Delay of Game (35 page)

The minutes ticked by with the Storm absolutely dominating play again. The Canucks just couldn’t keep up with their speed. Hammer and Bergy were rolling all four lines, all six
D
, keeping the attack coming in waves—but no one could get anything to go in the net.

With just over a minute left, Bergy signaled for Hunter to get to the bench for an extra attacker, and Kally dove over the boards to join Zee’s line. Somehow in the interchange, the puck got past Jens at the point, and he and Burnzie both had to turn on their jets to get back and keep Vancouver from getting an empty-netter. Burnzie corralled the puck and quickly turned it back up ice. He passed it to Jens, who passed it to Babs, who took it deep into the zone, bulldozing a winded Canuck in his effort to get to the net.

He shot it. The goalie stopped it with a kick save, but he couldn’t control it. The puck was loose. Soupy tried to jab it in, and just about every guy on the ice for both teams converged on the crease. It was utter chaos, with the referee hanging over the back of the goal with his whistle pressed to his lips, ready to blow the play dead.

Tick. Tock.
Seconds kept slipping by, but the goalie couldn’t cover the puck. That meant there was hope. The red light started flashing with 4.3 seconds left on the clock, but I still didn’t have a clue what had happened to cause it. The TV switched to a different camera angle, showing the puck just on the other side of the goal line.

The Storm had tied it up. Now for overtime.

Just in time for that cramping to start up again.

WE WON THE
game late in the first overtime period on a crazy bounce, so now we had two more games to win one final time in this series. If we could do that, we would move on to the next round. We’d dominated play throughout much of Game Five, so if we could maintain that, it shouldn’t be hard to do what needed to be done.

In the overtime period, Hamhuis had been trying to clear the puck out of the Canucks’ zone after a long shift, but one of our guys, Antoine Gagnon, had fresh legs. Gags had put a ton of pressure on Hamhuis, and he’d just barely gotten the blade of his stick in the way of the pass when the puck had taken a strange hop. Then Hamhuis had tried to help his goaltender out by blocking it. That had proved to be a poor decision on his part. It’d deflected off him, hit a rut in the ice, and somehow it had gone into the net. The officials had credited Gags with the goal, despite the fact that he hadn’t really shot the puck; he’d just been the last Storm player to touch it, and therefore it was his. Now he belonged to that exclusive list of players who’d scored playoff overtime goals. Considering he only had twelve career NHL goals, that was quite a feat.

I was just glad our boys had managed to finish off the job in a single OT period. That meant we didn’t have to hang around in Vancouver until God only knew what time in the morning. As it was, it was after three a.m. by the time we got back to PDX. I left there to go straight to Scotty and Sara’s house. I’d told my mom earlier in the day that I would be going to their place and not to my house, so she and the girls weren’t waiting up and expecting me. I really wasn’t keen on meeting Dylan until I’d had some sleep, anyway, so it was probably for the best. Then I could meet Dylan at the same time they all met Sara.

The team had the whole day off tomorrow. No practice. No meetings. Hammer and Bergy wanted us to just go home and get some rest, recharge for Game Six.

Even though it was insanely late when I got to her place, Sara was still sitting up waiting for me. Dana had stayed with her—she’d let her mom take her car since Zee could come pick her up—and they were sitting together on the sofa, talking about Lord only knew what. Zee had followed me there in his SUV and was waiting for Dana in the driveway.

I left my suitcase in the hall closet. There was nothing in it that I needed tonight, and I was beyond exhausted.

Once I came through the door, Dana got up. “Eric’s here?” she asked.

“Waiting outside with the car still running,” I confirmed.

“Talk to you tomorrow,” Dana said over her shoulder to Sara on her way out.

Sara stretched her arms over her head, yawning. “Tuck somehow managed to stay up all the way through the end of the game. I barely made it that long. I don’t know how that kid did it.”

“But you’re still up now.” I sat down next to her, and a surge of electricity raced through me when she almost instantaneously fell against me, resting her head on my shoulder. I could really get used to holding her like this.

She waved a hand as though that could wipe the implication away. “There have been way too many overtime games in this series.”

“As long as we win, I’m okay with that. I’m sorry you had to be up so late, though. You didn’t have to wait up for me. You need to rest.”

“Yeah. I just… I felt a little funny after everyone left. And it gave me a chance to talk to Dana.”

“Funny how?”

“Just…” She shrugged, shaking her head. “Just funny. It’s nothing.”

There was definitely more to the story than she was telling me, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to push and prod right now. I’d already been worried that I’d gone too far when I’d told her that I love her. It was too soon to push harder than that. As it was, I was slightly surprised and a whole hell of a lot amazed that she still wanted me to be here with her tonight, that she hadn’t tried to push me out of her life the second I’d been real with her about how I felt.

“Okay,” I said, dropping my head down so I could get a whiff of that minty shampoo she always used.

“How’s Nicky?” she asked.

“Still in the hospital.” Still saying he hadn’t taken anything—that someone must have put something in his drink. The fact that he was denying it was the most worrisome part, as far as I was concerned. That meant he didn’t recognize or want to admit that maybe he had a problem, and
that
only made his problem bigger. I was scared for him. “They’re keeping him in the hospital for a few days to be safe.” Part of me wished they’d keep him longer. Yeah, the team needed him—but we needed him healthy and with his head on straight, not when he thought he needed to take something to get through the day.

She nodded. “That’s probably for the best.”

“I missed you.” I had missed everything about her—even the way she could be prickly with me. It was amazing how much better I felt the instant she’d curled into my side.

She stayed quiet for so long that I feared she wasn’t going to say anything at all, that maybe I’d pushed her too far, even though I’d been trying to do the opposite. But then she yawned again and tipped her head back so she could look at me with sleepy, dreamy eyes. “I missed you, too. I didn’t sleep very well without you. Couldn’t get comfortable.”

Maybe she hadn’t reacted as badly to my admission as I’d thought she would. This was about as far from the response I’d expected as was possible. “Well, you don’t have to sleep without me for a while,” I said. I wished I didn’t have to sleep without her ever again. In my line of work, that wasn’t a possibility, though.

Sara gave me a soft smile. There wasn’t anything remotely suggestive about it, but my dick didn’t seem to care about the intention behind the smile. It rose to attention as though she’d just done a striptease in front of me.

Tonight was going to be hell.

“We should go to bed,” she said through a yawn.

Yeah. Bed. Where I could hold her but not be inside her. Where she could give me lazy kisses, but I couldn’t take them any deeper because her father was downstairs. Where her body would be pressed tight against mine, all of her delicious curves hugging me and driving me crazy with want, but I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it for fear of hurting her. She had been hurt enough already.

I nodded and helped her up. “Where’s Buster?” I hadn’t realized he was missing until right at that moment. I only thought about him then because having him in bed with us would possibly help to put a damper on my lust.

“He went to bed with Daddy again,” Sara said as we slowly climbed the stairs.

Well, fuck. My dog was abandoning me in my hour of need. Damned traitor.

I flipped on the light in her room and closed the door behind us, expecting Sara to go over and sit on the edge of the bed until I came to help her change. She didn’t; she moved behind me and put her arms around my waist, resting her head against my back.

Every nerve ending in my body came to life from that simple touch, and I felt like the sun was shining on me on a hot day. I leaned my head against the doorframe, keeping both hands fisted at my sides while I tried to get control of myself. If I gave in to my needs right now, I was bound to hurt her. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to make love to her, to take things slow and steady and have her writhing beneath me because it felt good, not because she was in pain and trying to get away. I wanted her to want me because she loved me as much as I loved her. She didn’t, though. It was still more lust than love on her end.

I’d almost gotten my breathing under wraps again when her hands slid down. “Sara.” Her name came out as a groan, but at least it had the desired effect of stopping her downward movement before she was could touch my dick. I couldn’t handle that right now. If she touched me, however limited the contact may be, I might lose it.

Her cheek was still pressed to my back, resting just below my shoulder blade, and her hot breath filtered through the layers of my suit coat and my shirt and seared my skin. “I want to be with you, Cam,” she breathed, and everything inside me clenched. My stomach. My lungs. My heart.

She may be past the point of exhaustion, but she wasn’t still half asleep this time. What was happening between us right now? This was Sara initiating things, and it was more than just a kiss in the morning. This was exactly what I’d been wanting, wasn’t it? I wanted her to take a step toward me, to meet me in the middle so the physical part of our relationship wasn’t entirely one-sided. But it was too soon after her accident. And we were in her father’s house. I couldn’t let it happen, no matter how much I wanted to take her up on her suggestion.

Releasing one of my fists, I put my hand over the pair of hers and held them, drawing her closer to me. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

“It doesn’t have to hurt. We can find a way to keep it from hurting.” She tugged one of her hands free, slipping it inside my jacket and running her fingers over my abs. “I can be pretty creative, you know.”

Did I ever. The first night we’d been together had surprised me in more ways than I could count.

I shook my head, determined to make her see reason. “We can find positions to make it hurt less, but it’s still going to hurt. I know. I’ve bruised my ribs in fights before—just
bruised
them—and even just masturbating caused some crazy pain.”

The act of sex itself might not hurt too badly depending on how we went about it, but if she came to orgasm that would be some fucking intense pain. And if she
didn’t
get to the point of orgasm, what the fuck was the point of having sex in the first place?

“It would be worth it,” she murmured against my back. “I didn’t just miss you while you were gone. It was so much more than that. You being gone made me recognize just how much I want to be with you.”

She’d missed me and more. She wanted to be with me. Granted, that didn’t mean she loved me, but it was closer than we’d come so far. I closed my eyes, trying to focus on inhaling and exhaling, on keeping my heart from pounding so hard that it leaped out of my chest. The deeper I breathed, the more of her scent invaded me until she absolutely consumed me.

“You want me, too,” she said. “I can feel your heartbeat even in your back. It’s racing as fast as mine. Maybe faster, even. Definitely harder.”

I’d wanted her for a hell of a lot longer than she could possibly know, but that was beside the point. This wasn’t a good idea. “Your father—”

“Is downstairs. And asleep. He sleeps like a rock. Always has. And he already knows we’ve had sex, since this is supposedly your baby inside me, and he also knows that you’re sharing my bed every night. If he had a problem with us having sex, he wouldn’t let you stay in his house.”