CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SAM
The room is dark when my eyes open, the moon still lighting the night sky. It creates an ethereal glow where it enters through the patio doors across the room. I have no idea what time it is. And I’m not sure what woke me.
I sense movement right before the mattress dips beside me, and that’s when I see her. Emerson. Her chestnut hair falls across her shoulders in waves. Her golden eyes are staring down at me. I drag my gaze lower. She’s lost the sweatshirt, and she’s wearing a tank top now. It hugs her curves. She isn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples are pebbled and beading through the thin cotton material. Unexpected excitement stirs deep inside my gut.
“Hey,” I murmur, my voice thick and gravelly.
“Hi,” she whispers back.
Her eyes glimmer seductively in a way they never have before—at least toward me. Her gaze drops to my bare chest and doesn’t stop until it hits the sheets that are draped low across my hips. I’m not sure when I removed my clothes or if she took them off for me. But I like the way her attention warms my skin. She’s never looked at me like this. With a wild-eyed look. With want. And I wonder what changed between the club and now.
She glances away, like she’s battling with herself, while I just watch. She bites her bottom lip. And when her eyes meet mine again, it’s like a decision has been made. Her delicate hands fall to the hem of her tank defiantly. Slowly, she lifts until the material is pulled above her waist, over her breasts, and disappears overhead. It lands somewhere on the floor beside the bed.
My breath hitches as I stop to study her in the moonlight. Her expression is smoldering. Her lips are parted. A piece of hair drifts across her cheek. Her skin is pale and smooth. The line of her collarbone begs for my tongue. The swollen curve of her breasts culminate into perfectly symmetrical nipples …
I’ve been so busy resenting her; I’ve never acknowledged how beautiful Emerson is. My body is on fire as I look at her, and I’m instantly hard as a rock. I need to feel her skin, but when I reach out, she grabs my hand.
“You’re not supposed to touch me, remember?” There’s a taunting lilt to her tone.
That damn contract. Why in the hell would they hire an attractive woman to travel with me? And then say that I can look, but never touch. She’s forbidden fruit. She’s exquisite torture.
“Are you teasing me?” I ask gruffly.
My hand is still held hostage within her grasp.
“Yes,” she replies without hesitation, one corner of her mouth lifting.
I like this playful side of her and the way her breasts rise and fall with each breath. She trails the fingertips of her free hand across my chest and down my abs, touching me without reservation. My sharp inhalation tightens the muscles, and she pauses to explore.
Excitement stirs inside my chest. I didn’t expect this, not from her.
“You aren’t supposed to touch me either,” I remind her before scolding myself in the next second. I don’t want her to stop.
Something about the taboo nature of this moment makes each stroke even hotter.
“But lucky for you,” she purrs, “I don’t always follow the rules.”
My eyebrows rise. That’s news to me. “Neither do I.”
Her grin is coy when I rip my hand from her grasp and secure it around the back of her neck. Her silky hair brushes against my fingers. I pull her down until my lips hit the crook of her neck, lingering there. She smells sweet, like peaches, and her skin is soft, like silk. I nuzzle further into her, trailing my mouth along her neck and landing beneath her ear.
“Kiss me,” she begs.
I hesitate for only a moment, my mouth sealing over hers eagerly. Her lips are plush and just as soft as her skin. She’s a sin I never knew I wanted, but one I won’t soon forget. I work my tongue across the seam, enticing her to open her lips. It tangles with hers as we taste each other for the first time.
I feel like I’m caught inside a dream, but I’m a willing prisoner. I’m intoxicated, but it’s not from the alcohol I drank tonight. It’s her. It’s all her.
Emerson straddles me. She leans forward until the tips of her nipples skim my chest and I’m breathing her in. We’re separated by a thin sheet and leggings that hug every curve of her ass and legs, but nothing else. Her hips shift until she’s rubbing along my cock. All the extra blood in my body travels down to my groin. Every slide up and down creates a spark, but the friction isn’t enough to ignite a flame. I need more.
Our mouths fuse again as I drop my thumbs into the band of her leggings and tug down with an urgency that wasn’t there before. She lifts to kick them off. I roll us until she’s lying beneath me, and she widens her legs to make room for my hips. I groan when I nestle into her, finding her center warm and wet now that nothing is in between us. I glide through her folds. She moans and bites my lower lip, tugging it between her teeth. Her nails dig into my shoulders.
“Please,” she begs.
“Do you want me, Emerson?” I lick along her jawline, my nose trailing her cheek.
“Yes,” she murmurs breathlessly.
Her knees bend, and her legs tighten around my hips. I shift and start to slowly sink in …
A door slams somewhere down the hall, shattering the image inside my head. I hear footsteps passing the room. My heart is beating out of my chest, and my breaths are rapid and shallow. It takes me a moment to remember where I am—in a hotel in Seattle, Washington. It’s no longer nighttime. The early light of morning filters through the windows, where I didn’t bother to close the curtains last night. Amateur mistake.
I groan and run a hand down my face as reality sinks in. My mouth is dry, and there’s a sheen of sweat across my forehead. I glance over at the bedside table to see a glass of water sitting there, like it was left by an angel who knew I would need it this morning. I grab and empty it in a few gulps. A shifting movement across the room steals my attention, and I see that the angel is real and sleeping on the couch in my hotel room. The same angel who was naked, writhing above me, just seconds ago in my mind.
But none of it was real. Except for the raging hard-on I’m left with.
Images of last night flash across my memory as I relive the reality of yesterday evening. I lied to Emerson and ended up at a club downtown with a few of my teammates. The alcohol was flowing, and there were beautiful, willing women everywhere. One drink turned into another. One woman multiplied into several. And then Emerson showed up and dragged me back to the hotel, shifting from the innocent doe into the fiery warrior, ready to do battle with me.
I find myself wanting to provoke her just so I can see that angry side again.
I glance down at my chest to see that I’m not naked after all. I’m still wearing the clothes from last night. I’ve awakened before with women in my room, but they’ve never slept on the couch. And I’m typically not clothed. Neither are they.
Shrugging the covers off, I sit on the side of the bed and wait for the throbbing in my temples to subside. I glance at the clock to see we need to be downstairs in an hour or so to meet the rest of the team. We’re flying to California later this morning for a three-game stretch.
I lift the phone and order coffee and breakfast, speaking low so I don’t wake Emerson. She’s turned away from me, her back encased in a heavy gray blanket. But her breathing is even, so I assume she’s still asleep. That couch doesn’t look comfortable.
I hang up and rise from the bed, discarding clothes as I go. I leave my boxer briefs on, adjusting myself as I walk, but not removing them until I’m inside the bathroom. My balls ache from that dream, making me feel like a teenager again. I’m left unsatisfied and confused about the woman sent here to keep me in line. The one I’m not supposed to touch, but the one that I now want to.
I drink another two glasses of water, knowing I need to hydrate if I want to rid myself of the bad taste in my mouth and the throbbing inside my head. I turn on the shower and adjust the temperature, stepping beneath the hot spray to soothe my muscles.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m out of the shower with a towel wrapped around my waist, answering the knock at the hotel room door. A waiter rolls in two trays full of food and another with coffee and mugs. I sign the bill and leave a tip before the door closes behind him. When I turn, tired golden-brown eyes are peering up at me from across the room. But unlike my dream, they aren’t filled with fire and lust.
“Hey,” I say, my voice scratchy and rough. I clear my throat. “I ordered breakfast. Didn’t know what you’d want, so I got a few different options.”
There’s a beat of awkwardness while I remind myself that she doesn’t know that I pictured her naked while sleeping this morning. Emerson sits up, the blanket pooling around her waist. She’s still wearing the sweatshirt, and I wonder if there’s a tank top beneath it. She runs a hand through her tangled waves, gathers her hair, and secures it into a messy bun with a tie she has around her wrist.
It’s strangely intimate, waking up with her, in a way that it hasn’t been with random hookups in the past. Even though we were both fully clothed and sleeping across the room from each other.
I walk to my bag and gather fresh clothes. I can feel her eyes on me the entire time.
“You can take a picture if you want,” I say without looking at her. “It’ll last longer.”
She scoffs, and my lips tip into a grin. But I lose the smile with her next words.
“I think you had enough pictures taken of you last night,” she retorts.
Curiosity gets the best of me as I lift my phone from the end table to see several missed messages from Mads and the PR team. Great.
Emerson rises from the couch and reaches out, wiggling her fingers at me. “Hand it over.”
I give her my phone, not in the mood to argue this morning. And I feel like she’d win if we did fight anyway. She has righteous anger on her side at the moment, and I’m tired. I never sleep well after a night of binge drinking. And apparently, I never learn my lesson either. She pushes a few buttons before handing it back.
“What did you do?” I ask while plugging it into the charger.
“I linked it with my phone so I can track you from now on.”
I smirk.
She glares, not finding even an ounce of humor in this situation.
“Look,” I say, running a hand through my wet hair. “I’m sorry about last night.”
“Are you sorry?” she asks through narrowed eyes. “Because I don’t think you’re sorry at all. I think you did it on purpose.”
And she’s right; I did. But she’s not done yet.
“What I can’t understand is why you want to sabotage yourself. Because you realize that’s what you’re doing, right? This doesn’t hurt me. It hurts you and your career.” She waves her hands around as she talks. “Sure, I lost a couple hours, traipsing around the city to find you, and stayed up most of the night to make sure you didn’t drown in your own vomit …”
“I don’t throw up when I drink.”
Apparently, that’s the wrong thing to say because her raspy voice rises a notch, along with her irritation.
“Well, maybe you should. Then, you wouldn’t have so much of that toxic poison floating around in your system the next day. You look like shit.” She mumbles the next words mostly to herself, but I hear her loud and clear. “If you always drink like this, you’re going to be in liver failure before you’re thirty.”
I don’t think I have a problem with alcohol, which is why I’ve never tempered my drinking. But even I can admit, I do things I probably wouldn’t do if I were sober. But I know I can quit indulging anytime I want. I’ve just never wanted to before. Maybe I don’t have a drinking problem, but I’m slowly realizing that drinking is causing me problems now.
“Would you put some clothes on, for crying out loud?” Her eyes are stuck on my chest, where a droplet of water is slowly making its way down my ribs. “I can’t concentrate with you standing there, half naked.”
I smirk despite knowing it’s going to make her angrier. And it does. She rolls her eyes and looks away—it takes effort though.
I walk to the bathroom with my clothes in hand. I can feel her eyes on my back. I drop the towel just before I turn the corner. I hear her gasp as she takes in my bare ass.
“You’re welcome,” I yell as the door closes behind me.
I smile at my reflection in the mirror as I picture her reaction in the other room. I think I can hear her mumbling profanity through the wall.
When I’m dressed, I come back out to see her seated at the small table next to the television. She’s eating a piece of bacon and has scrambled eggs loaded on a fork.
“Bacon, huh?” I say. “I guess I thought you’d go for the fruit. That you’d be vegan or a vegetarian or something.”
Her brow furrows. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know,” I say, shoving the dirty clothes from last night into a separate part of my luggage. “You’re an artist.”
“So,” she says defiantly, crunching on another big bite of bacon to make her point, “just because I paint doesn’t mean I don’t eat meat. That’s not stereotypical at all, hockey star.”
I chuckle and sit across from her. I select a plate stacked with pancakes, place a generous pat of butter on top, and then drown them in syrup. Emerson watches me.
“You eat horribly, you know,” she comments.
“No, I don’t.” I pour two cups of coffee, sliding one across the table to her. I watch as she puts cream and two granulated sugars into it before stirring, mentally memorizing the way she prepares it. I add cream to my own.
“You do,” she insists. “You eat takeout every single night. And not healthy takeout. I don’t think I’ve seen a single vegetable in your place yet, except the ones I bought.”
She’s right, but I don’t admit it. Instead, I shove a huge bite of pancakes into my mouth.
“I’m a growing boy. I need calories.” I swipe an errant drop of syrup off the side of my lip with my tongue.
“Not empty calories. I thought athletes were supposed to eat healthy to perform better.”
I smirk. “I perform just fine, Doe. Anytime you want to find that out for yourself, you know where to find me.”
“Yuck.” She frowns. “Hard pass. And … Doe? Why are you calling me that?”
“When we first met in college,” I explain, “you were all doe-eyed and innocent. You still are.”
“I am not,” she protests, a soft flush making her look young and fresh. “And … wait … I thought you said you didn’t remember me from back then.”
I lift a sausage patty and dip it in the syrup, eating most of it in one bite. “I lied.” My words are muffled by the food in my mouth.
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time,” she snarks.
“I remember you at that party, telling me off like I was the biggest asshole on the planet.”
“Still are,” she adds. “First impressions are pretty accurate.” Using a knife, she smears grape jelly on a piece of toast and bites into the corner. She watches me as she chews. “We need to talk about last night.”
“What about it?” I ask, sipping the coffee.
The food and the caffeine are already easing my headache, but I think this conversation with Emerson might bring it back.
She tilts her head and gives me a look, telling me she isn’t amused. I motion for her to continue.
“You can’t disappear on me like that.”
“I don’t like being told what to do, Emerson.”
“Point made, Sam. But I’m not telling you what to do. I’m trying to help you. Help your career. And we need to come to some sort of truce. I’m not the enemy here.” She pulls out her phone and scrolls, handing it over after a minute.
I flip through picture after picture at the club with various women all over me. It’s on some national gossip site that used to be a magazine, but is now online. This happens constantly these days. I spend the night with a woman and wake to find a selfie of me asleep in bed with a sheet barely covering my junk and a random girl smiling next to me. They get notoriety for sleeping with a professional hockey player. And I get a bad rep, screwed in the realm of public opinion, known as a fuckboy. I hate social media.
“It’s a different world these days, Sam. Everything you do will be online within minutes. And then it’s there forever.”
“I know that,” I say irritably. “I’m not an idiot, Em. I’ve been functioning just fine all on my own before you ever came along.”
She arches her delicate brow. “Really? Then, why am I here? Your reputation isn’t exactly great right now. And I know about Anaheim.”
I snort. “You know about it, huh? Where did you hear about it? The web? Madison?”
She doesn’t answer, but I can see it in her expression. The answer is both.
I rise from my seat and start packing the rest of my stuff in my bags. My movements are angry and rough.
“See, this is the problem. You think you know what happened because you read about it online. But the truth is, the only two people who know what really happened were me and her. No one else was there. Not you and not Madison and definitely not the rest of the world. So, don’t tell me you’ve got me all figured out.” I stop and look her directly in the eye. “I don’t need saving, Emerson.”
“I’m not trying to save you, Sam. But I am trying to help you.”
“I don’t want your fucking help!” I slam my bag on the ground.
“Too bad, superstar. Because I’m here and we have to work together.” She throws her cloth napkin on top of her empty plate and stands. “If you want me gone, acting out like you did last night is not the way to do it. If they get pissed and fire me, they’ll just replace me with someone else. And I’m sure the next person won’t have my charm and wit.” She flutters her eyelids mockingly and removes the key card for her room from her back pocket as she moves toward the door. “Prove to management and the PR firm that you can make better decisions. Lie low for a while. That’s how you get your freedom back. Then, you can piss the rest of your life off for all that I care.”
She opens the door, and it slams shut behind her.