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“Gia.” He groans. “Oh fuck, please don’t.”
He turns away as I take my top off. I toss it at his head and he groans again.
“You don’t have to look,” I say playfully.
“I’m going to win this bet,” he says in a low tone. “And then I’m going to fuck you the same way I play hockey—all in, with everything I’ve got.”
My body is tight with tension and longing. I’m not going to overthink this. Ro was right. I do deserve to be happy. Have some fun. I may not return from Philadelphia, and I don’t want to go never having been with Maverick in the way we both desperately want.
“The water feels so good on my nipples,” I say.
A strained sound comes from Maverick’s throat. “You’re cruel.”
At least I know I make him as crazy as he makes me. I can hardly stand how much I want to crawl into his bed instead of my own when I get home from playing poker early in the morning and he’s not on the road.
He turns then, his gaze dark as he takes in my bare breasts.
“Christ,” he mutters. “I have to get to a weight-lifting session at the arena. Guess that’s a good thing.”
He swims past me and sets my bikini top on the side of the pool, then pushes himself up and out of the pool.
“Guess I’d better brush up on my blackjack,” I say as he walks toward the house. “Or not.”
The laugh that rumbles out of his chest is sexy as hell. He turns for a long final look and then disappears into the house.
Chapter Nineteen
Maverick
Gia’s tits. Round and milky white, with perky pink nipples just begging to be licked, sucked and teased.
I shove the image from my mind, pressing play on my pregame playlist. “Indestructible” by Disturbed fills my ears and I focus on the game ahead. It’s time to visualize all the things I need and want to do.
Tonight, though, my mind is everywhere but where it should be. It’s the game I’ve worked and waited so long for. Tampa. More than a year after Hunter Paul and I brawled over Alana, we’ll be meeting on the ice again for the first time.
It doesn’t feel like I thought it would. I fucked Alana the first night I met her, and we fell into a comfortable relationship. She wanted marriage, so we got engaged. When I found out she was cheating on me with my so-called friend, I was furious, but not so much at her. At him. I wasn’t broken up about the end of my relationship with Alana, but I was pissed off that Hunter screwed me over. And right in the public eye, when he knows damn well how hard it is to have a spotlight shined on your life all the time.
Gia’s ten times the woman Alana is. I can’t get her out of my mind since we made our bet. Even though Ro moved out, Gia is still staying at my house. I don’t want her to go. Bad timing or not, I’ve fallen hard for her.
Pax approaches me and I turn off my music, looking up at him from my seat on the locker room bench.
“We’ve got you,” he says, nodding and walking away before I can respond.
My teammates seem to know I don’t want to talk about Hunter. They’re giving me space tonight, the locker room much quieter than usual. None of them will lay a hand on Hunter. What Pax meant was that they’ll do whatever it takes so I can get my hands on him.
Penalties be damned. What Hunter did was the worst kind of violation, and I’m not letting it slide. He didn’t mean to injure my leg that night, but that injury left things between us in limbo. If I’d left him lying on the ice that night, after taking his beating like a man, that would have been the end of it.
Tonight’s the second chance I worked my ass off for. I wanted to play hockey again, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I was motivated by not wanting to go out like that. Not letting Hunter have the last word.
It’s going to look bad to Gia, though. She’s looked me up online and she knows about my broken engagement. We talked about it a little, and I was honest with her—I have no feelings left for Alana. When I take Hunter on tonight, on live television, though, Gia’s likely to think it’s about Alana.
It’s nothing but a man giving another man what he’s got coming to him, though. I hope she’ll be able to understand that. My team can’t keep winning forever, and when we play that game of blackjack, I plan to show her afterward just how much I want to be with her, and how great I know we can be together.
