Hard Hitter

by Sarina Bowen

  “I’ve noticed that. Crazy.” He gave a giant yawn.

  “You’re beat. Let’s go to sleep.”

  “Sorry,” he said, scrubbing the uninjured side of his face. “I’m not a fun host. I’ll walk you home if you want me to.”

  “It’s almost one in the morning,” Ari pointed out. “Let’s crash.” She got up and collected their empty glasses.

  He came up behind her in the kitchen and gave her a little squeeze. Is this how it felt to be half of a couple? “Thanks for working out my kinks.”

  She turned her head, amusement on her face. “Patrick, you are still full of them.”

  Smart girl. She had his number. “Leave those,” he said, referring to the glasses in the sink. “Borrow anything in the bathroom. There are probably a couple of those airplane toothbrushes in the medicine cabinet.”

  Ten minutes later he switched off the lamp beside his bed and slipped between the sheets. Ari was already dozing on the other pillow, curled up in his Brooklyn: Fuhggeddaboudit T-shirt. It had draped practically to her knees when she put it on.

  “Good night, sweetheart,” he whispered. She made a soft, indistinct noise of agreement. He leaned over and kissed her temple, just because he could.

  Then he hooked her feet between his and fell asleep.

  EIGHTEEN

  THURSDAY, MARCH 24TH

  Standings: 4th Place

  10 Regular Season Games Remaining

  Ari didn’t begin to wake up until the room was flooded with natural sunshine. Keeping her eyes closed against the light, she took stock.

  Her back was pressed pleasantly against a hard, hot chest. And a broad hand was sliding slowly up her body, inside the big T-shirt she was wearing, past her panties, over her belly. Then Patrick’s fingers rose further still until he cupped both of her breasts in one big hand.

  Goosebumps broke out everywhere on her body. She took a big breath and sighed.

  “Morning, sweetheart.”

  “Mmm,” she agreed, pressed back against him. An ambitious erection was tucked against her panties. She stretched a hand back and met the bare skin of his hip.

  He was here, he was hard, and he was naked. Good morning, indeed.

  “You sleep okay?” he whispered, fingering one breast.

  “Yeah,” she breathed as her nipple hardened between his fingertips. “You?”

  “Like a brick.”

  “How’s your pain?”

  Instead of answering, he trailed two fingers down her chest and abdomen, then dipped into her panties.

  “Ah,” she gasped as he teased her with light, glancing touches. The moment shimmered with promise. There was sunlight on her eyelids and heat at her back. Soft lips brushed her neck and then began to nibble their way toward her ear. Her body was caught between the weight of sleep and the anticipation of sex.

  Heaven.

  Patrick lowered her panties with one quick tug. She kicked them off.

  Then he clasped her knee and lifted it a few inches. He slid his cock between her legs and rested it there, lowering her knee to trap himself. She tightened her legs together around him and he groaned and rolled his hips.

  “Sure like waking up with you in my bed,” he rumbled into her ear. He took her hand and brought it down to her mound. “Touch yourself while I work your tits.” Her pulse kicked up a notch, and then another when he reached under both her arms and cupped her breasts, thumbing her nipples. “Get yourself ready for me.”

  She took a deep breath and pushed her fingertips down, touching both his firm cock and the soft folds of her own body, already growing slick for him. She grasped him and rubbed his shaft against herself.

  “Fuck,” he growled. “Want you.”

  “Have me,” she said immediately. But the tone of her quick and utter capitulation nagged at her a little. “But this time we’re doing it my way.”

  “Fair enough.” He slid one of his big hands down her body and tucked a fingertip between her legs, landing right on her clit. “Tell me how you want me.”

  He swirled his finger and she almost forgot what they’d been discussing. God, this man. He played her body like a fiddle, and it always made her lose her head. Biting her lip, she let him torture her. He thrust his hips, reminding her just how good it was going to be. “Mmm,” she sighed. “Sit up. Against the headboard.”

  A low grunt of approval came from his chest. But when he withdrew both his cock and his finger, she almost regretted the decision.

  He did as she asked, and when she rolled to face him the sight made her mouth water. That muscular body sat propped against a pillow, thick, long erection jutting upward, the plump head pointing at his belly button. Even with a big bandage covering part of his face, his cocky grin was irresistible as he tore open a condom packet. She couldn’t stop watching the muscles in his forearm move as he rolled it down, covering himself.

  Yowza.

  Feeling shaky with anticipation, she straddled his thighs, walking her knees up toward his body. Cool blue eyes watched her approach. And when she lined him up beneath herself, he stopped breathing.

  “We’re going to go slow,” she warned.

  “Okay.” He exhaled.

  “Slower than you’ve ever gone.”

  “Show me, sweetheart. Wherever you lead, I’m following.”

  She lowered her body an inch, his cockhead breeching her, but just barely. “You know what tantric is?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t know my own name when you’re on my cock.”

  “Think—yoga sex.” She slid down another inch and his eyes went half-mast. “Look at me,” she prompted. His eyes opened again, and she rewarded him by filling herself completely with him.

  He groaned. She gave him a quick kiss. He tasted minty. Somebody had already gotten up and brushed his teeth. “Breathe with me,” she demanded.

  “I’m breathin’.”

  “Purposefully. Like in yoga class.”

  He grabbed her face and kissed her. Then he took a deep, slow breath.

  She rubbed his chest. And when he exhaled, she inhaled. And vice versa. He held her gaze, and they fell into a natural enough rhythm. Slowly, she leaned forward and kissed him between breaths. Then again. And again.

  He made a lovely noise from the back of his throat. While he met her breath for breath, she stroked his pecs and then his arms. She trailed her fingertips over his face and through his hair.

  Breath. Breath. Kiss.

  Breath. Breath. Kiss.

  Ari could feel all the effort it took him to hold back, and a fine sweat broke out on his shoulders. His fingers dug into the flesh at her bottom, and his hips twitched with pure need.

  She dug her knees into the bed and began to ride him slowly. His eyes fell shut with gratitude. But she wanted that eye contact. She wanted to know if he could withstand so much intimacy. So she held still and waited for him to rejoin her.

  His eyes flickered open. “You like it slow.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Sometimes,” she whispered. “I like it all.”

  He touched his smile to hers. “Go out for dinner with me,” he said against her lips.

  The demand caught her by surprise. “Right now?”

  “No,” he laughed, and she could feel his cock jump inside her. “But I want to see more of you, and I figure right now is as good a time as any to ask.”

  He pushed his hips forward and the sudden contact made her groan. “I’ll think about it.”

  “She’ll think about it.” He leaned down to kiss her neck. “What does a guy have to do around here to get a date?” He grabbed the T-shirt she wore in both hands and eased it over her head. “Is it still tantric if I play with your tits?” Roughened hands cupped both her breasts, and Ari felt her control slip a little. So she took a deep, slow breath and kissed him again.
>
  No matter how torturous she made this, he smiled at her, breathing through the rhythm she’d set. She’d meant to challenge him, but now it was her own desire that would not be contained. With every slow movement she made, her body tightened around him. And every time she bottomed out onto his lap, he gave a sexy groan. The tendons stood out on his neck as he strained to hold himself in check.

  “You’re very patient with me,” she whispered against his lips. “But I don’t want to be patient anymore.”

  “Enough of your way?” he asked with a grin.

  “Yeah.”

  “On your back, girlie.” But then he didn’t even wait for her to move. He rolled them both over, pinned her hands above her head and gave a good, hard thrust. They both cried out from the pleasure of such wonderful friction after the lack of it. And there was no holding back after that. He unleashed himself, attacking her mouth, pumping his hips.

  Her climax approached like a storm rolling in—first it was merely a heaviness on the horizon. Then came an overwhelming crash of sensation, blotting out the rest of the world. She groaned and pressed herself into the bed, letting gusts of pleasure sweep through her.

  Patrick moaned her name, low and deep. Then he gasped and shuddered and thrust into her one more time.

  Wow. She put a hand on his sweaty back and took a deep breath. She felt wrung out, the same way she’d feel after an hour of bikram yoga.

  But better.

  Patrick rolled onto his side, hauling her with him. “I swear,” he said, his voice husky, “gets better every time.”

  Her pounding heart skipped a beat. “That’s just because we did it my way,” she teased.

  “Liar.” He pulled her face in close and kissed her. “But I’ll take you any way I can get you.” He kissed her again.

  “Are we late for work?” she thought to ask.

  He lifted his head to see the clock, then dropped it again. “Don’t think so. It’s just eight o’clock now.”

  “Good. Because I don’t think I could hurry anywhere right now. How’s your face?”

  “What face?”

  She laughed. “Should I ask you later?”

  His smile made his eyes light up. He looked almost boyish when he smiled. “I got up earlier and took some ibuprofen. I feel okay.”

  “You going to practice?”

  “Yeah, sure. Unless they keep me back for another concussion evaluation.”

  All the mirth drained out of her. “Do you think you have a concussion?”

  He shook his head. “But every time I take a beating they need to check.”

  “I don’t like it when you take a beating.” She cupped his good cheek in her hand.

  He rose up on an elbow suddenly. “Is that why you won’t go out to dinner with me?” His cool blue eyes waited for an answer.

  And, damn it, she’d walked right into that one. “I already told you why I can’t date. You don’t really want to start something with me, anyway.”

  “Yeah, I really do.”

  She shook her head. “The next man who has the pleasure of starting a relationship with me is getting a cynical girl with trust issues and a ticking biological clock. How’s that for sexy?”

  “Ari . . .” he whispered, trailing the back of his hand down her naked abdomen, “in the dictionary under sexy, there’s a picture of you in the warrior pose. And—hell—nobody has more baggage than I do.”

  “Awesome. Then we should definitely become a thing.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” He leaned over and kissed her, in spite of her sarcasm.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed. “I’ll go out to dinner with you on one condition.”

  “Anything.”

  “You tell me how you started fighting, and why you don’t like to be touched.”

  He stiffened in her arms. “Why would you want to hear about that?”

  “Because I’m interested in you.”

  He rolled onto his back, out of her grasp. “It’s not a nice story, Ari. No need to go there.”

  “Your call,” she said, sliding out of bed. “I’m going to use your fancy shower.”

  She thought he might follow, but she showered alone.

  NINETEEN

  “March, man. Fucking March.” Castro set the barbell back down on the squat rack with a grimace. “It’s the month that killed Julius Caesar, and every year I think it’s gonna kill me, too.”

  “Tell me about it,” O’Doul said. His body ached everywhere. A day off just wasn’t enough to repair the damage.

  “Sixteen games in thirty-one days,” Castro said, wiping off the bar with the towel. “Batter up.”

  When Castro moved out of the way, O’Doul adjusted his weight belt for his set. “You know who are a bunch of pussies?”

  He hefted the weight, and Castro moved in behind him to spot. “Who?”

  O’Doul hefted the weight three times before he answered. “Football. Players,” he huffed, guiding the bar back into its restraints. It fell with a clang, and then he could speak again. “One game a week,” he said, sweat pouring off him. “And average time on the field is eleven minutes. You believe that shit?”

  “No, I do not,” Castro agreed. “Let ’em try to skate forty minutes in a game, three and a half nights a week. They’d curl up in a little fucking ball.”

  “Your turn,” O’Doul said, giving Castro the weights. He wasn’t going to do another set, either. His hip felt tricky after last night’s beat down, and he was trying to take it easy. “Need a spot?”

  “I got it.”

  “Okay.” O’Doul wiped off his face with his T-shirt and went over to the mat to stretch his hip.

  “How are you today?”

  He looked up to find Nate Kattenberger watching him. “Good, sir. You?”

  “Can we talk for a second?”

  “Sure.” As if he’d ever say no to the owner. It was kind of weird to find Nate here on a weekday, wandering through the weight room. The man should be at his Manhattan skyscraper, changing the world or whatever. He held the stretch for another sixty seconds, then followed Nate into an alcove outside the training office.

  “I want to show you this chart,” Nate said, pulling up a file on a gleaming tablet the size of Brooklyn.

  “Okay.” He squinted at the screen, where bubbles of different colors floated on an axis. “What am I looking at?”

  “Ten years of history. Each dot is a team in a given year. They are plotted like this: injury days versus wins. Do you see the pattern?”

  O’Doul hated this little exchange where he was supposed to answer the questions correctly. Nate stood in front of him, arms crossed, squinting at O’Doul the way teachers used to look at him. As if he was measuring him and finding he came up short.

  He didn’t see the pattern. And then he did—the dots massed along a diagonal line. “Okay—yeah. The teams that had more injuries have fewer wins.”

  “Exactly. And that’s just logical, right? But look how strong that correlation between healthy teams and winning is. Do you think they’re just smarter—their GMs somehow chose players that don’t ever get injured?”

  “No.” He pointed at the chart. “They don’t have a fucking crystal ball in Dallas.”

  “Right,” Nate agreed. “But they’ve realized that doing everything under the sun to keep people healthy is going to pay off. That’s what we’re going to do, too. I think winning more games isn’t like the sports pundits like to make it. We have the skills. We just need to keep everyone in rotation.”

  “Okay.”

  Nate turned to him and lifted his smug chin. “That’s why the club needs you to do less fighting.”

  This again. “That’s a nice idea. But exactly how do you think I could avoid it?”

  “Let Crikey take some,�
�� Nate said immediately. “Coach asked you to, and you pushed back. I’m asking you to stop pushing back.”

  The billionaire always had a way of saying these things that sounded irrefutable. The tone got under O’Doul’s skin. He pointed at the chart. “But are you trying to tell me your fancy stats don’t apply to Crikey, too? He hasn’t scrapped much up ’til now. He could fuck up his body immediately. And every player counts, right?”

  Nate’s eyes widened, and there was humor in them. As if he was surprised that O’Doul would argue at all. “Every player counts. Of course they do. But he’s a young kid. If he gets hurt he’ll bounce back faster.”

  “Is there a chart for that, too?” Hell, he shouldn’t be a smartass to Nate, but it just slipped out. Any time anyone made him feel old, it got his back up.

  Nate actually laughed. “Probably. But we don’t need another chart to know which of you has played almost a thousand NHL games. That’s you, not Crikey. The next ten games are going to be the most important of the year. We need experience on that ice. Don’t sacrifice your body over some macho code. Skate more, take fewer punches.”

  “‘Some macho code,’” O’Doul repeated. “Why did you buy a hockey team if you don’t like fights?” Weren’t the Knicks for sale?

  “Fights are a sideshow, and you know it,” Nate said, all the humor gone from his face. “If they keep butts filling some of our seats, that’s their only value to me. The game is so much bigger than fighting. And I know you agree with me.”

  Maybe he did.

  “In fifteen years, fighting will be gone from the NHL,” Nate continued. “The Canadian juniors teams are already leaning away from it. Concussion research will condemn it. If you step back now, it’s not a failure. You’re just trendy. This is Brooklyn. Be a hipster. More yoga. Fewer stitches.” He picked up the tablet and slid it into a sleeve. “Gotta run. You and Coach had better teach Crikey a few things so we can stay in the right corner of that chart.”

  Without waiting for a response, he left the O’Doul standing there, trying to process everything the owner had just said.

  Then he went to find Crikey.