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  When he ran a finger across the downy skin of her lower belly, it was her turn to shiver with pleasure. “Sensitive there?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was so ragged that he went to his knees without thinking. He laid his mouth across the skin between the teeth of her undone zipper and pushed her jeans down her legs. They got stuck on her boots, but he didn’t have time to take off her shoes. He had to taste her about five minutes ago.

  He groaned into her little black panties, so stark against the pale skin of her belly. He hooked a finger in either side and pushed them down her legs.

  Her legs wavered, and he realized she probably couldn’t move. The idea excited him, but he paused to check in with her. Her head rolled to the side, she peered at him when he stopped. “Do you want your shoes off?”

  She gave him a lazy smile. “If you’re about to do what I think you’re about to do, I’m not going to want to run away.”

  He ran his hands up the backs of her strong calves and over her knees. She gasped and leaned toward him before he put his open mouth over the curve of her inner thigh. Her hands dug into his hair as he spread her thighs apart, gripping her ass cheeks.

  When he licked her, he felt her nails dig in. She was all wet and ready for him, and he could barely wait to sink inside her, but he wanted her just as desperate for him. He sucked her clit, and she groaned out his name.

  He allowed himself to get lost in her, wanting to beat his chest every time she made a new sound. He lost track of time at the center of her. For maybe the first time in his life, he wasn’t worried about where he had to be and when. He didn’t give a shit about what his coaches and doctors were thinking. Even the dull pain in his knee, his constant companion since his surgery, quieted down while he feasted on Dahlia.

  “Anders, please.” He knew what she was asking for, and he would give it to her. He would give her anything. He pulled her cheeks apart and sucked again, precisely where she needed it. She went up on her toes and flooded his mouth with her honey.

  He kept at it, needing to ring every bit of pleasure out of her, until the hands in his hair pushed him away. But he didn’t let her go. He held her up by the thighs until she settled, and then took off her boots, socks, pants, and underwear.

  “Well, I think it’s pretty safe to say you’ve done that before.”

  Something in his chest shifted. He didn’t like the fact that she was making jokes about what had just happened. He’d never felt as close to another person, and he didn’t want her pushing him away, not right now.

  She ran a finger over his brow. “That’s not a bad thing.” He looked up at her. She wore a satisfied smile and a sleepy look in her eyes. “You made me happy.”

  “If I’d have known it would be that easy, I would have done it last night.”

  “If I’d have known you were that good, I would have let you.”

  He stood up, and finished up the buttons to her flannel. “Want to see you.”

  “Greedy now?”

  “Don’t you think I’ve earned the right to be a little bit greedy with you?”

  She bit her lip, as though she had to consider it. “I don’t want you to get addicted.”

  “Because this is temporary?” Jesus. He felt like such a girl in this situation. The pang of anticipated regret in his chest was completely uncalled for.

  “It has to be.”

  She stood in front of him naked, and he was worried about getting to do this again. Pathetic. He was lucky to be getting to do this right now.

  “Let’s make it count, then.” He leaned in to kiss her again and palmed her breasts. Some people might like big ones, but he liked one kind of boobs—Dahlia’s. He moved away from her mouth so he could taste her neck. “Love your tits.”

  “You’d be about the first person ever.” She ran her fingers along the muscles of his shoulders and back, kneading gently. Her touch disappeared everything, like being on his knees for her had. He could get lost in her for hours and days. They hadn’t done the deed yet, and he was already plotting to get her under him again.

  He kissed over her collarbone and grazed the ink that wrapped her shoulders with his teeth. While he was getting his mouth all over every inch of her he could reach, he nudged them over to the couch. He should probably get them upstairs to the loft and the bed, but he didn’t have the patience for that.

  After a quarter of a good lifetime of waiting, he needed her now.

  She sat on the couch and unbuckled his belt. When she pulled down his pants and boxer briefs, his eager cock was so close to her mouth that it only made sense that she ran her tongue over the head.

  Before she got too involved in blowing him, he grasped her hair. Maybe it was too much because she looked up at him wide-eyed, pupils dilated. “Too much?”

  “You’re a little kinky, Anders Sorenson.” Her words had a raspy sense of laughter to them.

  “And you like that?” He wanted to be sure, but he also wanted her to tell him she wanted him, as he was. He needed to know that she didn’t just like the idea of him, that she liked him raw and naked—both literally and figuratively.

  In the past, he’d been turned off by women who wanted him too much. They’d only been interested in the bounty or the idea of hooking up with a pro athlete. None of them, not one, had wanted the man he was inside. None of them had wanted the pimply teenager too shy to talk to girls.

  He almost didn’t buy the way that Dahlia was looking at him now because she’d made it so clear that she hadn’t wanted any of those things. The bounty insulted her. She hated hockey players. But she wanted him.

  “I love that, Anders.”

  He kicked off his jeans and sank down on top of her. Her arms and legs came around him, and he groaned into her mouth. They came together perfectly. Although he was only technically a virgin, he realized in that moment what he’d been missing all this time—the tangle of limbs and press of flesh against flesh.

  Dahlia’s sweet body wanted to welcome him. His cock dragged through her pussy, and her hips rolled, begging him to sink in deep. His breath was ragged, in and out through his nose to get enough control to slow down enough to protect her.

  When he pulled back to get a condom she stopped him. “I have an IUD, and I’ve haven’t been with anyone since I was last tested.”

  Her words didn’t sink into his lust-addled brain at first. “So, we can?”

  She nodded. “We can. We should. I want to.”

  He didn’t waste time after that; he went to his forearms and sank into her a bit.

  Heaven.

  When he didn’t move or try to get deeper, she thrust herself up on him. “Wait.”

  “I can’t wait.” Her voice was strained, and the fact that he’d brought her to that desperate place where she’d do anything for him to be inside her brightened something inside him.

  He sank deeper and lost the will to go slow. Thank God she didn’t want slow. They could do slow, before the night was over, they would do slow. But not now.

  “Oh, fuck, yes,” he said when she rolled her hips and clenched around him.

  He may not ever have done this before, but he knew that this thing between them was good. After a few tentative strokes, they were so in sync that they moved the couch with each stroke. On the end table, the lamp hit the wall every time he got all the way inside this woman, this lake nymph who’d stolen all his good sense.

  Sweat slicked their skin, and his hands sought purchase against the leather couch.

  The skin on her neck and chest flushed. “So close, Anders.”

  “You’re going to come, Dahlia?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  In answer, she dragged her pelvic bone across his. “I need more.”

  He slipped his hand around her hip and rubbed her clit. She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him closer, trapping his hand between them. He didn’t give a shit about the awkward angle; she moved as though she didn’t care about her skin sti
cking to the leather. Both of them fucking like the world was ending, like they could burn it all down from a couch in the north woods of bumfuck Minnesota.

  His whole body tightened with the impending orgasm, but this feeling of being inside her was so perfect that he didn’t want to give it up quite yet. She was his whole universe in that moment, and he wasn’t sure what he’d do without her.

  But, when she tightened around him, her face screwed up in a perfect mask of excruciating pleasure, he let go inside her. His brain emptied until they were the only two people who existed. The sounds she made as she came probably echoed all the over the lake, into Wisconsin.

  Right then, if someone had asked him, he would have told them that his life’s purpose had changed. Hockey was no longer his reason for being. Fucking Dahlia Clarno was what he’d been put on this Earth to do.

  They didn’t move for long moments. The only sounds in the townhouse were the rush of the lake against the rocky shore and their panting breaths.

  It might have been minutes or months later when Dahlia spoke. “Anders?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you want me to go?” Her unsure voice shocked him. From the moment they’d met, she’d been almost cocky in a way that he’d found so appealing. He liked this vulnerable soft side she’d been showing him since she’d walked through the door, but he didn’t want to be the reason she was so unsure.

  “Why would I want that?”

  “Well, you came, I came twice. You’ve been deflowered.”

  He looked down into her wide, dark eyes. He searched her face for a hint of the sarcasm she’d given him when they’d first met—it was absent. She couldn’t leave now, not when they’d just discovered this hot and tender thing between them.

  He brushed the purple strands stuck to her flushed skin away from her face. “I don’t want you to go anywhere.”

  “For how long?”

  The immediate answer that appeared in his head was: Never. But that was nuts. He was probably only this attached because she was the first. Because they couldn’t be together long term. She was getting her life back together up here. And he was headed back to New Orleans soon. Wasn’t he?

  It wasn’t the first time he’d questioned his desire to go back to hockey since his injury. But it was the first time something outside of himself had made him question his commitment to the game.

  He had to think about this when he wasn’t still inside her, but he wasn’t ready to let her go. So, he froze the puck the best way he knew how. “I want you to stay for as long as you want to be here.”

  “So, I’ll at least stay the night.”

  Anders couldn’t tell her the truth, that a night wouldn’t be nearly enough, so he kissed her instead.

  Six

  Dahlia woke up on the floor in the middle of the living room, tangled up in blankets pulled from the closet and Anders. There was a perfectly good bed up in the loft, but walking upstairs would have been a waste of time.

  After the first time, she’d gotten cleaned up. She’d been about to get Anders a snack, but he hadn’t been about putting food in his mouth. The only thing he’d been interested in tasting was her.

  The sky over the trees and lake was starting to lighten. She loosened her body from his, and turned to watch the sunrise—something she hadn’t done in years.

  Her hometown really was beautiful. She’d been so lost in finding a way to leave town as soon as possible that she hadn’t allowed herself to take in the good parts of where she’d grown up. Since high school, she’d been so absorbed in the negatives—the backward people, the isolation, the cold—that she hadn’t seen the positives.

  Maybe that was why she couldn’t seem to see eye-to-eye with her mom? She shouldn’t be thinking about her mom while her skin smelled of sex with the man wrapped around her. When she’d rolled over, he’d wrapped his arm around her waist. He was asleep; his breath was even as it puffed across the skin of her neck, but he gripped her tight.

  She felt safe, comfortable in his arms. And it scared the hell out of her. She shouldn’t be getting attached to this guy, of all the guys she should allow herself to get attached to. But the sunrise would keep her secrets.

  Anders shifted against her body, and she could feel his erection in her lower back. If Dylan had pressed his stiffy into her body in his sleep, she would have been annoyed. The sex between them had been fine, but it was something that needed to be confined to a box. She hadn’t thought about having sex with him while she was outfitting the kitchen or testing recipes.

  Dahlia couldn’t seem to stop thinking about sex with Anders. That, combined with the fact that she felt safe with him, should terrify her more than it did. But, if she were completely honest with herself, she wasn’t nearly as afraid of caring about him as she should be.

  She ran her fingers over the back of his hand, and he stirred. His hand creeped up until it took down the blanket the currently covered her boobs. If he was a boob man, she didn’t know what he saw in her.

  “Not much to see there,” she said as he plucked one nipple.

  “I disagree.” His voice was filled with just the right amount of gravel and too much humor for this early in the morning. “You have seventies tits.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” She tried to turn toward him, but he pinned her body face down to the floor, trapping his hand against her breast.

  “You know, in the eighties there were a lot of fake boobs. In the seventies, they were free agents.” He kissed the back of her neck. Instead of bucking him off and stomping out, she pressed her forehead into the floor so he could kiss more of the back of her neck. Her followed her silent instruction before he said, “My parents actually had Internet porn blockers that worked. The only boobs I ever got to see as an adolescent were in very old Playboy magazines in my grandparents’ attic.”

  The idea of Anders furtively masturbating surrounded by yellowed skin mags and dusty doilies made her laugh. He bit into the skin between her neck and shoulder, and it sent sparks straight through to her clit. She pushed her ass up into his pelvis and he growled, kissing the spot where he’d sunk his teeth.

  This was dangerous. He’d been inside her a couple of hours ago, and still she wanted him so badly that her core ached. He slid his hand free and grasped her hair into his palm at the back of her head.

  How did he know that was the secret key, knowing how to pull hair like a fucking boss? He slid his lips over her shoulder blades and down her spine, keeping his control over her movements.

  He made her feel both helpless and vulnerable her feminine power flowed through his worshipping lips into her skin. It settled and confused her at the same time.

  When the hand that wasn’t holding her hair dipped between her legs, she stopped thinking about it and let herself feel how good it was to have a man get lost in her. A man who could have anyone else loved her little boobs, tattoos, and wild hair.

  “Your skin is soft.” He sounded like that fact surprised him. “You come off all hard and badass, but that’s only until someone touches you.” He dipped a finger inside her, and she thrust back into him. He might be content to take his time now that he’d finally gotten inside a woman, but she wanted more. Now. “But you don’t let anyone touch you, do you?”

  What was he talking about? She certainly wasn’t as untouched as he’d been until a few hours ago.

  “Do you?”

  It was hard to be pissed off when he was fingering her like she was a miracle to him, slow and careful. He was exploring her from the inside. When he slid one finger across her clit, she felt her chest flush and her thighs tingle with an approaching orgasm.

  And then he stopped.

  “You don’t let anyone get close.”

  Now that he’d stopped on the road to making her come, she was over his probing questions. She wanted to get back to probing fingers and maybe graduate to a probing cock. “I was letting you get really close a second ago.”

  “Do you want my fingers back?
” The laughter on his voice, which had made her so hot before was going to make her kick his ass…if he took his hand out of her hair. She was pissed off because he was right. She didn’t let anyone get close, and the fact that he could see that made her want to push him away.

  But her body? Her body wanted him closer. “Yes.”

  “Then answer my question.”

  What was the question? “Yes.”

  “Yes, you want my fingers back?” His fingers tightened in her hair, and she flipped her ass up closer to his cock.

  “No one touches me, not like you.” She hadn’t wanted to say so much. Not so soon. Not ever. But Anders aroused emotions in her she hadn’t been sure she was capable of feeling. He was so unexpected, her Virgin Viking sex god.

  He released her hair, and she was afraid she’d said too much. Maybe he’d wanted to keep it to just sex.

  “That’s a good girl.” Dahlia hadn’t thought she was the kind of girl who would like being called someone’s “good girl,” but it worked coming out of Anders’s mouth. Especially when he followed up by replacing his fingers with his dick.

  “Yes. Yes.”

  She turned her head to one side and watched his forearms flex as he pushed inside her. She put her hands over his, and he entwined her fingers with his own.

  The first and second times she’d loved looking at him; his body was built for hockey, but perfect for sex. In her mind’s eye, she could see his abs flexing as he fucked her so deep, she struggled to take in air.

  They were intertwined, and she wasn’t freaking out. The orgasm that had slipped away a few moments ago came roaring back. He took care with her, he didn’t hurt her. But fucking her was going to make her break. This had to be the last time. She couldn’t let him see more of her, because him walking away would rip her apart.

  When she finally came—finally let go—she pretended that the tears leaking out of the corner of her eyes were sweat.