Body Checked (Center Ice Book 1) (24 page)

“How’s that for a new beginning?” he murmurs, licking his lips.  

I laugh and ruffle his hair. “I dunno . . . I might need a little more convincing.” 

He stands, and I reach for the front of his jeans. My fingers fumble for the zipper, but it’s surprisingly difficult using just one hand.  

“Let me help you with that.” He grins, closes his hand around mine, and helps me ease his jeans open. 

I groan and lie back, closing my hand around his thick shaft. He guides it toward my folds, and traces the tip against my skin, sending a fresh wave of shivers through me. 

“You’re sure you want this?” he whispers, looking down at me. He stands right in front of the edge of the bed, expression gentle, though a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. 

“Completely.” 

He guides himself inside me, eyes closing, head arching back, and shudders. I tense around him, doing my best to feel every inch. His ass tightens like a piston firing as he thrusts into me, again and again. 

What is it this man does to me? Not one hour ago I was trying to convince myself that I was over him. Clearly I was only lying to myself. This is what I want—Sergei, openly and honestly, no secrets between us, nothing but his skin on my skin and my heart in his hands. I can trust him. And finally, I think he can trust me. 

Sergei dives one finger between us and teases my clit once more. My eyes roll back as pleasure rips through me like a lightning bolt. Sergei groans, bucking deep inside my folds, and stays there, our gasps filling all the silences that settled between us over the past few weeks. 

I want this man. I want this. Now and always. 

Sergei pulls free of me and crawls onto the mattress beside me. It’s absurdly crowded with both of us here, but he makes it work, pulling me snug against his chest. “I love you, Jael. I’m ready to move forward with you.” 

“It won’t always be perfect,” I whisper. 

“No. It won’t. But for as long as we face everything together . . .” He nestles his nose in my hair. “We’ll find a way through it.” 

Sergei Drakonov. His name is on everyone’s lips, juicy and ripe, as he steps onto the ice. But no one’s screaming it louder than me. Not the rabid pack of potential consulting clients Todd’s entertaining at the back of the box. Not Monique or Beth, enthusiastic as they are. I am jumping up and down, good arm flying wild, frantic and happy and free. 

Sergei circles the ice, one skate in front of the other, and raises his stick high. His first game back after coming off the injury list—attendance is at an all-time high, and his prospects have never looked better. He lines up for the face-off. Crouches. Waits. 

The ref drops the puck, and he’s off, ready to score over and over for the team. 

THE END
 

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Sneak Peek: POWER PLAY (Center Ice, #2)
 

MARCUS WRIGHT has a lot to prove to the Washington Eagles: that he deserves to be on the front lines. That he’s no rookie anymore. That hockey isn’t just a white guy’s sport. But he’s also got a lot to prove to himself—that his kinks, his “inclinations,” his desires, don’t make him a monster. 

That he can escape what happened at college two years ago. 

Fiona Callahan has a lot to prove: that she’s every inch the investigative reporter her mother is. That she doesn’t need a man’s love half as much as she needs his respect. Better to be feared than liked, she always says. 

Until Marcus Wright makes her want to be a little bit of both. 

Marcus eagerly yields to Fiona’s dominating ways. He’s all too happy to please her—until she goes digging into his past for her latest scoop. But how much is Marcus willing to submit to please Fiona? And who’s really leading who? 

Power Play will release on Tuesday, September 22
^nd
, 2015. 

PREORDER NOW
 

Read on for a special sneak peek . . . 

Here’s something they don’t teach you in media training: never start an interview with a raging hard-on. 

Okay, so maybe “raging” is a bit of an exaggeration. I’m told I have a tendency to do that. (Other things people love to tell Marcus Wright: that I have a problem with authority, that I play hockey “pretty well” for a black guy, that my mother must be so proud of me for overcoming a hard upbringing—which always gives her a laugh as she gestures to our stately craftsman home in northern Virginia and asks, “This?”) But there is definitely some chub occurring in the groin region, and it’s significant enough that I can only see three options: 

1. Perform a discreet tuck as I cross my legs and be stuck in a horrifically uncomfortable legs-crossed-at-thighs pose for the duration of the interview. 

2. Drag the round green room table currently between us so it’s directly over my crotch, blocking any view of this rapidly worsening tenting action. 

3. Think about anything,
anything
other than the hourglass-shaped vision in forest green velvet seated across from me, currently fiddling with the voice recorder app on her phone, her red gel nails clacking against the screen the same way I’d like them to clack against my back while I thrust into her as she’s bound to the bed, writhing beneath me, her blood-red hair spilled across the pillow and oh fuck. 

Okay. Now this
definitely
qualifies as raging. Deploying emergency measures. Cold showers. My teammates scratching their sweaty junk in the Washington Eagles locker room. Grandma Beulah’s fake teeth resting on her plate at Thanksgiving dinner. Those ASPCA commercials with Sarah McLachlan singing.  

The cold, dead look in Rajani’s gaze the last time I tried to visit her. 

Too much, Marcus, too much. I prop one ankle on the opposite knee—no need for thigh-crossing now—and force my phoniest press box smile to my face. 

The reporter chick makes a tiny sound—like an “Ah-ha!” but
way,
way sexier—and sets her phone down in her lap. My god, those hips barely fit into her chair, and yet I could practically encircle her waist in my hands. And then that heaving bosom, shoving a faceful of creamy deliciousness in my general direction every time she takes a breath. 

She clears her throat and I realize that I have seriously, definitely just been caught staring at her beautifully proportioned boobs. Fuck. 

“Up here,” she says, her silky tone brushed with poison.  

I force myself to look into her face. But that doesn’t exactly help my problem, you see. Because she’s got clear, dazzling hazel eyes and perpetually arched brows and red lips and even redder hair, perfectly coifed. 

Everything about her—her posture, her challenging stare, her tiny little smirk—screams,
high-maintenance.
It screams
ballbreaker
. She is screaming every single one of those names for women you hear the guys warn you against, as if there’s only one kind of woman you’re allowed to like, and it’s the kind that’s slightly more animated than a blow-up doll. 

Me personally? I want to hear this goddess screaming my name. 

“Marcus Wright.”  

She’s not screaming it, but I’ll take it. I lace my hands together and position them strategically in my lap to conceal Boner 2: This Time, It’s Personal. 

“Interview with Marcus Wright,” she narrates, to her phone. “Fiona Callahan interviewing. December tenth, 2015.” 

“Miss Callahan.” I tilt my head to one side and let that dimple show on my left cheek. “What can I do for you?” 

Fiona tips her head to one side, smiling at me like I’m a toddler she’s barely managed to corral. Normally, I wouldn’t put up with anyone’s patronizing bullshit, but I have to admit, it looks pretty sexy on her. Like I’m being scolded by the world’s hottest substitute teacher. 

“As we all now know, the Washington Eagles team has been in a bit of an upheaval since the Thanksgiving Classic a few weeks back.” She speaks clearly, in the sort of tone that screams to be featured on the headline news, but there’s a hard edge to it. I can’t quite put my finger on it. “When Sergei Drakonov was abducted in front of a crowd of thousands—” 

“Look,” I interrupt, “it’s not my business to discuss what Sergei’s gone through. Even if I
did
know all the details.” 

Her nostrils flare wide; her smile evaporates in an instant. “
Don’t
interrupt me, Mister Wright.” 

Holy shit. That voice could freeze the tropics. I sit up a little straighter. 

“I don’t need to know the details of what happened during the Thanksgiving Classic,” she continues. “It’s been all over the news outlets. The tabloid sites. In the official league investigative files.” 

“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry—” 

“—So don’t assume you know what I’m going to ask you.” She narrows her eyes into tiny pinpricks of angry green. “Are we clear?” 

I blink, dazed. I don’t think I’ve been scolded like this since my mom first found me with a girlie mag in sixth grade. And I really, really like it. 

“Perfectly clear, Miss Callahan.” I flash her my dimpled smile again, hoping it’ll distract her long enough for me to cross my legs at the thigh. 

Because yeah. I’m even more turned on now than before. 

“Thank you.” And just like that, she’s smiling again, like nothing ever happened. “May I continue? Or is there something else you need to get off your . . . chest?” 

Her gaze flicks downward, for just the slightest of moments. But I know exactly where it went. And it sure as hell wasn’t my chest. 

Busted. Good thing this interview is audio only. 

“I’m good,” I manage to say. 

Fiona tosses her wavy hair over one shoulder. “Excellent. Now. While the Eagles’ newest left winger, Sergei Drakonov, has been on the injury list, you’ve really stepped up to fill the void on the Eagles’ front line.” 

“I’m just trying to do the best I can for my team.” It’s such a Media Training 101 answer, the easiest and simplest bullshit to peddle. But sometimes, it’s the truth. “I have a year under my belt, I’m more comfortable with our lineup and Coach Isaacs’s strategy, and I just really feel like everything’s falling into place. Yeah, it sucks not having Sergei on the ice with us these past few weeks, but we’re doing the best we can to make up for it.” 

“Well, it seems to be working out remarkably well.” Fiona smiles. “This is your second year with the Eagles, am I correct?” 

I give her a full few seconds before I answer, just to make good and sure she really is done. “Yes, that’s right. I was drafted for the beginning of last year’s season, straight out of college.” 

“No time in the farm teams. Very impressive, Mister Wright.”