by Maria Luis
Simple fact is, I don’t trust her sudden change of heart.
I climb into my truck, tugging the door shut. The moment the engine kicks into gear, I’m cranking up the heat. Hockey player or not, I’m not a fan of my balls freezing into nonexistence from the cold. “Gwen.”
“Marshall.”
I resist a smile at her perfunctory tone and cut straight to the chase. “Why are you calling me?”
There’s the sound of squeaking on the other end of the line, like she’s shifting in a chair. “Can’t I call a friend?” she finally says.
“Are we friends? Last I checked, you were avoiding me like the plague.”
“I wasn’t . . . I’m not . . .” She blows out a heavy breath. “There’s this thing tonight, and I was wondering if you might want to go with me.”
My pulse kicks into gear. Is Gwen asking me on a date—again? I run one hand through my hair. There’s a good chance I’ve entered the Twilight Zone. No other explanation for it. “What’s this thing?”
“Ice sculptures,” she clips out quickly. “I saw it online today while I was at work, and I’ve never been. I thought, maybe, it might be fun to go with someone.”
I want to ask if I was her first choice or if she’s asking simply because no one else will go with her. I don’t, mostly because I’m not about to show her my ace. Namely, that I’m way more intrigued by her proposition than I should be after she turned me down the other night.
After everything with Dave, I want this. Hell, I need this. Skimming my palm over the steering wheel, I seal my fate with five words. “Where should I meet you?”
7
Gwen
Twinkling lights wind through the trees above me as I wait for Marshall in Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall. Clasped between my hands is a Styrofoam cup filled with hot chocolate; clamped between my legs is a second one for Marshall.
I don’t even know if he likes hot chocolate.
Bringing the cup to my lips, I blow away billowing steam and brace myself for a hot sip. I need the scalding heat, anything to keep myself from obsessing over one thought: what in the world am I doing?
Asking Marshall out on a date—for a second time in a week?
I’m not even the sort of woman who asks a man out at all.
But here I am, camped out on a bench along one of Boston’s busiest tourist spots, waiting for the NHL’s most charming playboy to come and find me. Laughing awkwardly, even though I’m alone, I tap my cell phone to life and peer down at the text he sent me ten minutes earlier.
Parking now. What are you wearing?
He could have easily asked where I’m sitting—answer to that would be next to the Starbucks because I am nothing if not a traitor to every Bostonian around.
“That’s not his way,” I mutter to myself, sipping more of the hot chocolate.
I’ve known Marshall for years, and my first memory of him isn’t hockey-related. No, not at all. Accounting 201. While I’d known even then that PR was my future, I’d still been required to take certain business courses.
Accounting it was, then.
On the first day of class, Marshall sat directly behind me. Big, muscular. Without even knowing who he was, it’d still been obvious to me that he was an athlete. Mere mortal men don’t look like they can bench-press women over the age of twenty.
Marshall did.
His desk had creaked with his shifting weight, and the next thing I knew, his face was in my periphery, grinning devilishly as his full lips formed the words, “Gotta pen I can borrow?”
My eyes had caught on the pen hooked behind his right ear. “Think you’ve got that one covered,” I’d told him dryly, “but nice try.”
Marshall Hunt wasn’t a quitter.
For the next week, he purposely stalled by the doorway next to the trashcan. Only when my gaze clashed with his did he theatrically dig out a pen from his backpack and drop it into the garbage.
Every day I gave him a new pen.
The next day, he trashed it, making sure I witnessed the travesty to poor pens everywhere, and then asked me for another.
As a way to start up conversation with you.
Seeking out my hot chocolate like it’s spiked with booze, I try not to think of the disappointment in Marshall’s pewter eyes when I’d clued him in that I wasn’t single a few weeks into the semester, and that I was dating his teammate.
Ironic how we’ve come full circle.
“Gwen?”
I jolt at the sound of his voice, though I’ve been expecting it now for nearly fifteen minutes. My gaze lifts from my cup and collides with the bulge in his jeans.
He’s right in front of me, literally inches away.
And so is his jean-covered package.
Feeling heat rise to my cheeks, I hike my gaze up past his belt buckle, the Blades hoodie spanning his wide chest, and then up to his face. Chiseled features greet me, along with an arched brow and a twinkle in his gray eyes.
Oh, yeah.
He totally caught me ogling him.
Embarrassment mingles with pride as I purposely take a long pull from my drink, daring him to call me out for my shameless once-over.
Thankfully, he lets me off the hook with a flashy grin and a nod to the cup between my legs. “That for me? You shouldn’t have, Gwenny.”
Without waiting for an answer, he drops to his haunches, without a care to anyone who might be watching. The air vacates my lungs in a swift exhale when his big hands settle on my knees and then inches them wide.
The hot chocolate drops from its tight hold, right into his grasp, and in the smoothest move I’ve ever seen, he slides his free hand up my thigh, blunt-tipped fingers skimming my skirt. He watches me over the rim of the cup as he takes a long pull of his drink.
The moment is over within seconds.
Marshall takes the empty spot beside me on the bench, his hands wrapped around the Starbucks blend, his thighs spread wide, his right pressed to my left. Totally casual, as though he hasn’t made my legs quiver or my heart race with something.
Need. Lust.
Two things I’ve always been very careful not to allow myself to feel around Marshall Hunt.
I’m so consumed with sudden images of him between my legs in a very different NSFW-way that I catch only the tail end of his sentence: “How long have you been a wannabe Aaron Burr?”
I blink, turning to him. He’s got a beanie hat pulled down over his ears. I want to say that it makes him look younger than he already is—like he’s back in college—but that’d be a boldfaced lie.
The hat only accentuates his handsome, pretty-boy features. The straight slope of his nose, somehow unbroken from countless battles on the ice. The square jaw. The high cheekbones.
He belongs on a billboard.
Realizing that he’s watching me, waiting, I scramble to think of something to say besides you’ve made me horny and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t say that, thank God. Instead, I opt for the safer, “What do you mean, Aaron Burr?”
He holds up his cup, giving it a little side-to-side wiggle. “Starbucks, Gwen. As a local, you know better than to betray our beloved Dunkins.”
Funny how I’d thought the same thing as I purchased our drinks.
“Not that I’m complaining,” he continues with a wink in my direction. “It’s cold as a witch’s breast out here and this definitely helps.”
“Tit.”
He lowers the cup to his thigh. “What?”
“Tit,” I repeat, hating the fact that he’s managed to throw me off-kilter. I glance at the crowd wandering past, heading for the sculptures along the harbor, and wonder how no one has noticed that the Blades’ new favorite player is within their midst. “The phrase is, ‘cold as a witch’s tit.’ Not breast.”
Marshall only crosses his leg, his left ankle on his right knee. His smile is slow, flirtatious, and just before he tips the cup back up to his lips, he murmurs, “I know.”
Of course he does.
He gives a low, masculine laugh. “Worth it.”
I swallow a smile. “Anyone ever tell you before that you’re a jerk?”
“Once or twice.”
“Only once or twice?”
His fingers tap out a rhythm against his raised calf. “Pretty sure you’re not supposed to insult your date, Gwenny. It goes against every date code there is.”
Just like that, he manages to deflate my ease.
I’m on a date with Marshall Hunt.
And I’m not even stressing over his celebrity-status as a pro-athlete. Nope. The only thing bouncing around my skull is, I’m on a date with Marshall Hunt, the guy who drove me nuts all senior year and hasn’t stopped since.
Okay, maybe “drove me nuts” isn’t entirely correct.
It’s just that . . . over the last six years, Marshall has always popped up at times when he’s least expected.
A random date I’d gone on with a man nearly twice my age. One minute I’d been contemplating whether or not I actually wanted to sleep with the successful real estate broker, and, in the next, Marshall was pulling up a chair and sitting beside me, introducing himself to my date and ultimately ruining everything.
There was a year or two in our timeline of sort-of-friends where we’d had no contact. But then the auction had occurred last year. The Blades had “sold” themselves off to the highest bidder, all in the name of charity for Boston’s first responders, and Zoe had bartered me off to Marshall.
Once again renewing our years’ long push-and-pull.
Needing another moment to work over my thoughts, I finish off my hot chocolate, which isn’t so hot anymore, and then tuck the cup between my legs, just as I’d done to his.
“I’m surprised you even agreed to meet me tonight,” I say, going for honesty. Another rule of life I’ve thrived on after countless therapy sessions. “You were pretty clear the other day that you were no longer interested.”
I sneak a glance at him, hoping to see something in his handsome expression that’ll tell me I’m wrong, that he still wants me.
And if he does? What do you plan to do with that knowledge?
My cup crumples as my knees dart inward.
I don’t know. I don’t know what I’ll do at all, but for the first time in my life, I’m flying by the seat of my pants—or skirt, as the case may be. All I know is that the panic I felt when he walked away at the engagement party is not something I want to experience again.
Marshall plucks the cup from between my knees, holding it up with a raised brow before basketball-tossing it into the trash bin opposite us. Naturally, he’s got dead-center aim, and it disappears into the depth of waste.
“I had a pretty shit day,” he says, repeating the NBA-worthy throw with his own cup. “Figured if there was anyone out there who could make it better, it’d be you.”
Unexpected warmth squeezes my heart. “That’s so sweet—”
“As friends.”
What? My mouth falls open, and there’s no way that I look anything but ridiculous right now. “What do you mean as friends?” My voice emerges loud enough that a few people walking past slow down and crane their heads to look back at us.
“Lover’s spat,” Marshall tells them with a little finger wave in our direction. He goes as far as to wrap his arm around my shoulders and yank me up against his hard body. “You know how it goes.”
You know how it goes?!
What is he—is he . . . I can’t even get my thoughts to straighten out, I’m so flustered. But I do manage to untangle myself as I shoot over to the far side of the bench. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Do not revert back to the Old Gwen.
It would be so easy to do just that. To lay into him with a sharp tongue and a one-liner about not needing him as a friend, that I have plenty of friends (I don’t), and that I especially don’t need his friendship when he led me to believe that this was, in fact, a date.
But I refuse to be that person.
This is a test, that’s all.
A test of my self-control and respect for my self-worth, and there is no way I’m going to give him even the smallest glimpse into my shock . . . and, yes, my disappointment. I press a hand to my chest, feeling the erratic pounding of my heart through my coat. Yup, disappointment exists.
I’m not happy about it.
Determined to show how unaffected I am by his announcement, I flick my red hair over my shoulders and make a point to meet his gaze. “Friends is good. I mean, we haven’t even gone to the sculptures but I can already tell that . . .”
I purposely dangle that unfinished sentence in his face, letting him make of it what he will.
Marshall doesn’t let me down.
Square jaw clenches. Pewter gray eyes narrow.
No doubt about it, if I played hockey and he was coming my way, I’d be down in the fetal position in three seconds flat.
Model-handsome or not, he’s got the whole I-will-make-you-piss-yourself glare down to a T.
Not that I’ve pissed myself.
Nor do I intend to.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he says, voice hard.
I pretend to admire my cuticles, turning them this way and that. He will not see how much I was looking forward to tonight. Obviously, I was mistaken—Marshall isn’t a forever kind of guy.
He’s not even a now kind of guy.
Not when push comes to shove and I finally throw myself at him.
Guess he wanted the chase like every other guy in existence.
To my surprise, he captures my wrist, halting my inspection of my manicured nails, and tugs me forward, toward him.
I don’t have the chance to preserve my balance.
My palms land flat on his thighs, my thumbs dangerously close to that bulge I came face to face with earlier. A ridiculous oh! escapes my lips, and my tits, as he so expertly convinced me to say earlier, graze his hard chest.
Between the icy temperature and the fact that Marshall’s warm breath whispers against my forehead, is it any wonder that my nipples turn into hard peaks? Thank God for heavy winter layers because otherwise . . . well, you know.
Diamonds, my friends.
My nipples are as hard as diamonds right now.
Forcing nonchalance into my voice, I quip, “Can I help you, Marshall?”
His hands slip up from my wrists to my shoulders, and I fight off a shiver. A shiver from the cold, obviously. It has nothing to do with the hotshot hockey player a breath away.
“You wanted tonight to be a date.”
I don’t fall for his cool-as-a-cucumber tone. “You obviously didn’t,” I retort, trying my best not to give in and sniff his cologne like a crazy lady. “Friend.”
“You do realize that I’ve been trying to make this happen for years now, right? And then the minute that I decide I’m no longer playing our games, you decide that you suddenly want me?” The heat of his palm coasts down, down, down, over my back. I don’t have a chance to miss the loss of him before he’s cupping my butt, and this time . . . this time the oh that trips off my tongue is more lustful sigh than anything else. “Exactly,” he continues huskily, “you want what you can’t have, Gwen.”
No. The word reverberates in my chest. No, no, no. He’s lumping me in with who I’ve been, the self-centered woman with an icy shield of armor. “Marshall—”
“So prove it.”
My nails bite into his thighs as I rear back to meet his gaze. “What?”
“That you want me.” His gray eyes glitter with an inscrutable emotion. “If you want to date me, if you really want to see where this might go, it’s on you this time.”
Hadn
’t I said this exact thing the other night? That I need to woo him?
Although, to be fair, that was the plan tonight.
Marshall Hunt has always been one step ahead of me.
“Okay.” I swallow, hard. “Okay, I can do that.”
“And we’re not hooking up until I know you’re in this for real.”
Is it possible for your head to burst from too much blood pounding furiously through it? Humiliation, pure and raw, clouds my vision and unsettles my stomach. Good thing I waited to eat, in the hope that Marshall and I might grab something, because I feel utterly sick. Nerves, I think. Also a good deal of self-disgust that I’ve done so much harm to others in my life that this is how Marshall figures he can trust me.
Ahem. I think that was the sound of my heart splintering.
I avert my gaze, nodding to myself like yeah, yeah, makes all the sense. When, in reality, my heart is screaming what do I have to do to not be treated like my mother?
“No hooking up,” I mutter, stealing back my hands to push my hair behind my ears. “Got it.”
My shoulders twitch when I feel strong fingers cup my jaw, softly encouraging me to meet even softer gray eyes. Marshall’s thumb brushes my bottom lip, and I fight the urge to touch my tongue to the calloused flesh.
“I want you, Gwen. You have no fucking idea how much I want to taste you.” His accented voice thickens into a low growl. “I want your nails carving down my back as I take you, and I sure as hell want to know what it’s like to have you come all over my cock.” He leans in, his mouth nearly brushing mine, tantalizing me with the endless possibilities, before he retreats. “But I want what no one else has ever had.”
A shiver ripples down my spine. I tell myself that it’s the cold. I tell myself that it has nothing to do with the heated passion in his eyes and the way my core pulses with need. I’ve never, not once, felt the way that I do in this moment—like I’m on the cusp of something huge and I’ll never be the same once I take what he’s offering me. “And what’s that?”
