Chapter 26
Skyler
Iwoke to the smell of coconut, and not the artificial kind from sunscreen bottles or those little air fresheners shaped like palm trees.
This was something warmer, more natural, and layered underneath were notes of something I couldn’t quite identify—sandalwood, maybe, or cedar.
Whatever it was, it was coming from the mass of dark curls pressed against my face.
Jacks.
In my bed.
In my arms.
The realization arrived quietly, without the panic I might have expected even a week ago. There was no jolt of alarm or oh-God-what-have-I-done spiral, only a slow, warming awareness that spread through my chest like the first sip of coffee on a chilly morning.
He was still asleep.
I could tell by his deep and even breathing.
There was the faintest hint of a whistle on each exhale that I was absolutely going to tease him about later.
His back was pressed against my chest, his body curved into mine with a trust that made something ache behind my ribs.
My right arm was draped over his waist, our fingers still loosely laced together where they’d been when we’d fallen asleep.
My left arm, however, was in trouble.
Pinned beneath him, it was wedged between his torso and the mattress at an angle that had been comfortable seven hours ago but had since devolved into a medical emergency. The tingling had passed the pins-and-needles stage and entered full dead-limb territory.
I couldn’t feel my fingers.
I wasn’t sure I still had fingers.
Slowly, gently, millimeter by millimeter, I attempted to slide my arm out from under one hundred and ninety pounds of sleeping former linebacker.
He didn’t budge.
The man slept like a boulder.
A warm, coconut-scented boulder with exceptional hair and zero regard for my circulatory system.
I tried again, shifting my shoulder, testing for any gap between his body and the mattress.
Nothing.
Jacks made a contented hum that vibrated through his back and into my chest.
Great.
My arm was going to fall off.
This was how it ended—not a career-ending injury on the ice, but death by snuggling. The headline would read: “NHL Captain Loses Arm to Cuddling Incident. Teammates Unsurprised.”
Resigned to my career’s embarrassing fate, I surrendered.
The arm was a lost cause.
I’d deal with the consequences when he woke up.
For now, I had more important things to focus on.
Like his hair.
It was everywhere, a chaos of curls fanned across the pillow, tickling my nose and brushing my chin.
I’d never been this close to it for this long, and the texture fascinated me.
Each curl had its own personality, its own direction, its own stubborn refusal to cooperate with gravity or common sense.
I buried my nose deeper and breathed in.
Coconut and cedar and something that was all Jacks.
The combination was intoxicating in a way I hadn’t known hair could be.
With women, I’d noticed perfume, appreciated it, and moved on.
This was different. I wanted to live inside this smell.
I wanted to bottle it and carry it onto the ice with me like some kind of aromatic good luck charm.
I nuzzled further into his curls, letting them tickle my nose, my lips, and the skin beneath my eyes. One particularly ambitious curl had coiled itself around my earlobe like it was staking a claim.
I smiled against his scalp.
This was ridiculous.
I was a professional athlete, and I was lying in bed huffing another man’s hair like it was a controlled substance.
And most shocking, at least to me, was that I didn’t care. Fuck everybody else. This was amazing. No, this was better than amazing. This was . . . well . . . I didn’t have a word for that, but it was totally that. Seriously. Like really.
I pressed my lips to the back of his neck right below his hairline where the curls gave way to warm, smooth skin. The kiss was a whisper, light enough that it shouldn’t have disturbed him.
So I did it again.
And again, lower, where his neck met his shoulder.
A slow heat began building in my abdomen, spreading downward with a lazy insistence I couldn’t have ignored even if I’d wanted to.
My body was responding to his proximity, to the warmth of his skin against mine, and to the intimate reality of waking up wrapped around someone who felt like he belonged there.
I shifted my hips, and the contact sent a pulse through me that made my breath catch. I held still, not wanting to wake him, not ready to break the spell of this quiet moment.
With my free hand—the one still draped over his waist—I began to explore.
It started innocently enough.
My fingers traced lazy patterns on his forearm, following the line of a vein from his wrist to the crook of his elbow. His skin was warm, sleep-soft, the light dusting of hair on his arms barely perceptible beneath my fingertips.
I drifted higher.
Over his bicep, still firm from years of training.
Across the curve of his shoulder.
Down the side of his rib cage, where I could feel each rib beneath a thin layer of muscle.
My hand settled against the bare skin of his stomach.
He was warm.
So warm.
I let my palm rest there for a moment, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breathing.
The muscles of his abdomen were relaxed in sleep, soft enough to yield beneath gentle pressure but firm enough to remind me of the athlete he’d been.
The trail of hair I’d explored last night led downward from his navel, and I traced it with one finger before losing my nerve and drifting sideways instead.
I followed the curve of his rib cage upward, my touch featherlight, mapping the geography of his body. Every ridge and plane was evidence of who this man was and what he’d built and how he’d lived.
My fingers grazed his chest.
The light dusting of hair there was softer than I’d expected last night, almost downy, and I let my fingertips drift through it the way one might run a hand through tall grass.
His pec was solid beneath my palm. He hadn’t let this muscle group slide despite retiring from football.
The warmth of his skin against mine made my pulse quicken.
I found his nipple almost by accident.
It was a small, firm point beneath the pad of my index finger.
I paused, curious, then traced a slow circle around it.
That’s when Jacks stirred.
I froze.
He pushed back, forcing our bodies impossibly closer.
My cock, already hard, twitched.
I felt his eyes open.
He wiggled his butt again, back and forth, wedging my cock between his cheeks.
“Somebody woke up happy.”
If he’d been facing me, I would’ve caught untold amounts of shit for the colors my face turned in that moment. Thankfully, he kept his eyes forward and his ass . . . oh . . .
“Maybe we should do something about that,” he said, his voice a mix of sleepiness and arousal.
He wriggled again. This time, it wasn’t just my shaft squeezed between the muscles of his butt. He’d somehow shifted so the tip of my cock slipped precariously close to his hole.
“Oh, fuck,” I said. “We shouldn’t . . . I shouldn’t . . . I don’t . . .”
His laugh shook both our bodies and dislodged my dick from his doorstep.
“No, we shouldn’t,” he agreed, though I heard his smile. “But I want to when you’re ready.”
It took some effort and more than a little untangling, but he turned so he lay on his other side facing me. One hand reached up and smoothed the unruly hair from my forehead. It sprung back the moment his fingers moved away.
“You do?” was all I could think to ask.
He gave me a small smile and nodded. “I want to feel everything with you, Sky. but only when you’re ready. I don’t want to rush anything or make you feel uncomfortable. My first time wasn’t great, and I want yours to be special.”
I leaned in and kissed him. “If it’s with you, it will be.”
That earned me an expression that reminded me of watching butter melt in the microwave. Right there, in my bed, inches from my face, Jackson Armstrong melted into a puddle of man-goo.
Okay. No. That sounded gross. Even in my head.
He leaned in and kissed me again, this time deep and passionate, our tongues brushing, as his hands gripped my head and fixed me in place.
“I want that, Jacks. I want all that with you.”
I said the words before my brain could filter them. Damn, how had that happened?
Jacks’s eyes brightened, his grip firmed, and his kisses—dear God—his kisses somehow deepened into a love song I would hear for the rest of my days.
“Can I play with your dick?” fell past my stupid lips next.
Jacks laughed into my mouth before pulling back to look at me.
“Sky, you can do anything you want to me. You don’t even have to ask. But—”
“Uh-oh. There’s a but.”
He chuckled again. “I have to pee. Stay right there.”
I watched his perky butt as he bounced out of the bed and drifted into the bathroom, only briefly wondering how I’d gotten so lucky to find this incredible guy. A heartbeat—or ten—later, he was back in bed.
“What do you want?” he asked.
And that was a fine question. What did I want?
“Can I play with your dick a little?”
He smiled as he might when a small child said something cute. “Sure.”
I tossed the covers back fast enough to make him laugh again, then scooted down so I was eye level with my target. He’d lost his hardness with his restroom intermission. With only a slight tremble in my fingers, I reached out and touched his shaft.
It was softer than I expected. The skin was softer. I didn’t mean—
Never mind.
I wrapped my fingers around it, gripping like I might my own. Oddly, it felt like my own. Were all dicks the same? Somehow, in my curious-but-not-curious mind, I’d assumed they were different, like fingerprints, each having its own, I don’t know, curves and bends and texture.
Ew. Texture. No.
Shoving overactive thoughts aside, I focused, gentling my grip and sliding my hand up until his head was in my palm.
“Mm,” he said, which I took as a decent sign.
I traced a finger under the lip of his head. He twitched when I hit the underside, so I did it again. Another twitch. On a whim, I leaned down and licked that spot.
“Yeah,” he breathed. “I like that.”
I licked again.
He squirmed again.
So I swirled my tongue all the way around his head. And again. Then took his head into my mouth and sucked.
His hand landed on my shoulder faster than I thought he could move, and a laugh echoed throughout my bedroom.
“What?”
“So, you don’t suck like a straw. It’s more subtle than that. And, for the record, teeth are bad.”
“Right. No straw or teeth. Got it.”
He grinned down his body at me, then let his head fall back onto the pillow. “Back at it, hockey star.”
I smiled at my nickname.
This time, when I took him into my mouth, I was careful to let my lips lead the way, hiding any fangs that might not feel great. He’d leaked a little, and the saltiness startled me. But it also excited me. A part of Jacks was . . . holy shit . . . inside me.
My heart kicked into another gear at that.
I reached down and gripped his shaft like he’d done to me the night before, then took his length into my throat. He began to stiffen. I took him again . . . and again.
When he grew erect, he hit the back of my throat, and I gagged.
“Easy,” he crooned, his voice somewhere between drunken pleasure and awareness.
I took him again, this time working to open my throat, though I wasn’t quite sure how to make those muscles—or whatever they were—work right.
I gagged again.
Jacks’s hands found my shoulders and lifted me off him. “Easy, that takes practice.”
“I really want to practice.”
He chuckled. “Lie on your back. Let me show you again.”
And damn, did he.