Page 41 of The Prince and the Puck
Lizzy didn’t answer with words. Instead, she practically lifted me off the couch, nearly carrying me down the hall to the open doorway beyond, where an enormous bed waited.
“Lie down,” I suggested.
But Lizzy, it turned out, was not the compliant type. “Take off your pants,” she said.
I, for one, didn’t mind being ordered around. Especially in this context. I complied. “Okay, but what about your pants?”
A wicked smile crossed Lizzy’s lips, and some instinct took over—I kissed it. I kissed the smile I’d been wanting to kiss since the first day I saw her.
And kissing Lizzy? It was everything I thought it would be. And more. Kissing Lizzy was like every day being your birthday, topped off with cotton candy, ice cream, all the scotch you could drink, and zero regrets.
I wanted Lizzy more than I had ever wanted anything. It occurred to me that I liked her as much as I liked hockey. And that was saying something.
Lizzy refused to lie down. Instead, she spun me and then climbed me, pushing me back onto the massive mattress, which, by the way, seemed even bigger than my own California king.
I came up for air, glancing around. “California king?” I stretched my arms, testing my wingspan to see if it reached both sides. “I mean, it’s really big.”
Lizzy sat up and gave me a look that made me realize discussing the size of the bed was probably not what we should be doing at this moment. But she humored me anyway, because Lizzy liked me. “It’s an Alaskan king, if you must know.”
I raised a brow. “But you’re a tiny person.” Lizzy did not appear to enjoy being called tiny. I swear she started flexing some of the muscles in her chest and arms, because suddenly, she looked far more intimidating straddling my naked body than she had a moment before.
“Those are fighting words,” Lizzy growled. Then she attacked again. The woman was everywhere. And I was in heaven.
As a hockey player, I’d had my fair share of meaningless hookups. Women always seemed to enjoy the mystique of pro athletes. I didn’t really understand it, but as long as it worked to my advantage, I wasn’t going to argue. Lizzy, however, didn’t seem the least bit fazed by my status.
In fact, she seemed hell-bent on subduing me. Dominating me. Teaching me a lesson.
I was here for all of it.
CHAPTER 24
LIZZY
FAKE SURPRISES ARE NO FUN.
I knewDeclan had been about to tell me the truth. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want him to tell me the truth—honestly, that was my whole mission. That, and getting him home. The problem was, I wanted to steal just a couple more minutes of being Lizzy, the PR consultant. Because as the PR consultant, my responsibilities were neatly contained within the limited scope of the job I was pretending to do. I wasn’t responsible for a kingdom or the sanctity of the throne. More importantly—or really, more selfishly—I knew there was a chance Declan would hate me when I revealed my deception.
I didn’t think about any of that as his hands skimmed over my body, leaving trails of fire in their wake. My own breathing, my own moans, surprised me. I wasn’t even sure if they were actually mine or if they belonged to Lizzy, the PR consultant. Because I’d been playing a role. And there was something gratifying and sexy about maintaining it—getting to be a whole other woman. A whole other kind of woman in Declan’s arms.
Lizzy the operative intimidated men. She was one of them—strong, capable, maybe even a little masculine. She wasn’t this wanton, sexy girl in a hockey player’s bed. Okay, well, technicallyit was my bed, but you get the point. So who could blame me for wanting just a few more minutes to be that girl?
And Declan?
He was everything I could never have dreamed he would be when I was nine years old. He was caring, he was gentle, but there was a fire inside him that stoked my own. And as our mouths and bodies clashed together in a manic, tension-filled push and pull, I felt something shift. Not just between the two of us, but cosmically. It was as if, with every thrust, every grasp of his hands, every move of his hips, Declan was realigning reality.
For me, at least.
I’d begun the encounter wanting to dominate, but once my guard had slipped, thanks to Declan’s persistent thumb rubbing a firm circle against my clit and making me lose my patience and some of my self control, I let him flip me onto my back. And then, almost infuriatingly, he backed off. He was straddling me, but then he rolled to one side and sat up on his elbow, smiling down at me.
“Why are you stopping?” I panted. I’d been very close to reaching that point where my brain stopped its constant anxious churn. I needed him to keep going.
“I wanted to look at you for a second.” His eyes scraped across my skin, taking in my breasts, my heaving chest, my quivering stomach, and everything below. I wasn’t the least bit embarrassed, because I was looking at him too.
“Like what you see?” I asked him, though it was obvious from the way his engorged cock throbbed against my hip that he did.
He let out a low growl, and then he was rolling onto me again, taking my earlobe between his teeth and biting gently. A thrill shot from there straight to my core, and my hand wrapped itself around his cock.
“I think it’s time to see what you can do with your stick.”
