Cutting Ice: A Sports Romance Page 3

  I leaned towards him, caught his face between my hands, and pressed my lips against his. His mouth was cold but soft, and I barely had time to register how it felt before he had slipped his hands beneath my ass and hauled me on to his lap. I parted my legs to straddle him, and his tongue slid into my mouth, and in that second I couldn’t have given a damn how long it had been since I had last fooled around with someone new because all of this felt so natural and right.

  “I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you,” Sam murmured in my ear as he kissed down my neck and towards my breasts. I let out a small moan, unable to articulate that I had felt the exact same way.

  He slipped his hands up my shirt and found my breasts. The touch of his cold fingers was enough to bring my nipples to full attention at once, and I closed my eyes as his talented hands went to work. I was already aching for him, aching for more, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold back much longer.

  “Have you got a condom?” I mumbled urgently, and he looked up at me and nodded.

  “I need you to fuck me, right now,” I leaned down to kiss him again, harder this time. I had never wanted someone the way I wanted him at that second. It wasn’t that I’d never been turned-on before, or wanted to fuck before, but it had never been so desperate and needy and important. I swiveled my hips a couple of times against his lap, feeling his erection growing quickly beneath me, and watched as he registered what I’d just said. Putting a hand on my hip to steady me, he leaned forward and rustled about in his glove compartment for a few seconds before pulling out a condom.

  I lifted myself off his lap the best I could, awkwardly trying to give him the space he needed to sheath himself. There wasn’t a lot of room in the car, and my head was already pressed against the ceiling. But all thought of how difficult or weird or maybe not a good idea this was got lost in the sound of our heavy breathing and the way our steamy breath mixed between us. He shuffled down his pants and rolled on the condom, and then he reached over to flip up my skirt- before he penetrated me, he leaned forward and planted a kiss on my pussy, his warm breath (even through my panties) sending a shiver down my spine. And then, he pulled the fabric aside, gripped my hips, and slowly lowered me down onto his cock.

  We both let out a long, satisfied sigh as he entered me. His cock was thick and stout, spreading me as I enveloped every inch of him in my pussy. I let my head fall back, and clunked it on the top of the car as I did so. We both laughed, and then, finally, I began to move. I took my time at first, pressing my hands against his chest and using them as leverage as I moved up and down. And, soon enough, he began to meet my movement, thrusting up inside me as I came down. We soon built up a pace, and, without thinking, I slipped my hand between my legs and began to play with my clit.

  “Fuck, that’s hot,” Sam growled, his fingers sinking in to my hips as he watched my fingers get busy between my legs. I watched as the expression on his face twisted into something darker, more desirous than before, and when he looked up and made eye contact with me, it happened.

  I shuddered with pleasure, my hands curling into fists by my sides as I came. It usually took a lot of foreplay to get me anywhere close, but the situation was just right then and there, and I was able to get out of my head and just let it happen. I let out a loud moan, my pussy clenching around Sam’s cock, and a few seconds later, I felt him reach his own release inside of me. He leaned up to kiss me as he came, pulling my head down so he could push his tongue into my mouth once more. I held him inside me for a few more moments after we were both finished, savoring the feeling of him within me. Then, I climbed off and slipped back into my seat, shooting him a satisfied look.

  “Well, that was…” he began, but trailed off as he disposed of the condom and zipped up his pants.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “It really was.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments, and I wondered what happened now.

  “Is that…lift still going?” I wondered out loud, and he nodded.

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” he replied. He’d only had a couple of drinks over the course of the night, so I wasn’t worried about him driving me. As my own booze-buzz began to wear off, I watched as he started up the car, and tried to figure out whether or not I had just made a huge mistake.

  Chapter Six

  When I woke up the next morning, my head was pounding- but not because I’d been hitting it too hard the night before. No, far from it, I’d taken it easy. But I had hooked up with Emily, and I wasn’t sure if I’d made the right decision.

  I mean, yeah, she was incredible- the image of her, riding me hard, her head tipped slightly back and her mouth hanging open a little, played on my brain and made me smile to myself involuntarily. As soon as I’d picked her up, I’d known what was going to happen. We were flirting as soon as she slipped into my car, and I wasn’t going to argue with her when she clambered on top of me in there at the end of the night. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d done something….dangerous by fucking her.

  I mean, every other woman I’d hooked up with since I left high school, it was clear it was a one-night thing. They knew, I knew, even if I had to lay it out for a few of them a little more firmly than I might have liked- it was clear. They knew who I was. I had a reputation in this town for a reason, one I was a little proud of, I had to admit. And playing for the team meant that I was never likely to be around any of my hook-ups again. I might spot them in the crowd of a game and see them give me that secret little smile, but I had never had them around for such a length of time after we were finished with each other.

  I drove to training, and wondered why I had done it. Apart from the obvious, that she was smoking hot and sexy and forward and all kinds of good in bed. Or in-car, as the case may be. I had known all of this before we fucked, known that she wouldn’t be leaving soon, known that I would have to see her and be around her and deal with her for a long time yet. and still I did it. I couldn’t blame it on the alcohol, as I hadn’t even been drinking that much. The only explanation was that I was trying to get my mind off…it. The thing. The big one. The question that I still hadn’t come up with an answer to.

  I pushed it to the back of my mind as I climbed out of my car and walked into the building; my heart flipped in my chest when I saw who was leaning up at reception.

  “Emily!” I called. I had dropped her off at her place last night, and she hadn’t made any noises about inviting me inside. Not that I could blame her. She turned and smiled when she saw me, and I couldn’t help but let my eyes drift across her body. She was wearing a tight shirt and narrow pants, and I could imagine the outline of her body beneath the fabric with ease, remember what it felt like beneath my fingers.

  “Hey, Sam,” she flushed a little, but kept her cool. “Could you tell Darla here that I am allowed in the stadium while you’re training?”

  “She is,” I smiled at Darla, who raised her brows as she looked between the two of us. “Promise.”

  “Go ahead,” Darla sighed tiredly, waving us both in, and I held the door open for Emily. We made our way down the seemingly endless corridor in silence, until she spoke at last.

  “So…last night was fun,” she remarked, glancing over at me as if checking to see how I would react.

  “It was,” I agreed with a little smirk. “Really fun.”

  “But…I don’t think it should happen again,” she suggested, stumbling over her words slightly as thought she wasn’t quite sure how to get them out. “If that’s okay with you?”

  I let out a small breath, not realizing that I’d been holding it up until that point.

  “Just because we’ll be working together, and I don’t want things to be awkward,” she blurted, reading my sigh as upset. I shook my head and held up my hand.

  “It’s fine, you’re right,” I agreed. “We shouldn’t have…nothing should have happened. I get that. Let’s just put it behind us, okay?”

  “Okay,” she agreed, and we opened the door onto the stadium. The entire
team was there; it seemed as though I was a little late.

  There was a small murmur around the room as the little clusters of Crows noticed the two of us walking through the doors together; I did my best to pay them no attention. I strode down to the changing rooms, opened the door, and glanced behind me to see Emily taking her place in the stands. Thank God that had been averted.

  “So, you fuck her?” Nathan was leaning up against the lockers when I came in, taking me by surprise.

  “Yup,” I nodded.

  “Good?”

  “None of your business,” I shot back, raising my eyebrows at him warningly. “Just ‘cause you’ve not been laid in forever.”

  “You guys dating now?” He brushed off my comment easily. He’d heard a lot worse between these four walls, that was for sure.

  “Nah, just a one-night thing,” I replied with a shrug. “No big deal. We were drinking, it was fun, but that’s it.”

  “Is that what she told you?” Nathan cocked his head at me. “It never works out like that, you know.”

  “It’s mutual,” I snapped, growing tired of his questioning. “Come on, let’s get on the ice.”

  Training began, and I found my eyes drifting towards Emily a few times, watching her as she scribbled notes and made comments into her little voice recorder periodically. Her hair was tied back and she had rings around her eyes, but if she was hung-over, she certainly wasn’t showing it. I wondered why she had been so into me last night. I mean, she just got here. Most of the women I hooked up with did it for the sense of celebrity. Emily had looked exhausted from the first moment she walked through the doors here, and I wondered if there was something else that had driven her out of the city. She seemed reluctant to talk about it last night, deflecting my questions about what life was like there. Maybe it wasn’t as safe a place for her as she made out.

  Training finished up, and Johnson cornered me before I could get back to the locker room.

  “Have you thought about it yet?” he demanded, his voice low and quiet. Emily was lingering behind us, and I could see that she was trying to overhear what we were saying.

  “What?”

  “The offer, you know,” he replied impatiently. “I got a call from them today.”

  “Really? This soon?” My eyes widened. This wasn’t what I expected. I’d had no idea they were as eager as all that, and it was intimidating to think about a team of that size coming after me as aggressively as they were.

  “Yeah, this soon,” he nodded. “So, anything?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I’m still thinking about it. You said I had until the end of the month, right?”

  “Right,” he nodded. “But I can’t promise that they won’t find someone else in the meantime.”

  “I know,” I shot back, defensive, and we exchanged a hard look before Johnson backed off and made his way down to his office. I pulled my helmet off and slumped down on to the slatted wooden benches at the edge of the stadium, letting out a sigh that turned to steam as it left my mouth.

  “What was that about?”

  I looked up, and found Emily standing above me, hands on hips. Her recorder was in her hand, and it was obvious she’d heard all of our conversation. I met her gaze, and held it for a few moments before I responded.

  “Nothing,” I shot back childishly.

  “Are you moving to another team?”

  “Turn that off and I’ll tell you,” I nodded towards the microphone in her hand, and she held it out to me.

  “It’s already off,” she promised. “Here, look.”

  I inspected the small device for a second and, seeing no obvious activity, I patted the bench next to me. By the time she wrote this story, I either would have gone or I wouldn’t, so having the world find out about it wouldn’t matter. Besides, I needed someone to talk to this about, somebody outside the game.

  “I’ve been offered a position,” I began, talking slowly. It was the first time I’d spoken these words out loud to anyone since I’d first heard them a couple of days before. They’d been zooming around my head at such a speed, however, that I almost felt practiced reciting them.

  “Where?”

  “Philadelphia.”

  “Not with the-“ she raised her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, with the Soars,” I finished her sentence for her. Even saying that out loud, it didn’t feel real. She stared at me for a moment.

  “And you’re thinking about it?” She sounded incredulous.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “How?” Emily’s mouth dropped open after she spoke, the word hanging the air between us.

  “I’m just…not ready to go yet,” I looked at my feet, mumbling, feeling the way I did when I told my Mom that I wouldn’t be attending college. “I’ve still got so much to do here.”

  “That you couldn’t do with the Soars?” she pointed out. “Come on, if any of the guys in that locker room got offered this, what do you think they would do?”

  “I think they’d take it,” I admitted. “But they’re not me, are they?”

  “No, but I bet some of them wish they were,” she snapped, getting to her feet.

  “Hey, did I do something wrong?” I looked after her as she rolled her shoulders back.

  “Nothing,” she replied, her voice steady and suddenly cool. “Maybe we should sit down tomorrow, and have a proper conversation about this.”

  “I’m fine, I don’t need you to-“

  “For the article,” she cut across me, smiling slightly at the fact that I’d forgotten. I nodded, feeling chided.

  “Oh, yeah,” I agreed, glancing down. “Yeah, tomorrow.”

  “See you then,” she began to walk away, and I looked up after her. Why did it feel as though I’d just let her down? I thought things were cool between us after what had happened last night, but it felt as though I’d just firmly put my foot in whatever was still lingering between us.

  Chapter Seven

  I arrived back at my apartment, and immediately grabbed the handful of takeout menus sitting in the kitchen drawer. I was still feeling the hangover, and all that sitting in the freezing cold stadium had made me want was a nice, hot pizza and my bed. As soon as I was through the door, I wriggled out of my shirt and bra and pulled on an enormous t-shirt. There, that was better.

  I grabbed my phone and ordered my usual, a large Hawaiian with a Sprite. I had to hold myself back from ordering it with half-pepperoni, like Joel always had it- I felt a short stab of pain when I hung up, and wondered how long this would last.

  That said, my encounter last night had made things a lot more…palatable, I could swear to that much. Yeah, it had been a bad idea, and I kind of wish that I had at least thought it through beforehand. But hey, most of the truly fun things in life were terrible ideas anyway. He was good, and he’d been at least nice enough to drive me home afterwards and act like an adult about it the next day. I could handle a few knowing looks from his teammates if it meant that we could still talk like grown-ups.

  I lay back in bed and let out a sigh, reaching down under the covers to kick off my pants. I found my mind drifting to the conversation I’d had with Sam earlier that day. I felt a heavy sense of dread over it, mainly because I knew that I had found the story around which to build my article. There was no doubt that a guy like him, a small-town boy with the chance to get out for good, was a decent hook to hang the piece around. But it meant, of course, that I’d have to spend a whole lot of time with him in the coming weeks. Nice one, Emily, way to fuck the main subject of your article.

  My pizza arrived, and I went ravenously to town, having been too wobbly to eat earlier in the day. I grabbed my laptop, and put on a few episodes of whatever dumb sitcom I could find streaming, desperate to pull my mind off the situation for a while. But if I was nothing else, I was an over-thinker, and soon I found myself going back to everything Sam had told me today.

  I could see from the look in his eyes that this opportunity terrified him. Hell, I could s
ee why- it would be scary to anybody. But the difference was that most people--well, most people that I knew, anyway--would suck up the fear and do it anyway. Hell, I had. The Soars were one of the biggest teams in the country. How they’d come to hear about a player in a small town team like the Kingstown Crows was beyond me, but they had, and it wasn’t the sort of thing that happened every day. Sam needed to jump on the opportunity, and soon.

  I cleared out my bed, sticking the leftover pizza in the refrigerator before curling back up in bed and looking through all the notes I’d made over the last couple of days. Was there another angle I could approach this story from? I knew it would be hard getting any of them to talk. Johnson obviously didn’t intend for me to know, and I wasn’t sure any of the rest of the team knew anything that was going on. That just left Sam, and Sam himself seemed scared even just talking about the proposition, as if even considering it too deeply might force him to make a decision. Grabbing my Dictaphone, I began going through some of my recordings and transcribing them.

  As I listened and typed, I began to feel a creeping sense of recognition. Sam’s story, it was the same as mine, in a way. He had this opportunity halfway across the country, and it was down to him to take it or not; no one would know (or would have known, barring my article) if he said no, and if he said yes, well, great celebration as he took this brave next step. It was strange to me, considering the idea that someone might be handed an opportunity like this and think twice. Maybe I could find some way to relate to him based on what I’d been through? I needed to find a happy medium between getting him close and not scaring him off because he thought I was trying to pursue something more serious.

  I grabbed my phone, and weighed it in my hand for a second or two. Johnson had given me his number. He’d been a great help with the story, but I had the feeling that he didn’t want me to know about this. I wondered how he felt about Sam’s offer. Did he want the best for him, or did he want him to stay and drag the Crows out of the lower leagues and towards something more concrete? He hadn’t mentioned it to me, which made me think he was leaning towards the former. I dialed his number before I had the chance to back out, and held the phone to my ear.