I was the one who needed saving.
And now, I needed to figure out how to make this right. Before I screwed both of us over.
She tipped her head back slightly, her lips parted in invitation. I took advantage of what she offered—just as I had been since the moment we’d met—slipping my tongue between her lips, past her teeth, to glide alongside hers. A soft, almost inaudible moan met me, thank goodness. At least I could do this one thing right. And for that matter, I could do it for the right reasons—because this beautiful, guileless woman was my wife.
She still had the bikini bottoms on, which was adorable even though they were in my way. I hooked my thumbs under the waistband on either side of her hips and dragged the fabric down under the water to gain access to her pussy.
She practically jumped back against me when I palmed her.
“Too tender?” I asked, easing up a bit with the intensity of my touch. In all honesty, I didn’t have any idea how long she’d need to recover from all the fun in the sheets we’d been having to this point. She hadn’t acted as if it had hurt too much that first time, but she had been a virgin. Even if it hadn’t been clear from her reactions, the proof had been all over the condom.
The last thing I wanted to do was cause her pain, though. I’d already done enough to hurt her, and she didn’t even know the half of it.
“Not too tender,” she finally said. “I’m just not used to all of this.”
I couldn’t stop the chuckle from rumbling up through my chest. She had no idea how fucking delightful she was with her purity. “All of this?” I repeated, cupping one of her breasts with my other hand and giving her a gentle squeeze that had her leaning her head back against my shoulder, her eyes pressed closed.
“This…touching and whatnot.”
Touching and whatnot. She was so fucking cute, I almost couldn’t stand it. Whatnot was going to be our new code word for fucking, whether she realized it yet or not. But I didn’t want her to think I was teasing her, even if I might be. I wasn’t sure how well she’d take being teased at this point, so we’d just have to save that for later.
“Well,” I said, “there’s one sure way to get you used to it.”
“How’s that?”
“Practice.”
“Oh,” came out as barely more than a puff of air.
Even from behind her and without having a clear view of her face, I could practically feel her blushing.
I could get addicted to Mackenzie if I wasn’t careful.
But something told me there were worse things in the world I could do than develop an addiction to my wife. And she was definitely a nice change of pace from what I’d had before she’d come along. I just needed to figure out how to make this work.
First, though, I had a job to do; I needed to make Mackenzie come again and help her figure out how to relax enough to let it happen. Considering all of that, life was pretty fucking good.
Or at least it could easily be a hell of a lot worse.
THERE WAS SOMETHING amazing and almost dreamlike about Riley’s hands. It wasn’t just their size or their strength, either, although those factors shouldn’t be overlooked—and I certainly didn’t intend to overlook any piece of him. If anything, the amazing part was how gentle those hands could be despite their size and strength.
He used them to caress my most tender places. It would have been easy for him to go too far, to squeeze too tightly or press with too much force, but he didn’t. Somehow, he knew the perfect amount of pressure to use, gradually stoking a blaze within me that was strong enough to burn for hours.
I melted against his broad chest, allowing his muscular arms and legs to envelop me as his hands worked their magic.
He pressed kisses to my neck and shoulder, both hands constantly in motion: a slight pinch to my nipple followed by a firm kneading of the full breast; a finger swirling circles around the nub between my legs before dipping inside me; a strong hand massaging my belly, my upper thighs, my neck and back.
It was lazy and languid, an all-encompassing heat that started in my belly and spread out to the farthest reaches of my limbs. I had no choice but to succumb to it, allowing myself to revel in Riley’s determined attentions.
He slipped one hand up to tip back my chin, and then he was kissing me, all tongue and suction and hunger. And this time, it wasn’t like wildfire. More like a quick explosion, more powerful than I could have prepared for, followed by a long, low burn. I groaned into his mouth and shuddered from the sheer force and shock of pleasure that claimed me.
If I wasn’t careful, I might get used to all of this. And that would be a huge mistake.
Because every time I thought I had things figured out, every time my life started to turn around, something would happen to pull the rug out from under me.
Riley was the best thing that had happened to me in a very long time, the best thing since my time living with Jack and Donna.
But nothing in my life had ever lasted.
And especially not the good things.
As a product of the foster care system, I knew only one thing with any degree of certainty: if something seemed too good to be true, it was. What was the phrase from The Outsiders? “Nothing gold can stay.”
Which meant I had to keep my guard up, ready for the other shoe to drop. Because it was coming. I didn’t know what it would be or when to expect it, but the last thing I needed was for it to catch me unawares, the way everything with Paul had done.
I could enjoy this while it lasted…but I couldn’t afford to leave myself wide open like that. Not completely.
No matter how much I might want to.
I was probably an idiot for believing in fairy tales and happy-ever-after endings. I only hoped I’d have enough time to put together a plan to get myself out of it when everything fell apart around me.
Because it always did.
That was the way my story was sure to end, with the walls crashing in around me, crushing me beneath the rubble. I wasn’t living inside a romance novel. This was my life. And in my life, things didn’t always work out for the best. More often, they worked out for the worst.
People always told me I had such a tender heart. They tried to protect me from the awfulness of the world, guarding me against the evils out there.
Maybe it was time for me to start guarding my own heart. It’d be better to do that before I got burned once again. Not that I thought Riley would intentionally hurt me, but lots of people caused damage without meaning to do so.
Especially when it came to me.
I WASN’T READY for our time in paradise to come to an end, and I didn’t get the impression that Mackenzie was, either. But injured or not and regardless of my state of readiness, I had to get back to Portland. Doc expected me to return after my honeymoon so he could run whatever tests on my ankle he felt were necessary, and then I would have to start going through the treatment he prescribed. With any luck, I wouldn’t need surgery, but based on the way my ankle had been feeling, surgery was exactly what I expected.
My time away from the ice had certainly helped, but there was still something very wrong with my ankle. I’d been able to hide it from Mackenzie pretty well, because we’d spent an awful lot of our time in bed, in the ocean, in the hot tub, or lying out on the beach. In other words, not on our feet.
But she didn’t know me very well yet, so she couldn’t necessarily tell how bad it had gotten. There was no chance I’d be able to hide it from the people in charge of my career. I only hoped that surgery wouldn’t be required, because that would mean weeks, if not months, away from the game. I’d much prefer a prognosis that called for a matter of days.
Going back to the team wouldn’t exactly be a hardship for me—those guys were like family, far more than my actual family had ever been, and I loved my job more than I could ever explain to someone who didn’t share in it.
I just hated that returning to Portland meant the end of my time alone with Mackenzie.
W
e’d gotten to know one another reasonably well on the sexual front, but not in any other real way. And now the rest of the world was going to intrude on our stint together, making it far more difficult to get meaningful time to learn about one another.
The good news was that my travel agent had been able to rebook the plane ticket that had originally been for Amanda, now transferring it into Mackenzie’s name. The bad news was that I didn’t have a clue what to say to my teammates when I got back, especially to Ghost.
Hey, guys. So I dumped my cheating bitch of an ex and finally cut off my freeloading, backstabbing son-of-a-bitch brother, and then I married a perfect stranger I met in Cabo. Good times!
Ghost was bound to give me shit no matter how I tried to explain it. He’d always been the one with brains out of the two of us, and no doubt he’d be all too happy to remind me of that fact.
Nonetheless, all good things must pass. Or something like that. Right? I probably had that saying wrong. Again, Ghost was the intelligent one. He was the brains, and I was the brawn. I’d put all my focus into hockey and nothing else. School had just been a means to an end for me. I might have rubbed off on him in terms of getting him into hockey, but he hadn’t rubbed off on me in terms of furthering my education.
Kind of a scary thought, now that I was injured. I should probably come up with a backup plan at some point, figure out what I wanted to do with myself once my playing days were at an end.
Especially now that I had Mackenzie to look after.
She was so sweet and innocent, and a bit naïve. Maybe I hadn’t thought it through when we got married, but I needed to be sure I’d always be able to provide for her. She didn’t have anyone else looking out for her, and now it was beyond clear that the only person in my life who was looking out for me was Ghost. Time for me to man up and become responsible and shit. Maybe Mackenzie and I could figure out how to do this whole adulting thing as a team.
Being married was doing a number on me, in ways I’d never imagined. And something told me it wouldn’t have happened like this if I’d gone through with my original plan and married Amanda.
When we landed at PDX, I grabbed our bags—letting Mackenzie handle one of my smaller suitcases since it had wheels she could manage—and led her out to the parking garage. I pushed the button on my key fob to unlock the Escalade when we reached it, then hit another button to pop open the back end.
Mackenzie’s eyes were wide when I turned around to take my suitcase from her. “That looks huge. And expensive.”
I chuckled and put all of our bags into the back, hoping I wouldn’t get too much dog hair on her things. At least her clothes were in the suitcases. But then again, she was probably going to be just as covered in dog hair as everything else in my life before too much longer. Mastiffs tended to shed a lot.
“It wasn’t cheap,” I said, shutting the back end and then walking around to open the passenger-side door for her. “But I make good money. And I needed something big enough to cart around Max and Lola.”
She climbed inside and looked at me with a funny expression in her eyes. “Max and Lola?” And suddenly, she sounded nervous again, making her expression seem more anxious than funny, now that I thought about it.
Which reminded me that in all the time we’d spent getting to know one another physically over the last few days, we hadn’t really done much about getting to know anything about each other as people.
We’d have to start working on that right away. There was a hell of a lot more that went into a good relationship than sex, even if sex was a major component.
“Yeah, they’re my dogs,” I said conversationally, trying to keep things light to ease whatever worries she might be experiencing now. “Haven’t I told you about them already? They’re pretty big, but they’re both as sweet as can be.”
Well, they were sweet to anyone who deserved it. Mean as hell to anyone who didn’t, like Amanda. Maybe they’d known she was a cheating bitch all along, come to think of it, because they’d never liked her, not even when they were puppies. And these two dogs liked everyone. Usually, at least. Just not Amanda.
“You didn’t tell me about any dogs,” Mackenzie said. She sounded more anxious than she had when she’d told me about the asshole who’d lured her down to Mexico and abandoned her to fend for herself. Jumpier than when we’d first had sex.
That…wasn’t a good sign. Was it? Couldn’t be.
“You’re sure I didn’t say anything about them? Because I could have sworn I did.” I had to have. Sometime between shopping and lounging in the hot tub and luring her back into the bed again.
“No. No, you definitely didn’t say anything about dogs. I would have remembered. I would have—” She cut herself off, and it almost looked like she was biting her own tongue in order to prevent anything else from coming out.
Shit. This was worse than not good—this was bad. Very, very bad.
“So are you saying that dogs are a problem for you?” I asked cautiously.
“I’m terrified of them. Have been for almost as long as I can remember. One of my foster parents had these mean Rottweilers and…” She trailed off, shaking her head as if to ward off a bad memory, but there was no hiding how hard she was quaking with fear. “Are they at least not huge? I could maybe handle smallish dogs. I can try, at least.”
Shit, damn, and fuck. That at least came close to summing up my thoughts on the matter. “No, baby doll, they’re mastiffs.”
She shook her head, a question in her eyes.
“Mastiffs are big. Really big. Enormous, even. They’re one of the largest breeds out there. Max is bigger than Lola, but that’s normal with males. But like I said, they’re really good dogs, and they like almost everyone.”
Probably shouldn’t have said almost, because Mackenzie’s eyes got even wider than before, somehow.
I wanted to scoop her up into my arms to comfort her, but something told me there was no way to comfort her right now.
She was on the verge of outright panic, even though she was doing her best to hold it in. Her neck and shoulders were so tense that I could see every bone, every tendon. And then there were those huge eyes practically bugging out of her head.
This was going downhill, fast.
“They’ll like you,” I promised. And God, I hoped I was right. “And besides, I can feel a lot better about leaving you behind when I have to head out on the road with the team if I know they’re with you, taking care of you.”
“Go out on the road?” She sounded thoroughly fazed.
Holy hell, this was somehow only getting worse. Don’t ask me how that could happen. I couldn’t explain it no matter how hard I tried. Other than maybe acknowledging that I was an idiot and an asshole. That might be a good place to start.
“It won’t be right away, since I’m injured,” I reassured her.
She nodded dully. Didn’t seem as if that gave her much reassurance.
“And I’ll make sure you’re friends with some of the other WAGs before I go. My teammates’ wives and girlfriends,” I added in explanation. “So you’ll have people here you can count on.”
Mackenzie blinked at me a couple of times with the oddest expression taking over her features—some strange combination of confusion and relief and maybe a hint of panic. “I’m not very good at counting on people,” she explained in a matter-of-fact tone.
I chuckled to myself, even though there wasn’t anything funny about what she’d said. But I couldn’t deny the humor of the situation. Maybe Mackenzie and I had a lot more in common than I’d initially thought.
I’d never been able to rely on anyone in my life but Ghost, and even though I knew he had my back, there was always a part of me that was waiting on him to disappoint me. Hadn’t happened yet. Probably never would, but I was still waiting on it. Sure it would happen. Sure he’d prove me wrong to believe that our friendship was the real deal. And even though I knew somewhere deep down inside that it was all in my head, and the guy would never
let me down, I still kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The only things I’d ever been able to depend on in my life were Ghost and hockey. Everything and everyone else had let me down more times than I could count. I was always waiting for the next disaster, always expecting the worst in people to reveal itself and knock my feet out from under me.
That was why, even though it hurt and it sucked to the nth degree that Amanda had been cheating on me with my brother, there had been some part of me that had been waiting for the moment that everything would fall apart. It always did.
My life consisted of a series of betrayals and abandonments, heartbreaks and disappointments, one following soon after another until they all blended together into a single big ball of hurt.
Something told me Mackenzie might understand that better than anyone else ever had before. The thought that I could be the one to end the cycle for her, and that she might break the cycle for me…it seemed too good to be true.
But I had to at least hope, right? Didn’t I?
“I’m not very good at counting on anyone else, either,” I finally said. “My parents were never there for me. My fiancée cheated on me with my brother. I usually only count on myself. So maybe we need to start figuring it out together. And we can start by counting on each other.”
Mackenzie looked down at her hands, clasped in front of her, and took a long, slow breath. But when she met my gaze again, it was with a resolute nod. “Okay. I like the sound of that.”
I liked the sound of it, too. Even if it scared the shit out of me. Because counting on someone else, someone I barely knew, trusting her and giving her that much control over me and my life, wasn’t something I’d ever done before.
I wasn’t afraid that Mackenzie would hurt me. Hell, I doubted she’d swat a mosquito that was trying to suck her dry. The ability to hurt someone—intentionally, at least—wasn’t in her DNA.
Power Play (Portland Storm Book 16) Page 7
