60. Renee
Weston has barely taken a single break since the puck dropped. It’s as if he’s using the game to exorcize whatever demon is burning a hole in his chest.
No prizes for guessing what that might be.
With four minutes left to play, even though he should be ready to drop from exhaustion, he stays out as the rest of his line hits the bench for a breather. He picks up the puck and accelerates down the wing. The scoreboard reads 3-3; the Seattle Wave came out to play hard tonight.
The Wave’s Beck Daniels is on a beeline toward Weston. His legs are fresh, so when Weston doesn’t see him coming in time, he strips the puck, skates across the blue line before anyone is on him, and whips a wicked shot into the five-hole.
Goal.
The red light erupts. The sirens explode. 4-3, Seattle.
The air is sucked out of the Firebird Nest—the nickname for the arena—almost instantaneously, like the whole crowd is deflating at once.
I look at Danni. “It’s okay. They still have time.”
But time slips away. The Firebirds are in disarray. The puck bounces around aimlessly and when the final buzzer goes off, Seattle is leaving with the win. Thousands of fans slink out of the arena with their heads slumped low. Down on the ice, the team does the same thing.
Danni and I follow the herd to the exits. She’s heading home, so I say goodbye and give her a hug, then duck under the ropes to go meet Weston outside the locker room.
It’s been a hellacious week, made all the worse by spending almost all of it by myself. After everything that happened at the auction, I needed the time to recover.
I haven’t seen my dad or Deacon, although Mom has amped up the stalker calls. It’s like she knows the exact moment I leave and return home because she rings as soon as I step out of the building and as soon as I walk back into it. I’ve taken to turning my phone off while I’m at work and leaving it in a desk drawer.
But now, things are back to normal. Mostly. Kind of. If nothing else, I can breathe again. The panic attack that led Weston to drag me into a broom closet seems like a bad memory, as does the image of his furious eyes boring into me when I refused to explain what the hell was going on.
I want to tell him. But every time this week I’ve thought about walking down the hallway, knocking on his door, and spilling all my baggage on him in a figurative sense (as opposed to the literal way I did it when we first met), I remember the dinner with his family.
They were so perfect. They loved each other. Fought for each other. So if I were to go explain to him just how fucked up my own family is… he’d run screaming for the hills. He’d lock his door and never let me in again.
I can’t risk that. My heart is already stowed away in Weston’s penthouse, and if he bars me from it—well, I might as well just die then and there.
So explaining things is off the table. Instead, I’m going to do what I always do in times of trouble: ignore it. It hasn’t worked yet in my life, but one day, burying my head in the sand will actually make all my problems disappear.
I just gotta pray this is the time it finally starts working.
Tonight isn’t about me, though. After the loss, he’s sure to be in a foul mood. I want to make Weston feel better. So I plaster on my best smile when the first Firebirds start to trickle out of the locker room after showering and fulfilling their media obligations.
Orion is the first to emerge. Jonah and Amar follow him. “Good luck,” Jonah snorts. “He’s in a mood.”
I wince. “Yeah. I figured.”
Behind him, the door swings open again and Weston walks out. He takes one look at me and cruises right past without breathing a word.
“Hey!” I chase to catch up. When I do, he huffs out a sigh. “I’ve missed you.”
That’s enough to stop him. I’m glad. Even pissed off over losing, he’s gorgeous. He’s in black jeans and a green t-shirt, with a slim gold chain hanging over the collar. Something about a guy who can pull off jewelry makes me hot.
I put a pin in my desire—it’ll keep for later—and force myself to smile at him. “How about you let me buy you dinner?”
He grimaces again. “Okay.”
I grin and he shifts his bag to the other shoulder so he can tuck me in close to him for a few steps. Then, like he’s only just remembered that he’s pissed off at me, he moves away as we walk.
“I never pegged you for a sore loser,” I tease.
Wrong choice of words. His scowl darkens immediately. “People who don’t mind losing will only ever be losers. You want to fuck a loser?”
One of the parking attendants glances over in alarm at the venom in Weston’s voice. I don’t speak because there’s no point.
“Yeah. Didn’t think so.”
I urge the smile back on my face. “How about a burger?”
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”
We climb into the truck. It has the tense, cloying silence that only the inside of a grumpy man’s car can have. I clear my throat. “You played a good game tonight.”
“Oh, yeah? Maybe you do like losers.”
“It’s one loss. Big deal. Have you never lost a game before?”
“Of course I’ve lost before,” he snarls. “Don’t be fucking na?ve. No one wins all the time.”
I twist my lips to the side. “That was about to be my line.”
“I see what you did there.” He shakes his head. “I can’t take any know-it-all shit right now, Renee.”
“You think I’m a know-it-all?”
“You’re smart.” He says it like it tastes bad.
I do a melodramatic, exaggerated double-take. “Did you just compliment me? Did anyone else hear that?”
He stares out the window, probably so I don’t see that he might just be starting to grin. With a grin of my own, I drive us to Big Al’s. When I pull into a parking space, he turns to me and lets loose a long, weary exhale.
“You are smart,” he says again bluntly, like we’re picking up the conversation from ten minutes ago right where we left off. “I really do believe that. In case I’ve never made it clear before.”
His face is still solemn, but I see this for what it is—an olive branch.
“Thanks,” I murmur. “I appreciate that.”
I kill the engine. His mood’s still precarious and I’m in striking range, so instead of being Miss Independent Who Don’t Need No Man, I wait for him to open my door and let him help me out of the car. I keep my know-it-all shit to myself.
We order at the counter, then take a seat in a corner booth. He looks around at all the tacky Americana on the walls. “This place is goofy as hell,” he mutters. “How’d you find it?”
I grin mischievously. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you. Big Al’s is top-secret. The tourists can’t be allowed to know.”
He looks across the table at the cockeyed Mickey Mouse figurine clutching a bundle of napkins and snorts. “I wouldn’t be too concerned.”
“Psh, you’re a snob.” I look out the window. “Just because they don’t serve their food on the bare asses of supermodels or whatever doesn’t mean it isn’t good.”
He laughs. It only lasts for a second before he kills it, but it’s enough to give me hope that this black mood of his might pass in the foreseeable future.
Luckily for my war against his temper, the food delivers on every front. The presentation is as terrible as the rest of the place—sloppy burgers in broken red plastic baskets, wax paper with the chef’s fingerprints still marked on it—but as soon as he takes his first bite, he looks like he’s about to come in his pants.
“Yeah?” I say, waggling my eyebrows. “I think I recognize that face.”
“Shut up,” he growls through a mouth of burger. “I’m concentrating.”
I laugh and dive into my own bucket of grease. The first bite makes me moan, too. And at the sound of it, Weston strokes his foot across mine beneath the table.
Footsie. Burgers. Laughs. Mickey Mouse figurines with handfuls of napkins.
It’s not exactly the stuff of fairytales. But for the time being, I’ll take it.
“Admit it,” I say once we’re back in the car. “It was fabulous.”
“It was good.”
“Just good?!”
He shrugs. “I’ll alert Gordon Ramsay.”
I roll my eyes. But at least he’s talking now and not sulking over one bad game that wasn’t even all that bad. They didn’t get shut out. They didn’t lose by ten goals. It could’ve been a lot worse.
We listen to music on the way back to The Palais. “Watch a movie with me?” he asks as we climb into the elevator to jet up to our floor.
I give a shrug just like the one he’s been giving me all night. “Sure,” I say, parroting his words from the postgame tunnel. “Whatever.”
He flashes me a middle finger, but then he puts his hand on the small of my back and ushers me into his penthouse.
The smell of the place makes me sigh happily. It’s not something you’d bottle and sell for the masses, but I love it.
It’s him.
It’s home.
We collapse onto the couch, each of us nursing some serious food babies, and Weston cues up a movie.
An idea strikes me somewhere between the opening sequence and the first scene. He’s not what I would call crabby anymore, but when I move away from him, he looks at me. “Where’re you going?”
I kneel in front of him and reach for his buckle. “Not far. Right here, actually.”
He tilts his head as I tug the belt free of his jeans and then go after the button and zipper. When I manage to tug his pants down his thighs, his cock springs free. Gloriously hard.
“Renee, I?—”
“Shh,” I scold. “I’m working here.”
I take hold of him, stroke once from the base to the tip, then lean forward and swallow him down. When I swirl my tongue around the head, his breath hitches. I glance up, tongue still working on him, because if there’s one thing I love seeing, it’s Weston’s happy face.
It’s one thing to see it when he’s eating a burger.
It’s another entirely when I’m the one doing it to him.
He threads his fingers through my hair and lets his head fall back against the couch as I take him all the way into my mouth. My hand and lips and tongue all work in time. He growls and holds me to him, bucks his hips once, then again. At some point, I’m no longer entirely sure which one of us is in control.
I continue stroking him while I take him deeper into my throat now. He moans again, low and primal. I’ve never heard a sound more erotic in my life.
And my God, it makes me feel so powerful. I love making him feel like this. I love knowing that I can give him this. Hockey can make him happy and sad, can make him angry or depressed—but just pressing my lips to him makes his eyes roll back in his head.
That’s like magic.
He does it to me, too, of course. I can’t even count how many times he’s made me feel like I wouldn’t survive if he stopped touching me.
I guess I just like returning the favor.
He holds my head in place and moves his hips more, grunting and moaning as I continue sucking him. His fingers curl into my hair and his body goes taut.
He looks down at me, eyes wild with passion, lips parted. “Fuck, Renee!” And then he comes. Body shuddering, hands clenching, cock throbbing.
I take it all, waiting for him to finish before I finally pull away.
He sits for a moment, pants unzipped, cock out, head leaned back. Then he catches his breath and comes back to himself. “I feel like I should applaud. Or, like, say something.”
“You think a blowjob requires an Oscars acceptance speech?” I grin at him. “I know I’m good, but I didn’t know I was that good.”
He chuckles and tucks his dick back in his pants. “Smart ass. I meant I should say thank you.”
“Oh. Well, in that case, you’re welcome. It wasn’t so terrible for me, either.”
As soon as he’s all tucked away and I’m snuggled under his arm while we start the movie offer, the bedroom door swings open.
I look up as Hunter strolls out. My cheeks go red, wondering if he heard us, because I sure as hell didn’t know he was here. But if he did, he shows no sign of it. He saunters into the kitchen and starts throwing together a sandwich. I wave meekly and he waves back.
I should probably be mortified, but I’m not. If he saw me giving Weston head, it isn’t the worst thing. At least he didn’t see me ass in the air, tits swaying, panting like a puppy while Weston’s banging me from behind.
Though the mental image of that exact scene spreads little trickles of warmth through me. I stuff those thoughts back where they belong.
When he’s got his sandwich plated, Hunter walks into the living room. He’s about to take the armchair at the end of the sofa when Weston clears his throat. “Hey, beat it. I’m having a date.”
“We can go to Sutton’s,” I suggest softly.
Hunter shakes his head. “No, no, no. Sorry.” He looks at me and winks. “Don’t worry. I didn’t see anything.”
He retreats back to his quarters. When he’s gone, I sit forward and glance at Weston. “I thought he lives in New York.”
Weston nods. “He does. Sometimes.”
“So, not to be rude or whatever, but… what is he still doing here?”
“He’s just… here.” He shrugs like it isn’t a big deal. “He stays. He goes. I don’t have him microchipped or anything.”
But he cocks an eyebrow as if maybe he’s thinking about it. Maybe he is curious as to the amount of time Hunter has been spending here, too.
I should just ask him about Hunter’s addiction. Surely he’s noticed by now, but after the way he shut me down before, I don’t want to push any buttons. Things are good. I shouldn’t rock the boat.
But I make a note to myself to keep an eye on Hunter Mariano.
Some things aren’t always what they seem.