Slap Shot (10 page)

I tipped my head. “Why would he kill you?”

“Because, as I already told you, he’s trying to set me up working with kids, being an example and all that. It would make things awkward if this came out during the negotiations.”

“Then I promise I will never say anything.”

He dragged in a deep breath. “Back in my teens I spent some time in juvie.”

“You did?” My eyes widened. “What for?” Rick behind bars, I couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t believe it.

He swallowed and I was aware of his body tensing beneath my touch. “I fell into the wrong crowd. We took to running around at night, looking for a bit of trouble or a bit of cash, both if we could.” He paused. “One night we spotted a second floor apartment with the window open. I was the youngest but also the tallest so I was sent up on the fence and ordered in.” His eyes narrowed. “I handed down what I could—TV, stereo, kitchen stuff, even a jewelry box. I felt like shit about it but the others were shouting me on, encouraging me to get more. We would have a great time spending the cash on beer and some smokes. I was the hero of the night.”

“So what happened?”

“Sirens screamed down the street, a whole pile of cops got out and my so-called pals ran like the wind. Trouble was, I didn’t get out quick enough and four cops were waiting for me as I dropped to the ground. They hauled my bad little ass off to the station and screamed the riot act at me.”

“Rick, that’s awful, didn’t you tell them it was peer pressure?”

He laughed without humor. “That doesn’t wash when you’re seventeen, Dana. It was my own stupid fault and my own sorry mess.” He stared at the wall over my shoulder. “No one in my family had the cash to pay my bail and to cut a long story short, I got locked up for two months. It was a shit time in my life, the worst probably, but it did make me sit back and think. Made me decide what I wanted to do.”

“And were you skating then?”

“Yes, I was on the local team, messing about, hitting pucks whenever I could be bothered to show up. I enjoyed it, I was good at it, so I decided it could be more, a bigger part of my life. Luckily my coach felt the same, and when I got out he was happy to give me a second chance.” He shrugged. “The rest is history.”

“You mean your rise to fame and fortune?”

“Yeah, my rise to fame and fortune.” His gaze harnessed mine. “But I’m still looking for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“What a few of my teammates have found. Someone to spend time with, have fun with, get to know. Not some groupie who hangs around the bars near the rink hoping to score a hockey player, and certainly not some crazy stalker woman who sends me freaky letters and stuff. Someone nice and normal, someone who makes me smile and who makes me think about them when we’re not together.” His voice dropped low. “Someone who makes me so damn hot I feel as if I’ve been dropped in a volcano whenever she walks into a room.”

“I don’t think that’s me,” I said, shaking my head.
But I wish it was, ’cause he’s making me so hot I’m about to combust.

“Let me be the judge of that,” he whispered. “Because I’m sure whatever is bothering you has been blown out of proportion. We all have broken parts of ourselves we prefer to hide, but trust me enough to tell me, please.” His mouth pressed against mine, soft and gentle but with more than a hint of determination.

He clearly wasn’t going to let up and I owed him an explanation after what he’d just shared with me. I should get it over with and tell him my story, brace myself for his disgust that I wasn’t the woman he presumed or with the background he imagined. The sooner the agony of him cutting me from his life was over the better, because one more damn kiss like this and I was going to be hooked. Well and truly hooked. I broke the kiss. “Okay,” I murmured. “I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you why I’m not the one for you.”

His gaze snared mine. A flash of triumph seared through the rich base of his chocolate-colored eyes.

My heartbeat trebled, and it was already going some to begin with. I’d never told anyone in my new life this, not even Maddie. “You were right, I do know Tina.”

He gave the barest of nods.

Beads of sweat were forming in my cleavage. I was nervous, terrified, but also a part of me was longing to be free of my secret now that I’d made the decision to divulge it. “I used to work with her.”

His expression was unreadable.

“At Mackay’s and Monte Carlo’s, downtown,” I went on.

“Clubs?”

“Yes, clubs.”

“What were you? Management or something?”

I shook my head.

“Waitress, bar staff?”

“No, Rick.” I braced my spine and tilted my chin, tried to keep the quaver from my voice. “I was a dancer, a pole dancer, a lap dancer, whatever type of dancing was required by the patrons. That was me, I did it all.”

His eyes widened.

“What you saw in there tonight.” I flung my hand in the direction of the cinema. “That used to be me. I would slide around a pole practically naked and then take money into my underwear.”

His chest puffed up as he pulled in a long breath. “Fuck, that’s some horny image you just created in my head.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t get it, do you?” I slipped from him and rubbed my temples with my fingers. “It’s not just the dancing.”

He tilted his head. “You’ve lost me.”

“It was the lifestyle, the seedy clubs, the never-ending parties with drugs and gangs and…guns.”

He stood with his feet hip-width apart and shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets.

“I wasn’t the person you see now. I was living hard, playing hard, taking what I could. I was considered a lowlife, society scum by everyone, including myself. But this Dana,” I swiped my hands down my body, “is new Dana. In-control businesswoman, astute, self-aware, independent.”

He pulled a hand from his pocket and raked it through his hair.

“And so what you think you want isn’t real, Rick. I’ve invented myself to be this person. Despite having parents who were glad to see the back of me, I was lucky enough to find a way out of the life I’d fallen into. If I hadn’t I would still be living hand-to-mouth and waking up with dealers who keep their stash and their weapons on the bedside table.”

He stared at me, those swirling chocolate eyes so dark they were almost black.

My breath juddered as though it might dissolve into sobs. “I should go,” I said, grabbing my purse and stepping toward the door. The words were out there, they couldn’t be taken back. Clearly he was as shocked and repulsed as I knew he would be.

“Wait,” he said.

I sped up my movements.

“Dana.” A rigid forearm circled my waist and my back connected with solid muscle. “Wait.”

“No, Rick, please let me go.” Sharp tears nipped my eyes. “You don’t have to say anything, but I just ask that you keep what I told you to yourself, the way I will your secrets.”

“What do you think I am, fucking stupid?” he asked hotly against my ear.

He gripped me tighter and I squirmed against him. “I have to go.”

“Like hell you do.”

“Rick.”

“You really think that I’m such a hypocrite as to not still want you because you danced in clubs and hung out with the wrong crowd? Jesus, don’t you see it just makes us alike.”

I stopped my wriggling.

“We’ve both got a past, histories we’re none too proud of, but we’ve risen out of it, worked damn hard and come through the other end.” His lips pressed against my hair, his breath hot and hard on my neck. “It just makes me admire you all the more to know you worked your cute little butt off to turn your life around, to make it what you wanted it to be.”

He spun me in his arms and my breasts crushed against his chest. I gripped his biceps as they wrapped around me.

“I find independence and determination amazing qualities,” he said in a low, gruff voice. “And I find honesty and mutual trust the sweetest aphrodisiac of all.” As if to prove his point, he pressed his steely erection into my stomach.

I looked into his face, searching for signs that he was lying, that he was telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. I was greeted with nothing but the naked truth. His gaze burned with a heady combination of need and respect, desire and admiration.

“I don’t care what you did in the past,” he said. “I accept it about you the way you so readily accepted what I’ve done. Why should it be different for you, Dana? Why shouldn’t you be afforded the same understanding?”

I was falling for him. Falling fast and hard. My armor dropping away as he eased my fears and regrets and surrounded me with strength and kindness and a male sexuality so potent, so addictive, I didn’t know if I would ever get enough.

“Don’t look at it as a negative—hard work and determination is a good thing, a positive,” he murmured, his mouth just skimming mine. “So please, stop fighting, stop fighting
us
, ’cause I have the feeling we could be so great together.”

I curled my hand around the nape of his neck and pulled him into a kiss, a kiss that was desperate and hot and spoke a thousand words. I couldn’t keep up this damn fight another second. I wanted him, needed him. We already
knew
we were great together.

He responded with enthusiasm, sliding his hands down my back, cupping my butt and hoisting me into the air.

Locking my legs around his waist, I clung to the compact muscle and tendons of his shoulders. Feeling tiny in his embrace, I fed off him, devoured him, writhed against his body seeking closer connection.

“Stay with me tonight?” he asked breathlessly. “Please, don’t go. I want to hold you, make love to you, wake up with you.”

“Yes,” I said, fisting the soft material of his shirt. “Yes, I want that too, I want you to make love to me. I want you to make love to me knowing who I am.”

He was walking toward the staircase. “Oh, I know who you are, wild thing, and I know just what you need. I’m going to make you so damn ecstatic you’ll need to be peeled from the ceiling.”

Chapter Five

He took the stairs two at a time.

The next thing I knew, he was laying me on a soft bed. I opened my eyes, the lights were dim and his handsome face hovered over mine, his eyes stormy with raw desire and his lips moist from our mating of mouths.

“Damn it, I want you so bad but I don’t want to rush,” he said in a rasping voice.

“So we’ll do it more than once,” I said, toeing off my sandals and pushing them to the floor with a clatter. “First time to get it out of the way then again slow and lazy.”

“Hell, I like the way your mind works,” he said, stepping out of his jeans.

He rid himself of his shirt and as I wriggled from my own blouse and pants I became mesmerized by the broad, bronzed width of his shoulders and his hard, dark nipples.

Gaze still on him, I arched my back and released my bra. Shimmied it down my arms and dropped it to the floor. In a second he was over me, taking my nipple into his hot mouth.

“Oh yes.” I squirmed and threaded my fingers into his thick hair. He began to suckle, his teeth rasping around it. “Rick,” I groaned, reaching for my other nipple at the same time as he found it. Suddenly there was more touch, more pleasure. He was caressing and tormenting, making me desperate for more, the sensations extreme, rolling through me and making my body squirm for his touch. What he could do with his tongue was a talent.

His lips moved from my breasts, headed lower, down my sternum, over my belly and settled a fraction over my pubic hair. He pushed at my thighs and just the heat of his palms had my pussy swelling with anticipation.

“I’ve been fantasizing about doing this to you,” he murmured. “About giving you pleasure this way.”

His breath heated my pussy and his words fired in my brain like coils of lust. I glanced down and saw him looking up at me. Our gazes caught.

“You ready?” he asked, a smile twitching his lips.

“For whatever you’ve got to give,” I said in a ragged, needy voice. That twitch of his mouth was so sexy, so wicked my clit actually pulsed.

His tongue poked out and brushed the juncture of my thighs before it arrowed through folds of damp, needy flesh.

My head fell back, my knees came up and flopped sideways, spreading myself wider for him.

He dropped a kiss right over my clit.

“Ah…” My hips lifted from the bed and he clamped his hands over my inner thighs and held me firm, began to place kiss after kiss over my throbbing nub. I grabbed the erotic sensations, bathed in them, rejoiced in having a man love me with his mouth.

I was aware of strangled cries falling from my lips as he worked his tongue. Stroking around my clit, licking it, laving it, caresses so hot flames should have been leaving his mouth and trailing up my skin. Unable to think of anything other than pleasure, I pressed nearer, wanting more. He gave me more, his lips and tongue traveled lower, to the core of my pussy where I was wet and needed him so badly.

His tongue tickled over my entrance. He gave a harsh groan as he sucked my juices and dipped the hard point of his tongue inside me.