Chapter 21—Wolfe #2
He rested his chin atop her head and, upon spying his sister’s smiling face looking at him in pure and unwarranted adoration, Wolfe slammed his eyes shut. He couldn’t stand to see his sister’s reverent stare when he let her down so radically.
It all came crashing down around him. The water, her death, his mother’s passing, the venom spewed by his drunk father for nearly two decades.
All of it.
Wolfe could feel the tears collecting in his eyes. He squeezed them even harder just as he increased his grip on BB.
“It’s okay, baby,” Aspen soothed and began gently rubbing her palm across his back. “C’mon, let’s go sit down on the couch.”
Without waiting for a response, she tugged him by the hand to his chocolate-colored sectional.
Numbness spiraled through his body. He needed to get his fucking emotions in control.
Now.
“Wheel of Fortune isn’t on, so we’ll have to change-up our couch-time curriculum,” Wolfe teased, trying to compose himself.
He was going to have to dig deep to find his deflecting-self to prevent him from curling up in a ball and wailing like a newborn baby.
Aspen plunked herself on the couch and tugged Wolfe down to join her.
He looked into Aspen’s eyes, the color of vibrant emeralds due to her own tears glistening and threatening to tumble down her cheeks.
Wolfe focused his efforts on gliding his fingertips across the satiny skin of her hand, anything to keep from talking. Or crying.
“You can share with me. Please,” Aspen whispered.
In that moment, Wolfe knew he was safe. He could share his tortured story with this woman who literally fell at his feet. Scratch that. He wanted to tell her this story. His story.
“My... sister. She died when I was twelve. She was six.”
“Her eyes sparkle just like yours, like blue, icy diamonds. And I can tell there’s an impishness sprinkled in for good measure. What’s her name?”
Wolfe liked how BB’s words made it seem like his sister was still here. Still alive.
“Elle.”
“Beautiful. I bet she followed you everywhere.”
Wolfe gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Until her last breath.”
Wolfe clutched BB’s hand. The chain link tattoos wrapped around his forearm shifted as his muscles flexed.
Aspen used her free hand to trace a massive tattoo on Connor’s other forearm, an anchor, partially submerged in the water.
The portion of the anchor above the waves wept, the tears rolled down the metal and fell into the ocean.
“She drowned, yes?”
Wolfe could only nod his head. He knew he couldn’t trust his voice. His emotions were in control, not him. But he was trying desperately to get that control back.
Tell her, his mind shouted while his body screamed that he take Aspen so he could find his release, his peace in her body.
“Take your time,” Aspen filled the void with her soft and comforting voice, so filled with patience that it poured off her in waves. “You’re safe. You can tell me.”
“Elle loved sweets. With a passion,” Wolfe looked to where their hands remained joined.
“I could never say no to her and constantly bought her cupcakes and other things on the down low. My mom would get angry finding doughnut wrappers in her room. She especially liked the sleeves of the little gems.”
“Hence the packet of doughnuts on the table with her picture.”
“Something like that,” Wolfe attempted to smile but it quickly fell flat.
“Anyway, my buddies and I were swimming in the inlet. Elle wasn’t a great swimmer, so I helped her get to a sand barge about fifty yards from shore.
I told her to stay put and that I’d play with her right after we finished our game.
She had some toys to build a little sandcastle on the sand barge that I brought with me.
It was going to be five minutes tops. I checked her a few times, but then got lost in the game.
She said she’d stay put. To this day, I don’t know why I didn’t make her stay on the shore. ”
“Oh, Connor. She sounds so independent.”
Wolfe shook his head, continuing to stare at their hands, not able to look into BB’s eyes.
“She knew I had some gems in my backpack on the shore. She must’ve wanted a snack because, for some reason, she ditched her life jacket to try and swim across the channel back to the area where we all tossed our gear before getting in the water.
The problem was I didn’t even know she’d left the barge; I was so busy splashing around with my friends. ”
“Again, she sounds so determined.”
“I like how you still talk about her like she’s here. Like she’s present.”
Wolfe took a chance and looked into BB’s comforting gaze. He didn’t curl up and cry. He had that going for him.
“The veil between worlds is thin. She’s still here, trust me,” a soft smile touched her face and she held his hands in a firm grip. “So, what happened?”
Wolfe once again cleared his throat, feeling like a truck was parked in his esophagus.
“Like I said, I was messing around with my friends when I heard her scream my name. I saw her about twenty yards away just in time to see her slip underneath the water. I swam as fast as I could to the area where I thought she dropped beneath the water. I dove and dove and dove, but couldn’t find her.
I yelled for my friends to get help and kept diving. ”
“I can’t imagine how terrified you must have been.”
“Helpless. I was helpless and couldn’t find her, no matter what I did,” Wolfe’s shame consumed him. “By the time the emergency personnel arrived, it took another fifty minutes to find her.”
“Your parents—”
“—blamed me. And rightfully so.”
“You were twelve, Connor.”
“Doesn’t matter,” despair and conviction in his voice. “My parents trusted me and I epically failed by killing my sister.”
Aspen gasped at his confession. “You did not kill your sister, Connor. It was an accident. An accident.”
“She was my responsibility, BB. Period.”
“It sounds like your sweet sister’s mind was all her own, and I’m certain she would have found a way to your backpack full of gems even if you tethered her.”
“Which leads to my other failure of just keeping her on the shore to begin with and not give in to her pleading to bring her out in the water with me.”
“An accident, Connor. It. Was. An. Accident.”
Wolfe considered her words for a minute, but then shook his head in a reminder to himself how he failed so many people that day and beyond.
“Things were never the same from that moment. My dad started his deep dive into booze, drinking himself into oblivion every night. My mom... my mom died of a broken heart within the year of my sister’s death.”
“You mean a heart attack, right?”
“No, I mean a broken heart. Her death certificate said heart failure, but her demise rests solely on my shoulders,” Wolfe said flatly. “Then things got even worse with my dad. The man who taught me every construction skill I possess disowned me. We lived in the same house, but I was on my own.”
“Poor sweet, boy.”
Wolfe chuckled at that. “I was never sweet, BB, and the boy I was disappeared the day my sister died.”
“So, hockey?”
“It was my release, and I came across it by sheer accident. By the time I was eighteen, I was playing the AHL and called up to the NHL at twenty. End of story. In all the years that followed, the conversations have been brief with my dad and filled with tremendous hate. Honestly, I don’t know why I try.
Glutton for punishment, or my penance to allay my guilt. I don’t know.”
“Your dad? You talked to him the night we went to dinner at the food truck?”
“Yeah, that’s the anniversary of my... of my sister’s death. I thought I could call and ask about your air conditioner as a way to, I don’t know, talk with him. Have a connection. But it didn’t work out. Not to be a pussy, but it never works out. Ever.”
Aspen let go of Wolfe’s hand and crawled into his lap, straddling his legs and wrapping her arms around his neck.
“Because he’s your father. No matter what’s happened, you are both connected to your sister and to your mom.”
“It’s just not worth it,” Wolfe felt dejected and completely spent from admissions he made to Aspen he’d never shared with a single soul.
“You can’t control your dad, or his drinking, Connor,” she began running her fingers through his hair that brushed across his shoulders.
“He doesn’t deserve you, but he’s lucky to have you, even if he can’t see it through the veil of liquor and grief.
The bottom line is the only control you have is over your own actions. ”
Wolfe considered her words, but he simply couldn’t accept her notion. By controlling his world whether it was hockey, his response to his teammates, hell, even working around BB’ shop, he had some modicum of power to ensure things went his way. Period.
“Enough talking,” Wolfe instantly stood and gobbled up Aspen’s squeak of surprise with his mouth as he began kissing her deeply.
He ushered them down the hall to his bedroom. He needed to consume her before blubbering completely destroyed him.
Once in his bedroom, he tossed her onto his bed and instantly joined her atop his grey plaid comforter skimming his hands across her body, reveling in every dip and curve that rested under his palm.
“Connor—”
“—Take off your clothes, BB.”
Wolfe stood and shucked his clothes in record time. He tossed a condom packet atop the comforter before joining her on the bed.
“I’m gonna take you hard, BB,” Wolfe was kissing his way up her legs to the paradise that was her honeyed center. “Can you handle that?”
“I can take anything you’ve got, and more, hockey boy.”
“I already told you I’m no boy.”
“Boy. Man. Either way, you’re mine.”
That small, but powerful statement rocked Wolfe’s world to the point he was nearly paralyzed at this unfamiliar and uncontrolled moment in his life.
Aspen slid herself upright and tugged and pushed at Wolfe until he was laying on his back in the center of the bed.
“What’s going on in that beautiful head of yours, boss baker?”
“You and me, and you letting go of control and just feeling. Feeling me. Feeling us,” she demanded, as if reading his mind.
Aspen straddled Wolfe’s lap, his hard cock pressed against her naked center. She began grinding her hips against his rigidness as she peppered his body with long and soft kisses.
He gasped when the flat of her tongue stroked his nipple. And when she sucked his earlobe into her mouth and scraped her teeth across the sensitive flesh, he automatically jerked his hips.
“Thank you for sharing your story with me, Connor,” she whispered in his ear, then continued to her ministrations with her talented lips.
He could only nod as sensation washed over him. He grabbed her hips to flip her beneath him to take her. Hard.
She clutched his shoulders, shaking her head, making sure he knew she was going to be in charge tonight. She began grinding her wet pussy against his stomach, then lower against the ridge of his iron-like cock.
“BB—”
“—Let go, Connor,” she purred, the sweeps of her hips becoming bolder, more pronounced, bringing the head of his dick a millimeter away from her sweet opening. “I’m on the pill. I’m clean.”
“Yes,” was all he could muster.
The feel of her tight heat nearly pitched him over the edge when she slowly guided herself onto his cock. He’d never fucked without a rubber, and wasn’t sure how long he’d last after the emotional roller coaster he’d been on since sharing his story.
Wolfe tried to grab her hips to command their movements. Instead, BB responded by taking his hands and pinning his wrists above his head while she continued to ride him, sheer pleasure sweeping across her face.
“Connor,” she screamed, clamping her inner muscles as a powerful orgasm swept through her body.
Her throbbing pussy pulled Wolfe right along with her and he pulsed his seed deep inside Aspen with a guttural groan.
With Aspen’s limp body splayed across his chest, Wolfe could barely find a word, let alone the strength to share the appropriate degree of thanks to her for holding him so protectively with no judgement. Not to mention the best lovemaking-induced orgasm he’d ever experienced.
Lovemaking.
Yeah, he’d chew on that one when he had more strength to do any more than yanking up a quilt to cover them.
Aspen snuggled against his side, their eyelids drooping from exhaustion in record time.
“Glad you’re here, BB,” he mumbled.
“Me too, Connor. Me too.”
Mine was the last word he heard a second before peaceful sleep took him. He just wasn’t sure which one of them had uttered it.