19. Chapter 18
Darcy
We hit the mattress and Beck kisses me like the argument is still in his mouth.
My gasp disappears against his lips, his weight pressing me into the mattress, the lights of the Strip glowing across the ceiling through the open curtains.
"You can't just say that," he mutters against my jaw, kissing his way down my throat. "You can't just drop that on a man mid-argument."
"I panicked. You were winning the argument."
"You panicked into loving me?"
"Apparently."
He laughs into my collarbone, and it vibrates through my whole chest.
I realize we've somehow gone from screaming at each other to… this… in under a minute. Which is either very healthy, or grounds for couples therapy. Possibly both. Poppy's going to need a bigger chocolate bowl.
Beck's fingers find the zipper at my back and drag it down slowly, like he has all night, like he didn't just tell me there is a meeting with another team that neither of us is mentioning.
My dress slides off my shoulders and he kisses every inch of skin as it appears. My shoulder, the curve of my breast, the dip of my waist. He peels the fabric away like he's unwrapping something he's not sure he deserves.
That's the part that breaks my heart a little.
Because Beck Morrison should never look at anything like he doesn't deserve it.
This man has been through so much, and after watching him for weeks now, I think he deserves the world.
I reach for his shirt and he rises up on his knees, ripping it over his head in one motion, and God. Those abs. Those fucking abs. The lamp on the sidetable helps highlight every cut ridge of him, all that tension and muscle and hurt wrapped in golden skin.
He leans forward again, kissing me deeply and I drag my nails down his stomach just to feel him shiver.
"Christ, Darce," he breathes. "I can't stay mad at you. Not when you make me feel like this."
"Good." I trace the line of muscle beneath my fingertips, watching his stomach tighten and flex. "Because you being mad at me was really inconvenient. I had a whole evening planned."
"An evening planned?" His voice drops, turning rough as my hand slides lower. "Is this the assessment version or the improvised version?"
"What's the improved version?"
He catches my wrist, pins it gently above my head against the pillow, and leans down until his mouth is just barely not touching mine.
"The version where I get to see you like this."
He nuzzles against my neck, sucking, nibbling and biting until I'm moaning against him, clawing at his back for more.
"Fuck, Beck."
I fumble for his belt while he kisses me again, deeper this time, slower, and the buckle fights me until he covers my hands with his and does it himself.
He takes off his pants, then his boxers.
My underwear disappears somewhere near the pillows.
Then there's nothing between us but skin and everything we screamed at each other twenty minutes ago.
He settles over me and stops, his forearms braced on either side of my head.
"Darcy." His blue eyes lock onto mine, his hair falling across his forehead in that maddening way it does. "You know I'm still mad at you, right?"
"Yes."
"But that doesn't mean I'm not still fucking crazy about you?"
My breath catches as his hips grind against my core.
"I'm starting to get that impression."
His mouth twitches, but his eyes stay serious. "Just making sure we're working with all the available data."
"How very Madden of you."
"What can I say? I've been professionally assessed."
My palm slides over his hardness, fingers wrapping around the thick, hard length of him, and his whole body shudders above me, a sound dragged low from somewhere in his throat that he clearly wasn't expecting to make.
"Darcy—" My name comes out wrecked.
"Shh." I drag my palm over him again, slower this time, watching his lashes flutter. His eyes close as I guide his cock forward, nudging the tip against my clit, using him to swirl slick against the tip.
"Fuck…" The muscle in his forearm flexes where he's bracing his weight, like he needs something to hold onto. "That feels so good, baby."
I roll my hips just enough to coat him, slicking him with my arousal, and his eyes snap open again, dropping straight to where we're almost connected.
He looks down between us, and I see his throat bob. His fingers curl into the pillow beside my head.
"Darce." His voice is raw in a way I haven't heard before. "Don't tease me like this. Not right now."
So I don't.
Instead I pull his face down and kiss him, and he must understand, because he holds my face in both hands, looks straight into my eyes—
And slides into me.
The sound he makes isn't for anyone. It's low and wrecked and torn straight out of his chest, and I feel it everywhere. My nipples tighten, my core squeezes around his every inch working me deeper.
"Fuck, Darce."
There's no hand on my throat this time. No commands, no filthy praise. None of the delicious things he's taught my body to crave.
It's just Beck Morrison in my arms, buried deep inside me, forehead pressed to mine.
And it's different.
I feel it in every thrust — something underneath the pleasure, something that aches. His eyes never leave mine. Every time I try to look away, overwhelmed, he tilts my chin back.
"Stay with me," he whispers. "Right here. That's it, baby." He grinds deeper, both of us groaning together. "Fuck yes. You feel that? That's us."
I think about tonight's game, that gaping hole on the left wing where he should have been. The team falling apart in real time, live, on national television, without him.
The data was wrong.
I was wrong.
I have never once in my life admitted that sentence out loud. I was never allowed to. Yet here it is, sitting in my mind next to the other thing I can't say, while the man I might have destroyed moves inside me like I'm the only thing holding him to the earth.
Because the truth isn't just that the Bears can't survive without Beck Morrison.
It's that I can't.
"This okay?" He lifts one of my legs, deepening the pressure.
"Yes," I breathe.
"Good." He shifts his hips and drives deeper, dragging a moan out of me. "Because you feel so good, Darcy. You know that? You feel like the only thing I've ever got right."
"Beck—"
"Don't argue. For once in your life, don't argue with me. Not now."
He picks up the pace, long and hard and deep, and the headboard starts a rhythm against the wall. He lowers my leg again, only for me to wrap them around him, pulling him closer, my nails in his back, his name falling out of my mouth in pieces.
"I've got you," he breathes. "I've got you, baby. Let go."
And I do.
I shatter with his face buried in my neck, his arms wrapped around me so tight I can't tell whose heartbeat is whose. He follows two thrusts later, groaning my name into my hair, his whole body shaking.
Warmth floods my body. Not just him, but with way too much emotion.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. The Strip glitters through the window. Then Beck collapses face-first beside me like a felled tree.
"Water," he croaks into the pillow. "Need water. Dying."
A laugh bursts out of me, and I reach over and grab the bottle off his nightstand, pressing it against his bare shoulder.
"You played exactly zero minutes of hockey today."
He lifts his head just enough to grin at me, sweaty and wrecked and gorgeous.
"Sweetheart, what we just did? That was the whole playoffs."
Beck disappears into the bathroom, and I hear water running.
He comes back with a warm washcloth and a towel over his shoulder like he's done this a thousand times, except I know he hasn't. Not like this. He kneels on the edge of the bed and cleans me up with careful hands, gentle in a way that makes my throat go tight.
"You know I can do that myself," I whisper.
"I know." He keeps going anyway. "But I'm the one who made the mess."
He tosses the cloth toward the bathroom, digs a second water bottle out of the minibar, cracks the cap, and hands it to me before I even ask.
I take a sip, watching that nicest bare ass I've ever seen strut to pull one of the hotel robes off the hook. He wraps the massive white cloud of a thing around himself, cruelly removing one of Las Vegas's finest attractions from public viewing.
Rude. I was enjoying that.
Beck Morrison in a fluffy robe should be hilarious.
It's not. It's devastating. The collar swallows half his neck, his hair is a wrecked mess, and he slowly drifts over to the floor-to-ceiling window like a heavyweight boxing champion who just retired to a spa.
Below us, the Bellagio fountains erupt right on schedule, white water dancing against the black sky. I pull the sheets higher over my naked body, watching how the whole city glitters through the window.
Beck stands in the middle of it all, backlit in flashing neon lights, quiet as a mouse.
Beck Morrison. Quiet.
That's how I know.
I pull the sheet around myself and watch him, the water bottle cool in my hand.
Then, I can help myself. I need to know.
"So who are you meeting tomorrow?"
He sighs, but doesn't look at me. The fountains keep dancing in the glass behind him, but I can't look away from Beck.
"That depends on what's actually happening with my trade." Now he turns, the robe's belt hanging loose, his eyes finding mine across the dark room. "I need to know where I stand with the Bears. And Darcy… I think you know more than I do."
He waits silently.
I could dodge. I've spent weeks perfecting the dodge. But he's standing there in a robe, asking me for the one thing nobody in his life has ever given him.
The whole truth.
I nod. "I do. I do know more than you. And I should have been more honest."
He goes completely still. "Then no more dodging. Tell me everything, Darce. I need to know."
I take a sip of water, and draw breath.
"Colin's been pushing since the gala. Calls, emails…
each one shorter and more urgent than the last. You were told the audit ran seven weeks, Beck.
What you don't know is that Colin cut it to three weeks ago.
And I didn't tell you. Then Vegas got serious, and now he's cut it again.
He wants my final recommendation within days, not weeks. "
My voice stays steady, which surprises me.
"I didn't know about the scratch tonight. I swear to you, Beck. Coach and management made that call. But I knew everything was speeding up, and I knew you didn't."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I wasn't finished." I shake my head, being absolutely honest. "My assessment wasn't done. I wasn't finished watching you. But every time I sat down to write that stupid report, I couldn't tell anymore whether I was reading numbers… or protecting you."
Beck folds his arms over his chest, now leaning back against the window. He doesn't say anything, just waits for me to keep going.
"I didn't know what to do, Beck. My professional judgment and my feelings got so tangled up I couldn't figure it out.
That has never happened to me. Not once.
I have spent my entire life knowing exactly what the right answer is, and for the first time, my head was telling me one thing, and my heart was screaming something else.
And I froze." I press the cold bottle against my knee.
"Then of course, my mother called. Reminded me that Maddens don't get things wrong.
That being wrong about you would ruin more than my career. "
"And?"
"And I just… I don't know, Beck. I still don't know what to do."
He absorbs that. No joke. No comeback loaded and waiting.
"Okay," he says finally. "Then here's my half. My agent has contacts with the Vegas front office. That's who I'm meeting tomorrow morning."
My stomach drops. "The team that ripped the Bears apart tonight?"
"Yep."
"Beck—"
"I'm not doing it to punish anyone." He crosses back toward the bed, and sits on the edge. "I'm not storming off because I'm angry. Well, I'm a little angry. Mostly at the shrimp tower I never got to eat. That thing was incredible."
The joke lands and dies fast, because his face doesn't hold it.
Beck sits on the edge of the bed, spreading his knees as the robe slips open around his chest. My eyes follow the familiar trail down his body automatically, over thick muscle and golden skin, all the way to the belt knotted loosely at his waist.
Normally, that view would have me crawling straight back into his lap.
Tonight, it's his face that keeps me still.
Because underneath all that muscle and swagger, he suddenly looks tired.
Not physically tired.
Just tired of having everybody else run his life.
"I want to play hockey, Darcy. That's it.
Tonight, I sat in a suit and watched my brothers get buried on national television, and I couldn't do a single thing about it.
If this evaluation has taught me anything, it's that I've done a lot of watching in my life.
Watching Zoey raise us. Watching Declan protect me.
Watching everyone else figure out what Beck can handle.
" He lets his head fall in his hands as he sits on the edge of the mattress.
"My whole life, somebody else has decided where I go and what I'm worth.
But if I leave Beachside, then for once, it's going to be my choice. "
And the horrible thing, the thing that I'm slowly coming to realize, is that I understand him.
Worse than that. I respect it.
Because I know exactly what it's like to spend your whole life executing other people's plans.
He's finally doing the thing I've never been brave enough to do, and he's doing it in a fluffy robe at midnight in Las Vegas, and I have never felt so strongly about him more, or been more terrified in my life.
"That makes sense," I say quietly. "All of it. I hate that it makes sense."
He almost smiles. "First time anyone's ever accused me of making sense."
I set the water bottle on the nightstand and pull the sheet away.
Beck's eyes flick toward me as I crawl across the mattress, completely naked and far beyond caring about it. I settle onto my knees beside him, fold my legs beneath me and reach for his hands.
His fingers close around mine automatically.
For a second, I just look at him. At this ridiculous, beautiful man in his fluffy Bellagio robe who's finally figured out that he gets to choose what happens to his own life.
I'm so fucking proud of him.
But…
I'm also terrified of what he might choose.
“So, Beck… if your future isn't in Beachside anymore…” My voice cracks right down the middle. “Where does that leave us?”