Harlow
One Month Later
“Grace, I can’t believe you did this!” I’m parked on our living room sofa with Grace on speaker, the contents of the care package she sent spread out on the coffee table before me. Wade’s working out and won’t be home for a few hours, but this package was addressed to me and me alone. And I couldn’t wait!
There’s an assortment of flavored teas, a tiny vial of glitter that’s sealed with a sticker that has Wade’s name on it with a giant X through it. There’s a tin of homemade cookies and a leather-bound book that made me cry when I opened it.
She started a scrapbook for us.
And Wade must have known, because there’s a crazy bad picture that has to be from his phone, taken from the night at the club. There are receipts from all the gas stations we stopped at on the way to Enderson and then picture after picture—some I didn’t even realize had been taken—of us with his family and us with his friends. Of us starting something real.
It took me several tissues to get past that one. But then she asked if I’d seen what else she sent. And sure enough, there was more.
“Cheat sheets?” I ask, laughing at the binder she compiled with the Slayers team roster and a short dossier on each of the players with the information she found most interesting about them.
Spoiler: It’s not their stats. And Grace noticed the same thing about Boomer’s little sister, Piper, and Bowie that I did.
“I know how you like to study up on everything. And seeing as how you’re an official hockey girlfriend, I thought this might be a good way to start.”
There’s a list of hockey terminology. Websites for gossip and news. Pictures of Wade on every team he’s played with—including football—with his numbers and stats. Team rivalries and traded players.
All in clear plastic page protectors that make me love this woman even more than I thought I could.
“Go to the back,” she tells me, excitement in her voice.
I flip through and find several more pages with burned CDs tucked into sleeves and labeled with pictures of Wade dressed in his hockey gear.
“Are these his games?”
“In order. As many as we had from all the way back to Mites. He was so cute. I snuck a couple of his old football games in there too. He was spectacular.”
When we hang up, I dig around to find something to play them on and then put the first one in.
I don’t even know how many hours I’ve been sitting here, but I’m perched on the edge of the couch, my hands clutched in front of me, breath held, riveted to the last seconds of a game played six years ago. Wade’s doing the impossible… on skates. He takes the puck off his opponent’s stick. Passes it through the other guy’s legs to himself.
And then he’s blazing up the ice, feinting right and then cutting left, his stick a blur of motion. There’s no time left. He fires off a shot and—
“Score,” comes a low, familiar rumble at my ear, scaring the life and a totally humiliating yelp out me.
I’m off the couch in a flash, hand at my throat, eyes wide and shifting between the flesh-and-blood man in front of me and the miniature version of him pumping his fist hard as he glides on one skate into the embrace of a team that has spilled onto the ice following the final buzzer.
I’m mesmerized by both. In awe.
Wade grins down at the table. “Mom’s package came.”
He flips through the pages and shoots me a cocky, too-sexy grin. “Been watching my old games?”
Three of them. One from this past season with the Slayers, an AHL game, and this one from college. “You’re really good.”
Geez, was that breathy voice mine?
He straightens. His brows go high, and his mouth tips into that criminally hot, slanted smile.
“Good Girl—oomf!”
Wade catches me against him as I kiss him with the frantic need of a rabid fangirl, my legs locked at his back.
“So I’m guessing”—he takes my kiss—“the hockey”—gives me his—“works for you.”
“So hot.” My legs tighten, bringing us closer. “You’re going to take me to your games?”
“Wrap you up in my number,” he growls, hands moving to my ass to drag me over him.
“Number seventeen.” I know it now. “Tap the glass when you skate by for warm-up.”
“Hell, yes.” We both groan. “Score for you.”
“Wade.” Heat spills through my center as he fills my mouth with the thrust of his tongue, kissing me hard and deep. Backing me to the wall and grinding against that spot I need him most. “Tell me I’m yours.”
“Fuuuck, Harlow. You’re mine.”
Yeah, I’ve got his number. But it works for me too.
“Make me feel it,” I pant against his lips, reveling in his answering sound of masculine desperation. In the way he maneuvers me to pull down my leggings and panties on one side, so I can pull my leg free. In the way he bites his lip as he strokes through the spread of my sex.
I’m drenched for him. Quaking beneath his touch.
He gives me one thick finger, pumping in and out. “You feel that, Good Girl?”
“Yes.”
Another thick finger presses in with the first. Stroking. His touch making me whimper. “How about that?”
“So good.”
“You want me to fuck you with my fingers?” He’s at my ear, his teeth nipping at my lobe, tongue tracing the shell. “Give you another and fill you so good you come all over them?”
“Wade,” I gasp, clenching around the stretch of a third. God, his hands are so big. His fingers so long. But I want— “More. Please.”
One more pump inside me and he eases out. The emptiness is unbearable, but then he’s back, the wide head of his cock nudging at me. Teasing. Torturing.
Making me crazy.
“You want me to make you feel it?”
I’m nodding, tipping my hips into his.
He drives in, full length. Filling me with everything I can take. More.
“Tell me,” I whisper, trembling around him, my body already on the brink.
“You’re mine.” And then he starts to move, retreating only to take me deep again. Deeper. “Mine.” Harder. “Been waiting for you forever.” So good. “Never letting you go.” So close. Almost there. “Fuck, I love you.”
And then we’re coming together, rocking, eyes locked, bodies as close as they can be.
My hands move to his face, my thumbs brushing across his short beard. “I love you too.”
Thank you for reading DIRTY TALKER!! Want to see what Wade & Harlow are up to next? For a sweet and sexy bonus epilogue… CLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter!
And Axel's story is next in… DIRTY DEAL
Fatherhood blindsided me.
There I am, working to get a rise out of my cranky little rule-following, fun-wrecking, soon-to-be ex-neighbor when my one-night stand from last season shows up… in labor.
Next thing, I’m a single-dad begging for a crash course in caring for this tiny miracle from the neighbor who loves to hate me.
Turns out, Nora raised half her siblings.
She knows things.
And I know my son needs her.
Unfortunately, she’s not impressed by my NHL career, my legendary charm, or the rumors surrounding the size of my stick (all true btw).
But I’m not trying to impress her. Not anymore. I can’t.
I’m asking her to help me out, because my son deserves better than some player who hasn’t even had a chance to read the manual yet.
Which means no matter how hot I find her spitfire mouth and those rules she doesn’t break… Nora is off-limits.
Get DIRTY DEAL