Game On (17 page)

Clara heard of women who could orgasm from breast play but never in her dreams thought it could happen to her. She wasn’t that easy! She prided herself on having an extremely high stimulation threshold. But, with muscles quivering, she began to doubt her tenacity.

Before she could succumb to the ultimate satisfaction, he released her.

“Look at me, Clara.”

She struggled to open her eyes when all they wanted to do was squeeze shut and let her body feel. His eyes never left hers as he finger walked a line to her center and down, down, down. Her muscles clenched as he skimmed over the contours of her abdomen, then lower, delving into her damp curls.

“You didn’t answer my original question.” He cupped her, applied a gentle pressure, then slipped his finger into her folds

Clara gasped, her eyes slipped shut, and her body writhed as he grazed her clitoris.

“Look at me,” he demanded. He toyed with her, circled her bud without touching it directly.

His face was inches from hers, watching, scrutinizing, waiting for a reaction. Clara bit her lip to keep from crying out. She swallowed but couldn’t speak. If she opened her mouth, it would be to moan, to whimper, to beg. Maybe all three.

He pressed her deeper, teased the passage to her core.

She couldn’t hold it in. Her hips bucked as a primal, needy gasp ripped from her throat . “Oh God, Luc! Please, I need you inside me.”

“Not until you answer my question.” He spread the creamy liquid from her slit to the plump lips of her labia, across her inner thigh, and back to the source for more.

Clara writhed on the cold table, her body trembling for release. She was ready for him. So ready. What was he waiting for?

“Stay with me Clara,” he growled as his fingers scooped through her. “Open your eyes,” he commanded.

They felt like lead weights, but she obeyed and watched as he brought his fingers, slick with her juices, to his mouth and sucked. He savoured her taste and smiled when she groaned.

“Did I get the rules right?”

“Please, Luc,” she begged, so near the brink of explosion, his words ceased to register. Her hips rolled toward him, seeking full physical contact. He obliged only by thrusting two fingers deep inside, pumping her, taking her dangerously close to the edge. Her inner muscles convulsed, squeezed, unwilling to let him go. “Yes, yes, please.”

And then he was gone. His warmth, his touch, him. All gone.

“Sorry,
ma belle
,” he said, hands up in defeat.

Clara’s eyes snapped open, a shiver of icy cold making her entire body tremble.

Luc’s eyes were dangerously dark. The corners of his mouth quirked, but it wasn’t humor she saw in his expression. It was victory.

“You made the rules.”

Chapter 19

L
uc slammed the bathroom door
and cranked the shower to cold. He didn’t bother taking his pants off but stepped into the stall half-dressed. If he so much as brushed against his cock, he would explode. They’d find little pieces of his manhood scattered for miles. But at least his pride remained intact.

Luc knew what it was to push himself physically. Professional athletes trained hard, stretching their mental and physical stamina until they bled, until every ounce of will, every fibre of energy was spent—sucked dry. And still they kept going.

But Luc had
never
felt agony like this before.

Not when he trained, not when he was shot, not during the months of torturous physiotherapy he endured when his shredded muscles were rebuilt.

He dropped his head against the tile and let the cold spray hammer his burning skin. He concentrated on hockey stats, tried to remember the names and numbers of every player on his last team—too easy—on his first team. He visualized himself doing up his skates, shooting pucks with his dad, but nothing could take away the images of her. Clara, laid out on the table like an all you can eat buffet for a starving man.
Tabernac!

He pressed his forehead against the wall until he felt the grout lines between the tiles and still couldn’t dislodge the picture of her petal-soft breasts heaving against him, her pussy,
oh God
, that sweet piece of her glistening with ripeness.

Torture. It was fucking torture. If a genie appeared and gave him the choice between playing pro hockey again or having one night of debauchery with Clara, she’d win, hands down.

She tasted like heaven and clouds and everything pure and good and sweet and he wanted her. He wanted her so bad, it hurt to breathe.

Luc banged his head against the tiles, wishing the pain in his forehead would mask the throbbing in his groin. It was so unfair. He could have had her. He should have taken her.

He still could.

Luc wrenched the faucet off, intent on marching right back into the suite and begging her—no—taking her. Fucking her until she moaned his name, screamed his name, then whimpered his name in complete satisfaction. But before he could the jump out and drag his sopping-wet-self back to her, he heard a door slam.

Hard.

Clara was pissed.

“You’re a cruel man, Luc Bisquet. Petty, sadistic, and mean.” Her voice was curt, devoid of the hysterical emotion he’d expected, yet every adjective cut him like a shim.

“You really think so?” Luc poured a glass of orange juice from the pitcher he’d ordered from room service and handed it to her. The angry pink splotches on her cheeks made him smile. He wanted to caress them back to their lovely shade of rose-cream. “’Cause last night you couldn’t get enough of me.”

Luc, feeling rather smug, popped a piece of croissant into his mouth and watched her hands shake as she set the glass down. She was dressed in a pair of skimpy running shorts that only served as a reminder of what her toned legs felt like wrapped around his thighs.

“Are you kidding me?” she asked, her voice elevating in both pitch and volume. “You humiliated me, toyed with me, played me like I was, was…Oh never mind. This is all a big game to you.”

And there it is folks, the shrill.
Now he had something to push against.

Luc leaned back against the table and crossed his arms. “Let me tell you something, Clara. If this was a game to me, I wouldn’t have hesitated to score.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She was so adorable when she was upset. Wide-eyed, chest heaving, face flushed. “It means I wasn’t playing you. I was making a point.”

“The point being that you’re a big, insensitive jerk? Yes, I got that, thank you.”

“No, the point being that you want me so damned bad, you’re willing to break your own rules.”

“Oh please. This smacks of petty revenge. Tit for tat for the hallway incident.”

“Well gee, I hadn’t thought of that, but it does fit.” Luc tore off another chunk of buttery croissant and held it out for her. A peace offering of sorts.

Clara smacked his hand away. “I explained this already.”

“No, you didn’t,” he said. “You said I wouldn’t understand.”

She pushed her hair behind her ears and harrumphed. “You wouldn’t. You just wouldn’t. Why can’t you trust that my intentions were neither sinister nor manipulative, that I had every intention of opening my door to you—and did?”

He wanted to pin her against the wall and kiss the frown off her face. “I just want answers.”

“But you wouldn’t under—”

“Understand. Yeah, yeah. Why don’t you try me? Not all athletes are dumb as stumps, you know. This one happens to have an IQ above that of a frozen pea.”

“I’m not insinuating you’re stupid, Luc.”

“Yeah, you are.” And maybe she was right. Maybe he was the very definition of stupid for pursuing this, for wanting her.

“I can’t do this,” she said, hiding her face in her hands. “I just can’t. Not now.” Clara turned her back to him and slid her feet into her running shoes.

At least Luc got to see the door slam this time.

“Well, fancy meeting you here,” Clara said, glancing down at her ticket stub to ensure she had the correct row and seat number. “Can I say I’m actually relieved?”

“Why? Because you didn’t want to watch the game all by yourself?”

“No, because when I checked the travel envelope and didn’t see the second ticket, I feared Luc would be occupying that seat.”

“And that would have bothered you?” Riley asked as he stood to help her off with her coat.

“A few days ago, no. Today, very much so.”

Riley didn’t press, but the look on his face invited her to continue.

“I’m not talking to him. He’s unworthy of my questions or my company.”

Riley turned his palms up, as if he couldn’t find a reason to disagree. “So, I’m guessing something happened between when I left you in the lobby and when Luc banged on my door this morning telling me he needed a peaceful place to work?”

“Peace! He said that? Wanker,” Clara said through gritted teeth. “
Peace.
Bloody hell. I’ll give him peace all right. I’ll give him a piece of my mind if he’s man enough to show his face around me ever again.”

“Clara, much as I’d like to know, it’s like you said last night, it’ll never leave my brain once it’s in there. So I’m not going to ask, okay?”

“That’s fine, Riley. I respect your right to stick your head in sand and pretend your friend isn’t the biggest arse in America.”

“You know, there’re things about Luc—”

“Stop! Please,” Clara said, palm in the air. “I just can’t even hear you speak his name at the moment. When’s tee off?”

Riley chuckled. “You mean faceoff? Right after the national anthem.”

As if on cue, the first strains of the Star Spangled Banner began and everyone stood, hands over hearts. Clara could feel hers pounding and, much like her running steps, it sounded like Luc-Luc, Luc-Luc, Luc-Luc.
Bugger.

There were so many questions Clara wanted to ask before the game got underway, but before she could trouble Riley, the players got into their positions and the puck dropped. They scattered before she had a chance to count them.

“How many players on a team?”

“I think you probably mean to ask how many players on the ice,” he clarified.

Of course that’s what she meant. She just couldn’t form a complete thought thanks to
him.

“You got your center—he’s was the guy who was in the faceoff circle—then behind him are the forwards, also called the right and left wings, then the two defensemen in front of the net, and of course the goalie. Six in total.”

“What position did
he
play?”

“Defense.”

Why did
he
have to intrude on her thoughts every twelve seconds? Time for a topic change.

“What do you smell, Riley?”

“That’s an odd question. Popcorn. Why?”

Clara looked around and, sure enough, half the people in the stands were reaching into bags of fluffy buttered kernels. She used to love popcorn, but without the smell, it tasted like salty puffs of nothing. So many foods were like that, she found, where the pleasure lay mostly in the smell rather than the taste.

“I read a phrase someplace about the smell of the ice. What does that mean? Is it figurative, symbolic?”

“I would say it’s figurative because it’s really no different than opening the freezer at home.”

Clara pursed her lips, disappointed but unsure why.

“But maybe you should ask Luc. It might mean something totally different to him.”

Him
again. She’d rather not. She’d rather not ever speak to or about him again.

Riley continued to patiently explain the game to Clara, never made her feel stupid for asking questions, no matter how basic, and by the time the first period was over, she wasn’t only enjoying the game, she was cheering and booing with the rest of the fans.

Watching the game live was an entirely different experience than watching it on the telly. It was hard to fathom this was the very game that had bored her out of her gourd back in Chicago. The collective energy running through the audience when the puck sailed toward the little blue area around the net—the crease, Riley explained—and the shared release of tension when it went past its mark, or the frenzy of cheers if it slipped past the masked goalie, was
palpable
. Her heart pounded with anticipation, plunged with disappointment, and Clara jumped to her feet no matter which team scored.

“Enjoying it?” Riley asked.

“Oh yes! It’s brilliant,” Clara said, unable to mask her ebullience. She couldn’t help it—it was very emotional and entirely too easy to get caught up in. “It’s so exciting, so fast, I can barely keep track of the puck.”