I was never ashamed of what my people did for money, but I wanted to give them a better life, an easier one. I knew, no matter how content we were, that it wasn’t fair that my family had been consigned to a lifetime of hard labor because we were poor people who’d come from even poorer people, most of whom hadn’t graduated from high school because they were so busy working to put food on the table.
My junior college welding degree was a step up for the Wallace clan. On the day I walked across that stage, my parents were so proud of me, every bit as proud as the day I was drafted into the NHL a year later. But for me, hockey was the holy grail.
I thought joining a pro hockey team would finally give me that “you made it” feeling I’d craved for so long. But it didn’t.
Yes, I have good friends on the team, and I’ve loved every minute of my career as a Badger, but that sense of marching a beat out of step with everyone never went away. Most of my teammates come from money—at least, more than I had growing up—and are more serious about the tough guy hockey persona than I am. Even Cruise, the other oddball on the team, isn’t really a kindred spirit. I like Justin, but he’s an over-the-top extrovert, not a looks-before-he-leaps introvert like me.
That’s what made it relatively easy to accept the offer to play for Kansas City. I still hadn’t found that “just right” bowl of porridge. I’d hoped it might be waiting in Middle America, with a team that would be grateful for the skill and experience I bring to my game.
My whole life I’ve been pushing hard for professional domination, certain it would eventually give me what I need.
Now I’m beginning to suspect what I needed was waiting in this woman’s arms all along, this woman who makes me laugh and think, and who looks at me like I’m a plate of bacon in a room full of tofu.
“What are you thinking?” Bree props her bare feet on the dashboard as I pull out of the campsite, headed north.
“Tofu or bacon,” I murmur.
She scoffs. “Bacon. Clearly. Though, I will eat tofu if there’s enough sauce on it and the texture is extra firm and I’m starving. My turn—diamonds or sea glass?”
I smile. “Sea glass.”
“Me, too,” she says, clearly pleased by the answer. “I enjoy seeing something ordinary made beautiful.”
“I like that it only takes a decade or two to make.” I take her hand, loving the way it feels to thread my fingers through hers—so simple but so natural and right. “It gives me hope I might be able to accomplish something big in my tiny human lifetime.”
“If you’re as powerful and relentless as the sea.” She grins. “Which you are, I think. At least as relentless. I actually can’t believe you’re taking four whole days off from training. Is your fancy coach going to bust your ass extra hard when you get back?”
“He won’t need to. I’m good at busting my own ass. Speaking of—ass or chest?”
“I’m an ass woman, no doubt,” she says, returning to the game without missing a beat.
It’s one of the things I love about her—how much she loves to play.
Love…
That’s what this warm, giddy but grounded, just-right feeling is. I’m not falling; I’m already gone. I’m in love with Sabrina Marks, and maybe, she’s a little in love with me, too.
As she asks, “Okay, now something more hard-hitting—elephants or giraffes? Which has the cutest babies?”
I can’t resist leaning across the car to steal a kiss, making her laugh and slap my arm. “Drive, psycho. You can’t drive and kiss at the same time.”
“I can on this road. The speed limit’s only twenty-five.”
“It doesn’t matter, you still need your eyeballs.” She presses a hand to my chest, holding me at a distance when I try to lean in again. “No. Concentrate. Or pull over and make out properly. Kissing isn’t something that should be multi-tasked.”
“You’re absolutely right.” I pull over onto the shoulder and shift the van firmly into park. A beat later, she’s got her seatbelt off and is laughing against my lips as I pull her into my lap and drop my seat back at the same time.
“You’re too good at that.” Her eyes narrow as she straddles my hips. “How many women have you had in this front seat, Wallace?”
“None,” I say, teasing my hands beneath her T-shirt. “Or at least none that I can remember. I’ve already forgotten every woman but you.”
As a line, it’s a cheesy as hell thing to say.
But it’s not a line; it’s the God’s honest truth. What I feel for her, the way she makes my soul light up with her smile and my body catch fire with a glance is so much bigger and better than anything I’ve known. She’s like the moon moving between the sun and the earth, eclipsing everything and everyone that has come before.
“Me, too.” She bites her bottom lip as my hands drift higher, cupping her breasts through the bikini top under her clothes. “What are the chances someone’s going to drive by, do you think?”
I tease my thumbs over her tight nipples, cock thickening as she shivers in response. “Slim. The coastal campgrounds don’t get crowded until later in the season, and if we head to the back and draw the privacy curtain, we’ll be safe either way.”
Bree arches into my touch, her breath coming faster. “But what if someone thinks we’ve had…car trouble? Van trouble? Some kind of—God, it’s hard to think when you’re touching me like that.”
“Then stop thinking,” I whisper as I pull her down for a kiss and murmur against her sweet mouth, “No one is going to bother us. Van life rule number one: if the van’s a-rockin’ don’t come a-knockin’.”
She pronounces that, “the tackiest thing ever,” but doesn’t offer a hint of resistance as I slip off the seat and ease back into the living area, drawing her along with me toward the bed. In seconds we’re falling onto the mattress in a tangle of legs and busy arms, undressing each other with the speed and efficiency of two people who have been lovers for years.
And then I’ve got a super-powered condom in place and Bree is lowering herself gently onto my cock, wincing as she sinks down until every inch of my throbbing length is buried in her heat.
“Sore?” I fight to hold still and let her set the pace. No matter how desperate I am to lift my hips, to feel her riding me, I know she must be tender from last night.
Her breath rushes out. “A little, but not enough to stop.” Her lashes flutter as she rises up and slowly sinks back down, taking my breath away. “You feel so good.”
Fuck, she feels so good, too. Better than anything or anyone.
“I love being inside you.” I cup her breasts, rolling her nipples in gentle circles as she continues to move, her hips stroking faster. “I love feeling you come.”
“I love you, period,” she says, making my heart stop, only to jerk hard a moment later, beating even faster than it was before.
“I love you, too,” I whisper, spirit soaring as she smiles brightly enough to light the world with her grin. “I really do.”
“Me, too,” she says. “Now kiss me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I draw her down for a long kiss, summoning a blissed-out moan from her that is the best sound I’ve heard all morning.
The best and the sexiest, and as I pull her closer, taking one sweet nipple into my mouth and sucking her deep, I decide to start a Bree moan collection. I want to remember every time I coax that hungry sound from her lips, just like I want to remember every time I make her come.
Make her come trembling, shaking, calling out my name as her pussy grips my cock, strong and sweet.
“Yes, baby,” I groan, squeezing her ass in both hands, pulling her closer as her release rocks through her, struggling to hold on long enough to make her come a second time before we’re through.
But then she brings her lips to mine, kissing me with an abandon that makes a mockery of all my plans. I follow her over, calling her name against her lips, my cock jerking hard, and my balls clenching tight until I’m pretty sure every last bit o
f fluid in my body has left the building.
Quickly and efficiently, I slip away from Bree, dispose of the condom, wash up, and slip on a clean pair of boxers and shorts before rejoining her on the bed, where she is thankfully still stretched out naked, making no move to cover her beautiful body.
I kiss her stomach, inhaling deeply, relishing the scent of her.
“Do I smell like Christmas?” she teases, threading her fingers into my hair.
I glance up at her with a grin. “No, you smell like Bree and sex.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Is that a good smell?”
“The best smell ever,” I assure her, holding her gaze as I run a hand up her inner thigh. “So good, it makes me want a taste.”
“Are you sure?” Heat and uncertainty mix in her expression as I gently urge her thighs farther apart.
“I’ve never been more sure of something in my life,” I swear, and then I prove that every word I said was true. I devour her gorgeous pussy, making her come twice before she insists I get another condom and finish what I’ve started.
As we come together again, lost in the magic we make together, the deal is sealed.
For better or worse, I’m hers.
But I’m hoping for better, hoping and praying and wishing on every star that watched over us last night as Bree finally became something so much more than a friend.
Chapter 13
Bree
“No. No way.” I reach out, covering the bottom of Shane’s menu. “You are not allowed to order crabs. How can you call yourself Sheldon’s friend and then turn around and have his brothers and sisters for lunch?”
“These aren’t hermit crabs, they’re soft shell crabs,” he says, as if that makes his betrayal of Sheldon, my sweet hermit crab, and the only pet I’ve ever been able to keep alive for more than a few weeks, acceptable.
Before acquiring Sheldon at an abandoned exotic pet adoption event, I killed enough goldfish to clog three toilets. I am unreasonably proud of my crab’s survival, as well as his frisky love of climbing over the mountains of blankets I make for him on my floor. Sheldon has a lust for adventure, an obsession with the toys in his aquarium, and an undeniable personality that has ensured I will never eat a crab again.
And I can’t bear to watch Shane eat one, either.
“So they’re his cousins, not his siblings, but they’re still family.” I press down harder on the menu, ignoring the strange look the other couple on the windswept balcony shoots our way.
We chose this seafood shack based on the fabulous online reviews of their fish and chips, and we would have already ordered two baskets if those jerks hadn’t ordered soft shell crabs loud enough for Shane to overhear and start getting ideas.
Bad ideas.
“And Sheldon is my family,” I continue, “and you being my boyfriend confers honorary stepdad privileges in my crab child’s life. Do you really want to eat your stepson’s cousins? Is that the kind of life choice you’ll be proud to make?”
Shane smiles that new, wide-open, limitless smile of his and shakes his head. “No, it isn’t. You’re right, I’ll order the fish and apologize to Sheldon as soon as we get back to your place.”
I nod as I draw my hand away from his menu. “Good. But don’t apologize. It’s better if Sheldon never gets word of this. He can hold a grudge, and I really want you two to get along.”
Shane claims my hand, twining his fingers through mine. “Me, too. And I really like hearing you call me your boyfriend.”
I grin and lean in, forearms braced on the rough wood as I whisper, “Me, too. It’s ridiculous how much I’m enjoying it.”
“It’s not ridiculous, it’s awesome,” he whispers back.
“It is,” I say, voice still soft. “When we get back in the van, I’m going to call all my girlfriends while you drive, just so I can say the word ‘boyfriend’ six or seven times instead of texting it. It’s going to be amazing.”
He laughs. “Why are we whispering?”
“Because it’s fun to have secrets.” I wink and sit back as our waiter reappears with his humidity-curled order pad in hand.
“You two decided?” he asks, plucking a pen from behind his ear.
Shane orders the fish and chips with coleslaw, and I ask for the same but with the side salad instead of the slaw, and we turn our attention back to the waves crashing below the restaurant. We’re about a hundred yards up a sharp rise with a view of the sparkling waves, a curved bridge decorated with seashells, and the mouth of a river emptying out into the ocean. It’s the kind of simple but lovely scene that makes me wish I could write poetry as well as I appreciate it.
Which reminds me!
“Your book, I totally forgot.” I reach down into my purse, digging through a tangle of earbuds, a spare water bottle, several free shampoo samples stolen from some long-ago hotel, and dozens of loose pens and pencils before I find the slim volume I wrapped in tissue paper before I dashed out of the house yesterday. I pull it out, placing it on the table between us. “For you. Something simple but lovely I thought you might appreciate.”
“Thank you.” Shane reaches for the book, doing an excellent job of concealing his distaste for poetry as he unwraps it and reads the title. “Poems from a Shropshire Boyhood by A.E. Housman.”
“It’s good, trust me,” I say. “Read one.”
“All right.” He flips to a random page near the middle, and his eyes begin to scan from left to right.
“No, no!” I interrupt, making shooing motions with my hands. “Aloud. Poetry has to be read aloud.”
He huffs and thrusts the book back my way. “You read it.”
“No, you try. Please?” I thread my fingers together, refusing to take the volume. “I want you to try it, to roll the words around and see how they feel in your mouth.”
Shane arches a brow. “Did you mean for that to sound dirty?”
“Read,” I insist. “You can do it. Just pick a short one and go for it.”
Clearing his throat uncomfortably and casting a glance over his shoulder to where the other couple on the patio is too intent on stuffing their faces with innocent crabs to eavesdrop on our conversation, Shane glances down at the page and reads in a halting but sonorous voice, “You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over; You hearken to the lover's say, And happy is the lover.”
He looks up with a frown. “So which is it? A friend or a lover? Or is the friend also the lover? Are there two people there or just one?”
“Keep reading,” I murmur as I prop my chin on my hand. “All the way to the end. You sound good.”
“I do not. I sound constipated,” he grumbles.
“Not even a little bit. You sound like you have gorgeous, stress-free bowels. Read.”
He laugh-sighs, rolling his eyes before he continues in a more relaxed, natural tempo, “’Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never: I shall have lived a little while, Before I die for ever.”
He glances up, peering at me through his long lashes. “Can I stop now?”
“Is that the end?”
“Yes. It was short. That’s why I chose it. I figured it would be over fast.”
I scrunch my nose. “Yes, you can stop now. Message received. You’re not a Housman man. I’ll keep looking.”
“You might as well give up, doc.” He closes the book, setting it down beside the vinegar bottle. “I don’t get poetry. It’s not Housman’s fault. Or yours.”
“It is my fault,” I insist. “I should have realized that would be too dry. You need something more soulful, something that will speak to your inner poet.”
“I don’t think I have an inner poet.”
“Yes, you do,” I say with absolute conviction. “You’re a romantic, Victorian classics kind of guy. I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner.” I tilt my head, soaking in the way the sun catches in his hair, making him shine like a golden god descended to earth. “You’ve got a secret starry-eyed-dreamer heart, Mr.
Wallace.”
His lips quirk, but he doesn’t look away, owning his soft side the way he owns everything else. “But let’s keep that between the two of us, okay? If word gets out in the locker room, they’ll never let me hear the end of it. Most of my teammates are about as romantically inclined as pet rocks.”
But they’re not your teammates anymore, I almost say, but bite my tongue instead.
I don’t want to think about that, and I don’t want Shane to think about it, either. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to confront the fact that we’ve jumped into a relationship we’re going to have to try to keep alive while in two different time zones, but not today.
Today is a day for celebration and contemplation and replaying every moment of making love with Shane over and over again in a sweet and sexy loop. Being with him was even better than I’d hoped it would be, shattering all my preconceived notions and giving me a host of new things to fantasize about.
I want to do everything with him. I want to explore every inch of his magnificent body, experiment with every position, and pack as much erotic adventure into the next three and half weeks as humanly possible.
“If you keep looking at me like that, we’re going to have to get lunch to go,” Shane murmurs, the muscle in his jaw ticking as his eyes fill with a hunger that has nothing to do with food.
“Like what?” I feign innocence as I run a finger beneath the neck of my tank top, slowly tugging the V lower until I’m giving Shane a clear view down the front of my shirt to the skimpy bikini beneath.
He makes a growly sound of warning, and I beam like the shameless hussy I am.
I’m about to summon the waiter and request our order to go—food can wait until I’ve lured Shane into a deserted beach cove and had my way with him—when someone calls his name from over my shoulder.
Instantly, Shane’s face lights up, a smile stretching his full lips as he stands, arms extended in a prelude to a hug. “Yoda! Good to see you, man. I was just headed up Sunset Beach way to look for you.”
Puck Buddies Page 11
