Altercation (Playmaker Duet #1; Prescott Family #4; Love In All Places #6)

by Mignon Mykel

  My body was broken.

  The nightmare that woke me was a blatant reminder—my body shuddering under me as my foster father stiffened over me. My eyes burned with the memories, but rather than let the tears fall, I squeezed my eyes shut and willed sleep to come back to me.

  The next time I woke, it was to Porter kissing my neck.

  I’d like to say I woke up pleasant and happy, but the reality was I woke with a rapid heartbeat and fear in my gut. Waking up in his arms, waking up with him kissing on me, was going to take getting used to.

  Waking up in bed with him, while he was on his side of the bed and me on mine, had been fine. But this new development of waking in his arms, was going to eventually give me a heart attack.

  “You alright?”

  Nothing got past Porter.

  “I’m fine,” I answered. “Disoriented.” I turned in his arms to face him, readjusting my head on my pillow, my forearm sandwiched between it and my cheek.

  He put his hand on my hip, his eyes not wavering from my face. “Someday you’ll feel safe enough to share with me what really goes on through your head.”

  “You already know so much,” I whispered honestly.

  “But not everything.”

  I didn’t bother denying it.

  “I’ll drop it. I will,” he repeated, before adding, “But I want you to know that whatever it is you’re keeping locked to yourself won’t change a damn thing I think about you.”

  I shook my head lightly but whispered, “Maybe, but you don’t know.”

  He rubbed his hand over my hip. “I promise.”

  And oh, how I wanted that to be true.

  “You’re such a fucking girl,” Nico informed me from my bedroom door.

  “Why don’t you do something productive and help me set this fucker up,” I grumbled from the floor, trying to assemble the new bed I bought.

  This one was the real deal. It wasn’t the metal frame that I had a box spring and mattress stacked on last season. No, this one had a headboard, a footboard, under the bed storage things, and matching dressers.

  “Asher was just fine here with your other shit,” Nico pointed out, still not moving from his fucking perch.

  I tossed the information book down and looked at him. “I have to pick her up in an hour. Can you help me put this fucker together, or what?”

  Chuckling, Nico moved away from the door and toward my mess of hardware.

  The last nine months were fucking fantastic.

  After my birthday and bye week, she and I compromised on her coming down every three weeks. One trip would be a long weekend, the next, a week, and so on until the season ended. The Rockets lost in the first round, and as badly as I wanted a good taste of playoff hockey, I wanted to be with Asher a little bit more.

  This summer, I spent a lot of time at the guest house with Ash. I spent some time at the house with my parents too, sure, but most of my time was with Asher.

  Still though, after essentially four months of living with her, we didn’t do much more than heavy petting.

  Really heavy petting.

  Clothes on and everything, heavy petting.

  I was a fucking saint, let me tell you.

  But the first time her body shook under my hand? More than worth it.

  Even if it didn’t happen until damn near a month ago.

  She didn’t outright tell me, but I didn’t think she was incredibly experienced and I thought that was likely the reason she held back. She never offered to give me head—granted, I never offered to do it either; it wasn’t something that was ever high on my list of things to learn, but the more she and I were together, the more I thought maybe I’d want to—but she was damn good at hand jobs.

  And while there were always clothes between us, she’d grind herself over me, bringing us both to orgasm, a number of times.

  Before I left for South Carolina though, I sat with her and told her I wasn’t doing the three weeks thing again. Two, tops.

  I knew she had work—I saw the images she took; she was a fantastic photographer. And I knew that Mom was wanting to scale back, and that she needed Asher there to help. But damn, I wanted Asher near all the time.

  More so after spending so much time with her over the summer.

  Two months ago, I hadn’t been too sure about my living arrangements down in Charleston, as Nico’s contract still hadn’t been picked up, but as of two weeks ago, he had a shiny new five-year contract to match the four left on mine. We decided to keep staying in the townhouse, splitting the rent.

  It worked last season, it would work again this season.

  But if the fucker wouldn’t stop laughing at me over my current predicament, I was going to find a new place to stay.

  “Does Asher know you bought new furniture?” Nico asked, helping to put the frame together.

  “No, but I needed another dresser anyway.”

  “So you decided to just buy an entire bedroom set to match?” Nico chuckled under his breath and I fought the urge to toss the wrench at him. “Okay, okay, let’s just get this som’bitch together so you can go pick up your girl.” Nico was still laughing, but at least he was doing it productively.

  Thirty minutes later, and not a second to spare, the bed was together with the mattress in place. I quickly tossed on the new linens, and Nico helped me bring boxes and the other trash out to the community dumpsters, before he waved me off.

  I was ready to get my girl.

  “I’m supposed to tell you that Avery’s favorite client is Logan,” Asher told me, stepping through the late afternoon travel crowd, and toward me.

  “What, you’re going to talk business the second you see me?” I grinned at her as she stepped closer. “I see how it is.”

  There weren’t any more of the running hugs. After the picture fiasco, we both agreed to try and keep it low key. Thankfully this year, Charleston added a star veteran to the roster, Erik Thistle, who the ladies all swooned over. Hopefully he’d take the attention from me, even though I was predicted to have a phenomenal season—NHL Nightly said it, not me.

  I met Thistle in camp the month prior. He was a big enforcer kind of guy and while I tended to just be a chirper—the guy who talks and taunts, riling the other guys up and getting them ready for a fight—I wasn’t a fighter. Thistle was going to help me with that.

  My parents weren’t aware of that plan. Mom would probably kill me if I lost a single tooth in my head. They paid good money to keep them straight in my early teens.

  Asher held her phone up to me, showing an active text thread between her and Ace. “She just told me.”

  I glanced at it and grinned. “Whatever. She knows I’ll be the better client.” Avery graduated and, true to her word, started doing the sports agent thing. As she told me the other night, there were others in her group that were upset with her and her quickly growing client roster.

  Did they not realize she had a built-in clientele? Of course her brothers were going to choose her to represent them. And Logan? Logan was like family, so it just made sense.

  Logan and I went way back. Well, like end of junior year of high school, way back. After a series of stupid acts on my part, I changed schools to a more prestigious one in our area, University School. There, I met Logan on the hockey team and the rest, as they say, is history.

  There were times he was more of a brother to me than my own were, but my brothers were also years older than me.

  Logan spent last season playing for North Dakota—the University—but still entered the draft. He was picked up by Chicago. McKenna, who recently took a position as a scout with the Beloit Enforcers, San Diego’s AHL affiliate, told me San Diego wanted him, but Chicago had the upper hand in the draft picks.

  He was spending this season in North Dakota again though, but planned on joining the real world next year.

  I’d been excited for him to meet Asher, and with schedules and the like, it didn’t happen
until the beginning of August, right before he was due to head back to North Dakota. I may have talked him up a bit to Ash, but I was glad they hit it off well.

  I didn’t see Logan often, but he was my man. If the two of them hadn’t gotten along? Fuck, I didn’t know what I would do.

  “Logan’s an ideal client because she doesn’t have to do shit with him right now,” I finally told Asher, grabbing her phone and pocketing it.

  “Hey!” she protested.

  I took her hand and squeezed it. “Avery can wait.” I pulled her toward a corner in the airport, away from chairs and onlookers, and near potted plants. “I can’t.”

  In the corner, my body could shield her from any onlookers and I wore nothing that screamed who I was. Even the baseball cap turned backward on my head was a nondescript white one.

  Asher, though, wore a tank top that showed off the colors on her arm, but surely no one was looking that hard.

  She wrapped her arms around my hips and slid her hands into the back pockets of my jeans, her fingers pressing into my ass. I pressed my hardening cock against her belly as I reached for her face and tilted it up to mine.

  “Missed you,” I whispered, not lowering my lips.

  “It was thirteen days.” She was here for a long weekend with the season home opener.

  “Still, I missed you.”

  Her smile was well worth the wait.

  “I got used to seeing you every day. You should just move down here.” It was a joke, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping she could.

  “I can’t.”

  “I know. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting it.”

  “You’ll be so busy, you won’t even remember I’m back home.” The day the schedule released, Ash and I added it to her calendar, making a game plan for when she’d come down and stay. It didn’t do anybody any good if she came down during a week I was out of town.

  “I’ll definitely remember,” I said, before finally lowering my lips to hers. She smiled into the kiss, her fingers pressing into my ass. I rubbed my thumbs over her cheeks, guiding her face as I changed angles.

  Knowing that we had to get her bags—I told her to bring things she could leave; there was no sense in her carting around clothes all the time if she was staying here often enough—I pulled back from the kiss before it could get too interesting, loving the little sigh that escaped from her lips.

  Needing one more taste of those lips, I pecked them one more time, before reaching behind me for her hand, pulling it from my pocket. “Let’s go before you get me into trouble.”

  “What is this?” I asked, walking past Porter into his bedroom. I carried the smaller of my bags with me. It had been a fight with Porter, who wanted to cart them both in himself.

  “You like?” he asked, swinging the larger of my roller bags to a stop in front of the wall.

  I let go of my bag in the middle of his room and took it in. Gone was the plain bed with the mismatched dresser. In their place was a relatively nice bed set, done in a rich espresso color with a bronzed metal headboard.

  It was very masculine.

  And very grown up.

  I grinned over my shoulder at him. “When did you have time to go shopping?”

  He shrugged his shoulder and shut the bedroom door before walking over to me. “I ordered it after you left last time. It arrived this morning.”

  My brows shot up. “This morning?”

  With a nod, he took my hand and pulled me to the bed, sitting and guiding me to his lap. “Yep. Nico helped me put it together.”

  Speaking of Nico… “Where is he, anyway?”

  Porter shrugged, his hands flexing at my hips. “Don’t know. Don’t care.” He winked at me and I wrapped my arms around his neck, at once comfortable with him.

  This summer was a crash course in learning to be at ease with this guy. He didn’t leave much room for me to not be comfortable. He was always there, but not annoyingly so.

  While he slept in my bed back home more nights than not, I worked a lot for the studio and Porter did a lot of hockey camp things with his brothers at the local schools. Spending time with him was a familiarity that I didn’t realize I needed.

  We hadn’t gone farther than hands and kisses, and I could tell it was frustrating for him, but he never called me on it. It took me a lot of nights to let go of some of the words and thoughts echoing in my head.

  Words and thoughts I determined to be the very reason that every time I was on the verge of coming by his hands, the feeling fled, leaving me empty and wanting. I couldn’t even imagine what it did to Porter.

  The guy screamed sex. He had the body, the voice. He was talented with his well-placed kisses, and his fingers definitely knew what they were doing. Still, sex scared me.

  It was one thing for my body to fail with hands.

  It was another thing entirely if I couldn’t come with him in me.

  I shook my head. I didn’t need to go there right now. There was no sense putting the carriage before the horse.

  I was, however, ready to give it all a try.

  Porter just didn’t know it yet.

  I tilted my head and looked at him. He was watching me intently but saying nothing. “It’s a very nice bed set. But why the change?”

  He wrapped an arm around me and moved to scoot back on the bed, turning us so he rested against the headboard. “I want you to be comfortable here.”

  “I was comfortable here before.”

  “I’m almost twenty-one. I needed a grown-up room,” he finally answered. “And I needed room for you.” He nodded toward the dresser. It was long, nearly spanning the width of the room, and stood three drawers high. “Lots of room for you here. Like I told you before, there’s no sense in you bringing clothes back and forth if you’re going to be here so often. It will make traveling easier.”

  “Have an answer for everything, do you?” I teased and, feeling particularly happy, I further teased him by shifting my hips over him. I felt as he twitched under me, growing thicker under the denim of his jeans.

  “God, hold still,” he groaned, holding my hips in place. “I’m on a tight wire here, Ash. My hand isn’t nearly as good as yours.”

  For whatever reason, that made me grin. “Yeah?”

  “Fuck, yeah.”

  My heart pounding behind my breast, the center of my chest full with pressure, I whispered, “Maybe I can make it better?”

  Shit. I nearly came from those words alone.

  “We have things to do,” I tried saying.

  Because we did. We had to unpack her things and get groceries. All the domestic shit. And who the hell knew when Nico was coming back.

  Asher rolled her hips over me again.

  Shit, hopefully he wasn’t back for a while.

  She swung her leg from over me and I frowned, my cock hard under my jeans and missing the pressure of her on it. “Where are you going?”

  Standing beside the bed, she sucked her lips in between her lips in that way she did, and crossed her arms in front of her, her fingers grabbing the bottom of the tight black ribbed tank top she was wearing.

  She wasn’t…

  Good fucking Lord, she was.

  She lifted the tank up over her head, pulling it back as her hair cascaded down her bare back. She wore a black lace bra that cut so freaking low, I was pretty sure that if her nipples weren’t tight right now, I’d be able to see them.

  And then her hands went to the belt on her jeans.

  While Asher owned stock in yoga pants that hugged each of her curves, she preferred her jeans to be a bit wider in the leg while still cupping her ass. Today, in her tank top and jeans, with flip flops on her feet, she looked every bit the country casual chick I knew her to be.

  But now, in a lace bra and her hands working on her bottoms, she was a sexy I didn’t realize I wanted in my life.

  I sat up, grimacing at my hard cock under my jeans, and moved to
stand. “Let me.” I wanted my hands on her.

  She took a step back and shook her head. I swore there was a flash of uncertainty in her eyes, but it was gone quicker than I could say that maybe I imagined it.

  Bending down to step out of her jeans, her hair moved over her shoulder and I reached out to run my fingers through it. When she stood again, in nothing but black lace, that uncertain look was definitely there.

  I stepped closer to her, not close enough for her body to be pressed into mine, but close enough that I could feel her energy. I brushed her hair behind her ear with one hand, leaving the other at my side, knowing, without her asking, that she needed the small space between us still. “What’s this look for?” I asked quietly, sweeping my thumb under her eye.

  She just shrugged.

  “We don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for, Ash,” I promised.

  “But I’m ready,” she answered quietly. “At least, I think I am. Maybe just what we’ve been doing, but with less clothes. I don’t know.”

  I could be game with that.

  First, though, “Why now?”

  Why not two weeks ago, after playing glorified house for months?

  She closed that small gap between us and I nearly cheered out loud. “Because I missed you this week,” she answered, her voice huskier than normal. “Because you do things like get a bedroom set because you think it will make me more comfortable.” She put her hands to the bottom of my shirt. “Because you always seem to know when I’ve had too much, and you respect that.” Her fingers went under my shirt and my abs clenched when she pressed them flat on my stomach. “Did you realize it’s been thirteen months since we met?”

  I did.

  “We both know I have…issues.”

  I opened my mouth to refute it, but she shook her head. “But you’ve been incredibly kind to me.”

  “That’s because I care about you,” I told her. I hadn’t said the words before, and while I thought she knew it, I needed to be sure she was aware.