Lana shoots me another dirty look as she packs her bag and stows her laptop inside. I feel bad about kicking her off the bus, but not bad enough to ask her to stay. I should have left the second the meet and greet was over but one look at my girl, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I booked a morning flight for Calgary from Winnipeg, which happens to be Stella’s next tour stop. It isn’t long enough, I only have her for a few short hours, but I intend to make the most of them.
“Don’t forget to look up Sophia’s details,” Stella says.
Lana rolls her eyes. “This isn’t my first time at the rodeo, Stella. I know.”
“Thank you,” she smiles sweetly. “And thanks again for giving us the bus.”
“Yeah, I feel terrible kicking you out of your bedroom and all.” I pull Stella close and maul her neck.
“A bunk on a tour bus is hardly a bedroom, Van,” Lana says, and of course she rolls her eyes, because she wouldn’t be Lana unless displays of public affection made her want to breathe fire. “Besides, the support act wanted a few pointers, so I’m going to sleep with him.” I grin, and I can’t see her face but I’m betting Stella is, too. “Not sleep sleep with him. There’s at least four other bodies on that bus! But he wanted some pointers.”
“I thought musicians didn’t care who was on the tour bus with them,” I say.
Stella nods. “He does have a crush on you.”
“He’s twenty, Stella. I’m old enough to be his . . . okay, well maybe not his mother, but still.”
“Eli will be crushed.”
She frowns. “What?”
“Boucher, my wingman. He’s hot for you.”
“He’s a real delight.” Her words are dripping with sarcasm. “But I don’t fuck hockey players.”
“You said that with so much disdain I actually believed you for a minute there.” I chuckle. “Did you tell Stella that he kissed you?”
“What?” Stella glares at me.
“That first night we came to Nashville. You’d gone inside and I was walking to the car, and Boucher says he pulled her in and kissed her.”
Stella glares accusingly at Lana. “You never told me that.”
“Because I was trying to focus on the problem at hand.” Lana grabs her bag, pillow, and a blanket from her bunk.
“Right, what was that again? Oh, that’s right. Keeping me and Stella apart.”
She sighs. “Yes, I’ll admit that was wrong, but I was just trying to protect her.”
“From me? Or from your mistakes?”
“Okay, Cujo. Back off,” Stella says, shoving me back a little ways until I fall into the booth.
“I’m sorry. It was wrong for her. I see that now,” Lana says. “I had to book in for both rabies and tetanus shots after that kiss with Eli, but I am sorry I tried to keep the two of you apart.”
My mouth drops open in surprise, and because I’m not a total dick, I close it and say, “You’re forgiven. I wanna protect her, too, and I never want to hurt her.” I kiss the top of Stella’s head.
She turns in my arms. “Um . . . ex-squeeze me, but I had a say in this too, you know?”
“No.” I chuckle. “You didn’t.” Stella pouts but snuggles in anyway because she knows I’m right. She was just as powerless to stop this as I was.
“I meant what I said though. You hurt her and I will shave off your balls with your skates.” Lana lugs her bag down the aisle toward the door. “Do try to get some sleep, Stella. You have a radio interview at eleven a.m. and sound-check at one thirty.”
“I remember. Now, go. I got me a hot date with a hockey hero.” Stella waves her off with a shooing motion, and then turns to me as Lana steps off the bus.
“Alone at last.”
Stella grins. “Looks like.”
I glance around the small space. There’s barely enough room for one person on this damn bus. I don’t know how she does it, existing in such confined quarters. I’m no stranger to hotel rooms or living out of suitcases, but even I get to go home every few days. I glance at the plush leather couches lining the wall and run my hand over the table top in front of me. I grab the edge and yank it hard, testing its strength. “So, this is your world, eh?”
“Yup.”
“And there’s a bedroom?”
“Uh-huh.” She moves toward me and leans up on tiptoes for a kiss, lightly brushing her lips over mine. “You wanna see it?”
“I do, but first I wanna bend you over this damn table and fuck you right here so that every morning while you drink your chamomile tea, you remember how good it felt with my cock buried deep inside you.”
Her jaw drops—and if I didn’t need to fuck her so bad, I might even find her doe-eyed innocence cute. Right now, I’m too goddamn impatient for cute.
I grab her waist and turn her, pulling her body tight against mine. Squeezing her breasts until her nipples form hard peaks beneath the silky fabric of her top, I grind my hips, my hard-on pressing against her ass. I encircle my fingers around the nape of her neck, lay my other hand flat against her back, and push her upper body down on the table. Groaning, I shove the skirt up over her hips, and yank her panties down, exposing her sweet ass to the air.
“Spread your legs for me, Stella.”
She does as she’s told, and I lean back so that I can see everything. Jesus fucking Christ. She’s perfect, and all mine. I slide a finger down her crevice and play with her clit in gentle circular motions. She opens her legs wider. Releasing my cock from my jeans, I slide the head through her slick flesh, and when I’m confident she’s wet enough, I drive it inside her. She gasps, clutching the edges of the table as I pump into her. Later, I’ll take my time. I’ll kiss every inch, lick and taste all of her gorgeous body, but for now, I need to fuck her before I go crazy.
I slide in balls deep. Stella hisses. I don’t know if it’s too much so I ease out and rock gently back in as the bus pulls away from the stadium. Keeping my footing proves difficult as we sway back and forth, but I plant my feet and eventually find a rhythm as I pump in and out. Stella hangs on to the table, and I grab her hips, but it’s not close enough. I lean over her, bracing my weight on my forearms placed either side of her body. Her back is pressed against my chest, and my cock is so deep inside her that it’s impossible to believe we aren’t one, that we weren’t always meant for one another, meant to be just like this.
I don’t know if it’s the angle, the long absence, or the vibrations from the bus, but Stella’s legs start to shake. Her breath labors, and I know she’s close to coming. I am too, but I hold off because I want to witness her orgasm. She tightens around my cock, her eyes fall closed, and her mouth opens as her cries rip through the cabin, and I whisper, “I love you, Stella.”
My own orgasm grips me and I rock into her tight pussy, and lose all sense of awareness, until we turn a sharp corner and I almost lose my footing. I’d hate to think what might happen if we fell while I was inside her.
I lean up and stroke the hair back from her face. Her cheeks are flushed with a fresh-fucked glow and her skin breaks out in gooseflesh as I cover her body again, careful not to crush her beneath my weight.
“Come on. You promised to show me this bedroom of yours.” I ease out of her, and Stella gasps, which of course has my cock growing hard again. It bobs against her ass. I grab my shaft and rub the crown over her puckered asshole. She stiffens all over and lies completely still, unmoving. I tease us both a little more, sliding my cock’s head across the sensitive flesh, pushing without actually seeking entry. “One day, country, I’m gonna be all up in here.”
“Er . . .”
“Not now. Relax. I won’t do it until you ask me to.”
“And if I never ask you?”
“Then you never ask. But it would be an awful shame because you have one very fuckable ass.” I groan and smack it. She jolts upright and glares at me, but there’s excitement in her eyes. I grab her around the waist and throw her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and then I smack her ass again for good measure. She squeals, and I walk to the back of the bus, because that just seems like the most logical place for a bedroom. Where the hell else are they going to put it? I slide the door back only to realize halfway through that it’s automatic, and it jerks back inside the frame with a juddering whoosh. “Shit.”
“Did you just break my bus, Ross?” She’s all-business now.
“Maybe.”
“God, you and your giant paws are why we can’t have nice things.”
“Hey, my paws aren’t giant, and you have plenty of nice things I haven’t broken. Like this, for example.” I grab her ass, then I slide my hand lower and cup her pussy. “And this.”
I push the door the rest of the way open and toss her on the mattress as if she weighs nothing. Stella feigns disgust, until I climb on the tiny bed and lower my body down on hers.
In the morning, Stella begs me to stay before I’ve even fully opened my eyes, and I want to. God, how I want to, but as exhausted as I am, I also have this renewed vigor to get back on the ice and win the motherfucking Stanley Cup. My hand is twitching to hold my stick, and not the one I had in Stella until the wee hours. “I have to be at the airport at nine.”
“So you’ll stay and have breakfast with me? We have a waffle-maker. I can make waffles.”
I crack open my eyelids and frown at her. “Country, baby, you’re good at so many things, but cooking isn’t one of them.”
“Well, we’re parked at the stadium now, and this is where the busses will stay until tonight, so we could order in? Or we could get a hotel room, with a bed that you actually fit on, and room service?”
“I tell you what. You let me eat you again and I’ll make us waffles for breakfast.”
“Done,” she says, and straddles my waist. I wrap my arms around her thighs and pull her closer, until she’s clutching the headboard against the wall. She maneuvers her legs a little more until she straddles my face, and then I pull her down to me and devour her over and over until she begs me to stop.
She takes a shower as I lie on the uncomfortable-ass bed that’s two sizes too damn small for a two-hundred-pound hockey player. I don’t bother with the shower because I want to smell like Stella long after I’ve left here. This woman’s my lucky charm. Stella Hart is everything. And I plan on keeping it that way. Maybe not right now, but eventually, I’ll ask that question again, and this time I’ll mean it with everything that I am.
I stand in Stella’s tiny kitchen dressed only in an apron as she sits at the table and sips her tea. The flavor of the day is green tea and ginseng, and it tastes like shit, but she swears by it for vitality so who am I to judge? If someone took away my Gatorade during a game, I’d get their face real familiar with a puck.
What Stella failed to mention about breakfast on the road is that while she may in fact have a waffle iron, it’s the size of my fist. A child-sized waffle iron, in fact, and of course, it’s Hello Kitty-themed. So are our waffles. That stupid cat face smiles back at me from the plate, and I feel like I just grew a vagina because Hello Kitty can make some seriously delicious waffles.
“Have I mentioned how hot it is that you can cook?” Stella pokes my bare butt with her toes.
“You reckon I could give that shirtless chef a run for his money?”
“Oh, without a doubt. You’re way hotter. Especially when you’re wearing nothing but my apron and making me breakfast.”
“I can knock out a guy’s teeth on the ice with a fairly average punch, but you’re impressed by my ability to make Hello Kitty-shaped waffles? Maybe I should quit hockey altogether.”
“Hell no! I’m impressed by the way you knock out teeth. I’m also impressed you don’t fall on your ass the second you step onto the ice. Super impressed, actually, because it’s not something I can see myself doing again.”
“Nah, you’ll be fine, eh? A couple more goes around. Soon you’ll be taking our kids out on the ice without batting an eyelid.”
She flushes. Her cheeks pink up and fuck me, I need to quit thinking shit like that, and I especially need to quit saying it out loud. “Kids?”
“Sure.” I shrug. I’d lie my damn cheek against the hotplate if it would make her forget I mentioned kids at all. I don’t do that because . . . ouch, and I have no desire to scar my pretty face. Stella likes my pretty face. “One day, right?”
I stare at her, because I can’t not. I want to see her reaction. Even though I’m all blasé about it now, this is kind of a deal-breaker for me. “Er . . . sure . . . eventually.”
“How long is eventually?” I make out as if I’m just asking a question, but I really need to know. “Just a ball-park figure.”
She frowns. “The waffles are burning.”
I frown. What does that mean? Is she referencing her ovaries? Is that what women are calling their eggs these days?
Smoke hits my nose, and I turn around and flip the lid on the iron. Burnt to a cinder. Hello Kitty’s face is shriveled and browned like a haggard old lady, like my balls will be when Stella finally decides she wants to pop out a couple babies. I toss Crispy Kitty in the trash. “So, when you say eventually, you mean like what? A year? Two, tops?”
“Er, how ’bout ten?”
My brows shoot skyward. “Ten years?”
“Give or take.”
Huh. “Give or take?”
“I’m not ready to deal with babies and diapers. I almost had a mental breakdown and drove my car into a mountain,” she reminds me, as if I’m crazy for even entertaining the idea of my babies in her belly.
“Right, of course.” I nod. “But . . . you want them, right?”
“Someday yeah, just not now.”
“Okay.” I let out a steady breath.
“Wait, is this a deal-breaker for yo—”
“No.” Shit. That response was far too fast. “Of course not.”
She smiles, and her whole face lights up. “You want kids now?”
“Well, not right this second, but in the next couple of years, yeah.”
“Don’t you think that’s rushing into things just a little?”
“When you know, you know, right?” I shrug.
“Do you know?” A beat passes, and I don’t say anything. I just turn back to Hello Kitty, wipe the iron clean and slather her in waffle mix. “How much of that proposal was real and not just something you said in the middle of your orgasmic high?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying,” she accuses.
“I’m not.”
Stella huffs. “I can tell.”
“No, you can’t.” It’s all I got. No, you can’t. Fuck, what am I, five?
“Van.”
I turn and face her. “I’m not that guy, Stella. I’m not the kind of guy who does serious, or the same girl more than once usually, and I hate even saying that to you, because I know I shouldn’t be such a dick. And I have been a dick. For a long time I’ve used women like they were expendable but you’re the first who makes me want to be more, who makes me see more.”
“That’s really sweet.”
“Yeah, that’s me. A sweet dick.”
She laughs. “Well, it’s a good thing I happen to love sweet dick.”
“Yeah, you do,” I say, at the risk of sounding like a fuck boy.
“I’ve never had anyone that’s all mine. I . . . I don’t know how we do this. I don’t know if you’re going to get traded to somewhere even farther away or if I’m ever going to have more than five minutes in my schedule to Skype with you each day.”
I nod and turn my back on her. I make out like it’s because I need to keep making waffles, but a beat later she wraps her arms around me from behind and rests her palms on my chest.
“Without our careers, I’d have said yes already.”
I place my hand over hers and bring it to my lips, pressing kisses over her smooth flesh. There isn’t any more to say, so I don’t. I just stand there, taking her in, loving having her body wrapped around mine because too soon, we’ll be miles apart again, wondering what the other is doing. For now, I’ll take as much of her as I can get, as much as she’ll give me in the hope that one day, she’ll give me everything.