Chapter 20
KIERA
As soon as we made it back to the cabin—honestly I was more winded than Sean, which was weird, but seriously, the guy made me a little breathless—he set me gently in one of the recliners and pulled off my boots.
My feet were red, and the skin was pruny. Super cute.
He tentatively touched the tender spot on the back of my heel. “I’ll get you a bandage.”
He left for the bathroom, though, the cabin being so small, he never left my sight. I enjoyed the view. The smooth, graceful way his hips and shoulders moved—just like on the ice—the way his brown hair fell down the middle of his back, the hard muscular curve of his ass…
He came back, knelt in front of me while opening the packaging, and bandaged my heel. Then he lifted my foot and kissed the arch.
I jerked and would have kicked him in the face if not for his quick reflexes.
“What happened?” he asked.
“That tickled.”
He laughed and squeezed the arch of my foot tight in his hand. “I guess my woman needs a firmer touch.”
My woman? Was I now Sean’s woman? I had to admit, I didn’t hate the idea.
“So, you’re a foot guy?” I asked.
“When it comes to you, I’m an everything guy.”
“Top five favorites?” I teased.
He assessed me with a serious expression. “At the moment? Hair. Tits. Lips. Eyes. Feet.”
“Really?” I cocked my head to the side.
“You’re surprised?” He looked equally taken aback.
“Uh…yeah. My hair has to be a mess. I’d bet money my lips are blue. And I kinda thought my kootchie would have ranked higher than my feet.”
Sean’s lips quirked. “I did say, ‘at the moment.’ I’m sure your kootchie will beat them all out later today.”
My clit pulsed. “How much later?”
Sean pushed out his lips in contemplation, accurately read my expression, then said, “How does two seconds sound?”
“Like two seconds too late.”
In a flash, Sean swooped me up and threw me over his shoulder. He carried me to the bed and tossed me onto the mattress, making it bounce.
After that, all bets were off. We were all over each other—hands, lips, tongues, teeth—as if the world had tipped like an hourglass, and we were running out of time.
I kissed my way down his neck, down his chest, licking, sucking, tasting, and he tasted amazing.
I undid his jeans, then really tasted him, taking him in my mouth.
“Fuck. Kiera.”
I stroked him with my tongue until he moaned low and desperate in his throat.
I could have gone on, eliciting that sound from him forever, but he grabbed me under the arms and hauled me back up his body.
“My turn,” he said.
And my god was it ever. Sean rolled me to my back and explored my naked body like a conquistador in a brand new land—the only difference: I’d decided to welcome my ultimate destruction because the things he did to my body… I was a big, big fan.
He kissed the inside of my knee, my thigh, and higher. He spread my spasming legs and licked through my folds.
I clamped my thighs tight around his head like a vise and squeezed.
This made him laugh against my swollen flesh, which was a new sensation. Before I could process it, he’d come up, over the top of me.
He grabbed me behind one knee and slung my leg around his hip. He did the same with my other leg.
I hooked my ankles behind his back, and lifted my hips to help him position.
He expressed his gratitude for the assist by pinching my nipple.
The sting made me whimper in pleasure, and I bit down on my lower lip.
“You like that?” he asked.
“Yeah, baby.”
“Gotta say…I love discovering all the things you like, but right now… Babe… I gotta have you.”
“Then take me.”
He drove in deep—smooth and fast—stretching my walls as he buried himself to the hilt on the very first stroke.
“Yes!” I cried out at the glorious intrusion, then followed that up with “Fuck, yeah!” because the onslaught had commenced.
Sean’s thick cock was moving deep inside of me, rhythmic, smooth, powerful and—dare I say it?—victorious.
He kept this up without slacking, driving in—again and again, over and over—scrambling my brain while maintaining total control.
I started panting, and his thumb went back to my clit. He pressed in, then swirled. My insides coiled and tightened, throbbed, then tightened even more.
I was seconds away from exploding into smithereens. All of my nerve endings felt like they’d moved to the outside of my body, and they were firing.
“Kiera,” he said, his voice hoarse and sounding completely awestruck.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to memorize the moment, unsure whether I would ever feel anything so otherworldly as this. I felt so full, so tight, so complete, and yet completely undeserving. God, I hoped I was giving as well as I was getting.
“Kiera,” he said. “Open your eyes.”
But I couldn’t, because at that very second his thumb flicked my clit, and I came. I came so hard my whole world unfurled, like a tree bursting into leaf in a single second.
I arched my neck, my mouth opening on a silent scream. I was flying! My core clenched and throbbed around his cock, and everything went so slick, I felt moisture running down over my ass.
“Gorgeous,” he murmured. “Fucking gorgeous.”
Then he slammed in one more time and joined me in the sky.
Sean rolled off but turned me to him so we were lying side by side, facing each other.
“You know I’ve wanted this for a while,” he said, stroking my hair.
I shuddered with an aftershock of my orgasm. “This?”
“You,” he said.
“Since when?”
I’d thought I’d memorized his face long ago, but now, with the sunlight streaming in his bedroom window, lying on his plush mattress, our faces close, I noticed little nuances I’d never noticed before: a tiny freckle on his cheek, a slanted quarter-inch scar on his jaw, how his moss-green eyes had flecks of brown and gold when the light hit them just right.
“Since we shared that elevator up to Lukas’s place. You were bringing boxes to Elli.”
“Yeah.” I stroked the curve of his ear, and he let me.
“You liked me then, too,” he said, always so arrogant, but he did it in such a cute way, I couldn’t get mad. I could, however, push back.
“I didn’t know you then,” I said, “I had no way of knowing if I liked you.”
“But you liked what you saw,” he persisted.
That was true. More than true. It had been hard to look him in the eye, he’d been so beautiful. But still…the guy could stand a little humility. “What I liked was that you were a good friend to Lukas. To everyone. That’s rare.”
“Is it?” he asked, his eyebrows drawing together.
“You don’t think so?”
His shoulders twitched in a kind of shrug, or as best he could manage lying on his side. “I’ve got a lot of good friends.”
I snorted. Of course he did.
“Is that funny?”
“No,” I said. “You should absolutely have a ton of good friends.”
“So should you,” he insisted.
I glanced toward the ceiling.
“You have a friend in me,” he said.
My gaze shot back to him. “You’re going to make me come that hard, then friend-zone me?”
For now, I was joking, even if that was the best longterm outcome I could hope for.
Fortunately, Sean laughed. “Hardly. Now that I’m finally in with you, I plan on making you come that hard a lot more often.”
“You think you’re finally in with me?” I was finding that I enjoyed teasing him, mostly because he seemed to enjoy playing along.
“Aren’t I?” he asked with one of his shit-eating grins.
“We’ll see.”
“Ball buster,” he muttered, but he did it smiling.
My phone pinged, and I wasn’t sure if I should answer it. We weren’t in the middle of things anymore, but maybe it was still rude.
Sean answered that question for me by twisting over his shoulder and grabbing my phone from the nightstand where I’d left it to charge.
He handed it over, and I looked at the screen. “That’s weird.”
“What’s weird?” he asked.
“It’s Aurora. She doesn’t usually text me.”
“Who’s Aurora?”
“My neighbor. If we need to talk, we usually do it right outside our doors.”
I opened the text.
Hey, doll. I hope you’re not on vacation or something because you got a big delivery—like 10 or 12 boxes—and the delivery guy stacked and arranged them into the shape of a T-Rex.
It’s kind of funny, but Tony’s threatening to confiscate them all if you don’t get everything inside soon.
Let me know if you’re out of town and need help with that!
She’d attached a photo. It was exactly as she described.
This had Darrel written all over it, and I had to give it to him. His cardboard T-Rex wouldn’t look out of place in a modern art museum.
I showed the text and photo to Sean.
“Impressive,” he said. “Who’s Tony?”
“Our landlord. He’s got a thing about clutter. As in, no clutter.”
In fact, he didn’t allow visible trash bins or gnome statues or pinwheels in people’s gardens. He allowed Christmas wreaths on doors and American flags. That was it. He’d talked to me more than a few times about packages that were left on my doorstep for too long.
“Best we get you home then.” Sean pushed back the covers. “No need to roil a landlord and make more trouble in your life.”
“Really?” I asked, glancing up from my phone. “I can go home?”
This came as a huge surprise. Sean hadn’t given me any indication that he thought it was suddenly safe.
“We’ll check it out.” He swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. “Take care of your packages. But there’s no way you’re spending the night there.”
He wasn’t going to get any argument from me on that point. I wasn’t even sure I had much of a bed left to sleep on.
I’d never made it into my bedroom to check on the damage, though Jen had. Her reaction hadn’t been exactly positive.
“We can grab your computer, too,” Sean added. “Your camera and whatever else you need. I don’t want you to get behind on your work.”
“My work?”
Sean pulled on his boxer briefs. “Your online stuff.”
I pushed up on my elbows. “You consider that work?”
He glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyebrows knitted. “Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly.” He stood up, turned to face the bed, then tied his hair into a knot at his nape. “It’s got to take you a ton of time.”
I blinked once. “It does.”
“Okay.” He gave me an incredulous look. “So, why are you questioning me?”
“It’s just… A lot of people don’t see it as a job.” A lot of people assumed I’d peter out before making even a dozen posts, let alone an actual career.
Sean reached down and grabbed his jeans. “A lot of people are idiots.”
I smiled at that and watched in fascination as he got himself dressed. I guessed the rumor was true: everyone—even hot-as-hell, hockey-player-lumberjack-nymphs—put their pants on one leg at a time.
“But why fashion?” he asked, buttoning up yet another plaid flannel shirt.
“What?” It was a shame to see that chest be put under wraps.
“There are all kinds of influencers, babe. Why fashion?” He grabbed my discarded clothes off the floor and handed them to me.
I sat up and held them against my chest, feeling suddenly exposed. “I like clothes.”
“I got that. But why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
Gulk. Was he really going to make me explain?
He raised his eyebrows and waited.
“Fine.” I blew out a breath. “I guess I’ve always liked clothes—classics and fads, so long as they were well constructed. Fast fashion is for landfills, not for bodies.”
“You’re into clothes for environmental reasons?” His tone was doubtful.
“No,” I said sarcastically. “As a kid… As I kid, I gravitated toward the things I didn’t have. The things I couldn’t have.”
“I get that,” Sean said, and it sounded like he really did understand.
It prompted me to keep talking.
“I got my first subscription to Vogue when I was thirteen. The photos made me…I don’t know…feel something. I was desperate for beautiful things.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said, which I liked, but I hadn’t been fishing for a compliment.
“What I meant was, I was desperate for life to be beautiful.”
Sean stared at me for a long time, then he drew in a breath through his nose, leaned down and kissed my forehead.
“Sean?”
He planted one hand on the mattress beside my hip and, with his other hand, brushed a few strands of hair off my face. “Yeah?”
“When we do go back to my apartment, I’d like to stay for a bit so I can assess the damage. I should probably take pictures for insurance.”
“Good idea.” Sean flicked his finger against the clothes I still held tight against my chest. “Get dressed and we can get going on that.”
“But don’t you have practice or something? I could have someone else come over instead.”
“One…” He straightened to standing. “No practice, just a meeting at three o’clock. We have an away game tomorrow. Two, I’m not leaving you alone at your apartment.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but he got in there first.
“Alone, as in, without me. Elli can come get you when it’s time for me to go. And three…”
His eyebrows drew together in concentration.
“What’s three?” I asked.
“I’m not sure yet, but there’s definitely a three.”
I smiled at that. “How soon can we go?”
He glanced down at my still naked body and raised an eyebrow. “Babe. You’re the one holding us up.”
I rose to my knees, letting the blankets and my clothes fall away, and threw my arms around his waist.
He bent to give me a quick kiss, then I got out of bed.