NINETEEN
Harper popped her head around the door of Coach’s office. He wasn’t here.
So it was unlikely on this snowy Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but Coach was a workaholic who lived close to the practice facility. Once she’d found him here inventorying equipment at 11 p.m. on the Fourth of July. But not tonight. She had hoped to talk to him about how best to replace DuPre.
The bargain she’d struck with Remy two weeks into the season was still their dirty little secret. Isobel was going to go apeshit when she heard, but Harper would deal with that later. Now it was time to bring Coach into the cone of silence so they could be in the best position come trade season.
Yet again, Remy had played like a demon at last night’s home game against New York, scoring one goal and setting up two more. There was something about his ability to deftly surf the currents in both the locker room and the rink, a rock-solid strength of character he brought to bear on the team. Something they’d been sorely lacking in the last year as Bren wrestled with his addiction and the collapse of his marriage. She prayed the Scot could take up the mantle once they gave up Remy.
Frustration boiled beneath her skin at the thought of having to give him up.
The sooner she talked to Coach about it, the better. Discussing its reality would attune her to what needed to happen. It would also have an added side benefit.
She would no longer feel so itchy. So needy. So horny.
She might also lose some weight, because the food deliveries would finally end. Damn, she was going to miss that gumbo.
Her mind shied away from the lurch in her chest. Remy DuPre was just one piece in the plan, and so far he was fulfilling his end of their devil’s bargain. The team was in its best shape in years, finally in the black—just—with this season’s win-loss record.
Walking through the facility’s backstage maze, she smiled to herself, thinking of the strides she’d made since her father’s death. All mine. Isobel and Violet might have a say, but Harper was running this show. So she had no love life to speak of and she was leading the second-worst team in the league, but she was making it happen.
That’s right, Dad, you old bastard. Here I am and here I will stay.
The heady sensation of power lifted her for a moment and she spun on her new favorite heels—the ones Remy had helped her choose in New Orleans—jumping in the air with a whoop that echoed in the empty corridors.
“Celebrating, minou?”
Ah, not so empty after all. Why did he always have to catch her at her weakest moments?
That streak of gorgeous male stood against the door to the player gym wearing nothing but shiny black shorts and a sheen of sweaty manliness coating a chest so sculpted Michelangelo would’ve smiled in approval. He folded his arms, and her body screeched its disappointment at the removal of those pecs from her sight line.
“I didn’t know anyone was here,” she said rather obviously.
“While you roam your kingdom, lady of all you survey?”
“Something like that.”
He held her gaze. She wanted to look away but she couldn’t. How ridiculous to be held in such thrall.
“I assumed you’d be off to New Orleans for Thanksgiving.”
“My flight got canceled because of the weather, but I’m hoping to get out in the morning.” He rubbed a towel over his chest, and her mouth reacted predictably: it grew desert-dry. “I was putting some time in on the elliptical when I heard this strange little squeak.”
“I didn’t squeak,” she squeaked. Hell. She cleared her throat to get back on track. “I don’t squeak. I just . . .” She trailed off, unsure how to explain it.
“You’re feeling good about where you’re at, Harper. No reason not to.” The right thing to say, but then Remy was as skillful with the verbal as he was with the physical. With a nod, he walked back into the gym.
She followed, like her core was attached to his ass by a lifeline. She wanted to go hand over hand along that string until she reached that ass and grabbed on to it like her survival depended on it.
Back on the elliptical, he restarted his workout. If she didn’t know him to be the straightest talker she’d ever met, she would think he was playing some game to showcase those amazing lats, how his trapezoid muscle pulled with every smooth motion. The man was simply sublime.
“How goes it in the Kingdom of Harper?” he asked, his voice not even strained from his exertion.
“Fine. Isobel’s gone to visit her mom in Arizona, and Violet is headed to see some friends in Reno.”
He frowned. “On your own for the holiday?”
“No. I . . .” She hesitated, not sure why she’d done that or even why she offered up her sisters’ current locations. “I have plans.”
He stopped the machine and turned to her, his forehead in an adorably sexy crumple.
“Do these plans involve you eating a granola bar and downing a bottle of wine?”
“You think so little of me.”
“Harper . . .”
“Remy . . .” she sang back. She knew why she’d paused in telling him. She didn’t want him to know because it felt like disloyalty.
He held her gaze for a moment, then seemed to shake off whatever it was about her attitude that was bothering him. She was relieved. Mostly.
He grabbed the towel and gave another swipe across his glistening chest. Tongue right here, dude. I could so clean that off for you.
“So, what are you doing down in the belly of the beast?”
“Worried about me?”
He inhaled a deep breath, his annoyance audible because she was teasing him for his chivalry. “You know I don’t like you working here late.”
She did know. He informed her constantly, usually with overbearingly protective texts checking in on her and making sure she was asking security to walk her to her car. Each message loosened her grip on sanity a little.
“I wanted to catch Coach Calhoun. Talk about new acquisitions.” Not a jot of hesitation now. “I talked to Quebec about Petrov today. Told them we might be interested.”
“Yeah?”
“Your name was mentioned as a possible trade.”
There, she’d said it. Not that it was secret knowledge between them, but she needed to be clear—to him, to herself—that he was leaving.
He should have looked pleased instead of gorgeously grumpy. Quebec was doing well in the conference and had a great offensive line this year. This trade would put Remy on the best path.
But right now, she wasn’t thinking of his shot; neither were Remy’s dreams uppermost in her mind. Harper’s fantasies were ruling. Harper’s fantasies were rioting.
God, she wanted him.
“That’s what we agreed, isn’t it?”
His gaze dipped to her mouth as she spoke, then moved farther down. Her nipples pebbled and heat pooled deep in her belly.
“I’m giving you what you want,” she said, reiterating her point when he didn’t reply.
She was close enough to smell his scent, the spice of hard work. No player put in the effort he did, and was that ever a turn-on. Until he uttered his next words.
“Tell me who you’re spending the holidays with.”
He already knew, or he knew enough to ask.
“Kenneth and his mother.”
“Kenneth and his mother,” he repeated mechanically, as if she spoke another language.
For the last three holidays, she’d accompanied Kenneth to his mother’s house in Winnetka. Mrs. Bailey was a sharp old dame who assumed Harper was trying to trap her golden boy into marriage. The first year, Harper had interrupted them hissing at each other in the kitchen, the words gold digger and trollop being bandied about liberally. Never mind that Harper could buy and sell Kenneth—and his mother—ten times over. Harper attended the next Thanksgiving dinner out of spite, and tomorrow she would go to Kenneth’s mother’s house and endure Mrs. B’s stink eye because it was better than being alone.
“I go there every year.”
“You’re still—I thought—never mind.” He stepped off the elliptical, shaking his head.
This was about the sandwiches and the notes and how something had been building and was now crashing in rubble around them.
“Remy, it’s just turkey.”
“Sure, Harper. Turkey.” Grabbing the towel, he turned and stomped off.
She had promised him nothing. You have nothing to offer him. Not the same thing, exactly, but productive of the same result. He understood this, or at least she had assumed he did, yet here he was getting in a sulk because she wouldn’t be spending Thanksgiving alone like she had every year since the age of six.
Mom would start drinking while she stuffed the turkey, and by the time it was done, so was she. Completely lit and spewing hate at Geraldine and Isobel.
I hope she chokes on a wishbone, her and the brat.
Harper’s father used to call the first couple of years after the divorce, but soon enough knew better not to. He had no compunction about leaving Harper to pick up the fragments of her mother’s heart and to try to glue them together again with tears and gin. Of all the crimes Harper should lay at her father’s door, this one hurt the most. His callous neglect.
By the time Lorraine had died of ovarian cancer when Harper was seventeen, the holidays were fixed in Harper’s mind as the season for dread. Even this year, with her sisters on site, nothing had changed. They had lives of their own, and while both of them had issued invitations, Harper had declined. She refused to be pitied.
Now Remy DuPre thought she owed him an explanation for how she would spend her holiday. Screw him.
She followed him into the locker room, and when she didn’t find him there, she moved on to the showers. Indignation powered each step, because who the hell did he think he was?
Waltzing in, she immediately realized her mistake. There had been so many mistakes, but this one beat them all hands down. He was . . . naked. Gloriously so.
His back to her, he was kicking off shiny black shorts, the ones that made his ass look like two watermelons lashed together. And then he turned and she forgot all about the ass. She forgot a few other things, too. Her social security number. Her name. How to breathe.
He was semierect and . . . there he went, all the way to full-mast. Was that because of her?
“What do you want, Harper?”
Even if she knew, she’d be hard-pressed to get the words out. Her mouth had turned to sandpaper, her legs as wobbly as water. All the moisture she needed to lubricate her tongue was busy lubricating other areas of her body.
Just pretend his penis isn’t there waving at you. This is just a regular old GM chat with one of your players in the showers. “I wanted to know why you’re in such a huff.”
“I’m not in a huff. I’m just sweaty and tired and cranky because I couldn’t fly out tonight and I might not be flyin’ out at all, which makes this the first Thanksgiving with my family I’ve ever missed.”
“I’m sorry.” Of course he wanted to get home to his perfect, loving family, especially with his father recovering from illness. Every moment would be precious. “Have you looked into a charter flight? I could call and see if anything—”
She broke off because something was happening here. His entire body had tensed, muscles rigid to the point that he bulged everywhere. Cords of sinew stood out in stark relief along his arms, and she tracked her gaze down his right arm to the big, dominant hand . . . that gave one long, blatant stroke of his erection.
She gaped. He could not seriously have touched himself in her presence. So she was standing there acting like she was one of the guys, gabbing with her star center in the shower room while he stood naked before her. Same day, different dick. But he had chosen to take it from five to negative one million on the appropriateness scale.
His hand was fisted at his side, as if it had never moved. Hand to God, she had to rewind her brain to check, and yep, the playback was not unpleasant. That had happened, all right.
Remy DuPre had stroked his cock in front of her. At her. Like a threat.
Or an invitation.
“You’re angry with me.”
“Harper—” He raked a hand through his hair. “I need a shower. I need a cold. Fucking. Shower.”
He turned to reach for the faucet and as he did, she made a strangled sound, not even sure what she meant to say. Something like “talk to me” or “need a soapy hand?” or “why are you wasting that glorious erection?”
Stopped in his tracks, his left hand stretched out to the tile framing the shower. Seeking an anchor. He didn’t turn to face her, just issued the starkest of rasps.
“Minou.”
Maybe he meant to say more, but whatever it was never found air. His back muscles were clenched, and damn, they looked good, like he was holding every ounce of frustration inside his body. All his frustration with her.
She couldn’t have that.
She moved toward him, a few steps that felt like a million miles, and when she reached him she touched his back.
He groaned. Animalistic, desperate. Beautiful.
The heat that sizzled on making contact fired through her like a furnace. Her fingers traced striations of muscle banking his spine, coming to rest at the indents of his hips. He held himself still, restrained power that could detonate at any moment.
Feeling brave, she brushed her lips across the lower part of his shoulder blade. Even in heels, she couldn’t go higher.
Another groan, heavy with want, quaked the air.
The muscles in his right triceps bunched, and there was only one possible reason for that: he had taken himself in hand. She continued to kiss his back, the ladder of his spine, the breadth of his shoulder, anywhere she could reach, and then those kisses turned openmouthed and greedy. Licking, sucking . . . all while his muscle-corded arm worked, pumping his cock. Up and down, mean and rough.
But this wasn’t a solo operation because she was right here with him, her kisses spurring him, his jerky tugs firing the want between her legs. He might have his back to her, but she was his fantasy. How powerful she felt to give him this.
This new knowledge forced a moan from deep in her throat, enough to split his attention. He whipped around, his face a torment of need. The hand not wrapped around his cock hooked her neck and brought her to his mouth to take the kiss that belonged to him and him alone.
This kiss. All she’d missed, every emotion she’d suppressed was unraveled with this kiss. His greed shouldn’t have shocked her because it matched her own, yet his hunger told her a story no words could adequately express.
This kiss seared her. Not just on her lips but all over her body, which burned with maddening need. They were consenting adults. They wanted each other. He’d be gone soon, so why not enjoy these moments?
No one would know.
Panting, she pulled away. “Remy, let me touch you. Properly.” She cupped his balls and stroked, watching as his face crumpled in ecstasy. He released his grip on his cock, dropped his hands to the hem of her skirt, and yanked it above her hips.
“Jack me, Harper. Pleasebabyplease.”
Gladly. But then he slipped his hand inside her panties and she forgot everything but the pleasure his fingers wrought from the slightest touch.
“Please, baby,” he pleaded again, and her to-do list flashed before her. Meaning the one must-do thing on it: touch Remy and make him lose his mind. But first there was this, his fingers stroking through her wetness. Slipping inside her. Destroying her completely.
She tried but failed to focus, so he grabbed her hand and put it where he needed it.
“Here, in case you’ve forgotten what it feels like. ’Cause it ain’t forgotten you. How good this is. How good we are.”
We. She squeezed, relearning his shape, recalling the tempo that drove him crazy in New Orleans.
“That’s right. Ça c’est—c’est bon.” And all the time he kept up that wicked slip ’n’ slide through her folds, the exquisite pressure building. The tension was unbearable, a wave hurtling toward the shore, and one slight glance of his finger against her clit, and there.
Yes. There.
Gone.
She paused in her stroke to let the orgasm ride to every extremity, her body clenching, her mouth open, and sobbing at the indescribable pleasure. And then she fell to her knees and wrapped her lips around him in the shower room at Rebels HQ.
Bad, bad girl.
But nothing else seemed to matter, not after the release Remy had just given her, not after the sweet torment on his face when she confronted him, not after he’d pumped his cock at the sight of her.
She read a million things in that gesture, but the most important was this: Look at how much I want you, Harper.
Time to show just how much she wanted him.