Chapter 16
Tanner
Present day
So much happened in the past five minutes that I stay silent for the whole ride, needing the time to just cool off.
Aisling sliding her thighs up and down that pole. The knowledge that every one of my teammates is smitten for her. Having her in my arms again with almost enough nerve to lean down and kiss her – only to find out that she’d gotten tipsy, which means that I had to rule that off the table.
Then there was the matter of her coming face to face with what was very clearly her first ever gun , and trying my hardest to keep cool so that she didn’t freak out, when all I really wanted to do was bust that guy’s jaw for putting her in such an unfair situation in the first place.
I shove the car into park, rip off my seatbelt and throw my head back against the seat. I dig the heels of my palms into my eyes as a long groan shudders through my chest.
When I drop my hands I tilt my head to the right, looking down at Aisling’s beautiful face. She’s gives me a sulky pout.
I lean over to un-strap her seatbelt, grimacing when her chest brushes gently against my biceps.
“What?” I grunt, not pulling back as far as I should.
“How’d you know how to disengage a gun?” she asks, her chest pumping faster when I lean in to grab some of my stuff from the side in the door.
“We’re not talking about this right now,” I manage to rasp, turning to open my door.
But then she’s brushing her body firmly over mine so that she can halt my progress, her hand gripped around the handle even though I could easily lift it away. I meet her blazing eyes, her body heat radiating straight into my abdomen.
I give her a reluctant glance up and down, before leaning back in my seat, nostrils flaring as she cages me in with her palms on either side of my bouncing quads.
“Aisling,” I whisper, “I only wanna talk about this when you’re sober.”
“Three tiny shots,” she reminds me, although her voice is a husky uninhibited purr.
I shake my head, hands clenching into fists on my knees. “Don’t care. When I finally get you to listen to me, there is not going to be a fucking chance of you blaming what happens after on a drop of alcohol being in your system. Not to mention the fact that what just happened in that bar was really fucking dangerous.”
She pushes up onto her knees so that her face is almost on the same level as mine, and I let our chests brush firmly together.
“You know exactly why I know how to disengage a gun,” I tell her. “You know where I come from. You know that I don’t take military shit lightly. I don’t want you to ever be in a position like that again or, if you have to be, I want you to be prepared. That idiot could have hurt you.”
She nudges her nose sweetly against mine. “You wouldn’t let anything hurt me. You’d kiss it better.”
I shove a hand through my hair as a flashback burns through my mind, and then my eyes are penetrating hers, my palms gripping urgently into her hips.
“You’re playing dirty now?” I ask her, eyes on her mouth as she pushes more firmly against me. “You can’t outplay a player, Aisling.”
She tilts her head and gives me a taunting smile. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing for the past four years?”
God. Damn .
I smirk and huff out a laugh as she climbs up on me like she’s been wanting to, and then I haul her thighs around my middle as I shift us over to my seat. I shove the driver’s door open and start carrying her toward the cabin.
“You’ve got the smartest goddamn mouth,” I rumble quietly, stubble scraping over her cheek as I press a hard kiss against the lobe of her ear.
Refusing to behave for one goddamn second, Aisling squeals, “Put me down, put me down!” as if she isn’t clinging into the thick muscles of my shoulders like a wriggling baby koala.
Calling her bluff I start to lower her to the sandy dirt path in front of the moonlit cabin, but then she’s instantly yelping and clutching her thighs around me tighter.
“No, no, no!” she squeals.
“Come on, tipsy girl,” I say gruffly, hauling her higher up my abdomen. It takes balls of fucking steel to tune out the sexy whines she keeps on making as she bounces up and down my chest, panting heavily against my neck.
I pull the cabin keys out of my front pocket, shoving it into the lock so that I can put Aisling to bed as quickly as possible. Then I’m going to put the whole damn lake between me and her horny little ass.
I kick the door shut and drop her to the floor, lacing my fingers at the back of my neck so that I can’t cuddle her up.
She jabs her little chin into the warm cavern between my pecs, and looks up at me with those beautiful did I do something wrong? eyes.
I grunt and look away from her. “Put the pout away, woman.”
She makes a sad little sigh that has me reluctantly glancing back down at her.
“We’re talkin’ about this as soon as you’re sober, Aisling,” I promise, my biceps flexing like crazy when she wraps her hands around them.
But then I’m swallowing hard and allowing her to bring my arms gently around her waist. My knuckles brush over her lower back and my eyes close for the briefest moment, chest expanding at how right this feels.
I slowly dip my head as she reaches up on her tip-toes, and I brush my forehead gently over her temple.
“I don’t want to talk,” she whispers, her warm body heat making me shudder.
I leash my fingers into her ponytail, holding her closer as she clings to me.
“I’m gonna put this shit to rest, Aisling,” I rumble quietly. “You’re gonna tell me what hurt you so bad and I’m gonna fix it, okay?”
She mumbles something that sounds like shut up big shot and I breathe out a laugh, tugging her head back so that I can look down at her.
Prettiest girl in the world.
“Tanner,” she whispers, her expression alternating between suspicious and giddy, and suddenly I realise that she’s pulling me over to her bed. My bed. The bed that I’ve been sleeping in while thinking about her, wearing my shirt in that lake house.
When we reach the foot of it she squishes her breasts right up against me and I groan quietly as she teases the hell out of me.
“No,” I rasp, even as one hand fists her ponytail tighter, and the other grips nice and firm over her hip.
“Can’t we just enjoy the moment?” she purrs as she rubs her lower abdomen against my belt buckle. My eyes roll back in my head as she applies the perfect pressure to the thick ridge down there.
“Y-you’ll enjoy plenty of moments with me, I swear.” I swallow. “Maybe on this bed. Just have to wait ’til you’re sober.”
Then I grit my teeth and growl as she slowly rakes her nail down one of my nipples.
“Goddamn, Aisling,” I pant. “You tryna scratch that thing off or something?”
She presses a gentle apologetic kiss over my erect fucking nipple.
“Sorry,” I quickly tell her, instantly backtracking so that she won’t have that embarrassed look in her eyes. “Didn’t mean to say it like that.” I pull her hand back up to my pec, giving her the green light. “Be as rough as you want, I can take it.”
It’s too dark to make out the finer details, the only light coming from the moon gently streaming in through the side window, but I don’t need a light on to feel what she’s doing to me. Aisling pushes up the tight cotton of my shirt, letting the bulk of my pecs hold the fabric just beneath my throat, and the next thing that I feel is her warm tongue flicking my nipple.
I gasp and hold her harder, while she looks up at me from under her lashes.
Then she wraps her lips around my nipple and sucks it into her mouth, hard.
My mind goes blank and I involuntarily walk her backwards, until her shoulders hit the wall at the foot of the bed.
“Whaaaat the fuck,” I whisper, neck arched back as Aisling – the fucking Captain of Carter U’s elite cheer squad – sucks at my nipple, her nails digging hard into the muscles of my back and making me groan at how good that feels.
I’m confused as hell and turned the fuck on. She looks up at me without blinking and then bites her teeth into it.
A rough sound rumbles up my throat as I leak inside my boxer briefs, leaning a forearm on the wall above Aisling’s head and watching through heavy lids as she kisses and sucks at me.
I keep her in place with my palms, not wanting the pain to end.
“Aisling,” I pant. “You feel so fucking good. How does that feel so fucking good?”
She bites into me, really fucking hard this time, and I grunt like a beast as she keeps her eyes on mine.
After a painstaking few seconds she finally releases me, and I automatically move my hand to adoringly cup her jaw, bringing her face up to mine as I lean down and tower over her.
She keeps her hands on the large muscles of my chest, feeling how heavily she’s got them pumping as I rub our foreheads together.
“Aisling,” I murmur, her mouth only a centimetre away from mine. She wraps her arms around my neck, hauling our bodies tighter together, and she nudges the perfect tip of her nose against my own. A silent request – an invitation – for me to give her the kiss that I’ve been waiting on for four years.
I slide the rough palm of my hand up her jaw, gripping her steady, and she breathes excitedly as my mouth hovers just over hers.
“Ash.” She pushes into me more desperately and I inhale deeply, overcome with the warmth and the scent of her. “Ash, baby–”
Four heavy poundings on the cabin’s wooden door have our heads whipping toward the sound, eyes wide with shock as a surge of adrenaline shoots through our bodies.
“Aisling! You in there?”
“Fuck,” I grunt, gripping Aisling against me tighter as her brother gives the door another rough pounding.
Aisling blinks quickly, trying to pull herself out of the pre-sex haze, and then she turns her head back to my body, eye level right with my chest.
She squeaks as she stares at the giant muscles in front of her and practically tears my shirt clean off as she yanks it back down over my abdomen. Before I can get a single word out she’s shoving into me as hard as she can, not moving me an inch but I get the picture and start backing up.
We’ve been so caught up in each other for the past five minutes that I didn’t even hear the crunch of boots on the dirt as Connell and the guys made it back to the cabins. I’m guessing that he’s checking in on her to make sure that she’s home safe – and alone – so I back-up into the bathroom as she calls out a frantic, “One minute!”
I smirk down at her as she shuts the door to the bathroom, scanning around for a hiding place big enough to fit a six-foot-four hockey player. I tug her sexy little body against me and encase my palms around her hips. She fumbles with something on the wall to my left.
“Not gonna lie, this is kinda hot,” I tell her, my voice dropping deeper than usual as she reaches up to twist something. When she doesn’t spare me a single word I glance at the wall and blink at it in confusion. “You tryna put me in the cupboard or something?” I ask her teasingly. “Baby, I’ll just hide in the shower.”
She gives me a withering glare. “Hidden in a lot of showers, have you?”
I clear my throat. Fuck.
She grips my jaw, ripping a primal grumble of satisfaction from my chest, and turns my face so that I’m looking at what she just opened.
Which, it turns out, was not the little cupboard.
“You’re not hiding in the shower. You’re climbing out of the window.”
I stare at the open window, blank and uncomprehending. Then I look back down at her.
“Baby, I don’t think I can fit through there.” Also, I really don’t want to.
“Aisling!” Connell’s voice, low and laced with alcohol, sounds from the outside of the cabin.
I shove a hand through my hair, eyes on the delicate golden finger that Aisling is prodding stubbornly into my chest.
“You will climb out of the window,” she tells me defiantly.
I swipe my tongue over my lower lip, gaze flicking back to the window, which is mounted partway up the wall and only opens on one side, probably so that no-one of normal size can break into one of these cabins.
“Fuck. Fine.”
Aisling rewards me with a happy pat on the biceps as she frantically checks over her shoulder, but I quickly grab a hand around her jaw, surprising her as I haul her closer. I press a rough kiss to her beautiful cheek and then release her, shoving the window as wide as I can before mounting the ledge. I muscle my shoulders through the frame at a tight sideways angle.
“Fuck,” I curse as quietly as possible as I twist my abdomen through the gap, Aisling’s warm little hands pushing at me like she’s trying to roll a boulder.
“Hurry up!” she whispers, and I have to bite back a groan as she accidently shoves her palm into my fucking nut-sack.
“Jesus Christ,” I rasp, reaching for the top of the frame on the outside of the cabin, and using it like a pull-up ledge to haul my hips, quads and feet through the hole.
Aisling laughs excitedly through the window as I drop heavily to the ground and I lean my palms flat on the bottom of the frame, smirking down at her. She’s giggling like I just made her night.
“Wild thing,” I murmur, before taking her chin in my palm again and pressing another kiss to her cheek.
Then I push up off the wall and head into the fringe of the forest. No-one sees me as I make my way around the water, and back to the lake house.