepened the kiss, and before she lost her courage, whispered into Niki’s ear, “Let’s go get a hotel room. I want to make love to you, Nik. All night long.”

  Niki paused, her body trembling against Eva’s. “Eva, we can’t. I’ve got Rory and—”

  “Isn’t she staying in your sister-in-law’s room?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You could be back by daybreak.”

  “But you have a curfew. You’re staying in the athletes’ village. Breaking curfew could earn you a suspension for a game or two.”

  “I don’t care, I’ll take that chance. Please. I need to hold you. At least for one night, I need to forget that we lost twelve years together.”

  “There’s more to think about than tonight. I can’t go off with you when everything’s hanging in the balance the way it is. Our teams could be playing against each other in a week, we could—”

  Eva raised a finger to Niki’s lips to shush her. “None of that matters to me right now. You matter to me. Only you. Always you. Everything else is just noise that won’t amount to a hill of beans after that final game. Besides, what else have we got to lose?”

  “If the media were to find out about this, it’d look like I’m guilty as charged. That I deserve what I got and more.”

  “They’re not going to find out. And besides, there’s no need for anyone to continue with their witch-hunt. They got what they wanted. But we’ll be careful, I promise.”

  Niki kissed the two fingers at her lips, one at a time, heating Eva from the inside. She could see from Niki’s eyes that she wanted this night together every bit as badly.

  “Tonight has to be the only time,” Niki warned. “For now.”

  “I know.”

  Niki was right. They couldn’t repeat the risk. She dropped her hand, waited for Niki to clasp it. “Now let’s go find that room.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Holding

  It had taken what seemed to Niki a Herculean effort by Eva—with a little help from her friend Kathleen—to find them a room. The city was booked up solid—every hotel and motel, bed-and-breakfast, inn, campus residence, lodge and cottage. A half hour of back and forth phone calls finally got them a room at a downtown hotel, booked under Kathleen’s name. The only reason it was available was because a Swedish team doctor was having a secret affair with a skier on the French team, and they no longer needed two rooms. Sex was the biggest of all the sports at the Olympics. If you weren’t here having sex, you were angling to have sex, and nothing was off limits. Certainly not your marital status and definitely not your citizenship.

  Eva was sweet the way she kept asking her if she was okay, if she was sure. There was a noticeable skittishness in her eyes, like she didn’t believe Niki would really go through with it. And there were good reasons for Niki’s hesitation, not the least of which was that they’d be doing exactly the thing they’d been accused of doing once the hot tub photo surfaced. Niki’s inner child said that if she was going to be judged as guilty, she might as well be guilty. But that wasn’t why she was in this hotel room with Eva. She was here because every time she looked at Eva, every time she was touched by Eva, she couldn’t, in that instant, remember why she’d ever given her up. Why she’d ever thought she could make a life without her. Why she’d ever been so stupid and so arrogant, like her head knew better than her heart. But then, the way a dream vanishes with morning’s first light, she’d realize that in letting Eva go, she’d gained Shannon. And Rory. She’d made a life without Eva that was a good life, a satisfying life, for a time at least. They had to let each other go to find what each needed to complete herself, because they hadn’t, back then, completed each other. Eva had been so restless, so full of adventure and the pursuit of her own happiness. Niki had been the introspective one, the cautious one, wanting to plant roots, wanting to build a life where she stood. Their passion for each other and their sport had intersected for a time, but it had never been enough to build a life around. Not then.

  “What are you thinking about?” Eva asked.

  Niki sat down on the king bed, having only removed her shoes. Eva had slipped off her jeans, but no more, and stood patiently nearby.

  “Is this just sex? Is that what we’re doing? Because I don�
�t think I want to be another one of your conquests.”

  Eva’s jaw tightened. “Is that really what you think of me?”

  It wasn’t, not anymore, but Niki was confused. “No. I did once, but…I guess I don’t know what the hell we’re doing. And I need to know what we’re doing, Eva. I have a daughter. A career. Or at least, I used to have a career. I don’t do this kind of thing lightly.”

  “What is it you want to do? Because we don’t have to have sex.” Eva’s lips curled playfully. “We can sit around and analyze the weather reports. Find a hockey game to watch on TV.”

  “I’m serious.” She sighed and patted the bed beside her. Eva didn’t waste any time accepting the invitation.

  “Sorry. I am too. Look, I don’t want to push you into anything you’re not ready for, Nik. Hell, I don’t even know if I’m ready for this, now that we’re actually alone together in this room.”

  “What do you mean?” Had Eva changed her mind? Niki tried to gauge her eyes, her face, for a clue.

  “What I mean is…Have you been with anyone since Shannon?”

  Eva, Niki noticed, never referred to Shannon as her wife. “No, I haven’t.” So that was it. Eva was put off by being Niki’s first lover since Shannon, because with it would come a certain depth of seriousness, perhaps commitment, that Eva wouldn’t be able to shrug off tomorrow morning, the way she might a hangover. Or a one-night stand. You don’t sleep with a grieving widow and then dump her the next day. Niki shook her head lightly. This is a mistake, she thought.

  Eva’s fingers crawled into Niki’s and clasped them. “Hey. I want us to be especially sure about this, that’s all. It’s a big moment for you. For me too.”

  “Are you going to run away screaming because I haven’t been with anyone since Shannon?”

  “Honey, I’m running to you because you haven’t been with anybody else. Don’t you know how much I admire you? How much I respect you? You make me want to be a better person, Nik. You always have. I’ve just been too stupid until now to realize it.”

  Love for Eva filled her heart, made her dizzy. She’d never stopped loving this woman, but she’d become so accustomed to shutting that part of her heart off over the years, it was hard to crack it open again. When she could finally speak, she said, “I’m flattered. I really am. And since we’re being honest, I’m so damned tired of stumbling around on this, this, treadmill of grief. I want to move on, I really do. Even Rory wants me to move on.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t want to make a mistake. I don’t want to get hurt.” There. That was the nub of it. She’d suffered enough hurt when Shannon died, didn’t want to travel another road that came to a sudden and painful end.

  Eva’s smile spread out slow and warm and with the power to melt her heart. “You always were a perfectionist.”

  “Eva—”

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” Eva’s fingers moved to the underside of Niki’s jaw and gently guided her face toward hers. “I won’t. I promise.”

  When Eva’s lips brushed hers, arousal flamed to life in her belly and a curl of heat slowly unfurled there. Instantly she grew hard. And wet. She wanted to fight this crazy attraction a bit longer to make sure Eva understood that they had solved practically nothing between them, that their relationship or status or whatever the hell it was remained extremely fragile. But…oh, God, it felt good! She tilted her head back to present her throat to Eva as her eyes slammed shut and her breath…was she even breathing? She moaned as Eva suckled the soft, fleshy part of her throat. She was tired of saying no to Eva. Tired of the sexual dormancy that made her forget she was a woman with needs.

  She lay back on the bed, buzzing inside from the slow trail of kisses that meandered along her throat, her neck, her chest as Eva lazily, agonizingly, released the buttons of her denim shirt. She decided to trust that Eva wouldn’t hurt her and to trust that she wasn’t making a mistake, because she needed this almost as much as she needed to breathe.

  After her bra was unclasped and her shirt pushed free of her shoulders, Eva’s tongue began to explore the delicate flesh on the undersides of her breasts. It flicked, it tasted, its wetness not at all cold, but warm on her skin. Inside, Niki turned to liquid as Eva’s mouth claimed her nipples. She clutched at the cotton sheets to keep herself from levitating off the bed as Eva sucked her, her mouth every bit as adept as she remembered. “Oh, God, Eva, I can’t last much longer.”

  Eva raised her head to look her in the eye. “Don’t worry. We have the entire night, and I plan to make use of every last minute of it.”

  Niki snapped her eyes open and stared down at Eva, wondering how it was possible that the passion between them was every bit as raw and white-hot as it’d been all those years ago. They weren’t the same people, not at all, and yet their bodies remembered every breath, every twitch, every urging, every touch, as though nothing at all had changed. She shivered from the heat of Eva’s kisses slithering down her abdomen, marveled at how familiar and yet how new Eva’s touch felt on her goose-pimpled skin. All that was old was new again as, clamping her eyes shut, strands of light danced behind her eyelids.

  * * *

  Eva hovered over Niki’s belly button and stole another glance at the woman she’d never stopped loving. Her neck was fully exposed, her mouth slightly open in anticipation, her eyes tightly closed and braced for pleasure. Her face was wonderfully kind in a way Eva knew infuriated her, especially anywhere near a hockey rink, where she tried to put on her stern game face. She was beautiful in a genuine, down-to-earth way that didn’t scream out “Look at me,” yet generated the same result. Eva could look at her all day, but there were other things she wanted, needed, to do at the moment.

  She crawled lower, nestled her body between Niki’s legs and breathed her in. She wanted to ravage Niki, plunder her with her mouth, her fingers. But her head told her to go slow, to make the moment last as long as possible. The years they were together—how short they seemed now—they’d made love almost recklessly, too fast sometimes, like they needed to hurry up and spend every last drop of passion for one another as if it might expire. But this…this was different. She’d never again take a single minute with Niki for granted. Would never again count on there being a next time. With anything.

  Her first taste of Niki was celestial. It sent her passion soaring until it blotted out the rest of the world. She closed her eyes to let the taste and feel of Niki flood her senses. The velvety moist flesh, the hardening pearl nestled within were like a gift to Eva’s needy mouth. Her tongue moved in sure, rhythmic strokes, building the tempo slowly in time to Niki’s quickened breathing. They both moaned, Eva’s low and gratified, Niki’s pitched with arousal. With two fingers Eva entered her, not for a second disengaging her mouth as she continued to pleasure her. Niki cried out, breathlessly urging her to keep going, and Eva sucked and licked and pumped ever faster, ever deeper, not slowing as the trembling in Niki’s legs intensified and rippled the length of her body.

  “Oh, Eva,” Niki exploded in a low, tremulous voice. “Oh, I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  Niki’s body stiffened beneath her and around her fingers, Eva’s own desire mounting as Niki’s orgasm unfurled and unfolded in a violent shudder. She pushed one final time against Eva and cried out from deep in her throat. Slowly and only reluctantly did Eva remove her mouth and her fingers, crawling up Niki to hold her tightly, showering her with little kisses on her neck, below her ear.

  There were so many things she wanted to say, but she needed Niki to say things too. She nestled into her, inhaled the salty moist sheen of her sweat. Her chest ached with love. Her heart floated in a current that pulled her, swept her away in its fathoms. All her life she’d always felt on the outside of happiness, a fingertip beyond its reach. Which quite possibly was, she thought, the reason she’d pushed herself higher and faster and harder with her hockey career and with her pursuit of women. It was probably why she’d let Niki go in the first place, because part of her d
idn’t believe she actually deserved to be happy.

  Well. Not anymore.

  She swallowed against the lump in her throat and tried not to sound too eager, too nervous. “Do you love me, Nik?” Oh, God, how I need you to.

  Niki looked at her with eyes the same hue of a cloudless sky at the height of summer—wide and warm and full of possibilities. “Yes. But I always have.”

  Eva moved on top of her so she could pin her with her eyes. “But can you love me and be with me?” That was the issue. They’d loved each all this time without being together.

  “I don’t know yet. Look, I’m being honest, all right? A lot has happened the last few weeks, the last few months. And a lot will be happening over the next ten days. After that, I need to sort some things out. I need time to do that.”

  The words fell like a guillotine on Eva’s heart. And yet what Niki was saying was completely reasonable, sensible. Niki was giving her what she could, and it was enough. It would have to be.

  “All right,” Eva replied. “I love you, and you need to know that I’m not going to stop loving you, no matter what. And I’m not going to stop doing everything in my power for us to be together.”

  “Noted.” Niki smiled. “Are you finished talking? Because I have things I need to be doing to you. Things that don’t require any talking.”

  Eva laughed and rolled onto her back. “You always did know how to change the subject.”

  Niki crawled on top of her. “I do believe I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “I do believe you’d better.”

  “Oh, I plan to.”

  Niki’s hands found her breasts, and so did her mouth, which alternated between her nipples, suckling them gently, then harder, coaxing them into rock hard pebbles. Eva arched her body, anticipation leaving her hard and wet and ready for Niki to take her. Her mind jettisoned every thought but to come and to come at the hands of the woman she loved.

  “Nik,” she moaned. “I need you inside me. Please.”