Chapter 22

Simone

There is nothing, and I mean nothing—well, except sex with Van—that is more exciting than the final round of the Stanley Cup.

Strike that.

Winning the Cup is more exciting.

I’m an old pro at Stanley Cup games. Even though Max was the backup goalie behind Ryker Evans when the Cold Fury won the Cup last year, my mom, dad, Lucas, and I went to every single game. Malik was on his second deployment to Afghanistan with the Marine Corps and he was sorely missed. Lucas was able to go to all the games because his season with the New Jersey Wildcats was over.

It sucked Max was the backup and didn’t see as much play as Ryker, but truth be told, Ryker deserved the primary slot. When Max injured his groin near the beginning of the season, Ryker came in and played the best hockey of his life. It’s true this is a team sport, but honestly, it was his goal tending that really won the Cup.

Now this year is Max’s turn as the starting goalie. Lucas is getting his shot at the Cup, and my personal favorite, the beast of a man known as Van Turner, is cleaning up the ice tonight. Jules and Stephanie are beside themselves with excitement and nerves. I’m not sure if it was Max or Lucas who scored the great tickets, but they got three in the first row behind the net where Max will defend twice. Thus, I’m thinking it was Max, as he’ll say he wanted Jules back there staring at his ass.

My parents and Malik are in the bottom section of the arena, but to our right and several rows up. They graciously gave us the seats on the ice because…well, Jules is going to marry Max and Stephanie is going to marry Lucas. I guess it was only natural that I got to sit down there too since I was dating Van.

We’ve just come back from the restroom during the first intermission and have a few minutes before the second period starts. The Cold Fury are up 1–0. I’m enjoying a few beers tonight, since I’ll be riding home with a very sober Van Turner. Jules is also partaking, but Stephanie is deliriously happy to stick with water as she keeps her hand resting on her baby bump that you can’t even see beneath Lucas’s jersey she’s wearing.

So cute.

“Okay,” Jules says as she nudges my left shoulder and leans in closer. “Now that it’s just us girls, we have got to have more details about Van.”

Stephanie leans in from my right. “I’ve been dying to know too.”

I smirk, because they were both shocked as hell when Van and I showed up at the cookout a few days ago holding hands. Apparently, Lucas hadn’t bothered to tell anyone, and the devious fucker did that intentionally so it would be awkward. I guess that was his way of getting back at me for him walking in on me naked with Van and a butt plug on the bed.

At any rate, Jules, who has never been one to hold her tongue, said something like, “Holy shit, are you two dating?”

Max’s eyes just bugged out of his head.

“Yup,” was all I said to Jules’s question, and then we were grilling and having a good time. It was a group-type of thing, so there was no time for girl talk, nor any time for Max to try to poke his nose in my business. It was laid back, casual, and a pretty damn good time. Van wasn’t overly talkative, but he never is. He seemed content to stay by my side and look pleasantly interested in the conversation.

“What do you want to know?” I ask Jules and Stephanie as my head turns left and right. Both women take the hint and scoot to the edges of their chairs and then lean in closer so we are more in a circle.

“Everything,” Stephanie whispers excitedly. “He’s such a scary motherfucker, but damn if he isn’t like a lamb with you.”

I look around, determine we’re relatively private, and when I do, I turn back to them with a twinkle in my eye. “Okay…so the short story is I decided I wanted him, but he didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Because you’re Lucas and Max’s little sister?” Jules asks.

“I think that was part of it, but also because he’s just a cranky fucker as well as a loner, and couldn’t offer me anything but sex.”

Never in a million years would I ever tell them that the real reason Van kept me at arm’s length was because of his fears and insecurities over having a serial killer for a father. That’s our secret.

“Sounds like Lucas and me,” Stephanie murmurs. “That’s all we said it was…sex.”

“That worked out well,” Jules says with a laugh and a nod toward Stephanie’s engagement ring.

“Must be something in the air,” Stephanie agrees. “Cold Fury players dropping like flies; babies coming.”

“So how cute is little Milo Evans?” I ask Jules. She and Max dropped by Ryker and Gray’s house to see the newest addition to the Cold Fury family.

“Well, you’ve seen the pictures and they don’t do him justice,” she gushes, and if I’m not mistaking…is that a little wistful look in her eye?

The pictures were so freaking cute. The Cold Fury players and staff have a private Facebook group. I’m not a part of it, obviously, but Van showed me the pictures a few nights ago. And yes, Milo was beyond adorable, but that did nothing to make my ovaries ache. I’m years away from wanting children.

Besides, I’d have to be with a man who wanted the same, and while I don’t know Van’s thinking on that or if we’ll even survive until the end of the play-offs, I’m going to take an educated guess that kids aren’t high on his agenda.

And I don’t want to even talk or think about kids, so I decide to get the conversation back on the original track of what they asked.

“Anyway,” I say to get the attention off babies and back on me. “I made it perfectly clear to Van I was okay with just casual sex…as long as it was hot.”

Jules chokes on the sip of beer she’d been taking and rasps, “You did not!”

“I so did,” I say with a dismissive wave of my hand. “Admittedly, I had to work on him a bit with some outrageous flirting and teasing, but he eventually gave in. And when he did, let me just tell you, Van has it going on between the sheets. I’m talking freaky-deaky in bed. He’s an animal. Insatiable. I don’t think I’ve walked straight—”

“Enough,” Jules says with a slight grimace. “I do not need to know that stuff.

“Screw that,” Stephanie says with a grin, and leans forward more. “I want details. These freaking hormones make me perpetually horny.”

I snort and Jules snickers.

I could tell these women details for days because it’s all been so new, adventurous, and exciting. Van still thinks I’m shiny and he said I’d always be that.

But I can’t tell them the things I want to. That yes, when it comes to sex, no one will ever do it for me the way he does, and he has fulfilled every sexual fantasy I’ve come up with so far and stands at the ready to give me even more.

Yet while sex started out as my focus, it’s definitely not the priority anymore where my heart is concerned. Because, oh yes, my heart has totally been captured by Van Turner. I think the uninhibited sex helped to open both of us up to more. I mean, I didn’t just one day decide to let a man pop my anal cherry. It took a certain level of trust in Van, and that was before I knew the real him. I was even falling for the closed-off Van, and I guess my heart recognized something that maybe wasn’t all that clear to me at first.

After he exposed himself to me, baring his soul and his fears, it was all over for me. I fell in love with Van Turner while sitting on his lap, on the couch, and listening to him admit to me his true reasons for staying closed off stemmed from the horrible ways in which he was treated as a young kid. He was afraid of stigma, and that is a god-awful fear to have.

It’s why his secret is so important. I would say there could be some catharsis in revealing, but why should he? He’s taken the step to open himself up with me, and isn’t that the point of working past his fears? What will the world knowing that Van Turner’s dad is a killer and rapist do to help him?

Not a fucking thing.

My attention is taken by the players’ return to the ice. I lock my eyes on Van when he steps out, his frame so much bigger than everyone else’s out there. God how I love it when that huge body is covering me, or fucking me hard, or holding me tight.

The players all skate in a loose form to get their legs warmed up again. Van whizzes by us, and the first time he does so, he doesn’t look at me. This doesn’t bother me because he’s in game mode, and that’s exactly where his head needs to be.

But the second time he skates by, I’m stunned when he looks straight at me and gives a half smile, then a wink. It’s such a little token he’s offering, but it knocks the breath out of me to know I’m on his mind while he’s playing in the Stanley Cup finals.

“Aww…that’s sweet,” Jules murmurs with a little elbow to my ribs. “He wasn’t overly touchy-feely with you at the cookout, so I was wondering.”

That’s true. Van and I may have held hands walking in, but after that, he mostly stood by me or sat next to me when eating. I think he just wanted to stay quiet and observe, and that was fine by me. Besides, he made up for it later when we got home, and when I say made up for it, I mean he was handing out orgasms like they were Halloween candy.

“So it’s more than sex now,” Stephanie says after witnessing me practically swooning in my seat when Van winked at me.

“Yeah,” I admit softly as my eyes follow him around the ice. “It’s definitely more.”

“Poor Malik is being left out in the cold,” Jules observes. “He’s the last Fournier that needs to fall in love.”

“Not sure that will happen,” I say with a chuckle. “Malik is all about his career right now. When he’s not working, he’s off doing high-adrenaline shit like skydiving and swimming with great whites. It would take a special woman to keep up with him.”

The second period is getting ready to start as the players take center ice for the puck to drop. I lean forward to focus on the game, and Jules and Stephanie readjust themselves to do the same thing.