Hot on Ice: A Hockey Romance Anthology

by Avery Flynn

  "Hold on to that headboard, Sparkles."

  With all the magic he was doing with his fingers, that order sounded like the best idea ever. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tightened her hold on the smooth wood of the spindles hoping they'd hold as they took the force of her reaction to Flynn's deliberate touch. In and out he thrust his fingers, keeping weight on her lower abdomen and locking her in place, and thrummed his fingertips against the bundle of nerves inside her entrance. Over and over he slid his fingers in and out of her, rubbing and swirling and reaching her the way only he could. It was torture. It was divine. It was pleasure beyond description. Her entire body hummed, riding wave after wave of sensation that had her moaning incoherently.

  Then, just as the ball of electricity building inside her started to tighten and build, it all stopped. Whip-quick Flynn lifted his hand from above her pubic bone and withdrew his fingers.

  A frustrated groan slipped from between her lips. "Fucking A, Flynn."

  "Oh, you liked that?" he asked, confidence that had crossed the line into beat-his-chest cave man cockiness heavy in his tone.

  "No," she said, trying for cavalier but sounding more like the desperately wanton woman she was. "It was totally amateur."

  "Uh-huh," he said as he used one hand to spread her slick folds wide so the cool air brushed against all her sensitive spots. "Keep telling yourself that, I know the truth."

  If that was the case, he'd know that even though she knew she couldn't have him in her life she was desperate for him. He'd know she'd loved him even as he drove away. He'd know that there would never be anyone else in her life that did the things to her heart and body that he did. Luckily, before she could blurt any of that out, he used his other hand and circled his fingertips butterfly-light around her clit and thought became an impossibility.

  It bordered on cruel while landing firmly in the middle of Blisslandia and with a sigh Gillie gave in to Flynn's touch and slow pace, letting the sensations roll over her as her entire being focused on that one small part of her that he was caressing. His touch didn't increase in pressure. He didn't hurry up. Flynn simply played her body like only he could do, until she was nearly crazy with need. Still, her body was climbing, reaching, craving release.

  Her grip on the headboard tightened as her breath came in shorter gasps and she arched her back, changing the angle of this stroking fingers just enough that her whole world broke apart with an orgasm that forced a guttural cry from her mouth and made her entire body go taut with pleasure.

  As she floated back down to earth, the first thing to come into focus was Flynn. His hair was tousled as if he'd just been the one to come hard enough to permanently curl his toes and his brown eyes were soft with a kind of tender amazement she'd never seen in them before.

  "What? I didn't actually levitate over the bed did I, because I'd probably believe you if you said yes," she teased.

  He glanced down for a second and by the time he looked back up at her, the look was gone, replaced by a hunger she knew well because it was the same one building inside her again already. Could she ever get enough of this man? Ignoring the voice that said she'd have to and soon, she curled up into a seated position, put a hand on his broad shoulder and drew him in for a kiss.

  Flynn

  Gillie fucking Pike.

  Maybe it was the testosterone or the pheromones or the amazing sight of watching the most beautiful woman he knew climax but Flynn didn't have it in him to pretend she was just a hot chick who wanted to fuck him as much as he wanted to bang her. So when she melded her mouth to his and pushed him back down on the mattress, he went with it. Taking control wasn't in the cards for him right now because he couldn't do it without revealing just how much he loved her.

  She was a bad girl. He was an asshole. And yet, together, they were more than the sum of their parts. If she were another woman and he another man, they'd find a way to make this work. Love was nothing more than heartbreak waiting to happen. He'd learned that as a kid and she'd reinforced the lesson in Dallas. Acting as if this wasn't anything more than an interlude was misery in the making. Goalies couldn't block the shots and win the game if they didn't anticipate every bad thing that could happen next. He'd perfected that to an art and it had resulted in his name going on the Cup—the very thing that may end his life in the game he lived and breathed during almost every moment of every day unless they figured out who was behind the frame job Gillie had said she'd come here to stop.

  He knew this.

  He knew all of this and he pushed it away anyway because Gillie was here with him now, her tongue in his mouth, her bare tits pressed against his chest and her wet pussy sliding along the length of his hard cock. A fool in love could block out a lot of shit in that situation.

  Her palms pressed against his chest, she straightened her arms and broke the kiss before lifting her hips and taking the thick length of him inside her—slow, inch by inch until they were one. His hands went to her full hips and his gaze on her face as she rocked against him. Not that he wasn't tempted by her pendulous tits as they swayed and bounced but she'd captured him and he couldn't look away. This was what he wanted to etch into memory. The white of her teeth as she bit down on her pink bottom lip. The long waterfall of her black hair as it poured down her back. The pleasure making her throw her head back as she closed those hazel eyes of hers in ecstasy. She was the picture of a woman he wanted to watch come for the rest of his life—and this was as close as he'd ever get to it.

  "Open your eyes, Sparkles."

  She did, dropping her chin so she was looking down at him, her eyes hazy with lust.

  "Don't look away." He'd never needed something more in his life.

  She shook her head. "Never."

  He'd like to believe it and—for the moment—he did. It hurt almost as much as it healed. So he did what he always did when confronted with emotions he didn't want to deal with. He gripped her waist tighter and took control.

  "Fuck me harder," he demanded.

  She responded immediately, riding him hard and coming down on his dick hard and sure as she rotated her hips in a tight circle that rubbed her clit against his pelvic bone.

  "That's it," he said. "Make yourself come again. I want to feel your pretty pussy squeeze my cock."

  The words spurred her on as he'd hoped. Up and down, twisting and turning, she rode him, her thighs firm against his hips and her cunt tight around his dick. This time his gaze did drop to her tits as they bounced in time with her movements as she fucked him stupid.

  "Flynn," she cried, clawing her nails against the hard plane of his abs. "I'm gonna come."

  "Yeah, Sparkles." He yanked her back and forth against him as she continued to go up and down. "Let go."

  She did, arching her back and throwing back her head before her orgasm milked his dick to a climax that sent him thrusting into her one last time before spilling into her.

  "Oh. My. God," she said before collapsing on top of him.

  This is where he should have had a smart ass remark or cocking rejoinder. With another woman he would have. But with Gillie fucking Pike? He just reached out one arm, fisted the comforter, and flung it over them both. She sighed and snuggled against him so her cheek fit perfectly into the pocket of his shoulder.

  The mental image would have made him laugh if he'd had enough energy. A perfect fit. The two of them. Now wasn't that just his fucking luck?

  8

  Gillie

  Waking up wrapped in Flynn's strong arms, Gillie said a silent plea for just five more minutes to spend cocooned together, but that wasn't going to happen. The sun's morning light was blasting through a narrow slit in the motel room curtain and shining right in her eyes like a laser beam. By the time she'd rolled over and blinked the last bit of sleep out of her eyes, her brain was already rolling a hundred miles an hour. The loudest thoughts centered around Flynn and what had happened last night but there wasn't a damn thing she could do about that situation, so she focused on what she cou
ld affect: the plan to frame him for stealing the Cup.

  Orlando was in Snow Bay. She'd track that shithead down and pry the name of the money man behind the whole plan out of him if she had to hit him over the head with one of the wooden brown bears from Flynn's mom's house. Of course, that wasn't going to happen until after she showered though. Smelling like sex and Flynn really did something to fuck with a girl's ability to concentrate.

  She sat up and immediately got yanked back to the bed, landing with a soft thunk with her cheek against Flynn's unyielding chest.

  He relaxed his hold but left his hand splayed across the small of her back. "Stop thinking so loud, you're wrecking my sleep."

  "I'm thinking about how to not let your career get ruined while you spend the next decade in jail," she said, brushing her fingers across the springy dark curls of his chest hair.

  His body tensed before he took a deep breath and let it out in one slow exhale. "It's Cup day."

  "Yep." She kissed the spot right above his heart.

  "Shit." He lifted his head up off the pillow and glanced at the motel room's digital clock. "It'll be here in a couple of hours."

  A few days ago he probably would have uttered those words with excitement. This was, after all, what he'd been working for his entire life and now was the time to celebrate the accomplishment. That's what made the plan to steal the Cup and frame Flynn so ingenious. Everyone would be distracted, happy, partying it up. No one would be thinking about the possibility of theft, except for maybe the keeper of the Cup who from her research was more there to make sure no one did anything too crazy with it. Some players had eaten cereal out of it, others drank from it, and it had even been used to baptize a couple of kids. Most of the time though, it was paraded around towns, schools and military bases as a symbol of what someone could accomplish with enough blood, sweat, and unshed tears.

  "What's the plan for pickup?" she asked.

  "It'll arrive at the Snow Bay Private Airfield on the Rage's team jet with its keeper," he said, circling his palm over her back. "Then, I was supposed to take it on a trip to my old high school, the Brown Bear for a meet and greet and then, eventually, go to Ten Pints to drink blueberry beer out of it and party the night away."

  All public with limited security. "Plenty of opportunities to pick it off."

  "You forgot about Edwin Motz."

  "The keeper?" She tried to summon up a mental picture of the guy and failed.

  "Yeah, his only job is to watch over the Cup."

  "Is he security? Special forces? A ninja?"

  "No, I think he's some tech guy who got rich, retired early, and finagled his way into being the Cup's keeper."

  She snorted. "Then taking the Cup will be easy."

  His hand stilled and he sat up, forcing her to sit up too so that they faced each other. "You're not taking it."

  "I might have to." It was the only way she could think of right now to make sure the day didn't end with Flynn in handcuffs.

  The vein in his temple pulsed and his jaw squared but before he could launch his argument, her phone buzzed. She reached past him and grabbed it off the nightstand. Instead of a phone number or name, caller ID read Unknown Number. It could be Marko, letting her know he was almost there, but her money was on the redheaded asshole who'd taken this job in the first place.

  "About fucking time you called," she answered.

  "And hello to you too, darling," Orlando said. "Enjoying your time with Flynn Crazy-kov?"

  "Don't call him that."

  "What's wrong, do you still have feelings for the goalie?"

  Not something she was going to discuss with him. "Your money man and his goon in a suit tried to grab me off the street yesterday."

  "I know, I saw the whole thing."

  She started but really what had she expected? It was Orlando after all. "You're a real piece of work."

  He sighed. "Look, I'm already two hundred miles down the highway. Do you want to know what I know or issue insults to a dial tone after I hang up on your ass?"

  That got her attention. If he'd followed her all the way up to Snow Bay, there was no way he'd leave voluntarily without getting a paycheck. "What happened?"

  "The big man sent his steroid commercial in a suit to inform me my services were no longer necessary. He'd hired another outfit. This one smells like Vegas."

  She swallowed past the lump of anxiety blocking her throat. "Mob?"

  "Probably."

  Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and mentally hummed her favorite jazz warm up—Billie, of course—as she settled her runaway thoughts and focused on what she could control not the scary shit behind door number two. "What's the money man's name?"

  "Thomas Slater and he means business," Orlando said. "Bang your guy goodbye and get the fuck out of there, Torch."

  It was good advice. She should take it. Even with Marko and his B-Squad Security connections coming to Snow Bay, the odds weren't in their favor. Whoever this Slater guy was, he had a helluva lot of juice to bring in heavy hitters from Vegas for a frame job. The smart move was to get the hell out of Michigan just like Orlando had. She looked over at Flynn sitting naked beside her on the bed, his body strung tight and a guarded look in his hazel eyes—the same one he'd had when she'd confessed her sins in Dallas. Seeing it again was a punch in the gut.

  "I can't," she said.

  "Your funeral," Orlando said. "I did what I could to warn you away."

  "You're the asshole who sent me here."

  "If you could go back in time and tell me no when I made that first call, would you?"

  No. She didn't even have to think about it.

  "Fuck you, Orlando."

  His laughter blasted in her ear. "That's what I thought, Torch." He paused. "Look, we really were friends once. If I would have realized how deep you were in with this guy, I wouldn't have called you."

  Coming from Orlando that was practically a formal, public apology. It almost made her feel warm and gooey inside.

  "You think that would have made any of this any easier?"

  He snorted. "You always did like to do things the hard way."

  Her gaze automatically went to Flynn. "Yeah."

  "Good luck, Torch—on both fronts."

  Without waiting for her response or saying goodbye, Orlando hung up. She put her phone back on the nightstand next to Flynn's and flopped back so she was lying on her back on the mattress. Flynn appeared above her, the guarded look still in his eyes but something else too. What that thing was she had no fucking idea.

  He tweaked her nose and lay down next to her on the bed, their shoulders touching. "What's the play?"

  "The money man fired Orlando and is bringing in the mob." Yeah, that just about summed up the shitstorm they were in. "Whatever you did to Thomas Slater, he sure hates your guts."

  Flynn stiffened. "Thomas Slater?"

  "Who is he?" she asked, rolling on her side to face him and propping her head up on her hand.

  He closed his eyes, his sinfully long eyelashes brushing against his cheekbones. Why was it always men who got the Hollywood lashes without extensions and mascara? Then, he opened them and she forgot everything else for a second except that this man rocked her entire world.

  "Thomas Slater is one of the Dallas team's biggest fans," Flynn said and shoved his hand through his already tousled dark hair. "A real Misery-level number one fan. When my contract was up for negotiations, he was all over me to sign, promising money that was off the books and therefore wouldn't affect the team's salary cap. He had the money and power to make it happen too. There was something about the guy that always creeped me out though. He called all the time and was just always everywhere I turned."

  Gillie's stomach clenched. "He was stalking you?"

  He squished up his mouth and shook his head. "I don't know that I'd call it that. More like, he was a man very used to always getting his way and in my case that meant me staying in the net in Dallas. He was obsessed with the team and de
termined to do whatever he could to make sure they won the Cup."

  The lightbulb went off. Finally. "So when you won it with the Rage, that might just be the kind of thing to make a man like that dead set on revenge." If she could have done her shimmy happy dance while lying naked and staring down at Flynn, she would have. "This is good."

  He looked at her like she was the one the hockey commentators called Crazy-kov. "How in the hell is this good?"

  "Because now we know who we're up against and we can formulate a plan." She couldn't keep the grin off her face. This was it. This was when everything went their way. "When Marko gets here, he'll be just the backup we need to deflect whatever mob muscle he's bringing in to set you up for the fall."

  "My life used to be simple." He gave her that wicked grin that would have made a smarter version of Gillie shake in her hot pink cowboy boots. "All I did was block the puck."

  She dipped her head lower. "Then you met me."

  "Yeah." His gaze zeroed in on her mouth, setting off a whole wave of sensations in places lower. "Then I met you."

  He reached up and cupped the back of her head, pulling her face down to his, and kissed her. Strong lips that were unwavering. Promises they couldn't keep. Heat that wouldn't flame out. Hunger that couldn't be fed. It was all there in that kiss and it was theirs, only theirs. Thomas Slater, mob muscle, their own worst instincts may be plotting against them, but this moment, it was theirs. And she had to end it sooner rather than later because much more and she wasn't sure she'd be able to. She pressed her hand against his chest, feeling the sure beat of his heart, and pushed herself away from him, breaking the kiss.

  "Do we flip a coin about who showers first?" Flynn asked, grinning up at her.

  "You go ahead." She wasn't sure her legs would hold her at the moment.

  He winked and gave her a quick kiss. "I'll be quick."

  Watching his perfect naked ass strut into the tiny motel bathroom until he closed the door between them, Gillie held her breath. There had to be something she could do. Marko would be here in a few hours but her sitting on her ass without any information about the main villain except that he was a stalker hockey fan wasn't going to do them any good. As soon as Marko was wheels down, they had to be ready for go time. The Cup was vulnerable, which meant so was Flynn. That wasn't acceptable. She could put a call out to someone else on the B-Squad to do a background check on Slater while Marko was still in the air. It was better than sitting here on her ass. Shoulders lighter, she pivoted and reached for her phone but hesitated over Flynn's.