Page 76 of He Has It All (Boston Brawlers Hockey)
Chapter 19
Chelsea
“What about your Mom?”
I smile. He’s adorable when he gets old-fashioned like this, like he’s two different people. The public playboy and the private man who’s all about family and loyalty.
“She’s supposedly working late,” I say, trying not to sound upset about it because I know she’s not working. I know she’s drinking, but I don’t know what to do about it except to tell Mike to call me when she’s ready to come home. I already tried hauling her out of the bar against her will once and that didn’t go well. She didn’t talk to me for days, cried, stayed in bed. Finally she begged me to leave her be. Said she knew she drank too much, but that was the only way she could live the life she had. I called around and found someone who would see her, a therapist. Now all I had to do was talk Mom into going. Still haven’t figured out how I’m going to do that, only that I will. Eventually. We go inside, quiet in spite of the fact that the place is empty.
“Tell me,” he says, standing there in my mom’s kitchen, leaning against the dented old refrigerator, brightening the place, making it seem like heaven.
“I always figured you were a unicorn underneath it all,” I say, recklessly.
“Don’t think you can distract me with flattery. Spill it. What’s going on with your mom?”
“You already know.” I shrug. “She drinks. Too much.”
“Is that what she’s doing tonight?”
I nod, trying not to feel the humiliation because she’s my mom and I love her and she’s lost so much.
“If I were in her shoes, maybe I’d be drinking too,” I say.
“No. You wouldn’t.”
He seems so certain. He doesn’t say why, doesn’t say it’s because he wouldn’t let me, because I can count on him, but I know those thoughts are in his head. I can feel it in his certainty. My white knight.
He takes me in his arms then, rains kisses on my hair, my face, then his lips hit mine and my knees actually buckle, but it’s okay because he’s holding me up. He takes a deep taste, long and lazy and tender, then he separates our lips, breathing deep, but not ragged, like I am.Hisbreathing sounds satisfied, happy, like he’s in no hurry. Plus, he’s in way better shape than I am.
“Want to come up to my room?” I say.
His smile is my answer. With his hands on my hips, feeling intimate and possessive, he turns me around to lead the way. He follows very close behind.
I stop at the door and turn to him, winding my hands around his neck to coax him forward into a kiss. A soft, intoxicating kiss, slow and deliberate and imbued with simmering passion. And love.
“I adore you, Ryan.” Breathless with fear and triumph, I watch his face absorb my words and everything behind them.
He pulls back, but I keep my hands around his neck and stay the course. No backing down now. Allowing my eyes to shimmer with that adoration, I remind myself that this isn’t news to him. Maybe I should have expected him to be skittish like a colt not quite ready to be broken.
“I know,” he says. “I’m concerned about your lack of good judgment.”
I smile in spite of my need to hear more from him and, when I’m about to protest,
he pulls me in close, nuzzles my neck, finding the exact places to send my pulse sizzling, my flesh rising in goose bumps. He murmurs in my ear all those serious endearments I’ve been dreaming about since I had my first erotic dream of him at the tender age of twelve.
“Do you know how special you are? How much you rock me, how beautiful and sexy you are? I can’t resist you anymore, Chelsea.” He nibbles and I sigh and purr and kiss him back.
“Don’t resist.”
He cups my face in his hands, finds my mouth with his and plunges in with his tongue, trying to communicate without words. I feel his raging cock through our clothes and he pushes the door open and moves us inside my bedroom.
Once he kicks the door closed behind him, he drags me to the bed and we collapse there, making the old springs squeak. I don’t care if the whole bed gives in. I need this man tonight. This has to be right. I’ve never felt anything so right.
Rolling away, feeling hot and bold, I kneel and begin undressing for him—not in a siren striptease, but in a slow, sultry invitation. He growls his admiration. I feel heat pouring all the way from the arm’s length I hold him at.
Then he strips and I try not to drool at the ripple of muscle, the hard rounded swell of his chest and shoulders like an exquisite carving of the perfect man. Except he’s real. And he’s so much more than prime beefcake. But right now it’s easy to focus on his strength and his masculine beauty, especially once he kicks his pants off.
He stands before me with dilated pupils and a majestic cock, ready to make love. His face holds a look of rampant desire mixed with admiration and awe as he rolls on a condom and stares back at me as I kneel on the bed, naked.
