Liam
Don’t look at it again.
That’s what I’ve been telling myself since Saturday night when my wife innocently sent me a photo so hot it nearly set my phone on fire.
It wasn’t just those big blue eyes staring up at me with her dark waves spilling over her pillow. Though that would have been enough considering the last time I saw her like that, she was naked, and I was inside her, never wanting to leave.
It wasn’t that she was wearing the Slayers Hockey hoodie I got for her. Though the previously dormant caveman stalking around in my chest gets off on seeing my number across her chest in no small way.
It wasn’t even that when she lifted the phone overhead to take the picture, she didn’t notice the hoodie had crept up, showing off a generous slice of pale skin from the top of her thigh. A slice I liked having my mouth on very much.
No. What set my phone on fire was all that coupled with the scant lace of panties in the same light blue as her eyes and so thin I could practically see the shadowy slice of heaven I’d feasted on the night before. And PS, yeah, that was beard burn on her inner thigh.
Fuck. Me.
I’d had my hand down my joggers, gripping my painfully hard cock in a heartbeat, totally on board with the dirty long-distance playtime. But then she squeaked out the whole accident business… and, hell, I’d nearly ground my molars to dust prying my fingers loose.
Somehow, I managed to talk to her for a few more minutes without begging her to slip her fingers beneath that thin lace.
And now after walking around for the better part of two days fighting the call of that photo, I’m finally home.
I punch in the door code and glare down at my fly, willing it to behave.
She’s sitting at the dining room table I never used before she moved in. Her laptop is open and there are reports scattered across the surface. She looks so good, I have a hell of a time fighting the urge to throw her over my shoulder and tote her back to my bed.
“Hey, gorgeous.”
“Oh, I didn’t hear you come in.”
She stands, looking like she’s about to come over, but then stops like she isn’t quite sure how to behave all of a sudden. Which sucks, but I get it.
And we’ll get past it.
“Stealth mode.” I round the table, waving her in for a hug. “Either that or you were deep in the spreadsheets.”
She laughs, moving into my side. And when she relaxes there and that brief awkwardness melts away? Damn, it feels good.
“How was your trip?” she asks when I let her go.
“Stuck on the tarmac for ninety minutes before takeoff.” We walk back to my room, and I set my bag on the bed to unpack, trying not to think about the last time we were in it together.
It’s made. No sign she’s been staying in it. Because of course she wouldn’t.
She’s got her own room. We’ve got a plan.
I’m good with it.
She stands at the doorway to the closet. Was she just looking at the bed too?
“It must drive you crazy with how much you travel.”
Small talk. Got it. I’m down.
“Nah. Delays happen.” I unload my bag, tossing the laundry into one bin and the dry-cleaning into another. “So long as I’m not the one causing it, it doesn’t bother me.”
“Right, the timely one,” she teases softly.
I undo my tie, letting it hang as I start on the buttons of my shirt… and try not to think about when she’d been the one with her fingers in them. Or the sounds she made when I was inside her. How wet she was.
Christ, or the way she looked at me when she was on the edge, and I finally took her over.
So not cool.
God, I’m an asshole. It’s nothing new, but for this girl, I don’t want to be.
I need to turn around and talk to her like I’m not dying to know what color her panties are.
Simple. I’ve got this.
Taking a deep breath, I turn and— freeze.
Because the way she’s looking at me? Well, I’m not feeling so guilty about my wayward thoughts all of a sudden.
Her cheeks are pink, her bottom lip trapped in the clasp of her teeth. Her eyes are hot, locked on what I’m pretty sure is the top inch of my Tom Ford boxer briefs visible above my suit pants.
Damn.
She swallows, her eyes moving up my body until they meet mine, and the heat of our connection sparks between us.
I expect some kind of gut-level awareness that it’s a mistake. Except it doesn’t feel wrong.
She pulls her bottom lip free, wets it. “Are we still on the same page?”
I nod, closing the distance between us. “Divorce in two years. No chance of a misunderstanding.”
She launches herself at me, and I catch her against me, devouring her like a starving man.
We haven’t gotten the physical part out of our systems yet. Plain and simple. And until we do, so long as we’re on the same page, what’s the problem?
“Damn, you going for the land speed record getting out of here?”
Bowie’s grinning at me from where he’s parked on the bench, a towel around his waist. He hasn’t showered yet, but I’m already dressed in jeans and a button-down.
Shoving my feet into my shoes, I shake my head. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh.” He rubs his shoulder, in no rush. “Married life looks good on you, man.”
I grin, and he laughs, nodding.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Okay. Maybe I do.
Because this thing with Stormy is good. Better than. It’s fucking amazing.
“This why we never saw you dipping into the bunny pool, or any pool really? You more one of those quiet commitment guys whose always got a serious girl at home he’d rather be talking to?”
I stop, cutting him a look.
“Not really.” Not even close.
I could leave it there. I normally would sever the conversation before it had a chance to get too deep, too invasive. Before I inadvertently gave someone something they could use against me. But for whatever reason, when Bowie raises a brow in question, I shrug and go on.
“There were the girlfriends. Once in a while.” Not so much in the last few years. “We’d go on dates. Dinner. A party where, chances were, we would spend more time talking to other people than we did each other.” Probably because there wasn’t that much to say. “But with Stormy, it’s been different from the start. Real.”
And the irony of that statement isn’t lost on me. Because while the marriage might not be real in the traditional sense… everything else is.
“And we were friends first.” First and foremost.
He barks out a laugh. “Dude, you mean like for the first five minutes before you married her?”
I freeze, but the way he’s laughing, he thinks I’m joking, thank fuck. “Yeah, pretty much.”
Needing to change the topic, I jut my chin at him. “You got a girl?”
I should know this. Probably every other guy on the team does.
It’s the sort of information I used to actively avoid learning. I didn’t want to know anything about my teammates beyond how they handled a puck. Didn’t want anyone getting close.
But now?
Every time Stormy and I join the team after a game, I learn something more about them. Find that much more common ground.
Now, these guys are growing on me.
“Me?” Bowie scoffs, pushing to his feet. “Fuck, no. I got my hands full enough with Boomer.”
Just then the guy sails in, fresh out of the shower. “What about me? Also, I’m fucking hungry. And horny. Horngry? But I’m tired too. Any chance of reconsidering the no bunnies rule at our place? We could order in.”
Bowie shoots me a weary look and shakes his head. “See?”
I cut out of the locker room and head straight for the garage, my mind on Stormy and how different things are with her. How different I am.
It was never like this with Jess. When we were together, I’d thought maybe we had that comfortable silence thing people talk about, but I realized I was actually more comfortable alone. Some boyfriend I’d made. I couldn’t even get worked up about the fact that she broke things off when I was injured. With my ability to play again in question, it didn’t leave me much to offer.
Of course, knowing what I know now, that fracture was the luckiest break of my life.
I shake the thought off.
Because it’s different now. Stormy and I get each other. We’re a team. And for the past few weeks, we’ve been on the same page every night I’m not traveling and first thing in the morning.
In the shower.
On the island.
And once in the back seat of the new car I got her as a Valentine’s Day/early divorce settlement gift.
But it’s not just the sex. Hell, it’s the non-physical stuff that has me doing double takes at my own life more than anything else. I can’t get enough of her. The trips to the fish market and the Nike store and that little coffee place she found a few blocks down. The mornings when she sits at the island with her coffee, reading me snippets from the news as she scrolls through. The way we talk when I’m on the road. The way we laugh.
If we were the kind of people looking for forever, I might want it with her. But then if she wanted forever, she’d deserve a hell of a lot better than me.
But I’ve got two years before I need to think about that.
When I get home, Stormy’s waiting for me.
She’s on the thinking couch, wearing my Slayers T-shirt, the one I wrapped her up in that first night she stayed here. Only tonight, her long legs are bare beneath it.
“Hey, gorgeous. Miss me?”
I close the door behind me, already toeing off my shoes and dumping my shit on the entryway floor, watching as she uses her pretty painted toes to nudge at a mug set out on the coffee table.
“We should talk about who’s going to get this,” she says in a low purr. “I mean, we acquired it as a couple.”
The mug came in a thank-you bag from a bone marrow registry drive I was volunteering at with Grady last week. But I’m curious to see where she’s going.
“Yeah?”
She bites her lip and nods. There’s this sexy combination of sensual hunger and playful light in her eyes as her legs shift restlessly together. It’s making me so hard it hurts.
“Mmhmm. And since we’re getting a divorce in two years… we should talk about who’s getting it. I mean, if we’re still on the same page. Right?”
I grin, reaching over my shoulder and grabbing a handful of my shirt to pull it over my head. It hits the floor with everything else.
I growl, stopping in front of her. “You dirty-divorce-talking me right now?”
She hooks a finger in my belt loop, tugging me closer as she angles to lie back. I plant my knee on the cushion between her legs, and she runs her hands over my chest.
“Is it working?”
I nod. But then she could be reading me the grocery list and it would work.
I bunch her T-shirt as I draw it up. Over the lace between her legs. Higher, past her ribs and the mouth-watering peaks of her perfect breasts. All the way, free of her raised arms so she’s stretched out beneath me in nothing but that single scrap of provocative red.
“You get the mug.” Like anything else she wants. Like everything I’ll be able to get her to take.
I pull her down beneath me, groaning at the softness of her skin against mine. Our eyes meet and something happens, deep in my chest.
Something that makes me want to wrap my arms around her more than get inside her. That makes me want her laugh as much as to hear her panting my name. Christ, it’s almost painful how much I want.
She searches my eyes, and the smallest hint of a furrow digs between hers. “Same page… right?”
I blink, shake my head again, and then let out a short laugh.
Same page.
“Gorgeous?” I roll my hips into where she’s soft and open to me. Vulnerable and trusting. “I’m going to divorce you so fucking hard.”
And that half laugh, half gasp— why does that feel so right?
I want more. I want all of her heat and laughter, all of her breathless sighs. I want those bleary-eyed morning smiles and the soft looks when she asks me how my flight was.
I want her dirty video calls on the road and the bored looks when she’s deciding between yogurt or an apple for a snack.
I want it all… for the next two years. Because anything longer than that would put us on a different page, and we promised.
I drop my face into the crook of her neck, drawing in the sweet scent of her before rumbling more— “It’s going to be a deeply amicable parting.”
Her hands are between us. Shaking, she fumbles my belt and fly. “So deep.”
I smile into her skin. I want to take my time with her, but she’s already breathless, her heels pushing at my jeans as she frees me.
“More,” she whispers as I reach between us. That sexy red lace is fucking soaked. I slip a finger beneath the panel that covers the place where I need to be.
I tug it aside, and she lines us up so my head notches at her opening. Fuck. This is my favorite part.
That moment when I’m nearly there.
That beat when our eyes meet, and she tells me without words she wants me. Needs me.
I don’t ever remember that with another woman.
But with Stormy—
“Liam. Please.”
Anything.
I start to sink in, feeling the slick hug of her pussy taking me inch by inch, the clench and spasm of her body stretching around mine.
Heaven.
I give her all that I have, groaning when her lips part on that first sweet arrested breath, at the feel of her body’s resistance when we’re connected as completely as two people can be.
Her eyes flutter, and she drags her leg higher up my side. Ready.
I issue another reminder to us both as I draw back through that tight connection. “Our divorce is going to be so good.” I thrust back in. Rock against the spot where we meet.
“Yes. Right there.”
“It’ll go through so fast, the bill won’t cover a night at the movies for our lawyers’ kids.”
“Faster,” she begs, and I give it to her, driving hard, again and again.
She’s pulsing around me, her body wound tight.
“We’ll make… all our divorced friends… so… fucking… jealous.”
“Why?” she moans on a half laugh, fingers tightening in my hair as she arches into me.
“Because we’ll be… such good friends…”
“The best.”
“And…”
“Tell me.”
“And I’ll still fuck you into next week anytime you want it.”
And that’s it. She comes apart, crying my name as her body clamps down on me like a vise, holding me tight with a greedy grip that has me following her over the edge into bliss.