“Where did you read that?”
“
Hockey News
.”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“I’m paraphrasing.” She lowered her voice a fraction and added, “You actually said it will come down to who has the biggest sac.”
That sounded more like him. “Which is different from wanting it enough.” He took a drink of his beer then set it back on the table. He didn’t want to talk about his sac. Not with her. Not when his sac had noticed the way she smelled and the way her breasts filled out that sweater.
“How is it different?”
He looked into her big green eyes surrounded by thick black lashes. “It just is.” Her cheeks were smooth, perfect. He lowered his gaze to her full mouth and chin down to the hollow of her delicate throat just above the top button on her sweater. He wanted to do things to her. Hot, sweaty things that would make their skin stick together. Wild things that would get him into a lot of trouble.
“How’s it different?” she pushed.
“Angel of Harlem” poured from the pub’s sound system and he wondered how to answer. If she were a man, he wouldn’t even hesitate. If she were a man, he wouldn’t have a hard-on. “You can want something, Mrs. Duffy, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get it. Sometimes wanting isn’t enough.” And because she pushed, he added,
“Sometimes it comes down to what you’ve got left in your gut and the size of your sac.”
She chuckled as if she wasn’t the least bit shocked. “The article didn’t mention the importance of sac
size
, Mr. Savage.”
“Size is always important. Massive sac is almost as important as massive skill.” And because they were sharing what she’d read about him, he leaned toward her a bit and said just above a whisper, “I read about you too. I read you hate hot dogs and love crème brûlée.”
Her brows lowered in confusion. “How did you…? Ah.” Her confusion cleared and she smiled. “That’s true. Where’d you get the magazine?”
“One of the guys.”
“Of course.” She turned her face toward him and, to anyone looking, it appeared as if they were speaking closely to be heard over the music. Her mouth just inches from his, she said, “So, I assume it’s been passed around.”
“I got it a couple of weeks ago.”
“What took so long?”
“Sam wasn’t finished looking at it.”
She reached for her beer and laughed, not the least embarrassed. “Those were taken a long time ago.”
Not that long ago. He thought of her with that long string of pearls.
“You’re thinking about those pictures, aren’t you?” she asked from behind her glass.
He didn’t answer.
She smiled. “Only seems fair.”
“How’s that?”
“Because completely against my will, and no matter what else I try to shove into my head, I can’t stop thinking about ‘massive sac.’ It’s very disturbing.”
He chuckled and she looked at him as if he’d sprouted a horn from the middle of his forehead. “What?”
“I didn’t think you ever laughed.”
Of course he laughed.
“Hey, Mrs. Duffy,” Sam called from down the table. “Do you know
The Girls Next Door
?”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Jules admonished like a preacher, and Ty had to admit that the assistant probably had a point. Which made the conversation he’d just had with her completely off the scale of appropriate.
Faith smiled. “It’s okay, Jules. I met Holly and Bridget at the mansion. There were other girls there too. But Kendra didn’t live there at the time.”
“What’s Hef like?”
“He’s nice.” Her salmon arrived and she placed her napkin on her lap.
He was also old. Like Virgil. What was it with her and old men? Oh yeah. Money.
“He’s also a very a smart businessman,” she continued.
“Did you go to a lot of parties?”
“As Playmate of the Year, I hosted several. That’s how I met Virgil.” She squeezed lemon on her fish and picked up her fork. “He and Hef were good friends.”
“Do you still get invited?”
“Occasionally, but the last few years Virgil really couldn’t travel very often. So we didn’t go.”
For some inexplicable reason, the thought of Virgil’s old hands on her smooth, young body made Ty feel uneasy. Why he should give a shit, he didn’t know. Maybe it was the Guinness. He was used to Canadian brew, and rich beer always hit him hard after a few.
“Maybe you can get us all an invite to the mansion,” Sam persisted.
She looked up and smiled. “Win the Stanley Cup, and I’ll see what I can do.”
The heels of Faith’s red pumps clicked across the lobby as she made her way to the bank of elevators. She’d just left Jules and Darby Hogue at the pub, talking hockey and acquisition. It was a little after ten, and Ty and the other hockey players had cleared out of the pub by nine. She didn’t know where they’d gone. They hadn’t said, but it was
Saturday night, and she suspected they’d joined their other teammates at various bars around town.
She pushed the button and the empty elevator opened. The back wall was mirrored and she looked at herself as the doors closed. She pulled the band out of her ponytail and scratched her scalp as the elevator moved upward. It had been a long, exhausting day, and she was tired. She had a slight headache from the Irish beer or the ponytail or both.
A few floors up, the elevator stopped and the doors slowly slid open. Inch by inch, Ty Savage appeared in the mirror. In the glass their gazes met and held as he stepped inside. He still wore the deep blue dress shirt and jeans he’d had on earlier, and a nervous little flutter settled at the bottom of her sternum. She turned and spoke first to cover her nerves. “We meet in an elevator yet again.” Although why he would make her nervous, she didn’t know. Maybe it was his height. Tall men had never made her nervous in the past.
He acknowledged her with a slight nod of his head and pushed the button for the floor above hers.
“I thought you’d be out partying with the guys.”
The doors closed and he leaned a shoulder into the mirrored wall. “I don’t party during the play-
offs. I was just in Sam’s room talking to his kid on the phone.”
“Sam has a kid?” He seemed so young.
“Yeah. He’s five.” As the elevator moved up, Ty’s gaze moved down. It started at the top of her head, lowered over her face and throat and paused for a few heartbeats on her breasts. “Does it bother you,” he said as his gaze slid down her stomach and legs to her shoes, “that the guys have seen you naked?”
She was used to men looking at her body, but with Ty it was different. The warm little flutter in her chest slid to the pit of her stomach. “Roughly four and a half million men worldwide have seen my pictures in
Playboy
. If I worried about who’s seen me naked, I’d never leave the house.”
Slowly he raised his gaze back up her body and he looked into her eyes. “So that’s a no—eh?”
“That’s a no—eh.”
The doors opened and she stepped out.
“How long were you married to Virgil?” he asked as he followed.
“Five years.”
“And you’re what?
Aboat
thirty?”
“I just turned thirty.” She looked up at him. “Don’t judge me. You don’t know anything about my life. Sometimes you do what you have to do to survive.”
“Not all women would have chosen to get naked or marry an old man to survive.”
He sounded angry. Like it was any of his damn business. “Not all women have lived my life.”
Judgmental jerk
. She moved down the hall toward her room and he walked beside her. “Is your room on this floor?”
“No. Yours is.”
“Are you walking me to my room?” she asked and didn’t bother to hide her irritation.
“Yes.” But he didn’t sound happy about it.
“Why? I don’t need you to walk me to my room.”
“I’m a nice guy.”
She laughed without humor and glanced up at him out of the corners of her eyes. “If you believe that, you’re delusional. Maybe you’ve been punched in the head one too many times.” She stopped at her door at the end of the hall and reached into her big purse. She pulled out the card key. “You’re not nice.”
“Some women think I’m real nice.”
“There are lots of words I’d use to describe you, Mr. Savage.” She shook her head and tapped his chest with the side of her card. “
Nice
isn’t one of them.”
He raised his hand and flattened her palm against his chest. “What is?”
The warmth of his touch curled her fingers against the hard muscles of his chest. He stood so close she caught the scent of cologne on his heated skin. “What is what?”
“How would you describe me, Mrs. Duffy?”
She tried to pull her hand back but his grasp tightened. “The first word that comes to mind is rude.”
“And?”
She licked her lips and stared up into his sexy blue-on-blue eyes. “Surly.”
“And.”
The warmth of his touch traveled up her arm and across her chest. She swallowed hard and suddenly couldn’t think. She didn’t know if it was the Guinness or the pheromones. “Big.”
A slight smile touched the corners of his eyes and she thought he might laugh. Instead his gaze sank to her lips and he asked in a low voice, “Where?”
She wondered what it would be like if he kissed her. If he pressed his mouth into hers. If she just leaned forward and kissed his neck and tasted his skin against her tongue. “What?”
“Never mind. What else do you think of me?”
She took a deep breath and forgot to exhale. She wondered what it would be like if she licked him up one side and down the other.
“What are you thinking?”
She suddenly felt kind of hot and dizzy, and accidentally let Layla out. “That I want to lick your tattoo,” she whispered.
His brows lifted up his forehead and she shocked him into silence. Once again, she tried to pull her hand from his chest, and once again his grasp tightened.
Lick his tattoo?
A mortified hot wave rose up her neck and heated cheek. She was tired and confused, that’s why Layla had slipped out. Mrs. Duffy didn’t talk about licking things. Especially tattoos. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She took a step back and he took a step closer. “It’s inappropriate. I take it back.”
He tugged her closer as soft laughter touched her cheek. “You can’t take it back. It’s already out there.” His slid his free hand up her arm and shoulder to the side of her neck. “You took your hair down.”
“I was getting a headache.”
“I like it down.” He slid his thumb across her jaw, leaving a warm trail across her skin as he tilted her face up. “This can’t happen, Mrs. Duffy.”
She meant to take another step back but somehow she swayed closer. “What?”
“You. Me.” He lowered his face and brushed his lips across hers. “This.” The soft, moist brush of his mouth closed on her throat and curled her toes inside her red pumps. She couldn’t swallow or breathe or think beyond the consuming desire
for more. She stood perfectly still, afraid to move. Afraid of what she’d do, but mostly afraid he’d stop.
It had been so long, the kiss was a hot rush across her flesh, an overload to her senses that woke up all those lonely places inside her that she’d ignored for the past five years. He touched his tongue to the seam of her lips, and her chest got tight and achy and her knees threatened to buckle. She raised her hands to his shoulders to keep from falling and tilted her head to the side. Her lips parted, and the slick touch and warm glide of his tongue was like dropping a lit match on a pool of gasoline and she went up in flames. She wanted to burn and make him burn along with her. He tasted like beer and liquid sex and she wanted to eat him up. A low moan escaped her chest, her breasts grew heavy, and her nipples tightened into hard points of pleasure.
Ty’s hand found the small of her back and slid up her spine, urging her closer. He exerted a gentle pressure, closing the space between them until her breasts pressed against the front of his shirt. She slid one hand up the side of his neck and her fingers combed through his hair. He pressed the full, hot length of his hard body against hers and she felt his erection against her lower abdomen. His solid muscles, warm breath mingling with hers, and long, hard penis poking her belly
awakened the hot, achy place between her thighs and the painful need for a man’s touch. The touch of his hands and mouth all over her body. She’d always loved this toe-curling part. This buildup to a mindless yearning that made her lose control and forget everything but feeling as much as she could for as long as it lasted. The grasping, greedy part just before clothes came off.
He pulled back, looking at her through heavy blue eyes and breathing as if he’d just run a marathon. Then he came at her again and the kiss got hotter. Her mouth opened and closed with his as she gave and received long, feeding kisses. A deep groan vibrated his throat and she got a feeling that Ty had what it took to finish what he’d started. That he could give her what she needed to put out the fire rushing across her skin and pooling between her thighs. That he would make love like he played hockey. That he was a guy who’d keep going at it until he got the job done.
A door down the hall opened and closed, and Ty pushed her away. “This can’t happen,” he said, gasping for air.
She nodded and reached for him. She slid one hand to the back of his head and opened her mouth against the side of his throat. “Mmm,” she moaned as she sucked his warm skin. He tasted yummy. Like a man. Like a man she wanted to kiss all over.
He placed his hands on her shoulders but didn’t push her away. His fingers curled into her flesh. “This is no good, Mrs. Duffy.”
“So good.” She sucked harder.
“Listen to me,” he gasped as his fingers dug into her.
She bit his earlobe and whispered, “Don’t stop. Touch me, Ty. Touch me all over.”
“Oh God,” he groaned as if he was in real pain. “You’re a talker.”
“Please. Touch me. I want to eat you up.”
He took a step back and held her at arm’s length. “This can’t happen,” he repeated, and this time he sounded like he meant it.
A frustrated moan escaped her lips. “Why?”
“I have too much to lose.” He dropped his hands from her shoulders and took another step back. “You’re not worth my career.”