Chapter 12
King
Ididn’t sleep and this time it didn’t have anything to do with Victor.
I laid there with a hard-on all fucking night, refusing to give myself relief.
The conflicting torture of keeping my vow versus claiming what’s mine are fighting for control and tearing me apart in the process.
Team.
Emee.
Team.
Emee.
Fuck.
I brace my arms on the door jamb outside her hotel room, trying to make some sense of this new brand of chaos she’s created inside me.
Against the wall rests a gift I grabbed as I left my place this morning, fresh out of the shower, ready for another session with the girl that has gotten into my soul.
I texted her last night to make sure she was settled in and okay. I already knew she was at the hotel in her room, because I’m watching her like a psychopath on the tracking app, as well as watching her every move and keystroke on her laptop.
She Googled me five times.
First, just King Hertzof.
Next, King Hertzof girlfriend.
Then, King Hertzof photos.
And, King Hertzof criminal record.
Finally, King Hertzof bar fight.
That’s my girl.
I texted her to tell her goodnight and sweet dreams.
She needs her sleep.
I, on the other hand, don’t.
I need her.
I rap my knuckles on the door.
“Baby, it’s me. Open up.”
A shadow darkens the peephole, and my chest swells with pride. I told her last night no matter what, when someone comes to the door, you look at them before you let them in, even if it’s me.
I’m hoping she’s come to terms that I’m not just a client, and she needs to drop the whole ‘I can’t do this’ professional conduct bullshit.
The door swings open, and I rush inside, desperate to be close to her again, grabbing the accessory I brought with me, then kicking the door shut behind me.
Bam. Bam. Bam.My pulse rages in my chest and my eardrums as I take her in.
She steps out of reach before I grab her, walking toward the windows before turning my way. The view of the Detroit River and the Canadian Club sign on the other side of the waterway frame her in the distance.
She’s back in a pair of black stretch pants, and the seam highlights the indent of her pussy. She’s paired the pants with a pink tank top today, and she’s bare-footed, which makes my balls ache for some reason.
Her toenails are painted a sparkly green, matching her eyes, and her tits look even more tempting than yesterday, her nipples pebbling under her shirt. I’ve never needed anything as much in my life as I need to be inside of her.
Her hair is damp and fresh, hanging in natural curls around her face, with the blue sky out the window behind her… she’s a masterpiece.
I set the gift on the floor and walk forward, following the trail of her Sweet Tart scent, ready to dive into this pool of lust and obsession.
I need to figure out how I’m going to keep myself together, keep my no nutting vow to my team, but keep her in my life without upending everything I’ve worked for.
As I get closer, I notice she won’t meet my eyes. My heart drops as she squeezes them shut and a single tear drops down her cheek.
“What happened? Did you get hurt?” Wild panic aches in my chest as I bolt across the room. “I told you not to open the door unless you knew who it was!”
She does that waist squeezing thing again, doubling over as I leap over the couch between us, my fucking foot catching on the back, sending me airborne. I land with an oof, snapping a leg on the coffee table as I roll to the floor, then bounce up and barrel forward until her shoulders are in my hands.
“Jesus.” Her face screws up, watching me make an ass of myself, then she shakes her head like it’s too much to try to figure out right now and says. “Anyway, nothing happened. No one hurt me.”
This is not nothing. She may be the empathic whatever, but I have a connection to this girl that runs straight into my heart, and something is most definitely wrong.
“Please.” My voice is thick, a knocking pain wandering around in my head with a sledgehammer as that tear glides over the apple of her cheek. “You tell me what’s wrong, right now. I can’t fucking breathe.”
I snap my teeth together, fighting for a breath that won’t come as she looks to the ceiling and I give her shoulders a soft shake, drawing her eyes to mine.
They are red-rimmed, and I hate it. I hate whatever is distressing her and I need to fucking fix it.
“I—” She bites into her bottom lip, trying to stop the tears, which roll out one after the other as her chin quivers. “I’m sorry, this is so unprofessional. All my clients canceled again. For tomorrow now. Except for you, so it’s not a glitch. No calls, they just canceled from the scheduling app we use. I’m sorry, I’m trying to forget about it and focus on your session—”
I’m bombarded from all sides by cannonballs of guilt, and I nearly forget what my plan was when I got her alone today.
The gift I brought was a hockey stick. One of mine, from last year when I scored the winning goal in the final game that sent us to the championship. Which, we ended up losing in the fifth game by one goal.
I was so hell-bent on her giving up control to me, my stupid, selfish, impulsive, alpha-male bullshit act of canceling all her appointments because I couldn’t stand the idea of another man touching her is going to ruin everything before it gets started.
“Since I walked into that bar the other night, it’s like everything is just so out of control,” she mumbles, the words thick with emotion.
I clear my throat, the pain in my chest nearly putting me on my knees.
If I’m going to take control and put her into my life as a permanent fixture, then fuck. I have to fix this. Right now.
Leading her toward the sofa, my heart is thudding against my ribs, the broken coffee table lying there mocking me as I sit, pulling her onto my lap.
“Look,” I start, hugging her tight with one arm and pinching her chin with my other hand, so her eyes don’t leave mine. “Maybe they heard about the fire.”
The deception hollows out my chest where my heart should be, and the disbelieving expression on her face reminds me I’m not dealing with some dim-bulb puck bunny who only cares about getting another notch on her stick.
I have a fuck-ton of faults, but letting a misunderstanding and a lie hinder things between us is unacceptable.
The pain on her face is fucking wrecking me. The feelings I have for this firecracker of a girl I’ve only known a few days are dismantling me like a trailer park in a tornado.
“I shouldn’t tell you this, but if my business fails…it’s like how you talked about hockey. It’s my life. I built this.” The crack in her voice cracks open my chest. “I grew up poor with no opportunities. I made them for myself, with hard work and a refusal to sink into the same life I lived as a kid. You had hockey, I had my brain. My schoolwork, my tenacity, then this special skill I had at helping people. It’s who I am and yeah, it’s the money too. If my business fails, it will ruin me and the people that helped me get where I am.”
Fuck. Me.
The pain on her face hollows out my heart with a jagged knife.
“You love touching all those people?” I want to say those other filthy fucking men, but the hurt on her face is about to rip my heart out.
She tugs a shoulder to her ear as I ease her knees on either side of my hips. I want to see her eyes and feel everything she’s feeling.
“When I was little, I felt helpless. My parents weren’t there for me or my brother. I had no skills, but at like five years old, I was expected to cook and do laundry and take care of him and avoid the wrath of my father and try to please my mother.”
Her hands come to rest on my shoulders as I set her on her hips, already feeling the heat from her pussy warming my cock, making it hard to see straight. She’s giving me that glimpse into what makes her tick, and I’m here for it all.
“I wish I could take all that away. You need someone that puts you first, firecracker. Above their own needs.” My words are a kick to the balls, making me come to terms with the fact that what I’ve been doing for her may be more for me.
“It’s okay.” Some of the light in her eyes dims. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. I shouldn’t be doing a lot of the things I’m doing with you. Because, if anyone found out, like I said, I could lose my license and there would be no coming back from that.”
“No one is going to know.” I brush her tears away with the backs of my fingers. “All the more reason for you to write up a report that gets me back on the ice. Then our little sessions can be unofficial.”
I wink, digging my fingers into her hip, moving her back and forth on my stone-hard length.
Instead of a smile, her expression falls, and that hurt I see on her face guts me.
“I want to help you,” she says. “That’s why I’m successful. I actually care and believe I can help. I didn’t just walk the streets with a sign that said, ‘who wants a hug?’. I studied hard. I explored and did my research and found something that means something to me. Like you and hockey. If I lose all my clients, I lose not only money and the respect of people that stuck their necks out to help me, but I lose a part of me.”
She collapses into my shoulder on a sob.
A fucking sob.
Because of something I did.
I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t fix this right now.
Fuck. I’ve fucked this up in such an epic fashion.
Deep breath, moron.
With fear that goes bone deep, I blurt out what I’ve done.
“Baby, your clients love you. They didn’t cancel. Fuck, I’m…” I swallow the hockey puck sized lump lodged in my throat as her face comes up to lock her misty eyes with mine.
“What?”
I reach out to twist her hair in my fingers. If this is the last time she lets me touch her, I want to remember this.
“It was me. I’m a caveman. I couldn’t handle you touching other men.” I gulp, wrestling for a breath before I finish. “I didn’t know what else to do. I had Gabe at the Apple Store give me a clone of your laptop. I can get into your account. I canceled everyone.”
Her lips fall open, shaking her head, looking past me out the window. “I can’t believe this. You are insane.” Her jaw locks down, then she hisses. “That was a huge dick move.”
“Well, yeah, I have a huge dick.”
She scoffs, and I hate myself for making light of something that is so important to her.
When she doesn’t move off my lap or punch me in the face, I do as much triage as I can in the few seconds I have before she gives me my walking papers.
“Listen, baby, yeah, that’s why I came to see you, right? I’m impulsive. I don’t think before I act, especially when it comes to people I care about.” I almost say people I love, but she’s already sized me up as a madman, so I do my best to rein it in. “Like hockey, you know why I act like I do? Why I did what I did to that guy in the bar the other night?”
She’s stone still on my lap, her chest rising and falling as she rolls her lips together, giving me a silent opening to finish.
“Because, same as you, I grew up helpless. You used your brain.” I pad my fingers on her temple. “I didn’t have that, but I had this.” I lower my hand and make a fist. “I want to take care of the people in my life I don’t want to lose. I’m not a bully. I’m more like…an equalizer. I fight and hurt people when they hurt what’s mine. It’s the only way I know how to help.”
Her breath catches as her hands press to her cheeks, tugging her face down on a groan.
“I hate that I understand what you just said. How can that make sense?” She shakes her head as unbridled joy scampers through me that maybe, just maybe, I haven’t fucked up the best thing that’s happened to me since hockey. “I should punch you right in that crooked nose of yours.”
The sparkle I see in her green eyes makes my soul jump for joy.
Before the magic dissipates, I continue, hoping to make things better, not worse. “I’ll cover all the money you lost from the cancellations. I’ll double it. You can just tell them about the fire, and losing your laptop, and somehow there was a glitch and it canceled all your appointments. Give them the next one for free.” Her mouth falls open, but I press my fingers to her lips before she can speak. “I’ll pay you for those, too.”
“You’re impossible.”
I smirk on a shrug. “But I’m cute.”
She snorts on a long breath that raises her tits, and my dick fucking aches. “No more manipulating my life like that.”
I hold my hands up in surrender. “Cross my heart. I will not cancel your appointments.” Once I say it out loud, panic crushes my chest, so I add, “But, you’re not only beautiful but fucking sexy as hell. You can’t trust people, men especially. I’m one, I know. No way you are taking appointments without security from now on.”
“Security? I can’t afford security.”
“Did I say you were paying for it? You said you wanted to do your work. I know you want to earn your money, I get it. But I have plenty. I’m just…providing you with a service. I pay for security, I have cameras installed, panic buttons, all of it. That’s the only way I’ll live through it. And, I’m still not sure I will.”
“No hitting clients. Or throwing potted plants on their cars. I know that was you.”
I nod, but clarify, “If they hurt you, I can’t keep that promise, baby. Sorry, but I can’t.”
“How am I going to help you if you still think violence is the answer?”
“You have helped me. I wanted to feed that Rolex-wearing asshole his own head for dinner, but I didn’t. I just threw a plant on his car. That’s progress.”
“I can’t protect you from yourself. But, I can still show you how being touched can change things.”
Her expression turns playful, desire darkening her eyes as she lowers her head and winds her tongue around the edge of my ear.