Hired

by Lily Harlem

  He looked at me and frowned. “My dear, like I said, I’m very grateful for what you’ve done and the picture in the paper was genius, all publicity is good publicity when it comes to the team, boosts merchandise sales.” He took a step backward. “Just give your details to Giselle,” he said as his mobile phone trilled to life. “Sooner you do the sooner you’ll get paid for providing Phoenix with what he needed last week.” He plucked the phone from his inside jacket pocket. “Now if you’ll excuse me.” He stepped into the corridor, glancing toward the locker room. His piercing green eyes shifted back to me and I saw a flash of irritation cross his iris as he pressed the phone to his ear. “Gunner,” he barked.

  I swallowed a lump of frustration down the tight channel of my throat. I suddenly felt hot in all my winter gear. My scalp prickled and my layers were sticking to my back. He’d hardly let me get a word in edgewise, and anything I had said he hadn’t heard.

  I stepped past Fergal. He was rubbing his temples as he listened to his phone and paced from one side of the corridor to the other. I tried to think rationally. It didn’t matter, I would get Giselle to explain it to him when he wasn’t rushing around in work mode. She could tell him I didn’t want to be paid for my week with Logan. What had happened between us had been lust, romance, destiny and certainly not a business arrangement.

  The door to the locker room swung open and a posse of players tumbled out, slapping each other on the backs and talking over one another. I halted and scanned for Logan. But he wasn’t amongst them. My heart sagged in disappointment. I just wanted to see him. I wanted to feel his arms around me. I wanted to snuggle my face into his chest and inhale his familiar scent. I couldn’t tell him why I was feeling so anxious and jittery. But being cocooned in his arms was the only thing that was going to make me feel better until my deal had been properly undone.

  “Brick,” I said, as the door opened yet again and two players strolled out with bags slung over their shoulders.

  “Hey, Brooke.” Brick’s face lit up when he spotted me. I saw his aura, I couldn’t help it, it was a beautiful pea green, perfectly clear, no hazelnut specks and really quite dazzling. “Ramrod, this is Brooke, Phoenix’s girl.” He turned to the huge player beside him who’d actually had to shift sideways to fit through the doorframe.

  “Hey, Brooke, guess we have a lot to thank you for.” Ramrod held out a dinner plate-sized hand.

  “Hi, I er, nice to meet you, um, Ramrod.” I rested my hand in his and he brought it to his mouth. Soft lips pressed a warm kiss on my knuckles as his chestnut brown eyes glistened down at me.

  “The pleasure is mine,” he said, and released my hand. “Call me Rick.”

  “Watch it.” Brick fingered a bruise on the rise of his left cheekbone. “Phoenix gets real possessive over her.”

  “Well, I can’t blame him.” Ramrod grinned. “Not one bit.”

  “Ramrod’s our captain,” Brick directed at me.

  “I know,” I said. “Well done, it was a great game.”

  “Sure was,” Ramrod said, shoving his hand through shower-damp black hair. “And Phoenix had a lot to do with it. He played awesome. Best since, well, best since a while. He was real focused and under control.”

  “No trips to the penalty box,” Brick said.

  “Yeah, unlike you, squirt.” Ramrod gave Brick a good-humored shove on the shoulder.

  “Yeah, well, someone’s got to take over Phoenix’s bad boy reputation.” Brick grinned.

  “Have you seen Logan, I mean Phoenix?” I asked.

  Brick shook his head. “No, not for a while.”

  “He was first out, a one-line interview in the tunnel and then he was gone,” Ramrod added.

  “He was in a rush to see you.” Brick shrugged.

  “So he’s not in there?” I pointed at the locker room door.

  “No,” Ramrod said. “We’re nearly the last out.”

  “Oh.” How could I have missed him? I’d been here the whole time.

  “He’s probably in the players’ lobby or something,” Ramrod said.

  “Yeah, don’t sweat it,” Brick added.

  But sweating was exactly what I was doing. I unzipped my jacket and pulled at my scarf.

  “If we see him we’ll tell him you’re looking for him,” Ramrod said, stepping away.

  “Thanks.” I wished my heart would stop fluttering. I had a bad feeling growing in my stomach.

  “Oh, and Brooke,” Brick called over his shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got him by the short and curlies.” He hardened his voice. “So be careful with him, okay?”

  “Yes, sure, of course,” I said.

  “Brooke,” Giselle said, rounding the corner. She nodded briefly to the two giant players walking past her, then her brow furrowed. “Brooke, you look like you’ve seen a ghost, what’s the matter?”

  “I missed Logan,” I said, hearing the whine in my voice.

  “Don’t panic, he’ll be around.”

  “But I tried to talk to Fergal, you know about me not wanting payment for my week with him.” I rubbed my fingertips over my lips—the words were hard to say. “But he wouldn’t listen to me, he was too preoccupied with other stuff.”

  Giselle rested her hand on my shoulder. “Hey, stop winding yourself up. I’ll talk to him.” She glanced at Fergal who was slotting his phone away. “I’ll soon have his undivided attention and I’ll smooth it all over, don’t worry, I know how important this is to you.” Her lips stretched into a wide smile as Fergal joined us.

  “Ready?” he asked, slipping a hand around her slim waist.

  “Sure,” she said. “Oh, hang on.” She delved into her handbag. “Here you go.” She handed me her car keys. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Sure.” I nodded.

  They turned and walked away. Giselle giggled at something Fergal whispered into her ear. Then they rounded the corner and the sound of her heels clicked into the distance, eventually fading completely.

  I began to feel cold again. I yanked up my zipper and reknotted my scarf, plucking my gloves from my pocket and shoving my hands in. There really was no point hanging around the locker room.

  I wandered up to the players’ lounge, but by the time I got there, there were just a couple of coaches sipping beer and a barman wiping the shiny oak tables.

  How could I not find him?

  Hadn’t he looked for me?

  I found myself heading back through the lobby past a group of cleaners sweeping up great waves of litter. I didn’t even have his cell number or address so I couldn’t contact him. I felt like a groupie or a rink bunny who’d hung around to see the famous Phoenix but missed the chance.

  I walked into the hot evening and the air blasted me with its sticky heat. I stripped off my top layers, beeped Giselle’s car to life in the parking lot and got in, heart heavy, stomach nauseous. I felt tears of disappointment prick my eyes. I’d been so looking forward to seeing him. To spending the night with him. To feeling complete again.

  The car purred awake and I swung out the lot onto the highway. There was only one thing I could do. Go home. I obviously didn’t mean as much to him as he meant to me. Holiday romance. I’d always known that was the file in my heart we were destined for. I had only myself to blame. I should never have let him convince me we could be more.

  Chapter Eleven

  I poured a glass of white wine, pulled on my favorite baggy Tom and Jerry t-shirt over my underwear and settled on the sofa. I tried not to look at the enormous bunch of red roses on the dining table, but their thick, powdery aroma hung heavy in the air and made them impossible to ignore.

  I flicked on the highlights of the hockey game on Sport Tonight. Immediately Logan’s face filled the screen as the presenter gushed over his performance. It was an old picture, taken before he’d cut his brow, and his hair was shorter. But his eyes were the same, the same penetrating glacial blue that I’d witnessed fill with determination and desire, lust a
nd love. The same eyes I’d fallen into, like diving into the clearest ocean, as I’d made love to him.

  I took a deep slug of wine and refused to succumb to a good old cry. Instead I watched as they ran through his goal in slow motion. I studied his big body moving with power and grace, speed and agility. I looked at the way he held his stick as if it was an extension of his body, always exactly where it should be. I re-heard the commentator’s remark about Phoenix’s mojo and his week away and how Mr. Gunner would be glad, “If you know what I mean folks.”

  I jumped as the doorbell chimed through the apartment. Unfolding from the sofa, I placed my wine on the coffee table and stepped up to the door to peer through the peephole, and there, standing in the corridor, was Logan “Phoenix” Taylor himself.

  My heart flipped at the sight of him looming behind the door with his arms crossed and his jaw set.

  My fingers fumbled at the lock as adrenaline shot into my system. I looked down at my scruffy yellow Tom and Jerry t-shirt. Who cared, I wouldn’t have it on long anyway.

  I pulled open the door, but before I even had time to say hello he slammed his mouth onto mine. The door banged shut. He must have kicked it. I heard him growl, a feral, carnal sound. I had no idea what he’d said, it was as if impatience had made him incapable of coherent speech.

  I locked my arms around his neck and hung on as he stepped me back into the apartment. I stumbled and the next thing I knew he’d run his hands to my butt cheeks and lifted me into the air.

  Wrapping my legs around his waist, I was consumed with want, need and lust. He was here. He felt the same way I did. I could feel it in his hot, searing, kisses, hear it in his ragged, desperate breaths.

  “Logan, I looked for you, I couldn’t—” His tongue plundered into my mouth again, sweeping and circling, devouring me, filling me with his hot, male flavor. He paced forward and I felt his erection shove against the thin silk gusset of my panties. I was greedy for him. I wanted him inside me. I raked my hands through his hair and groaned at the intensity of my urges. They were so primitive, so elemental and natural. Nothing could stop us reaching conclusion.

  The back of my legs hit a cool, shiny surface. The dining table. Logan moved his hands to my hips and shoved me back so I was sitting with my legs dangling over the edge. He grabbed fistfuls of my t-shirt and dragged it over my head. My hands moved to the belt of his jeans. He looked me straight in the eye, the muscle in his cheek danced and his nostrils flared.

  I felt tugging, heard ripping and looked down. My panties had been shredded from my body and hung against my right thigh. He clamped his hands to the balls of my shoulders and forced me flat.

  As the chill of the polished table spread over my hot back he ducked his head, un-clipped the front fastening of my bra and latched his mouth onto my nipple. I moaned and arched farther into him, seeking more stimulation, more sensation. He increased the pressure and nipped me to the point of pain with small bites while bunching and feeding my flesh into his mouth with his hand.

  He’d never taken me so roughly, so urgently, so desperately. I hardly recognized the animalistic way he was ravaging me as being the attentions of the same man I’d fallen so desperately in love with. My body was buzzing with excitement and with the need to feel him inside me. “Logan, please,” I whimpered, wrapping my legs around his hips and thrusting my pelvis into his. A groan of pure carnal desire tore from my mouth.

  He straightened and stood between my legs, pulled at his belt buckle and the buttons on his Levi’s. I lay there naked, ridiculously, dizzily aroused, looking up at him. I wanted flesh on flesh but that would have to wait until later. This was all about immediate satisfaction, taking what we needed on the most primitive level. It didn’t matter how we did it so long as we did.

  He pulled his cock from his fly and rolled on a condom. His breaths puffed up his wide chest and beads of sweat shone on his top lip. He hooked his elbows under my knees and spread me wide open, stretching the joints of my hips to the extreme. I eyed his formidable erection and forced my trembling pussy to relax.

  He spread my lips with the tip of his cock, finding my entrance and dipping in just a fraction. Then he shut his eyes, tipped his head to the ceiling and forged forward. My body was forced to stretch for him and I cried out as he buried to the hilt. A stitch of pain mixed with pleasure as his balls slammed up against my butt cheeks and his hipbones pressed on my inner thighs. I was so full, so possessed by him, he was so damn deep.

  “Logan, oh, Logan,” I cried as my hands clamped around his wrists. I was pinned to the table. Out of control, under his control.

  He pulled back, slipped from me almost completely then pounded back in with a grunt. I thrashed my head from side to side, mindless with sensation as he rocked up against my clit. Moisture wept from me, lubricating his way. He set up a fast, furious pace, thrusting like a jackhammer and putting all his considerable strength and energy into fucking me.

  My hands squeezed his wrists like manacles as the first waves of orgasm grew. “Yes, oh god, yes,” I shouted. “Don’t stop.”

  He upped the pace. The solid teak table creaked in protest. My heart beat so wildly I didn’t know if it could cope. Heat pooled deliciously in my pelvis and my inner muscles clenched, my climax was imminent. I tilted my hips and his full weight rocked against my clit, and then, like a bolt of lightning, completion claimed me.

  A deep moan erupted from my core. My sense of reality shattered as my body convulsed in bliss. I ground against him, seeking deeper penetration and gripping at his cock as my clit flew me through spirals of pleasure.

  “Logan, ah, Logan,” I cried. “That’s it, right there.”

  He slipped his cock from me, wrapped his hands around my waist and flipped me over on the table. Twisting midair, my flailing hands hit the vase of my huge bunch of roses. They toppled to the floor with the smash of glass and a wilting crunch. I barely noticed.

  My breasts and stomach flattened against the cool wood and I felt him shove between my thighs. I craned my neck to look at his face. His eyes were dark and possessed as he positioned himself at my swollen, sopping entrance, his hands feeding his cock toward me. I knew he was only moments away from coming, his steely erection hammering into me seconds ago had told me that. But I couldn’t keep my neck twisted that way to watch him climax and my cheek fell against my hands as he penetrated me again.

  The smooth flare of his cock sped over my G-spot and I gasped at the intensity of the ultra-deep caress. He rode higher and higher. Every muscle in my body went taut and my spine arched. He was filling me to capacity and still he wanted to gain more entry, demanded more of me. I’d always been against rough handling but I couldn’t deny that Logan’s treatment of me tonight was flying me high.

  He dug his fingers into my waist and held me firm. He took what he wanted. I was sure he was jabbing into my diaphragm with his cock.

  “Fuck, ah yes, that’s it,” he said as his hips pounded against my butt and his wiry pubic hair tickled my ass. My body was slick with sweat, dripping with renewed desire. He thrust purposefully in and out, over and over, his breaths hard hisses and his cock a rod of pent-up pressure. A dark bloom began to build and I knew another deeply satisfying G-spot orgasm was about to arrest my body, if only he could last a few more strokes.

  I bucked against him, instinctively seeking more, even though I had no more to give. I felt one of his hands leave my waist and palm my butt cheek. His fingers dipped down, stroked into my hot cleft and hovered at my anus.

  As the shock wave of my second orgasm rocked through me he rammed two saliva-coated fingers into my clenched hole, hard and fast, sending white-hot electric currents straight into my pussy.

  “Oh, god, ah, ah,” I panted as stars exploded in my vision. Wave after wave of ecstasy washed over me. I felt him coming too. Pulsing high up inside me. He grunted, a deep Neanderthal sound, and kept on ramming both holes as I spasmed around his cock and his fingers.

  He threaded his free arm b
eneath my stomach. My toes lifted off the floor as he dragged me upward onto his thick, corded forearm. Holding me tight and spread before him he ground through his long, hard release. It was as if he wouldn’t be happy until he had gone deeper, higher inside me than ever before.

  Eventually his muscles relaxed and my toes tickled against the tiles again. I managed to brush a strand of hair from my mouth as I landed back in the real world.

  I curled my torso toward him and with a small squelching noise his cock slipped from me. He pulled his fingers out and my tight band of muscle closed. My pussy felt empty and swollen as I drew my legs together.

  “Logan,” I said, pushing up from the table on shaky arms and stepping up to him. “That was…” Words escaped me as I cupped his scratchy jaw in my palms. I stretched up to the balls of my feet and pressed my lips to his. Poked out the tip of my tongue and traced the seam of his beautiful mouth. I’d missed kissing him while he’d taken me from behind and I intended to make up for it, more than make up for it. I wanted to kiss him all night long.

  I prodded and probed deeper, searching for a mating with his tongue. But his lips were rigid and when I found his tongue it lay flat and thick on the base of his mouth.

  I pulled back. “What?” I asked, slipping my hands to the side of his neck and dropping down to the soles of my feet. “What’s the matter, didn’t that do it for you?” I smiled, I knew full well it had.

  A shard of lightning shot across his eyes and his lips tightened into a dead straight line. He sucked in a breath and his nose wrinkled. When he spoke I barely recognized his low, mean voice. “I didn’t think whores kissed on the lips.”

  The world stood still.

  Everything stopped moving. From the cosmic orbits in the outer solar system to the rhythmic beating of my heart.

  “W-what?” I stammered.