6. CHAPTER FIVE
It definitely wasn’t like me to sleep with a woman right after meeting her. All of my cousins usually teased me for being a bit of a romantic prude, and rightfully so. I could count on one hand the number of women I’d ever slept with and most of those had been in established relationships.
Ciara Callaghan was different though.
I would be lying if I said I hadn’t watched both of her programs earlier and been immediately smitten.
When he’d seen my slack-jawed awe, Nash had warned me that she wasn’t the commitment type of person. He didn’t elaborate, but I could read between the lines. Once I told him that I didn’t care, he invited me out to meet her while they celebrated.
She was far prettier in person than she’d been on camera. She had this warm brown skin and curly hair that floated around her head and while she was on the taller side, she was still a bit shorter than I was—the perfect height for kissing my brain had whispered numbly to me as we sized each other up.
And damn did she smell amazing. Like, turn-me-rock-hard amazing.
We were at the point of the evening where our scent-blockers had started to wear off, filling the club with an absolute blur of different scents.
I could pick Ciara’s out almost immediately amongst the throng as soon as her hand slid into mine. The smell of cinnamon with the slightest hint of nutmeg made for a mouthwatering combination.
My instincts took over from there and I found myself flirting shamelessly with her in front of her entire family. Yet another thing that wasn’t like me.
When she reciprocated I thought my heart was going to burst right out of my chest and do a little jig on the bar. Not only that, my brain had been a constant chant of don’t fuck it up, Jae, don’t fuck it up ever since. Which made it even harder to function when she kissed me.
Then I made the idiot mistake of mentioning my impending trade to the Stallions. I could see her mood shift in a blink. Then she was running away and I was left to kick myself at our table and pray she took pity on me and came back.
“Stupid,” I muttered glumly to myself as I took another swig of my beer. “So stupid.”
Ever since our lips met, I’d been telling myself that I wouldn’t mind a one night stand if it was with Ciara Callaghan. That I could handle it.
But even to me that sounded like utter bullshit. I wanted to get to know Ciara because better to learn what her likes and dislikes were and what made her tick.
She was clearly very loved by Brynn and her alphas because as soon as they’d left my phone had buzzed with a message from Nash telling me to behave myself. It made me want to know more about her than even they knew, to strip away all of the bravado and see who she was really.
But unfortunately, it didn’t seem like I was ever going to get that chance. I was pretty sure that Ciara wasn’t actually going to the bathroom and that she’d fled the scene entirely.
“Curse my hopeless romantic genetics.” I downed the rest of what was left in my glass, my glum mood taking over completely.
I’d always worn my heart on my sleeve, a trait I inherited from my mother. She’d taken one look at my dad when she was on a trip to Korea and had decided that he was it for her.
Almost thirty years later and they were still as in love as they’d been on day one—even if it had taken mom showing up to the place where my dad worked for an entire summer.
Pressing a finger to my lips, I tried to remember the tingling sensation from the earlier kiss we shared as I started to come to terms with the fact that I’d probably be going back to my room alone.
Then I saw her out of the corner of my eye hurrying through the crowd back toward our booth. Her face looked odd, like she was feeling far too much and it resulted in a furrowed brow and a deep grimace as our eyes met. Then her features smoothed out and I blinked, trying to figure out if I’d imagined the storm cloud expression.
“Hey,” I said, frowning as she pulled to a stop and put one knee on the edge of the booth. “You left pretty abruptly so I was worr—”
She cut me off, grabbing the edges of my jacket and dragging me across the leather seat to her until our lips met again.
The kiss earlier had been slow and languid, like we were curiously exploring each other and the clear attraction we felt between the two of us.
But this?
This was electric and desperate. It felt like she wanted to swallow me whole, and every alpha instinct I had inside of me was ready to oblige.
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” she asked, her lips still ghosting over mine.
Her brown eyes looked different than earlier, like all of the confidence that seemed to ooze out of them was gone now replaced by someone who was as vulnerable as a livewire.
“Sure.” The urge to comfort and protect her kicked in as I stared at her, my thumb brushing a line down her cheek. “Let’s go.”
Tugging me from the booth, Ciara made a beeline for the backdoor of the club.
“Where are we going? Your room?” I asked as we stepped out into the chilly night air, dodging the people who filled the sidewalk. A wash of different languages and accents met my ears and it was almost overwhelming as I let Ciara pull me through the streets.
“Not mine unless you’re okay with my stepsister hearing everything I’m about to do to you,” she threw over her shoulder, all of her earlier anxiety seemingly gone as she shot me a cheeky smile.
I wanted to ask her what that had been about, but I’d gotten myself into trouble already this evening and I wasn’t about to do it again.
“I don’t have a roommate,” I told her as I pulled us to a stop, keeping her hand firmly in mine as I raised the other to signal an oncoming black taxi.
Fifteen minutes later and I was holding my keycard against the door. Ciara’s hands were already sliding up the back of my shirt as I led the way into my room.
All of the athlete’s rooms in the village were pretty bare bones, and mine was the same aside from the little knickknacks and things I usually brought with me when I traveled.
The Team USA hockey player that was supposed to share with me had never shown up, so I had the room all to myself and had pushed the two twin beds together to create a full sized one to accommodate my longer frame.
How they expected athletes to sleep in such narrow beds was beyond me, but I was pretty sure it was the UK’s way of exhausting us so we weren’t rested for our own events.
“Shirt off,” Ciara demanded as she kicked the door shut behind us, her hands pushing up under the shoulders of my jacket to push it off.
I obliged, my mind hazy with the beers I’d drunk and the cloying smell of her scent in my nose.
Without all of the other scents that had been in the club, her cinnamon scent was mouthwatering. It was like I’d just walked into a damn Cinnabon and dunked myself in a vat of the stuff. But Cinnabon didn’t give me a hard-on like Ciara did—and thank gods for that or else I’d probably have been arrested for public indecency a long time ago.
“You smell amazing,” I groaned, never one to keep my thoughts to myself.
Ciara’s eyes lifted to mine and her grin widened. “You do too, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who smells like you before.”
She likes how I smell, fuck yeah, I cheered inwardly as I slipped a hand behind her back to tug at the zipper of the little black dress she was wearing. The skin of her back was just as smooth as I’d imagined and the next couple of minutes were a blur of clothing dropping to the ground and desperate kisses that sucked the breath right out of me.
I’d been rock hard since we’d gotten into the taxi, the surreptitious brushes of her fingers and her scent making it hard to concentrate on the idle conversation the driver had been trying to hold.
Now, my cock was practically begging for relief as it stood at attention, ready for the woman in front of me to peruse, and hopefully, give her approval of.
Ciara’s brown eyes slid down from where they’d been locked on to my face and her stare was so intense I could practically feel it skittering down my chest as if she was physically reaching out and touching me.
“I didn’t think you were packing all of this,” she commented a bit dryly, the corner of her mouth pulling up into a self-satisfied smirk. “I see now why they call you Wiz.”
A laugh huffed out of me at that. The real reason I’d garnered my nickname was because I’d gotten really good at pulling a miracle out of my ass during games, seemingly by magic. But at this point I’d agree to anything she said as long as it meant she was going to brush those pretty fingers of hers against me.
Not wanting to wait any longer, I reached for her hand and brought it to my length, wrapping her fingers firmly around it.
“It’s hard for you,” I told her, reaching up to cup her face in my hands and pull her lips to mine.
Ciara seemed to understand my unspoken request, because her fingers tightened and gave my cock an experimental pump.
A muffled grunt left me at the sudden sensation of pleasure that was tingling down my legs.
Then she was giving my chest a shove and my back was hitting the bed with a thump as she straddled my waist and began to notch the head of my cock at her weeping entrance.
Things were moving much faster than I thought they would and I laid a hand on her thigh.
“Wait a second,” I murmured, realizing that she was about to slide down onto my cock without any sort of foreplay.
Gently flipping us over, I smoothed my hands down her front, my palms roughing over her dusky nipples and making them harden.
“Don’t go too fast.” I cupped one of her breasts in my hand, testing the weight of it.
“I want you now though,” Ciara murmured with a pout, reaching up to pull me down to her again, but I dodged away from her grabbing hands.
“And I want to remember every moment of this,” I told her as I leaned back on my knees and let my eyes explore her naked body.
She looked gorgeous lying on top of the white duvet, one hand tossed over her head and the other resting on her stomach, just over the mottling of some scar tissue.
Ciara’s eyes followed my gaze and she flattened her palm, covering it completely. “Car accident when I was younger,” she explained before I could ask.
“I’ve got one of those too.” I pointed to the line going up the side of my left thigh. “My dad hit a patch of black ice and flipped our minivan.”
I lifted her hand and brought it to the raised flesh, tracing her pointer finger along the length of it.
“Just let me take care of you tonight,” I murmured after the moment was over. “Don’t rush.”
“Sorry,” Ciara said, her teeth worrying at her lower lip. “I’m not very good at giving up control.”
My laugh was loud and sharp. “I’ve only known you for an hour and I could have told you that.”
Dropping down I pressed my lips to her sternum and began my slow trek down her body. I could almost taste her sweet scent on her skin as I stopped to pay homage to each of her breasts, my mouth wrapping around her left nipple before moving to the right one.
Ciara, for her part, had stopped talking and stopped trying to hurry me along. Instead, her hands slid into my hair, gripping with enough tightness to make my scalp tingle with pleasure as a low gasp left her lips.
She seemed to be melting before my very eyes and by the time my mouth left her nipples and whispered down her stomach, her eyes were shut and she was completely relaxed underneath me.
I knew she was going to taste as divine as she looked. Women didn’t look ethereal the way she did and didn’t taste amazing, and one flick of my tongue confirmed it.
Ciara wasn’t an omega, but the scent of her damp center was still strong and sweet, cinnamon mixing with feminine musk that made my instincts rattle inside of my brain.
Her fingers tightened in my hair and when I shifted my gaze up to her face, I found her watching me through heavily lidded eyes as my mouth remained buried between her thighs.
Her dusky pink lips, still just a bit sparkly from the gloss she’d been wearing before our mouths tangled in the club, were parted and I could hear her sharp intake of breath as I pressed the tip of my tongue to her clit.
Thighs clamped around my ears, as her hips lifted to meet my face. I took the opportunity to wrap my arms around them, holding them firmly as I continued to explore her wet folds, my imagination getting the better of me as I imagined how tight her quivering entrance would feel around my cock.
I couldn’t knot her—or at least I didn’t think I could. Truth be told I’d never slept with another alpha before and the sex ed lessons I’d gotten in high school after awakening were eluding me thanks to what I was currently in the middle of.
“Shit, why are you so good at this?” I heard Ciara mutter, the Irish accent which had been just a hint all night definitely more pronounced now. Her fingers clenched in my hair and a stinging sensation rippled down the back of my neck, quickly mixing in with the heady arousal I was feeling.
Swiping my tongue along her moist folds, I came up for air. “I’m a very good student,” I rumbled, my voice more gravelly than I’d ever heard it before.
I sounded like a completely different man, something about Ciara bringing it out in me as I unabashedly climbed back up her body and our mouths tangled together again. If Ciara didn’t like the taste of herself on my lips, she didn’t say a word as her hands fumbled between us, gripping my cock and bringing it to her warm core again.
“Condom?” I asked, my words muffled by her seeking lips.
She nodded. “I’m on birth control, but better safe than sorry.”
I nodded and rolled over to the bedside table.
“You’re not going to use one of those Olympic condoms are you?” I heard her ask as I reached into the drawer.
Pulling out the box of condoms that always came with me in my toiletries when I traveled, I held it up for her to see. “No, I wouldn’t trust those as far as I could throw them, why?”
Ciara’s brown eyes sparkled with mirth as she plucked the box out of my hands and eyed it critically. “Because I have a niece and nephew who owe their very existence to a faulty Olympics condom, and I’d rather not have a repeat of history.”
She pulled a foil-wrapped condom out of the box and unwrapped it, crooking a finger in my direction. “Come here then so we can get started.”
Swallowing the sudden lump of nerves threatening to make an appearance via babbling, I crawled back across the bed to her.
When our mouths met again, I realized that something in the air was starting to shift irrevocably. I wasn’t sure if it was the jovial mood to something more hedonistic, or if it was something far more important, something like fate.