Icing the Puck (New York Empires Book 2) (29 page)

Watching him interact with Kenny and the other kids today had brought back the teenage crush she’d had on him. Well, she could admit to herself that it had never really gone away.

Now he was standing in front her. And her heart had decided it wanted to run the Kentucky Derby at being near him.

“Reiner, I want you to meet the woman who organized this event. Emma Chase.”

“Good to see you again, Emma,” he murmured. His accent was hardly there, not nearly as noticeable as his sister Astrid’s was. He was eying the glass of champagne in her hand like it was a king cobra about to strike him. Not that she blamed him. The last time she’d seen him, just before she’d started working for the Special Olympics, she’d spilled wine all over him, ruining what she was certain had been a very expensive suit.

Spotting a waiter, she waved him over and placed her glass on his tray. As soon as her hands were free he took them, raising one to his lips brushing a kiss across her knuckles.

“You, too.” Making banal small-talk was difficult with his light blue eyes meeting hers, and her hand engulfed in his larger one.

The rate her heart was beating, it wasn’t going just after the Kentucky Derby, but the Triple Crown.
Damn it, Astrid
, she swore again.

“You look…different.” There was a question in his voice. One she wasn’t surprised by. She looked nothing like she had that last disastrous time they’d met.

She’d out grown the dark black pixie cut she’d worn up through college and now embraced her natural curls and color, with natural looking highlights in her red hair. She’d also ditched the lip and eyebrow piercing. She’d kept the small stud in her nose, though, liking the tiny bit of glam. It was at the point where when she looked at pictures of that time, she didn’t recognize herself. She’d hidden behind her goth hair, piercings, and clothes that were three sizes too big.

Now, however, she embraced who she was and how she looked. She wasn’t model thin, as was all the rage, at least according to fashion experts. She was a throwback to the Marilyn Monroe era, with curves a man could hold onto if he wanted, and she loved it. Besides, if she had to choose between running and chocolate, chocolate would win any day of the week.

“Have you spoken to Astrid lately?” he asked.

“Yeah, I talked to her last week. She couldn’t make it. Something held her up back home. She was supposed to be my date for tonight.”

“So you don’t have a date?” When she shook her head, he held his arm out. “Then allow me.”

She giggled as he whisked her away. Good crap, what the heck was that? She’d giggled. She wasn’t a giggler.

It was sweet of Reiner to offer to escort her around tonight. She knew he was only doing it to be nice to his sister’s friend, but to her, it was an exercise in restraint. The tingles shooting up her arm made her want to press her whole body to his and rub up against him like a cat in heat. She had it bad.

A woman would have to be dead not to be affected by him.

At six-foot three he wasn’t the tallest in the NHL, but nor was he the shortest. His face was all sharp planes and angles, combined with the pure blue of his eyes, and the twin dimples in his cheeks when he smiled. The square jaw made her want to run her fingertips against it to see if it was as hard as it looked. Of course that wasn’t the only thing she wanted to run her fingers across…

Oh boy. It made a girl wish she was home with her favorite toy. Imagining it was him. She’d better stop this, or she’d end up drooling on his shoes. How embarrassing.

Her gaze dropped as she took in his suit. It was so well-made, that she knew it must have been custom made. Nothing off the rack could fit him this well. She wished she could admire his ass without looking like she doing exactly that, but unless she wanted him to catch her drooling over him, she kept her eyes to the front. Why did he have to look so good?

She’d bought several copies of the ESPN Body Issue the year he’d been on the cover. Because hello, Reiner naked. How could she not?

Don’t sniff him, don’t sniff him
, she chanted in her head. Too late. She nearly groaned. He smelled delicious.

Down girl, she warned her inner vamp. She was working, tonight was important. Too important to screw up because she had a major case of lust for her best friend’s older brother.

Especially when he was being nice enough to escort her around as a replacement for his sister.

Reiner couldn’t stop staring. Holy shit, Emma had changed. The floor-length gown she wore skimmed her hips and hugged her ass in such a way that he’d glared at the man behind her who couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

He’d never known her hair was red. The soft red curls framed her face, giving her a more glamorous quality. He’d watched her change over the years. He very much preferred this Emma to the one who’d lived with his family. That Emma had acted like he didn’t exist, all sullen and full of teenage angst. At the time he’d loved the fact someone outside of this family wasn’t treating him like a hockey god. Being the youngest player to win a Stanley Cup in the NHL had brought all sorts of media attention. Attention he hadn’t been prepared for.

So when it had been his turn with the Cup, he’d headed home, taking it back to the small village where he’d donned his first pair of skates. That was the year Emma had been an exchange student. Whenever he’d seen her after she’d left Norway, she’d been with his little sister, Astrid, and caused something to happen to him, from spilling food and drinks all over him to walking in on him in the shower. Thank the gods she hadn’t known it was him or he’d been certain something horrid would have happened.

Looking at her now, he felt certain the girl who’d caused all of it was gone, and in her place was a woman he wanted to get to know more about. Not because she was his little sister’s best friend but because she was a damn sexy woman who was lighting the room up with her energy and passion. Her cheeky smile caught him off-guard. Did that mean there was no boyfriend in the picture? He was sure Astrid had mentioned Emma was dating someone. But if she wasn’t…

His cock stirred at the thought of getting some action. It had been so long since he’d been attracted to a woman, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex. OK, he could remember, he just didn’t want to.

It had been with a puck bunny, and she’d tried to tell him he didn’t need to wear a condom as she was on the pill and clean. It wasn’t the first time some chick had tried that with him. He hoped to the gods it would be the last. At that point he’d almost gotten up and left. But he’d needed the release, and been tired of using his hand. He should have left, as it had been a very unsatisfying interlude.

Since then, he’d taken a break from women and sex.

But now, watching the way the Emma’s dress hugged her figure as she walked to join her friend Ruby, he wanted. But he only wanted her.

The question was…did she want him?

“So you going to tap that?” Sandberg asked him.

He’d been so lost in his thoughts about Emma, he hadn’t heard Sandberg or Karpov come up on him. That was never a good thing. They were his best friends, and according to them, this meant they had the right and duty to give each other massive amounts of shit about everything. Especially women.

The fact they’d just caught him staring at Emma’s ass, meant he could only do one thing. Go with it.

“If the gods permit, yes, I’m going to have sex with Emma. Tonight,” he told them in a mixture of Norwegian and Finnish. A mixture only the three of them understood. No way did he want someone overhearing them and then telling the gossip rags about it. That’s the last thing he needed.

Kyle Sandberg and Alexei Karpov had joined the team at the same time he had. Karpov had been in the States for a year, and Kyle had had just moved to the U.S. like Reiner. As the only non-English-speaking players on the Empires farm team they’d bonded. The language hadn’t been much of a problem, at least for Reiner; one of his aunts was from Finland, and his cousins had spoken a mixture of Norwegian and Finnish, resulting in most of the family doing the same. It had just made sense to him when he’d met Karpov to do the same thing. Kyle had added the Swedish words, leaving them having conversations that no one could understand unless they spoke all three languages.

“Does she know that?” Karpov asked, his Finnish accent thick as the day he’d come to the U.S.

“Not yet, but she will,” he replied. Tossing back the rest of his beer, Reiner set it on a nearby table, preparing to go after Emma.

She looked over at him, and he caught the flare of attraction in her gaze. Emma smiled slowly. Then her gaze flicked to Sandberg and Karpov, and her eyes widened.

“Fuck, man, did you see that?” Sandberg whispered.

He had. It pissed him off. He’d shared women with both of the men at his side, and while he knew a lot of guys got off on it, he was happy to say he’d been there, done that. But with Emma, he found he didn’t want to share. And he definitely didn’t want her looking at his friends.

“Yeah, I did. But we all agreed…”

“We’re too selfish to share the woman in our bed.”

“Exactly.” They’d better remember that.

Emma sauntered back to them. Fuck, she was sexy. “Wow, Renier Jahr, Kyle Sandberg, and Alexei Karpov, the fearsome threesome, right in front of me. How did I get so lucky?”

Even after years in the States, he sometimes missed nuances in the English language. Now was not one of those times. Emma was teasing him.

He liked her teasing.

Reiner smiled and noticed her breathing increased. Good. She wasn’t unaffected.

“We are the lucky ones,” Sandberg said raising her hand to his lips.

If it had been anyone else Reiner would have growled and told him to back the fuck off. But they had an unwritten rule of no poaching. They already knew he wanted her, so he wasn’t worried. But it didn’t mean he liked seeing another man’s lips touching Emma. Even if Sandberg was his friend.

He bumped Sandberg out of the way, and placed his own lips to the center of her palm, his tongue lightly touching her skin before pulling away.

Her skin flushed, and he wanted to see that flush over her entire body. He had every intention of ending the night buried so deep inside of Miss Emma Chase that she’d wonder where she ended and he began.

Emma ushered the last person out of the ballroom and heaved a giant sigh of relief. It was over. The day and night and been a huge success. Now she could take a break and breathe before she started working on the next event.

“You all done here?”

Slowly she turned to the voice behind her. Reiner was leaning against the bar, his bowtie undone and hanging around his neck, the top two buttons open on his shirt. His hands were shoved into his pants pockets, stretching the material across his package.
Er, pelvis, I totally meant pelvis
. Because she didn’t ogle men’s crotches. Ever.

Oh, man. She nearly pressed her hands to her cheeks, but instead forced her fingers to clench together.

Swallowing she answered him, “Yeah. The hotel and caterers will take care of clean-up.”

He straightened and started walking toward her.

Beneath her dress her nipples pebbled, and she clenched her thighs together.

Not even in her wildest teenage…and, OK, even her adult dreams, had she ever imagined that hockey god Reiner Jahr would ever look at her like that. Her sexual experience could be chalked up to some not bad, but mostly mediocre, partners.

Something she would bet her Empires season tickets Reiner wasn’t. Sometimes a woman could look at a man and just
know
that he was amazing in bed. Reiner would be a god in bed.

She was so out of her depth…and comfort zone.

She really liked her comfort zone when it came to men. Hence the term
comfort zone
. Oh Lord she was babbling in her head now. Again.

The only daring thing she’d ever done in her life was that year she’d been an exchange student. That had really only been to escape her parents’ divorce. Living halfway around the world meant she’d been able to escape all the drama of being put in the middle of two people she loved. Mentally shaking her head, she focused back on the here and now, the here and Reiner. Emma watched him stalk closer.

He stopped inches from her, and she got another whiff of him. Holy moly, he still smelled good. How was it possible?

Reiner stretched out an arm, wrapping it around her waist, he drew her into his body. His very hard body. There was no give in is his muscular form, forcing hers to melt into him. Or maybe that was just her body instinctually surrendering to the inevitable.

“What are you doing?” she murmured, knowing full well what would happen.

“What I’ve wanted to do all night.”

His head descended, slowly, giving her plenty of time to say no. There was no way on God’s green earth she was saying no to a kiss from Reiner Jahr. Did she have stupid written all over her face?

His lips brushed hers gently, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. His mouth nipped and teased, never pushing her, but not taking the invitation her parted lips offered.

Warm lips pressed against the corner of her mouth, drifted down her jawline, never coming back to her lips, instead settling against her pulse. When his teeth scraped her throat, she gasped. Emma pressed her body even more fully against his, fitting herself into him, damn near wanting to climb him. Reiner dragged his tongue up to her earlobe and nipped her.

Her hips shifted against his, and Reiner fisted her hair, dragged his mouth back to hers, and kissed her. Kiss was too tame a word. He plundered. He devoured. He conquered.

Her mind blanked, and all she could do was clench her fists in his jacket and hold on. Kissing Reiner was better than a molten lava chocolate cake topped with ice cream. Better than…

With one hand still gripping her hair, his slid the other down to her ass, palming it, pulling her tighter into him. She felt his erection, his very impressive erection. Good God, did she want him.