Page 37 of Hockey Heart

Maiden nodded his sleepy head, and I felt a rush of fatherly love for that adorable little man. How had I bought all this into my home,ourhome?

“Okay, go get Pascal and we’ll try get some sleep.”

Pascal, a plush turtle we’d got at Six Flags five summers ago, had seen better days. I felt like that ragged plush turtlesometimes. Once shining, fun, and vibrant. Now it was ragged and battered by life, its eyes having been drawn back on with a marker pen more times than I could remember.

Like Pascal though, I would always be there for Maiden. He had me to rely on.Who did I have, though?

I scooped up Maiden, Marvin, and Pascal and carried them back to my bed, smiling at the tiny person in my arms, but also worried for him. When he was four, I’d lost him for a moment. Cara was supposed to be watching him while I swung by the bank, but being Cara, she’d got distracted by something shiny in a store. By the time I came back, he was gone. For the first time in my life, I froze. Incapacitated with absolute terror. Everyone had looked to me to act, but I didn’t know what to do.

Twenty minutes later, we found him. Maiden had wandered into a kid’s birthday party happening at the pizza joint next door. No one had noticed there was an extra kid, and he was happily chewing on a slice of pepperoni.

I’d never left him alone with Cara again. People couldn’t be trusted. No one except me.

The rain began to beat down hard against the city that night as I lay restlessly, tussling with my aching feelings.

I couldn’t risk it again, but maybe I had to. Something inside me was changing. The feelings I’d once shut down were operating again, compelling me to act. All I could think of was her. The soft curl of her brown hair caressing that smooth, exciting curve of her shoulder. Those slim, tiny wrists that made me crave to touch them. The sweet delight in her smile. And those eyes. Those fucking eyes that I wanted to fall into and never come back from. The way she squinted one of them when she laughed, the lines around her mouth that I wanted to press a thumb softly over. It felt almost irresistible.Almost.

My heart beat harder. It wasn’talmost. It was true. I rolled out of bed, threw on a shirt, then stumbled out into the hallway and reached for my car keys.

22

THE RAIN

Sarah

The rain came down hard that night, driving its way into every available surface as if it had to get in somehow. I sat and watched it stream down the windows, blurring the city lights as I contemplated my life. I wanted love. I also wanted Hayden Raynor. But I couldn’t see how those two things could come together. I wasn’t some glamorousIt Girlyou chased. Women came to him, and I wasn’t going to try and get my heart broken like that.

Hayden had been a fantasy, but now it was blurring into something else and I didn’t know if I could handle it. I was shaken out of my thoughts by a thumping sound. The door pounding as if the person on the other side, like the rain, was desperate to get in.

It pounded again as I walked barefoot across the wooden boards, pausing to wonder what was lurking on the other side that was so mad to get inside.

Opening the door, there he stood. Looking at me like a hungry wolf, the rain streaking down his huge frame. Therewas nothing but fire in his eyes as he walked in without a word, striding toward me, dripping water across the floor as he came closer.

I tried to catch my breath as I stumbled backward, his eyes wild and intense. My ass bumped against the kitchen table and I was trapped there as he descended on me. Without hesitation, his mouth met mine, and I kissed him back hungrily. One big paw scooped me up by my ass and dropped me back down on the table. Our lips broke, and we looked deep into each other’s vibrant, excited, and expectant eyes.

It seemed in that moment as if the world was electric. Everything melted away and there was only this.

“Lift up your skirt,” he growled at me, raindrops pooling on the floor around my feet.

I gulped, my legs trembling as he looked down at me, a quivering rabbit cornered by a wolf, unable to resist the fate that was coming. There was no escape, and I craved it.

My fingers slipped down to my sides on his command. Slowly, I lifted up my dress, revealing the warm skin of my thighs and the soft white cotton panties underneath. His eyes left mine as he eagerly watched his prey being revealed to him, making me blush at the intensity of his look.

Hayden’s other hand rose to my chest and pulled my dress open with one wild tug. My blood rushed with desire as he gently stroked the soft skin of my collarbone with his fingertips, admiring me.

His hand went lower, stroking my thighs, his fat thumb rising up between my legs and pressing down on my panties, my body softening at the touch.

As his lips came close to mine, I opened my mouth in expectation, but instead, his mouth slipped past me and went to the nape of my neck. His warm tongue tasted thesalt from my warm skin as he ran one of his huge paws over me, trying to greedily touch all of me all at once. My nipples stiffened as he roughly pawed at my chest before pushing me down against the table. He lowered his head, the wet hair tickling my skin as his hot tongue traveled down my body, eagerly pulling me into his mouth.

Then all of a sudden, he scooped me up in those huge arms like I was weightless to him, and carried me toward my bedroom, kicking the door open like some kind of action movie star.

The mattress creaked in anguish under our weight as we fell onto the bed, the air rushing out of me underneath his huge frame as he fell on top of me, our lips feverishly kissing at each other, like it was our oxygen and we were desperately gasping for more of it.

I pulled with all my strength at his shirt, tearing it open, the pearl buttons scattering across the room and revealing his thick chest, my lips running kisses down him as he moaned in pleasure.

We were lost to each other as his hands slid under my dress and roughly pulled my panties from me, before he descended like a madman and his head fell between my quivering legs.

I was shaking with intense pleasure as his hot, wet tongue met me and took me deeper into a state of blissful, wild, arousal. Grasping tightly at his hair, I writhed under his thick tongue and moaned at the feel of his beard rasping against my thighs as I pulled him deeper.

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