by Lily Kate
“No, no, you were up front. The massage was all my idea. I wanted to do it, and you deserve the pampering.” A long pause follows and, though it hurts my heart, my stomach, every inch of my body, I re-fasten her bra. “What do you say I order pizza?”
“You’re not upset?”
“I’m the opposite of upset. I’m begging you to stay for dinner.”
“Well, then...” she rolls over, and I barely glance at her chest. “Give me a kiss, and then you can order.”
Chapter 30
COHEN
The pizza arrives after I’ve showered. I pay for it and haul it onto the couch. Annie’s already got Netflix queued up on one show or another—I don’t give a damn which show it is, so long as I can sit next to her—and a grin waiting on her face.
“I like your pajamas.”
I look down at my long, hockey-stick covered flannel pants. They were a gag gift from a teammate but they’re freaking amazing. So soft. It feels like little clouds of bliss are cupping my legs, so I wear them even though they’re ridiculous.
“Seriously,” she says again. “I really like them.”
Her voice is soft, and she’s not looking at my pants. She’s looking at my chest which I’ve left bare after the shower. I hadn’t really thought about it—I’m in my own house, and I generally prefer to be naked than wear clothes. Hence the no-shirt policy. The fact that Annie seems to like this rule is a major bonus.
“Shall we eat?” I plop the pizza on the table and pour two glasses of wine from a nice bottle I received at Christmas last year. I watch Annie’s expression as she takes a gulp, and her eyes light up at the flavor.
Excellent, I think. I have no clue what good wine tastes like, so if she’s happy, I’m frigging ecstatic.
“Wait!” Annie reaches out, her hand resting on mine, blocking me from taking a sip. “First, a toast.”
“A toast?” My mind is blank again. Mostly because Annie also decided to forego a shirt and is wearing my robe. The top opens a little as she twists to face me, and words suddenly don’t make much sense. “To your boobs.”
“What?” Her forehead crinkles in confusion. “Cohen, you can’t say the first thing that comes to your mind. This is serious.”
I sigh and drag my eyes away from her body. I stare at the Netflix sign on the television and pray for inspiration. Somehow, somewhere, God is listening to me. He gives me words.
“I would like to make a toast,” I say, starting again. “Ready?”
Annie nods and raises her glass to mine. “Oh, I love toasts.”
I smile, hold in a laugh, and let the words pour out as they come into my brain. It’s some sort of divine magic there are sentences in my head at all. “This is a toast to the bricks.”
“The bricks?”
“The wall you have around you, Annie. The shields, the guards that protect you from getting hurt.” I look into her eyes, watching as her expression softens when she realizes I’m not toasting another of her body parts. “I think a few of those bricks came down today. This toast is to leaving them off, and to letting me chip a few more away tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.”
She swallows, her eyes locked on my face. All of a sudden, her eyes dart away, quick as a squirrel, and she’s clearing her throat and looking all uncomfortable.
“Your turn,” I tell her.
“How can it be my turn?” She glances up at me. “We haven’t completed the toast.”
Leaning her glass toward mine, she punctuates the speech with a clink, and then raises it to her lips. She waits for me, holding there, until I follow suit. Together, we take a sip.
I’m surprised when I set my glass down. It is good wine. I’ll have to thank Boxer next time I’m in Los Angeles—he’s an old teammate who stocked up my collection for Christmas.
Annie sets her glass down on the table, too, but I stop her before she can pull her hand away.
“Nope,” I say. “Your turn.”
“You already made the toast.”
“It’s a double toast sort of night.”
A smile flickers on her face. With achingly slow movements, she lifts her glass and turns to face me. Thankfully, she cinches the robe tight this time, so that when she begins to speak, I’m focused on every word.
“This is a toast to the person patient enough to peek between the bricks of my walls.” She stops, her eyes going wide. “No, that is not an innuendo.”
I’m grinning because she’s nervous, and it’s adorable and sweet, and I want to wrap her in my arms. But I think she’ll take it the wrong way if I slide my hands underneath that robe in the middle of the toast, so I lock my fingers tighter around my glass.
“I can sometimes be... hard to deal with.” Her free hand comes to rest on my fleece clad knee. “You have been really patient, Cohen, and I appreciate it. Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me for that. Plus, it’s selfish. I like you, Annie. Any man would be lucky to be patient for you.”
“Well, thank you. For that, and for your creativity and persistence.”
“Is that a reference to my showing up outside your bedroom window?”
“Among other things. You never cease to surprise me.”
Gesturing toward the table, she urges me silently to finish the toast, clink her glass, and take another sip. Once we’ve done so and replaced our glasses on the table, we find ourselves sitting on the couch, mostly naked, hands free.
I’m aching to take her into my arms, to kiss those pink cheeks of hers, warmed by wine, and bring her back to bed. For sex, yes, but something more, too. I want to be next to her, close to her, and ease away those bricks one by one.
I clear my throat instead, determined not to ruin this night. “Pizza?”
“Oh.” Her mouth is round, and she shakes her head, flustered. “Yeah, sure.”
“Unless you had something else on your mind?!”
“Nope.” She picks up a slice in a hurry, shoves a bite into her mouth, and clicks Play on Netflix. “Let’s watch.”
We settle in for the night and, though it’s only six p.m. on a weekday, it might just be the best day I’ve had in quite some time.
Sure, I’m eating dinner at the same time my grandfather does in his retirement home, and yes, I’m wearing fleece pajamas made for a newly toilet-trained child. It’s perfect. It’s all perfect.
When Annie finishes her pizza and rinses her hands, she returns to the couch and nestles under my arm. We’re halfway through the second episode of whatever stupid show is on the television when her breathing evens out, and she sinks into sleep.
I can’t resist leaning over, brushing one more kiss on her forehead. I give her another hour or so, but as the clock approaches nine, I decide she’s not waking tonight, and I move her into my bedroom.
She shifts, moaning ever-so-slightly as I cradle her body in my arms, and I take epically quiet steps into the room. The mattress is so damn large we could both sleep on it and never worry about touching, but something tells me that Annie might freak out if she wakes up and finds us in bed together.
Especially since I have no shirt on, and all she’s wearing is underwear beneath my robe. Thin underwear, I happen to remember. I snuck glimpses of it all night. That robe and its inability to remain cinched tight is friggin awesome.
I ease the covers over her shoulders and watch for a long moment as her chest rises and falls, her hair splayed over my pillow. She looks good there, at home in my bed, on my pillow, in my clothes.
I’ve never been one for relationships, never felt the urge to dedicate myself to a single woman for more than a few weeks, let alone my lifetime, but I find myself wondering if that could change. It might, if Annie has any interest in the idea.
Pulling an extra blanket from the closet, I drag my ass back to the couch and curl up underneath it. Oddly enough, this might be the first time in my life I’ve invited a girl over, and then proceeded to put her in my bed and myself on the couch.
I pr
ess Play on that stupid show and, three episodes later and five quick checks on Annie, my eyes sag shut, and I ease into sleep.
Chapter 31
ANNIE
I wake to sunlight streaming through a window.
In a house that is distinctly not mine.
It takes a second of frantic thrashing about before the memories from last night come back in a flood, and everything makes sense. I fell asleep in Cohen’s arms—that much I know. The memory comes back with a burst of warmth and comfort. The only thing not adding up is the empty half of the bed.
I squint at the extra pillow, struggling to remember if Cohen had climbed in with me, but I’ve got nothing. Blankness. Beyond the sensation of happiness and the mushy feeling of curling into his warmth, the snugness of the couch—the rest of the details are lost to me.
Tiptoeing out of the bedroom, I find him sprawled on the couch in nothing but those fleece pajama pants. If you’d bet me a million dollars that Cohen James owned pants with hockey sticks plastered all over them, I’d have lost a lot of money.
There’s the spirit of a kid somewhere in Cohen James, and I like that about him. There’s an innocence to the hockey star that even I hadn’t expected, a wide-eyed thirst for life lost in so many adults.
I take a moment to appreciate the sight of him. It’s not that I haven’t seen his bare chest before. Or fleece pants. But the morning glow softens his skin, smoothing the worry, the stress of responsibility away, enhancing features with a sweetness that give me an ache inside.
I imagine slipping onto the couch with him, opening my borrowed robe to let his hands caress my back, my shoulders, my skin as we slip into sleep together. The image sends warmth swirling through my veins.
I remember how he hadn’t even climbed into bed with me last night, and because of that gesture, another few bricks melt away from my guarded walls, opening my heart to him, urging me closer and closer.
I want nothing more than to run a thumb over his cheek and trace his smile, but I don’t want to wake him. Instead, I let him sleep, sneaking into the kitchen and beginning World War III with the coffee machine. The thing is complex and annoying, and it takes me fifteen minutes to grind out two cups of something resembling coffee.
Now that I have an offering, I figure it’s fair to wake him. With a coffee in each hand, I return to the living room and watch him sleep for one moment longer. His eyelashes fan out over his cheekbones, beautiful and thick, and I’m envious for a moment.
Then, I realize that I’m the lucky girl who gets to look at him and his gorgeous lashes. I lean forward, pressing a whisper of a kiss to his forehead. The second his eyes open, another brick from my wall crumbles away.
Clear, green eyes stare back at me, a brightness there. Then a burst of confusion, followed by a flash of pure joy.
“You stayed,” he whispers, bringing an arm around my neck to pull me close, dusting a kiss against my cheek. “Good morning, gorgeous.”
“Good morning, handsome.”
“What time is it?”
I glance at the clock under the television. I have to check again to make sure I’m reading it correctly. “Oh, I’m so sorry! It’s only seven—I don’t need to leave until nine, but—”
“Hey, it’s fine,” he says, swinging his feet to the floor and rising to a sitting position. He runs a hand over his face, through his hair, clearing the sleep away. “More time to spend together. Are you rested? You got almost twelve hours of shut-eye, sweetheart.”
“I am so sorry that I fell asleep on our first date!”
“Hey...” He slides one hand onto my exposed knee, the touch of his fingers cautious, tender. “You don’t have to apologize for anything.”
“I stole your bed.”
“I let you have it. Look at it this way, you’re doing me the favor.” At my questioning look, he grins. “I didn’t have to argue with you about spending the night. You made the decision all on your own.”
“Okay, fine. You got lucky.”
“Well...” His fingers inch up the slightest amount. “I can think of one thing to make me an even luckier man.”
“Cohen!”
“Just testing the boundaries. Sorry.”
“Keep testing,” I tell him with a foxy smile. “Who knows? Someday, it just might work.”
“I’ll pray for that day.”
“And in the meantime?”
“I’m practicing my patience.” He swivels to take one look at the coffee, giving me a sideways glance. “That’s for me?”
“Yeah, but it’ll cost you one kiss.”
The next thing I know, he’s removing the coffee mugs from my hands and depositing them on the end table. His hands then snake around my back and pull me onto his lap. The robe, wide open by this point, covers the pair of us like a cape. I take inventory of the items between us: my bra, my undies, and his fleece pants.
And let me just say that fleece pajamas don’t hide much of anything.
He takes control, situating me right where he wants before lowering his mouth, teasing with the threat of a kiss. All the while, he keeps his eyes locked on mine, desire clouding his gaze.
I can feel him under me, every inch, and it’s so incredibly sensual, even though we’re barred by clothes. We’re not kissing, we’re barely even touching, save for his fingers finding a place on my hips to hold me close. I shift my weight unconsciously, and he grips me tighter, a devilish grin appearing on his lips.
“I think you want me, sweetheart,” he murmurs, his lips dancing over my neck. He pauses to press a kiss under my ear, at the top of my shoulder, in the center of my chest. “Admit it.”
My head falls back, just enough to give him better access to my neck, and he takes advantage of it. A treasure trail of kisses across my chest, goose bumps spiraling over my skin.
“Let me taste you,” he says, his voice gruff. “Touch you, at least. God, Annie, I need you so badly.”
I lean into him, pressing against his desire, resting my body against his. I’m throbbing with need, but I can’t bring myself to act on it. Not yet. Lowering my mouth to his, I kiss him with everything I have in me, needing to let him know my confusion, the conflict warring inside of me.
I don’t have the words for it, so instead, I show him.
I hold him close, feeling him as I move against him, bringing forth a groan from his lips. He holds me, rocking my hips back, then forward, then back again, until the friction is so intense I’m gasping.
It’s more than attraction—it’s chemistry. I’ve never experienced anything like it, this desire burning through my veins, ripping through all sense of logic. I’m drunk on him, on everything he has to offer, but still, it’s not enough.
There’s that tiny part of me, the voice of reason that reminds me we will probably never work out. The two of us—we’re different, so very different, and my fears are shouting that the second I let my judgement lapse, the moment I give myself to him fully and completely, I’ll be vulnerable. My softness, my soul will be exposed to Cohen James, my heart resting in his hands.
I’m not ready for that, not yet, and the thought brings a sob to my throat. I swallow it, masking it as a moan as I ride against him harder, faster through our clothes, a frenzy between us that acts as a disguise.
“I can’t keep kissing you,” he says, his hands sinking into the skin of my waist as he stills me on his lap. “I don’t trust myself to stop anymore.”
I take a breath, calm my nerves, and then I bring my hand to his cheek. The stubble there is rough against my fingers. He closes his eyes in pleasure as I drag my fingers through it, down to his chest. I rest my hand on his heart.
“I trust you,” I whisper. “Please kiss me.”
If we don’t do something, I’m going to explode from passion. Thankfully, he moves first, curling me to him as he shifts, spreading me on the couch before he climbs on top of me. His hands never stop moving, tracing every inch of exposed skin.
We rock together as he crash
es his lips, his body against mine. He’s bringing me to a dangerous verge, ascending a mountain I’m not sure we can leave without shattering together. His hand carefully caresses my breasts, taking care to move in ways that make me cry out with pleasure.
Then he moves on, letting his fingers brush downward, across my stomach, past my belly until he rests against the outer edge of my panties. He stops, our chests heaving in sync.
I’m breathing heavily, waiting to see what comes next. The air is thick with lust, thick with need, and I know he’s waiting on me. But I can’t seem to gather the oxygen necessary to respond.
“I’m not going any further unless you ask for it,” he says, his voice with a desperate note to it. “I need you to tell me what you want... if you want me. If you want me to touch you, kiss you, take you.”
“Cohen, I want you, but... “
He looks into my eyes, his gaze softening. Understanding. “Can I touch you?”
I nod.
He brings a hand lower, brushes against the outside of the silky material. I exhale a moan that has him closing his eyes and biting down on his lip. “You’re okay?”
I can’t speak, so I nod again. His eyes lock on mine as I arch my hips toward him. His fingers add more pressure, and I withhold a whine of pleasure. My fingernails dig into his shoulders, my thoughts blank, my entire being focused on holding him.
With painstaking patience, Cohen watches my face as he slides one finger past the fabric, hesitating just long enough for me to give him the signal to continue. When I grit out a cue to keep going, he does, a finger dipping inside me for the first time.
He groans first, leaning toward me, begging for a kiss.
I meet him halfway as he gently teases me with his fingers, finding the places that make me writhe with pleasure. My arms wrap around his neck and the magic between us lights my nerves on fire. There’s a blind ecstasy to this moment, a blur of everything good I had never known.
“God, Annie, you’re incredible,” he says. “I want to make you see stars.”
“What about you?” I say, more gasp than voice. “If you want—”
