Dirty Score, A Rough Riders Hockey Novel (11 page)

That last comment knocked the wind from Rafe’s chest. Mia never brought up Tate’s ex-wife. She’d always been incredibly sensitive over how that loss had nearly crippled her brother. But she wasn’t pulling any punches, and Tate’s gaze warred with Mia’s.

“I know what happened with Lisa was hard on you,” Mia said, her anger turning to pain in her eyes and bringing tears that welled but never fell. “And I know there has to be a transition period. But honest to God, Tate, I’m tired of waiting for you to turn back into the guy you were before that bitch took over your life.”

A waiter passed, and Mia flagged him down. “Cancel my order please. I have to go.”

Rafe rubbed a hand down his face, searching for a way to pull this from the fire, but came up with nothing. He could barely tackle his own emotions over this revelation. He sure as shit couldn’t take on Mia’s hurt over losing Tate or Tate’s inability to move on after Lisa.

She gave Joe a sad smile and patted his hand. “Can we have dinner tomorrow night? Before you catch your plane?”

Joe looked miserable. He lifted a hand to her face and wiped at her cheek. The gesture made Rafe realize her tears had spilled over and it wrenched his gut. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Mia cry.

“Of course, honey.” Joe kissed her forehead. “I’m so proud of you. And your brothers are too. It’s just…this Cup.”

Mia nodded and stood.

“Mia.” Tate planted his elbows on the table and rubbed his face with both hands. “Don’t go. I’m sorry, I’m…” He looked up at her. “I’m an ass. I’m stressed, and I’m worried about you and—”

“And we’ll talk about it later,” she said with finality. The same finality she’d used when she’d told them she was moving across the goddamned country. “After we’ve both had time to cool off.”

She looked at Rafe, and the glimmer of tears still in her eyes made everything inside him twerk. “And you’re wrong too. It
is
for the money. A lot more money.” She shot one last look at Tate. “Neither one of you knows me the way you think you do. I’m beginning to think you never did.”

M
ia had finished half
a bottle of wine by the time she’d exhausted her Internet apartment search in Los Angeles. She was going to move into her friend’s two bedroom until she got settled in the job, but Mia wanted to stand on her own. She’d already let Tate pay for her education, which had been difficult for her independent spirit. Living on her own, especially in light of how Tate viewed her, was more important than ever.

His hurtful words—or more to the point, their accuracy—stabbed at her heart again, and tears pushed into her eyes, blurring the screen. She pulled another Kleenex from the box on the coffee table and pressed it against her face. As soon as she’d gotten home, she’d ditched the high heels, washed her smeared makeup off her face, coiled her hair into a bun on top of her head, and curled into a corner of the sofa with her laptop.

She closed her browser, picked up her phone, and scrolled through Instagram, trying to keep her mind busy until she was too tired to keep her eyes open or Tate got home and they started fighting again—whichever came first.

A knock at the door made her jump, then she rolled her eyes. “He forgot his key?” she muttered, setting down her phone to start toward the door with her wine, calling, “Would serve you right if I left you in the hall.”

She opened the door, but instead of Tate, she found Rafe, and her stomach squeezed. He’d loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. His expression was tight and dark. Turbulence brewed in his eyes. His intensity pounded awareness through her body, but her heart balked. Mia had been hurt enough. Great sex and good looks wouldn’t fill the hole there.

She glanced behind him into the hall, suddenly self-conscious about her own miserable state of red swollen eyes and blotchy face. “Where’s Tate?”

“He and Joe went to have some father-son time.” His voice sounded as rough as the stubble over his jaw. “They’re hitting a few of their favorite pubs.”

“Well. Good for them.” Mia was done with Tate and his misplaced overprotectiveness. Maybe Joe could whip him into shape. Nothing else had worked. “Wish I’d known, because you are
definitely
staying in the hall. Good night.”

She shut the door in his face.

But Rafe’s hand hit the wood before the latch caught, and pushed it open. “No, I’m not.” He stepped in, nudging Mia backward. “We have shit to talk about.”

She set her wine down on the kitchen bar, wandered deeper into the condo, and crossed her arms. “Like how I wish I could go back in time and walk away from you at the hotel when you asked for help? Or how I wish I’d never taken you back to my room?”

“No.”

He followed her, advancing in a slow, predatory way that unnerved her. She felt brittle and weak. She felt alone and unwanted with a difficult future ahead and no strength to face it.

“Like how you lied about not using me as a rebound fuck,” he said, voice tight and rising. “Like how you came here with a deliberate plan to fuck me out of your system then move three-
fucking
-thousand miles away.”

The rasp of his voice as he tried to keep it down scraped over Mia’s skin. The scent of his cologne and the heat of his body teased her with memories. She wanted to cave. She wanted to lean into him and feel his arms around her. Wanted to feel his lips against her skin. So she kept inching away, because that wouldn’t solve any problems, and that desire was how she’d gotten here in the first place.

The vortex of emotions she’d spent the last hour calming threatened to slip from her control again. “You’d have to be inside my head to make that call. And you’re not. You haven’t even talked to me in a damn year, so don’t you dare stand there and tell me you know my motives better than I do.”

“Then
why
?” he yelled, making Mia flinch. Her heart stuttered and raced ahead. “
Why
did you sleep with me after twenty years and hundreds of other opportunities when you didn’t? Why do it right after you broke up with Sam and before you move across the
fucking country
?”

Pain seeped into his voice, and Mia’s strength waned, all the hurt rushed back.

“Because Tate was right,” she yelled. “And I’m sick of guys walking away from me because my heart is somewhere else. I did it because I wanted a fresh start, okay? I just wanted to finally let go.”

His hands closed on her biceps, and he gave her a shake. “Let go of
what
?”

“
You.
” She threw her arms out to break his hold. “
You
, you idiot.”

He straightened away from her, his expression shifting from confused to hit-with-a-puck-between-the-eyes.

Mia crossed her arms again, pulling them tight across the pain ripping through her heart. What the hell difference did it make if he knew how she felt now? She was going to be across the damn country soon.

“It was stupid, I know that now.” The admission swamped her with guilt. She was better than this, and she didn’t know how she’d been drawn to such lows. “I’m sorry I dragged you into my mess. I’m sorry it’s become a problem between you and Tate. I’m sorry it’s created trouble for everyone. But you guys, you all just go about your life, and I’m always an afterthought.”

The truth hurt, and she couldn’t hold the tears back. “Joe loves his job and deals with important cases. He travels all over, and he’s got the perfect son. Tate has an awesome career and the best father a guy could ask for. He could also have any woman he wanted if he’d let go of Lisa’s betrayal. You get Joe and Tate and any puck bunny you smirk at.” She wasn’t going to go into all the ways her life failed to measure up. “I get the leftovers. I get the occasional visit from Joe, the occasional call from Tate, and then you dropped me completely. Which reminds me,” she said, anger renewed, “fuck you, Savage. You have no right to come here and—”

In one step, Rafe closed the distance. She startled, but before she could react, he clasped her face in both hands…and kissed her.

The gears of Mia’s brain stalled, and a murmur of surprise escaped her lips. She fisted her hands in his blazer, trapped between shoving him away and sinking in.

Before she’d decided, he broke the kiss abruptly.

“Stop,” he said, a little breathless. One hand pushed into her hair. He dropped his forehead against hers, and his eyes closed. “Just stop.” He pulled back only far enough to focus. “Go back to the part about why you came. Why you slept with me. Why you’re
really
pissed at me right now.”

“Why? Just so I can humiliate myself again? Forget it. And don’t tell me what to do. I’m sick of you and Tate throwing your weight around. If you didn’t hear what I said the first time, too damn bad.”

He pulled her in for another kiss. This time, she pushed at his chest. But he wrapped his free arm around her waist and hauled her off her feet.

She turned her head to escape his mouth. “Rafe—”

He dropped to the sofa, pulled her in to straddle across his lap, and held her there.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he told her.

“Then you’re going to have another black eye soon, because if Tate walks in on us like this, he’s going to go ape shit—talk with Joe or no talk with Joe.”

“So you
did
come to fuck me out of your system,” he said, ignoring her warning. His eyes were narrowed and intense, and she couldn’t read him. And those stupid kisses were messing up everything.

“You have a hearing problem…among others.”

He huffed a laugh, and his lips quirked on one side, but it wasn’t a smile. His eyes were still dark as they lowered to her mouth. “I always did love that smart mouth of yours.” He lifted a hand to her face and ran his thumb over her lips. A rough, slow rub that pulled her mouth open. “Such a dirty, sassy, smart mouth.”

His thumb moved across her cheek, but he didn’t meet her eyes. His cock was right where it should be, riding the heat between her legs. And he was hard. His expression, his voice, his touch, everything about him told her he was hungry. And her body was conducting a mutiny. She wanted him worse right now, even hurt and pissed off, than she ever had—including their first night. Because now she knew exactly how much pleasure he could deliver. Now she had memories of his passion. And it took every sliver of resistance not to rock her hips against him. Not to bend her head and taste him.

“Did it work?” His question was low and rough.

“What?” She frowned, pushing against his chest to lean away. “What are you—”

His gaze cut to hers, deliberate and hot. “Did it work? Did you fuck me out of your system?” He waited only a heartbeat to continue. “Because you are infused in my blood.”

“That’s lust, Rafe. You should recognize it by now. And it’s not what I want anymore. It’s not enough. I may want you, but I don’t like you right now. And honestly, anyone who could pull away from me so completely for so long, as if I didn’t exist, doesn’t even deserve any part of me.”

“I did that because I had to,” he snapped. “Because talking to you and seeing you got too hard. I knew I’d never be able to have you all to myself with this twisted little family we’ve created. I couldn’t stand seeing you with other guys when you came to town. And I couldn’t stand the way you turned away from me and went running to your boyfriends when not one of them was there for you the way I was. That night in New York, I realized my expectations were way out of whack. And I knew I had to put some distance between us. The fact that you were mad at me over it only helped.”

His anger turned sullen, and Mia’s mind darted to the last time she’d seen him. To the week from hell in her previous apprenticeship and how she’d called him in a moment of weakness when her boyfriend at the time had been too busy at work to take her call. Then her mind jumped forward, to the way he’d shown up in New York that very night to make sure she was okay, only to have her boyfriend show up fifteen minutes later.

Before she lashed out at him for not telling her how he felt, she caught herself. He couldn’t tell her. Not without messing things up in their family. Just another illustration of how Tate and Joe always came first. In this case, he’d also been thinking of Mia. She knew him, and she knew Rafe wouldn’t have wanted to mess up her relationship with Tate and Joe either.

His hand slid around the back of her neck and into her hair. It felt so good, Mia’s eyes closed. All her anger waned, and desire spiked in its place. She couldn’t change him. She didn’t even want to. His loyalty was one of the things that made him Rafe. One of the things that made her love him. She only wished…

It was stupid to wish. She felt like she’d been wishing her whole life.

She had to stop wishing and just accept reality.

He shifted beneath her, rubbing against her, reminding her that this was her current reality. And that she could either take what she could get or get nothing.

When his strong hand pulled her head to his, she didn’t resist. But he only pressed his forehead to hers and massaged her scalp.

“This past week has been hell on earth.” The distress in his voice pulled her eyes open, and she found his closed in a look of pain. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I feel like shit over this situation with Tate and how much it’s hurting you. I don’t know what to do to make any of this right.” His jaw clenched. “I fucking slept with my phone, hoping you’d call or text me back.”

A huff of humor and disbelief passed her lips, and her heart skipped.

But Rafe didn’t smile. He opened his eyes and looked deeply into hers with a kind of misery she understood too well. “I can’t believe you’re leaving.”

Her heart wrenched open against her will. She framed his face with her hands, tilted her head, and kissed him. The hand at the back of her head tightened and pulled her deeper into the kiss as he opened to her. The sparks instantly caught fire. Their tongues met, and hunger exploded deep in Mia’s body.

A sound of longing and desire rolled in Rafe’s throat. A growl that reverberated through her. He released her waist and gripped one of her wrists, but just left his hand there as he kissed her and tasted her and moaned with the pleasure of it. All Mia’s worries and hurts fell away. She could only focus on the heat and taste of his mouth. The way he kissed her like he never wanted to stop. Like he couldn’t get enough.

When he broke the kiss abruptly, Mia fell into him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed his jaw, his neck. Licked the spot behind his ear.

He groaned and lifted into her.

“Oh…” she breathed, swamped in the delicious pleasure he pushed through her lower body.

His fingers flexed and released. “Mia, God,” he rasped, his voice low and hungry. He combed his hand through her hair and wrapped his arm around her head, clutching her close. “Need you.”

That didn’t just snap her restraint, it bulldozed every barrier. She turned her head and kissed him again, open and hot and wet, while she dropped her hands to his waist and worked his belt open.

He broke the kiss again murmuring her name. “Mia, Mia, Mia…”

“Wallet,” she managed through her quick breaths.

She flipped his button open, pulled his zipper down, and moved his clothes out of the way to slide her hand over his thick, hot length.

Rafe’s hips pulsed. He clenched his teeth around a curse and dropped his head against the sofa, eyes closed, face tight with pleasure. The sight pumped lust and power and need through her body.

“Condom,” she reminded him, anxious to get him where he belonged. Anxious to close all the distance between them, to bond with him the way they had the first night.

He lifted his head, his eyes heavy lidded. “Do we need one?”

Her hand froze with his hard length in her palm. “What?”

He combed both hands through her hair and pulled her to him, kissing her, long and slow. When he pulled away again, Mia was light-headed.

“Do we need one?” he repeated. “Are you taking something?”

Birth control. He was talking about birth control. Jesus, her head was not working. “Yes.” The thought of feeling him with no barriers hammered her with lust. She met his eyes directly. “
Do
we need one?”

His lips quirked for a millisecond before he went serious again. “No.” And with a little shake of his head, he pushed his hands up her thighs, under her skirt, and hooked his fingers in the fabric of her panties at one hip. “Just got a clean bill of health.”