Defensive Zone

by Catherine Gayle

  And now we were finally getting to the crux of the problem. “Which is?” I demanded, raising my brows with a hefty dose of impatience.

  I wasn’t an idiot. Whatever Dad had on Harry, it had to come down to the night Harry had been arrested and my father had to bail him out. I didn’t know what had happened that night other than the few details that seemed to be common knowledge—he’d been at a party, there’d been a noise complaint, and everyone at the party had been arrested. I’d tried to pry it out of Katie, but she claimed ignorance, too. Hell, so did Jamie, and every other guy on the team I’d tried to sweet-talk the details out of. Either they were damn good at keeping their lips zipped or they honestly didn’t know what else had been going on. All this secrecy had been driving me up the wall. It was past time for Harry to spill the beans, because none of my stalker friends had managed to pull up any dirt.

  Were there drugs at the party? I couldn’t imagine that being the case, or there’d have been some formal charges pressed against him, and there hadn’t been. So what was it? Why all the secrecy about that night? Dad knew, clearly, but he wasn’t about to spill.

  It was as if the details surrounding the arrest had just vanished into thin air. But no matter how deep I dug, I came up with nada. Just the bare-bones minimum, damn it all.

  “Which is,” Harry said, annoyance tingeing his tone in a way that only made him sexier somehow, “private. Otherwise known as none of your business.”

  “Oh, get over yourself,” I countered, and his eyes flickered. Yes! I was getting to him. One button at a time, I was figuring him out. I got up and headed for his kitchen, slipping past him to fix myself a glass of water. Might as well just make myself at home, because I had no intention of going anywhere until he saw things my way. I turned around and sipped, staring him down. “Here’s the thing. You and I both know we want each other. So nothing else should matter, including whatever the hell it is my father seems to think should matter. If you’d done something that bad, you’d still be in jail, or you’d be facing a trial, and you wouldn’t still be playing in the NHL. Definitely not for the Storm. Jim wouldn’t allow it. He’d have found some way to void your contract or trade you—”

  “Jim doesn’t know,” Harry cut in. “At least he doesn’t know yet, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Well, Jim doesn’t have to know just because you tell me.”

  “Christ, Dani, don’t you get it? All it’ll take is one word from your father, and Jim’ll be selling my contract to the first taker.”

  “Then we just have to make sure Dad doesn’t find out about us for a while, until I’ve convinced him this is a good thing.”

  “He will never see the two of us as a good thing. That’s a pipe dream.”

  “What he doesn’t know—”

  “He’ll know. He always knows.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Dad doesn’t know everything, no matter how much he may want you to think he does.”

  “He sure knows plenty about that party on Saturday night. And how we left it.”

  That took me by surprise, but only slightly. Who the hell would have told Dad about me throwing myself at Harry that night? More than likely, my father had just filled in a few blanks after hearing about the party, made a stab-in-the-dark kind of guess, and maybe he’d guessed right. But that didn’t mean he had to know about me hooking up with Harry if we wanted to keep it quiet—a point I was determined to make.

  “Even if he does,” I countered, “that’s no reason we can’t keep the rest quiet from him if we want to.” I gave Harry a meaningful look. “And I think I can be confident in the knowledge that we both want more than what we have now.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want,” Harry grumbled, kicking a toe against the wall in a way that made me think he wanted to do a lot more than that.

  “Bullshit it doesn’t.”

  “You just don’t get it. You think you can have anything and everything you ever wanted. Maybe that’s how things work in your family—”

  “It’s not about how things work in my family,” I shot back. “Good grief. My sister had cancer twice, in case you forgot. I don’t think anyone would ask for that. And my brother is in freaking Germany trying to work his way into a hockey career because no one’s going to just hand one to him simply because of who our father is. In my family, we work for what we want, and we don’t give up until we have it. That’s what I know. And I want you.”

  “Well, I’m telling you that you can’t have me.”

  “Is that a challenge? Because if so, game on.”

  This time, he punched the wall. Not hard enough to put a hole in the drywall, but I got the sense his frustration was reaching those proportions. “I’m not challenging you,” he bit off. “I’m just telling you how it is. Stating facts.”

  “I don’t accept that as a fact. Especially not after you gave me the best freaking orgasm of my life the other night.”

  “Well, it’s not ever going to happen again.”

  I threw my hands up in the air. “Why the hell not?”

  “Because your father knows all about my kink, and it’s not the kind of thing any father wants his little girl to be messed up in, okay?” As soon as Harry finished talking, he pinched his eyes closed and shook his head, like he couldn’t believe he’d let himself go there.

  “Kink?” I repeated, since it was the only word that had registered in my mind. I was right. Harry was a dirty, dirty bird. Now I was more determined than ever to convince him to forget about my dear old dad so we could get on with things.

  “Forget I said anything,” he said, taking my glass from my hands and grabbing hold of my elbow, trying to lead me to the door.

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  SHE DUG IN her heels, which meant I’d have to drag her—literally—in order to get her out of my house. “What kind of kink?” she demanded, ripping her arm away from me and crossing her arms in front of her. Which only put her tits on display even more than they already were. Her blue eyes flickered with curiosity. Damn but she was as bad as a cat, constantly poking her nose into things she had no business getting involved in.

  My kink was sure as fuck not anything I intended to share with her. “You need to go now. This isn’t going to happen, no matter how many arguments you make and no matter how much you think you want it. I’m not going there.” Not now, and definitely not with her. I’d already gone too far on Saturday. There was no undoing what I’d already done, but I could at least avoid taking things any further.

  “You already went there, didn’t you?” she countered.

  Huh? I shook my head, lost.

  But the most devious smile I’d ever seen ghosted across her entirely too kissable lips. Not just kissable, either. Those lips were made for all sorts of sinful things. “You threatened to spank me on Saturday. That’s it, right? You’re into that Fifty Shades stuff?”

  I grabbed her by the elbow again, determined to get her out of my house and never be dumb enough, let alone distracted enough like I’d been today, to somehow let her in again. But Dani refused to budge.

  “It is. Omigod, that’s it. Do you have a torture room? Show me.” And just like that, she was moving of her own volition—farther into my house, instead of out the front door. She headed down the hall toward the stairs, still talking, but it didn’t appear she required me to answer. “Is it all red like in the book? No, black’s more your style. Black and leather and whatnot. Or maybe navy blue. You’re a bold, neutral sort. But I knew you weren’t Mr. Rogers.”

  Mr. Rogers? What the hell was she talking about?

  By that point, she was already halfway up the stairs. I was still standing in my kitchen like an idiot, watching the sway of her hips and internally drooling over the sight of her curvy ass as she climbed. The skirt she had on swirled around her body, sending my thoughts into a tailspin, and all I could think about was digging my hands into those soft, round cheeks and holding on for dear life. Not a helpful thought at present.


  “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, finally getting my limbs to move so I could follow her.

  “Looking for your dungeon.” Her eye roll was evident in her tone, even if I couldn’t see the eyes in question to verify.

  “Dungeons are usually in basements,” I muttered. Good Lord, what was she expecting to find? I’d never read Fifty Shades of Grey or watched the movie, but I knew a few things about it. And none of what I knew fit my experience of the BDSM community. Most of the people I knew who participated weren’t exactly fans of the way our lifestyle had been depicted, so if that was where Dani’s expectations had formed… I didn’t even want to know what she was thinking. I reached the top of the stairs in time to find her opening random doors and peeking inside. “That’s just a guest room,” I pointed out as she poked her head in the first door on the right.

  “Nice and boring,” Dani replied, moving on to the next room.

  “You can’t just go barging through my house like you own the place, you know.”

  “Then tell me where your playroom is, so I can check it out.”

  “I don’t have a playroom. I don’t have kids, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  This time, she turned around so I could see the full effect of her eye roll. “I sure hope you wouldn’t involve kids in that kind of play.”

  Christ if that impishness didn’t turn me on. “Dani…” There was a warning in my voice, and I hoped she would heed it for once.

  As usual when it came to this girl, all my hopes were in vain. “Harry…” she repeated, mocking me and dragging out the final syllable. “If you don’t have a playroom, where do you do your…stuff, for lack of a better word?” Then her eyes lit up and practically bugged out of her head. “Oh! That’s why you got arrested, isn’t it? You must have been doing something really kinky to be arres—”

  “I didn’t get arrested for it,” I cut in. Not exactly, at least. Yes, I’d been in my costume and had a naughty schoolgirl draped over my lap so I could give her a spanking when the cops had burst into the room, but everything we were doing had been fully consensual and had nothing to do with the arrest. “Everything going on was entirely legal. And all parties were on board,” I added.

  “But you were doing it,” Dani filled in for me. “You were doing something filthy and hot and kinky when they arrested you.” She headed for the next door and poked her head inside it, not waiting for me to confirm or deny her deduction. That room was set up as an office, though, which accounted for the disappointed scowl she gave me as she closed the door behind her. She locked her gaze on me. “Your house is boring. Where’s the fun stuff?”

  “The fun stuff?” I repeated, sure I had to have misheard her. Because she was looking for a freaking dungeon, for God’s sake, and that wasn’t what most people thought of as fun. More like torture.

  Granted, I wouldn’t exactly fall into that category of most people, and I did think of my choice of activities as fun. Or at least as a release, even if it wasn’t exactly fun. But I’d always known I wasn’t quite normal by traditional definitions.

  Dani’s expression turned to full-on exasperation, her brows drawing together in a cute line. “You did say you’d spank me. Or don’t you remember that?” And then she pouted, her arms crossed and propping up her breasts again, putting them on display like a Thanksgiving turkey.

  Well, hell. That pout was going to fucking kill me. My mouth went completely dry, and my spanking hand tingled with anticipation. I licked my lips, trying to remember how to breathe when she was this close to me—and she was easily three or four feet away, all the way on the other side of the hall from me. And too damn close to my bedroom.

  This was bad. This was very bad.

  Especially because her eyes had followed the path of my tongue, and now she was staring at my lips like she wanted to claim them.

  And I wanted to let her.

  She crossed over, closing the distance between us, and fuck if she didn’t reach up and put her hands on the collar of my shirt. My heart stopped beating; my lungs refused to work. All the blood in my body headed straight for my dick, and in no time, I was as hard as I could ever remember being before.

  “Or is that only if I sit on your lap?” she asked, because I still hadn’t said a word in reply. “Wouldn’t coming over uninvited be bad enough to earn me a spanking? Going through your house, trying to find all your naughty toys? I’m a bad girl, Harry. I need to be punished.”

  “Cody,” I croaked. How the hell did she manage to do this to me? The act of attempting to keep myself in check while she came on hard had turned me into a bumbling, fumbling teenager again, tongue-tied and cracking voice included. I cleared my throat, wishing it would be so easy to clear my mind of all the things I wanted to do to her. But it didn’t work that way, and nothing—absolutely nothing—was proving to be easy when it came to dealing with Dani Weber. I swallowed hard, hoping it would clear my mind. “My name’s Cody.” Telling her that once before didn’t seem to have done the trick. I didn’t know why it was so important to me to have Dani call me by my name, but it was.

  “Is that what you want me to call you?” she asked, silky words rolling off a tongue that I wanted on me as much as I wanted my next breath.

  She leaned in close enough I could smell the sweet peppermint scent of her breath and the spicy perfume she wore, and it was all I could do to keep from backing myself against the wall in order to keep my hands off her.

  But if I did that, she’d just advance on me some more, and I’d be trapped, and then I’d have no choice but to turn things around on her.

  And now I was thinking about pressing her against the wall and making her come again. Fuck.

  I must have cursed out loud, because her lips curled up like she’d just put on the show of a lifetime at Fashion Week. Damn if this tenacious woman wasn’t determined to push all my buttons.

  “I’ll call you Cody if you do something for me,” she purred, her hands curling into my shirt like she wanted to rip it off me.

  “What?” I shouldn’t have asked her. I should have dragged her back down the stairs, walked her to the front door, and made her leave. Maybe Webs was right to give me threats and ultimatums, because I wasn’t doing a very good job of staying away from Dani.

  “Show me your whips and chains and stuff.”

  I laughed hard enough that she chuckled, too, but her laugh was rich and husky. Couldn’t stop myself from laughing, though, no matter how turned on I was. “Whips and chains? Just what exactly do you think I’m into?”

  “Well, it’s got to be pretty hard-core to get my dad so riled up. Right?”

  Had she never met her own father? The guy had threatened Jamie fucking Babcock to within an inch of his life back in the day. Blushing Babs, the kid with dimples, who would be any normal father’s wet dream when it came to the kinds of guys they should want dating their daughters. My kink didn’t need to be hard-core for Webs to hate the idea of me being with Dani. The fact that I had a kink at all was more than enough.

  “I don’t do whips and chains,” I said, attempting to ignore the warmth of her breath fanning over my neck and chin. “That’s not my thing.”

  “Then what is your thing?” She flattened one palm over my pec, the edge of her thumb brushing up against my nipple. Then she leaned in even closer so her lips were only a breath away from mine, and it was all I could do not to groan out loud. Her hands were small but entirely too sure of themselves. And her eyes. Holy hell, those eyes. They were deep and heavy-lidded with lust.

  She was a flirt on a whole other level from the women I typically spent time with. I wanted more of it at the same time as I wanted to turn her over my knee because she was trying to run this show. She wanted to be in charge here. That wasn’t about to happen.

  And if that wasn’t already enough, she wanted me to spank her. She’d already said so. More than once, actually.

  I wasn’t sure she fully understood what she was asking of me, though, and
until I knew she was one hundred percent on board, there wasn’t a chance I could follow through with that.

  So I did something I never imagined I’d do. “You have your ID with you?”

  “Yeah?” Her brows raised with curiosity. “But it’s my real ID, not a fake one, so I can’t get into any bars or—”

  “We’re not going to a bar,” I cut in. Even if we were, I knew ways to get someone underage inside. We’d done that any number of times over the years with various teammates who weren’t quite legal. Still, I couldn’t believe I was doing this. But I was. And there’d be no going back once it was done. Either it would do the trick and scare her off or… I couldn’t allow myself to think about the other eventuality. “Give me ten minutes to change, and I’ll show you.” Bad idea. Seriously bad idea, because if Webs ever found out…

  So I’d have to be sure he didn’t. Ever.

  Her entire face lit up like a Goddamned Christmas tree. “Really?”

  I was definitely going to regret it, even if this convinced Dani once and for all that she needed to stay the hell away from me. But I pried her fingers off my shirt and separated myself from her. “Really. Ten minutes. I’ll show you.”

  Before I had a clue what she intended, she popped up on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on me that had me aching with a kind of need I couldn’t ever give in to. Her tongue pressed against the seam of my lips, and like a total glutton for punishment, I opened and let her in. The kiss was both happy and greedy, at once. And hungry. Holy shit, the way she tangled her tongue with mine left me breathless and frantic, our teeth knocking together with wild abandon. She sucked my lower lip between both of hers, and I imagined how it’d feel if she sucked my cock like that.

  I had to stop this. Now. Or else I’d forget all about my plans and take her down the hall without further delay.