Ares

The room is too hot.

I look to Jenna for help.

She nods, and I’m out.

Leave the table right there. Middle of a question.

Some rumblings, but no one stops me.

Felicity’s disappeared. I blinked and she’s not at the back of the room anymore.

If someone hurt her…

Jenna pushes me toward the side room. I move on the crutches, swing through the door, and—

No Felicity.

Panic’s settling in.

Am I wrong?

Did she not come for me?

Did she get my message?

My brain hurts. I’m jumbled. Turned around.

“Sit,” Jenna says.

I don’t want to sit.

Ankle’s throbbing, but I don’t care. I want—

“Ares. Sit.”

Felicity.

I want Felicity.

I turn, and there she is. Coming in from the other door.

Loki claps and chirps.

My knee wobbles. Arms shake on the crutches.

She touches me. Touches my chest. “Sit,” she says again.

Her eyes are red-rimmed.

Like she’s been crying.

I sit, because I’m afraid if I don’t, she’ll cry more.

Drop the crutches, because I need to touch her. I wrap my arms around her waist, lay my head on her breasts, and she holds me.

She came for me.

“Ares,” she whispers again.

I need you, that whisper says.

I’m sorry.

I’m here.

She strokes my hair. “You aren’t one of them.” Her words are soft. Her voice is thick. Her arms are strong. “You are so much more.”

“I love you,” I tell her breasts.

Not because I love her breasts.

Okay, I love her breasts. I do.

But I don’t want to move. Don’t want to let her go. Don’t want her to walk away.

Can’t go one more second without telling her.

“I love you,” I say again.

“Ares.”

My name on her lips. Once more.

A reverent whisper.

She kisses my head. Presses me tighter against her body. “I love you so much.”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

Hold her tighter.

Breathing hurts. My eyes hurt. My heart’s swollen so big it shouldn’t fit in my chest.

“I’m sorry I didn’t follow you yesterday,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry. I thought—you shouldn’t—”

No more words.

I growl, lift her, and pull her into my lap. The chair squeaks and groans and tilts back, but it holds.

“I don’t ever want to hurt you.” Her voice cracks. Tears. More tears.

“Sshh.” I put my fingers to her lips.

I don’t ever want her to cry. Not for me. Not for anything.

Even though I know she’ll cry.

We all cry.

Sometimes.

She tilts her forehead to mine. “I love you, Ares. I thought I loved someone before. A couple times. But I didn’t. Never. Not like I love you. You are so much more. You’re strength and kindness and heart and you just are.”

Even if I was a guy who liked to talk, I couldn’t.

Not right now.

“I want you,” she whispers. “I want all of you.”

I can’t talk, but I can touch. I cradle her head. All that soft hair in my fingers. I squeeze her thigh, lean muscle that makes my cock twitch. Her body’s hot and soft and molded against me. I angle my mouth to hers, touch her lips with mine, and a wildfire sparks to life and races through my veins.

“Love you,” I grit out against her lips.

Those words, I can say all day. Every day.

I’ve never loved a woman.

Not like I love Felicity. “Love you.”

She wraps her arms tighter around my neck, parting her soft lips for me, sucking my lower lip into her mouth, her fingers teasing my hair, her body pressing harder to mine.

Those breasts pressed to my chest.

Her hot velvet tongue stroking into my mouth.

Those sweet, needy noises in the back of her throat.

The chair tips, I pull her away so we don’t knock heads, and we crash to the ground.

The impact jars my back. Her knee gets me in the ribs. I grunt.

She gasps. “Ares. Oh, shit. Fuck. I’m sorry. I didn’t—” She tries to scramble off, gets another knee in my gut.

We’re a mess of spilled chair and tangled limbs. Loki screeches.

Felicity lets out another fuck, and I let my head hit the floor while I laugh.

She stares at me, and her expression shifts. “Your laugh is such a turn-on.”

Nothing’s quite as funny now.

No, now everything’s heavy. Blood channeling to my junk. My heart reaching out for hers.

She flops off me and onto one of my crutches, and then she starts to laugh too. “We’re a mess, aren’t we?”

I shake my head. “Human.”

“You’re my human.”

She crawls off the crutch, shoves it under the table. And then she’s cradling my head. Bending down. Kissing me.

Long.

Slow.

Soft, full lips taking their time. Sure strokes of her tongue. Her hands keeping me right where she wants me.

Kissing me.

Loving me.

Right here, on the floor of a conference room, while my legs are cocked funny over a tipped chair.

I need her.

I need her more than I need hockey, more than I need my twin, more than I need air.

I need her.

I kiss her back until I’m aching so hard in the nuts that I’m getting dizzy.

Drunk on Felicity kisses.

So hard and desperate for her.

Missed her yesterday. Last night. Need her.

She makes me okay.

That missing puzzle piece in the question of why I exist.

I tighten my abs, lift my ass, and shove the chair out from under me.

“Okay, that was hot,” she whispers. She’s heavy-lidded. Breathing quick. Eyeing my lips, my chest, my straining cock.

“Come,” I tell her.

Her breath quickens even more. “That almost works. Say it again.”

“Come.” I pull her to me, line our bodies up, and lean into kissing her again.

I want her.

I need her.

Here.

Close.

Now.

She yanks my shirt from my waistband, her hands skimming up under it and over my abs and chest. A low groan slips out her mouth. “I love how you feel,” she says against my lips. “Touch me.”

I can’t stop at touching her. I unbutton her jeans. Push them down her hips, stroke my fingers under her panties.

“Ares,” she gasps.

She’s wet. Ready. Tight. She arches into my touch, offering me more. My fingers slip into her channel, her hips jerk, and I slide deeper, thrusting my fingers in and out while I devour her mouth and she scrapes her nails over my chest and she bucks her hips into my hand.

I want her.

I touch her clit with my thumb, and she shatters, her walls squeezing, closing in on my fingers, everything hotter, faster, harder.

“I love you,” she gasps. “Ares. I love you.”

I need inside her.

She’s already reaching for my jeans. Unbuttoning. Her hand inside, stroking my cock.

A muffled laugh sounds next door.

Thin walls separate us from my coach, my team, half the press in Copper Valley.

And I don’t care.

I don’t fucking care if I lose my spot on my team.

I just care that I’m hers.

All hers.

Only hers.

I tear her jeans the rest of the way off. She pushes mine down off my hips, squeezes my dick, cradles my balls.

I kiss her, stroking my tongue deep into her mouth.

She squeezes me tighter.

My ankle’s throbbing. We’re under a table.

Could get caught any minute.

And I don’t care.

I pull out of the kiss. “I’m yours,” I tell her. “Felicity. I’m yours.”

She rubs my balls, lifts her head, peppers kisses over my jaw. “Ares. My sweet Ares. I’m all yours too.”

She guides me to her entrance, that slick, hot, wet, perfect channel, and pumps her hips against my bare cock.

“I want you.” She squeezes my aching cock again. “I want you like this.”

“Fuck,” I rasp out.

Now my eyes are getting wet. I squeeze them shut.

She stills. “Is that okay?” she whispers.

Fuck, yes.

I nod. My chest is heavy. My heart’s so full.

But I can’t open my eyes.

She’s on birth control. We talked.

She talked.

I listened. Said as little as I needed to say.

She wants this for me. For her.

For us.

No barriers.

“Ares?” she whispers.

I blink my eyes open.

Her brows are knotted together. Worry dancing in her pretty green eyes. I press at her entrance with my cock.

“Love you,” I tell her. “So fucking much.”

The worry smoothes away before I’m done talking.

Because she can see me.

She sees me.

She knows.

“Take me,” she tells me.

I thrust into her, skin on skin, her hot heat incredible and real and so fucking perfect around my cock. I pump into her, not smooth, not in control.

I need her.

She’s everything.

Everything.

Her body.

Her mind.

Her heart.

Her soul.

She’s my match.

Too soon, she’s tilting her head back, but she doesn’t close her eyes. She lets me see.

Lets me in.

Lets me feel her climax from her core, to her hot pussy squeezing and clamping hard and fast around me, to the drum of her heart, to the release in her soul.

“I love you,” she’s chanting. “Ares, I love you.”

I follow her over the cliff, my own release exploding out of me, all my nerve endings lit up like fireworks after a summer baseball game. Can’t hold back.

Not when it’s her skin.

When we’re this close.

When everything is so right.

So fucking perfect.

I come hard and deep, my cock straining, reaching higher even as the last of the spasms still.

“Forever,” I tell her.

I’m breathing hard. Want to take her again. Love her again. Stay.

Here.

Together.

Forever.

“Forever,” she agrees.

No hesitation.

No question.

No fear.

She cradles my face. “I will love you forever, Ares. Even if you get tired of me and my voices and—”

I cut her off with a kiss.

And when I’m convinced she’s too breathless to talk, I come up for air. “You’re my missing piece,” I tell her. “Never thought—”

My throat clogs, and I can’t go on.

But I don’t have to.

Felicity always knows.

She always knows me.