Epilogue

Van

The knock on the hotel door rouses me from my blissfully blank stare out the window to the parking lot five stories below. I’ve only been here about half an hour, the team bus dropping us off after our victory over the Wildcats tonight to take game three of the conference finals.

I turn away from the window and walk across the hotel room, opening the door fully expecting and in no way surprised to see Lucas standing there. He’d texted me that he was flying back tonight.

“Dude,” he says with the biggest, goofiest grin on his face as he holds his fist out to me.

“Dude,” I say, without a return smile but totally pandering to him. I mean, I’m happy we won the game, but nothing makes me smile the way he is.

Lucas pushes past me, throwing his duffel bag onto the bed nearest the window, which is always the one he takes. Doesn’t make a difference to me one way or the other. My sleep is shitty every night no matter where I am.

I close the door and turn to find him sitting on the bed texting on his phone.

“Did you catch any of the game?” I ask him casually as I flop down onto my bed.

“Hold on,” he says distractedly. “I’m just texting Steph to let her know I made it to the hotel.”

That’s sweet.

Fucking not.

Looks like Lucas is once again pussy whipped.

“I take it you two made up?” I ask, not really caring about the answer to my first question, and well, not really caring about the answer to this one either. As an afterthought because it’s totally fucking rude otherwise, I ask, “And I’m assuming she’s okay?”

Lucas had all the tongues wagging on the team when he got off the team plane last night when we’d arrived, only to board a commercial flight right back to Raleigh as Stephanie had been in a bad accident.

“She’s banged up, but fine,” Lucas says as he puts the phone down and looks to me still with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“What?” I ask with slight annoyance that he has something big he wants to share and he’s making me ask for it. I don’t work hard for anything other than hockey.

“We got engaged,” he says with barely contained excitement, and I swear if he squeals like a girl, I will be well within my rights to beat the fuck out of him.

Thankfully his smile actually dulls slightly as he pushes up off the bed and unzips his duffel. “Didn’t think that would happen when I left.”

I don’t reply because I don’t know what to say. I have no clue what even happened between them. All I know is that Stephanie’s pregnant, they broke up, and until about two minutes ago, I knew that Lucas was one unhappy son of a bitch.

It never crossed my mind to find out why he was unhappy. He’s probably the dude I’m closest to on the team, and yet our conversations never got deeper than discussing sports or pussy.

Well, after Stephanie it was just sports, but no biggie. Not much to say about pussy.

It is what it is.

My gut clenches as I think about my most recent fuck, and well, okay…admittedly it wasn’t just some stranger I’d picked up.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” Lucas says as he grabs his shave kit out of his bag.

I lift my chin up in acknowledgment and watch him retreat into the bathroom.

I’m wondering what he would do if I admitted to him that I’d fucked his baby sister that very night she’d kissed me right in front of him. She did it to try to stop her brother from making a bad mistake, and rationally, I get her motivation.

But she also awakened a sleeping beast, and I let her know that when she walked into the house that night.

I met her at the front door, inflamed with lust and fury that she could get me so worked up. It wasn’t the first time she’d kissed me, but she did it that night to blatantly piss her brother off, and that could have caused major problems between us if Lucas thought there was really something going on. She never even thought about the damage she could have caused.

If Simone wanted to play that game, I’d gladly join in. So I had my fist in her hair and my mouth on hers in a punishing kiss before the front door even shut.

When I tore my mouth from hers, taking slight satisfaction in the way her hands were clenching my T-shirt and her eyes were glazed with passion, I growled at her. “I’m tired of your games, little girl. No more flirting and shaking your ass around me.”

She laughed at me, and fuck, it was all husky and filled with sex. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that laugh, and I usually got it every time she pushed me to the point I’d kiss her out of frustration and rage over the way she teased me around the house. She knew was she was doing, but she didn’t know that night how close to the edge she pushed me.

I fisted her hair harder and leaned down to bite her lip hard enough she made a sound of distress. I licked at it and she responded by shoving her hips into me, seeking contact, and my fury raged hotter that she would continue to try to one-up me.

She was utterly incorrigible and was in need of a lesson.

So I pulled back from her and released her hair. “Get your ass in my bed and get naked. I’m going to show you what happens when you aren’t smart enough to stop provoking me.”

I said it with cold eyes and a menacing growl that was meant to scare her off so she’d leave me alone and stop torturing me. Instead, her eyes heated with excitement and she sauntered past me, pulling her blouse off as she went.

I closed my eyes and sighed, knowing I was going to follow through with my threat. My dick was aching too much, and I wanted her too bad to pass up the feast that would be waiting for me in my room if I dared to just move my feet.

That night I fucked Simone Fournier because she asked for it. Begged for it more than once and so I gave it to her more than once. Then I kicked her out of my bed and told her to keep her distance, because now that she was wearing my sweat on her skin, she’d lost her shine.

Think that deterred her?

No. She just laughed at me, and I didn’t know whether I wanted to throttle her or fuck her again. At least when I was balls deep inside of her, she was compliant. For some reason that crazy woman wants me, and I can’t figure out why. I’m mean, guarded, and selfish. I’ve got nothing to offer a woman other than my dick…and yeah, she came several times for me that night.

But she really, really needs to tread carefully.

She needs to heed my warning to stay away.

Simone has no clue how dangerous I really am.

If she knew what my DNA was made of, she’d scurry far away and never look back at me.