Game On

chapter 20


CLARA POUNDED AGAINST THE RUBBER-LINED treadmill in the hotel gym for two reasons: she needed to sort out her conflicting feelings, and she wasn’t ready to face Luc. Over an hour later, she hadn’t come to any resolutions and her legs felt like jelly. She hoped he’d be asleep when she got back.

The suite was dark and quiet when she entered, so presumably he was. After a quick shower, she sat down at the dining table and wrote her half of the blog article. She’d made copious notes at the game, so it shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, but her mind wouldn’t stop drifting back to the night before, when she was prone on this very table. Visions of Luc, eyes dark with lust, kept intruding, stealing her focus. And his hands. The mere recollection of what his hands and mouth did to her made her body pang with need.

Hours later, when she finally she hit send, she lay in bed and stared at the door to the bathroom. His bathroom. His bedroom a few steps beyond.

It was futile. She couldn’t resist tiptoeing through to the other side and peeking in. His face, in the soft glow of the clock radio and his phone charger, was peaceful: no scowl, no knitted brows, no cocky smirk. She imagined him as a boy, a boy with dreams of a future in the NHL. He’d worked hard for his success, and he should still be playing, scoring goals and winning games.

Sure, he’d had a taste of it and some would he say he should be grateful he had years of doing the thing he loved, but that didn’t make what was done to him any less than a grave injustice. Like Riley said, Luc lived for the game and nothing, certainly not writing about it, could replace being in that arena with fans chanting your name. Writing about the game wasn’t the same as playing the game, but he still wanted to be a part of that. She understood.

But what about her? Was she any different? Holding on to her career, albeit a less passionate one, when she had no right to be there?

The answer, as much as she’d like to ignore it, sat like a bridle of stone around her neck.

Watching him made her heart ache.

“Luc?” she said softly, hoping he wouldn’t wake so she could leave yet praying he was so she could beg for his forgiveness.

“Clara?” he said sleepily. “You okay?”

She dropped to her knees at the side of his bed. “I’m so sorry.”

“What are you talking about? Sorry for what?” Luc propped himself up on one elbow and scrubbed his face with his hand. She looked at him, unsure of what to say, unsure of how to make him know how horrible she felt.

He pulled her onto the bed next to him. “What happened?” He glanced at the clock before looking her over. “It’s after two. Where’ve you been?”

“Luc, listen to me,” she said, framing his face with her hands, the warmth, the stubble on his cheeks, tugging at her instincts to lay down, let herself be enveloped by him. “I’ve been stupidly insensitive.” She spoke softly, calmly, though her heart raced. She swiped her thumb across his cheekbone as she continued, “I shouldn’t have pushed you to go to the game the other night. I didn’t realize that you…I should have known—”

Luc pulled away from her touch. “F*cking Riley.” He said it in anger but she heard an underlying tone of hurt.

“Riley has nothing to do with this. It just took me an embarrassing amount of time to put two and two together.”

“Is that right? What else did he have to say to get you to spend half the night with him?” He bunched his pillow and turned away from her.

“I wasn’t with him half the night,” she said, shocked to hear a note of jealousy. Surely he didn’t think…

Clara stretched out in bed next to him, careful not to make contact. She wanted him to touch her, to hold her, needed his warmth to make the icky, icy feelings in her disappear.

He didn’t. He didn’t move.

She put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s just taken me this long to realize that I’ve been a complete idiot,” she whispered. Everything inside her ached.

“You’d better leave, Clara.”

“I don’t want to leave, Luc,” she said, her voice tight. She tried to blink away the prickles in her eyes before the tears came. She slid her hand down his back, felt his muscles go taut. “I want to stay.”

“Just. Go. You don’t get to make no-sex rules then crawl into a man’s bed.”

“What if I said the rules were utter nonsense?”

He lay perfectly, frighteningly still, as if the slightest movement would kill him. When he spoke his voice was like broken glass on gravel. “I don’t want a pity f*ck, Clara.”

No, no, no! It wasn’t a pity f*ck or a surrender f*ck or a please-forgive-me f*ck. She wanted him, needed him, to make love to her. If she walked away now, she’d keep walking until she got to her flat in London.

“Fine. What about an ‘I can’t stop thinking about you’ f*ck? Or an ‘I can’t catch my breath when I’m around you’ f*ck?” What about a goodbye f*ck?

He didn’t speak. He didn’t respond in any way. Clara wasn’t sure he was still breathing.

She slipped her arm around him and placed her hand on his heart, felt it hammering against his sternum, echoing the frantic rhythm of her own. “What about an ‘I sat and chatted with charming, loveable Riley for hours and the only thing I wanted to talk about was you and you and you’ f*ck?”

A low rumble came from his chest. “Sutter must have loved that.”

“Luc?”

“Hmm?”

“Please won’t you kiss me?”

“If I do, I won’t stop. Not this time.”

“I don’t want you to.”



Luc pulled her on top of him, the easiest position in which to get her naked. The tank top was easy enough to tug over her head, the shorts, both his and hers, he doffed while feasting on her mouth and shoulders. It occurred to him maybe he was dreaming, that Clara being in his bed was merely a hallucination, a chimera, a result of madness borne of extreme sexual frustration. And if so, he should take her as quickly as possible, before he woke up.

“Are you real, Clara?”

“’Course I am,” she moaned as he ran his tongue over her nipple.

“Prove it.”

“Gladly,” she said, pushing him down onto his back. Luc’s head swam in sensations as she kissed a trail down the center of his chest, then proceeded lower, using her tongue to trace the ridges of his abs. If he was dreaming, he’d better not f*cking wake up before she reached her destination.

“Ah, God, love, yes,” he said, or something to that effect when her lips went around him. Maybe that shot had been fatal, the last two years of his life a coma-induced nightmare. Maybe he was dead because this, her, doing that, felt like heaven.

His balls tightened and every nerve in his body lent themselves to his cock, leaving his extremities numb and tingling from lack of blood flow. Every thought, every feeling focused on this one primary area as she massaged his shaft with her deft fingers, with her tongue, her lips, her teeth. Mon dieu, let this be real and not another dream.

She pushed him hard and fast toward ejaculation. He was ready to explode, ready to surrender to days of sexual frustration. But he wouldn’t come, not like this, not the first time. The need for release was crucial, but his need to be inside her was critical.

“Clara, love,” he managed to say. “Hold on.”

Luc fumbled for his wallet on the nightstand. With trembling hands—he was trembling, by God—he managed to extract a foil packet. He pulled Clara away—last time he’d do that, ever, he vowed—and slipped the condom on. He flipped her onto her back and thought hockey stats while he prepared her, sliding his fingers into her silky warmth, trying fervently to tune out her throaty mewls.

Her beauty filled his chest with a sweet ache. He caressed the soft skin between her thighs, nudged her bent knees further apart so she opened for him. She was wet, ready, and as much as he wanted to be inside her, he wanted to taste her, everywhere.

He teased her with his cock, sliding through her p-ssy to coat himself with her cream, nudging her channel without entering. He was torn between driving into her and devouring her, lapping her up. She had tasted like peach nectar on his fingers last night, and he’d been craving her all day.

Clara’s legs came around him, anchoring him against her.

Nope. Not this time. There’d be time to explore every inch of her skin with his mouth another time. And there would be other times. Obsession wasn’t strong enough a word for how he felt about her, mind and body.

“Oh God, Luc. Yes, yes please.”

Her breathy yeses made his cock iron hard. He rose onto his elbows and drove into her, mindless with need. As he slid into her tight channel, his only rational thought—irrational actually—was that they must orgasm together. He didn’t question why it was important to him when, technically, it was 2-0 for her. He could dwell on that later. For now, he had to hold on, had to keep from exploding before she was ready to join him. He splayed his hand across her abdomen, his thumb on the tight little gem inside her sweet p-ssy, and stroked it until Clara panted his name. When she replaced it with the name of our Lord, he knew he could let go. Her inner muscles pulsed against his cock as he pumped, pushing him into a wickedly intense release.





Limbs entwined, they lay on their sides facing each other. The room was dark and silent except for the wet muffled sounds of their kisses, slow and lazy, unhurried. He caressed her with long, gentle strokes across her back, down her thighs, over her abdomen. He palmed her breasts, keeping her nipples in a continued state of arousal. He rubbed her p-ssy, smeared her juices across her mouth, then went to work licking and nibbling her clean. It was intimate, arousing, and sexy as hell.

It was beyond what she’d imagined it could be with him, the union moving from merely physical to something of a deeper nature. Clara felt sated, peaceful, and excited all at once.

Tell him. Tell him, now.



No. She wouldn’t ruin this. Not now, when it would spoil a tender moment.

She’d tell him later. In the morning. She’d confess everything.

“I’m not dead, am I?” he whispered against her lips.

“If you are, what does that make me?”

“An angel?” he said.

“Not bloody likely. So if you were dead, it’d be a hell of a lot hotter in here.”

She felt the low rumble in his chest under her hand as he chuckled. “That wasn’t hot enough for you?”

“It was plenty hot,” she said, sliding her hand around his ribcage for a playful rake of nails on his back. “Scorching even, but do you see flames? Can you smell brimstone?”

“No, ma belle, just your intoxicating scent.” He buried his face in her neck. “And you definitely smell like an angel.”

“Funny,” she said, pinching his butt, “’cause I’m feeling rather devilish.”

“Good,” he said, rolling her onto her back. He rained kisses along her jaw and down her neck. “Because I’m going to do things to you that are not allowed in heaven.”

Tell him! You owe him the truth before this goes any further.

“Luc?”

“Mmm?”

“Before we proceed, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Does it have anything to do with us being naked?” he asked and captured her pert nipple between his teeth.

“No, not real-eee!” The small squeal escaped as he gave it a gentle nip before swiping it with his tongue.

“Does it involve a sex-change operation, a husband, or a communicable disease?” he asked before blazing a smoking-hot trail down her torso with his tongue.

Clara felt a giggle rise, but it came out more of a gasp. “No, no, and no, nothing like that.” As his mouth travelled dangerously close to her lady business, tingling heat spread through her like a raging wildfire, driving every sane thought from her head.

“Then it’s going to have to wait,” he said, settling between her thighs. “Because I’m going for a hat trick tonight and talking would really throw me off my game.”





She must have fallen asleep sometime after the second athletic round because she awoke with a start to the sound of the telephone. Clara reached out to silence the shrill before it woke Luc.

“Clara Bean,” she said automatically.

“There’s a plane ticket waiting for you at the American Airlines counter. Your flight leaves at seven. Don’t miss it.”

“Charlie?” She pushed the hair from her eyes and struggled to sit up in the dark room. “Charlie, what’s happened?”

“Make sure you’re on that plane, Miss Bean. Ring me when you land.”

“But Charlie, what’s—?” She realized he’d already hung up.

Clara, blinking herself awake, looked at Luc, who’d reached over her to click on the lamp. “That was Charlie. He wants me back in England.”

“What? Why?”

“He didn’t say but he sounded…curt.” Clara glanced toward the digital clock. “God, it’s already four-thirty. I’ve got to go.”

“But you can’t leave now. We’re leaving for New Jersey after lunch.”

Dread furled in her belly. This could only mean that Bartel had pulled the plug, or…she really couldn’t even think about the other possibility. No, he simply couldn’t know her secret.

“I guess you’re going without me,” she said as she gathered her clothes and took a shortcut to her own bedroom through his bathroom.

Luc, stopping only to pull on a pair of pants, followed. “Go jump in the shower. I’ll pack up your laptop and the rest of your things.”

Clara felt as though the rug was pulled from under her as she hurriedly showered and dressed. She didn’t know what to think, what to say, how to act.

They rode the elevator in silence, Riley’s warning that BMG would cancel the blog tour if things didn’t pick up thickening the air around them. Did his advice come too late?

“There are seven voice mails and a text from Charlie, beginning at two a.m., which is pretty darn early in the morning in the U.K.,” she said, staring at her phone as the bellman waved a taxi forward. “And you’ve nothing from Bartel?”

“No, not a word.” Luc was just as bewildered as she. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” he asked.

“No, no. But thanks.” She found it hard to look him in the face so instead focused on the taxi driver as he loaded her bags. Her legs felt shaky and she wasn’t entirely sure she could keep herself from tearing up.

“You’ll call me?” he asked.

“Or text,” she said, anticipating a cowardly lack of emotional strength.

“He didn’t say how long you’d be gone?”

“No.” It hurt to talk through her dry, tight throat. What if she never saw him again? The thought was unbearable. She wanted to kiss him, but couldn’t. It would feel too much like a goodbye. She wrapped her arms around his neck before he saw the tears pool. “But you’ll probably have to cover New Jersey by yourself.”

“You’re going to miss the Devils,” he whispered against her hair.

“I already do.”