In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) (32 page)

Once she’d finished getting her cats settled, Brie came up to sit in the living room with me. She sat close enough to me on the sofa that I could easily touch her but she didn’t reach out to me. I figured I’d better keep my hands to myself. If we were going to move beyond friendship, whenever that might be, she was going to have to make the first move. I was pretty sure I’d already stepped over the line in asking her to come and stay here for the holidays.

I wanted every opportunity I could get to see her, to talk to her, though. I wanted to stumble into the kitchen in the morning and find her by the coffeepot, or to spend an hour talking about anything or nothing, so long as I could hear her voice. If she hadn’t come to stay here for the holidays, seeing her here and there over these few days—and only at times that I could finagle my way into getting together with her as friends for something—it wasn’t going to be enough. I didn’t have hockey responsibilities to distract me right now and steal my time. Most of my friends and teammates were going to be spending time with their families, so there was no better chance to immerse myself in her life—and her in mine.

“Did you have a good time at the game?” I asked.

“More than I expected.”

I laughed. “You didn’t think you would?”

“I didn’t know what to expect, I guess.” Brie shrugged, drawing my eye to her shoulders.

She’d worn a dress tonight, even though I had insisted it would be a casual affair. The league required all players and team personnel to travel to and from every game in a suit, but everyone else wore whatever they were comfortable in. I definitely didn’t mind seeing her in a dress, though. Particularly this one. It wasn’t something she’d bought when we’d gone shopping together, so I didn’t know where it had come from. It was some sort of wrap dress, tied together with a belt at her waist, in a bold print of rich purples, greens, and blues. Jewel tones, just as the saleswoman had suggested based on Brie’s coloring. That woman had definitely known what she was talking about.

The way the dress draped around Brie’s body emphasized all of her best physical assets. It dipped into a vee over her chest, drawing my eye to her cleavage, the belt showed off the shape of her waist, and then the skirt flared out some below that. It fell to just below her knees, but with the way she was sitting, it parted a little bit, revealing a little more leg than it would if she were standing. The longer I looked, the harder it was going to be to keep my hands off her. I couldn’t look away, though. Not even if my life depended on it.

She shifted to face me a little better, and the skirt parted a bit farther. “I watched you some, but I really spent a lot of time watching Babs and Razor—at least after Dana and Shane told me that they’d been best friends.”

I had to laugh again at that. “They were going at each other all night. I’ve never heard Babs talk trash like that before.” It had brought out a side of him that I hoped we would see more of. The kid had mad talent, but he’d really come alive out there tonight, trying to one up his buddy. Maybe after he’d spent a few more years in the league and had a few more good friends on other teams, he would have this newfound drive a bit more often.

He was smart about it, at least. He wanted to beat Razor, but he wanted to beat the Sabres even more. That meant he wasn’t going to make a stupid mistake only to prove he was better than his buddy.

Brie hadn’t stopped smiling while I was thinking, and I hadn’t stopped staring at her. I couldn’t seem to focus my eyes on any one thing. Every bit of her was gorgeous. This was going to be a long few days if I couldn’t convince her to move our relationship forward again.

“Keith?” she said quietly after a moment, her voice having turned a little husky and sexy, making my mouth water.

“Yeah?” I didn’t even care that my voice cracked on the word. She knew I hadn’t stopped wanting her.

“I think— Can I—” Her face was all pink and flushed and so fucking beautiful, and she slid over closer to me. The movement tugged her skirt apart a little more, revealing a few more inches of her thighs, and I had to fight down a groan. But then she cupped my cheek with her hand and her lips were on mine, and all conscious thought left me.

W
AS THIS REALLY
fucking happening? It hadn’t been that long since Brie had insisted we back off from the physical side of things between us. Only a few days, actually. But now her lips were pressed to mine. I’d been practically desperate to kiss her again—and so much more—and it was all I could do to keep myself from tossing her back on the sofa and forgetting all about my promise to keep my hands to myself.

She was definitely the one initiating this time, but I couldn’t push for more than what she was ready for. I
wouldn’t
. She deserved better than that, and I’d be damned if I treated her with anything less than the utmost respect. No assumptions. She might be ready for a little make out session, but that didn’t mean she was ready to move beyond that.

I forced my hands into fists, keeping them clenched at my sides because I didn’t trust myself fully. Not now. Not with the sweet taste of her on my tongue and the softness of her lips brushing against mine.

She tilted her head, deepened the kiss, drove me insane with wanting her. I was so hard I thought I might come if she made even the slightest contact with my cock. It left me torn between wanting her to touch me and hoping she wouldn’t.

Who the hell was I kidding? I wanted her to touch me. I wanted her hands and mouth and teeth and tongue all over me.

Without taking her lips from mine, she climbed up over me and straddled my hips. Her skirt parted to accommodate her new position, and I itched to run my hands along her thighs, to slide them up farther and knead her ass, to draw her down to me. It was torture to keep my fists where they needed to be. One of her hands was on my shoulder, the other against the back of the couch, supporting her. She pulled back a bit, sucking in breath after breath;
I
couldn’t breathe for wanting to bury my face in the cleavage rising and falling right in front of me.

I closed my eyes, trying to will that beautiful sight away. I ran through a series of unsexy images in my mind, hoping that would help—jockstraps, smelly hockey pads, watching Chunk get about ninety stitches in his forearm a few weeks ago… That was definitely helping.

“I thought we were just friends right now,” I croaked.

“Maybe we can move a little beyond friends,” she said, still panting.

“How far beyond?”

“Far enough for this. Far enough to make out a little.”

To make out a little.
Fucking hell, she was going to kill me.

“You can touch me some, Keith.”

My hands jerked as though trying to unclench of their own volition. “No, I can’t. Not unless you’re ready to let me do more than simply touch.”

She lowered herself down onto my lap, stretching her neck so she could lay kisses along the line of my jaw and up toward my ear. “How much more?” she asked in a breathless whisper.

“Unless you’re prepared for me to carry you up to my bedroom, handcuff you to my bed, strip every piece of your clothes off, and make you come about a dozen times, I’m keeping my hands to myself.”

“Oh.” She kissed my throat, right over my Adam’s apple. It involuntarily bobbed from her touch. “I suppose you’d better keep your hands to yourself, then.”

She didn’t keep hers to herself, though. I’d taken my jacket and tie off a while before, but she undid a few buttons of my shirt, pulling the fabric apart so she could place kisses on my undershirt, down the line of my breastbone. My whole body was alive, thrumming with the anticipation of where she would touch me next, and how.

She had both hands splayed against my skin, and she slid them beneath my dress shirt and explored my abs and ribs, moving around behind my back and then up to my pecs. The tips of her fingers swirled around my nipples, and I hissed in a breath, imagining doing that to hers, only with my tongue.

“You’re all muscle,” she murmured, tracing the lines of some of those muscles with her fingers. She was all softness. My hands remembered the silken sensation of running over her body, and it was all I could do to keep myself from doing that and more now.

Then she moved down, down, dangerously close to my cock, pulling my shirt free from my waistband with determination. I tossed my head back against the sofa, ready to explode, but she didn’t take her exploration any lower than my belt before fisting one hand in my hair and drawing me into position so she could kiss me again. We were both winded by the time she ended the kiss, resting her head on my shoulder. The heated air from her lips spread over my neck and chest before dissipating.

“You’re determined to torment me, aren’t you?” I said once I could speak again.

“Maybe a little.” Brie laughed, a husky, throaty sound. “Mainly I want to take things slow, like we should have done to begin with.”

But we hadn’t, and I
knew
what it was like to be with her, and that made the wanting even worse than it might otherwise have been.

It was the most exquisite torture I’d ever gone through, though, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. I was starting to understand that she was right. We already knew we worked together on a physical level. Now we needed to make sure that we were as well-matched in every part of our relationship.

I didn’t want this to be a quick flame, great sex but no substance. I wanted Brie, and not just for now. I wanted this to last.

I had no clue if this meant I was falling in love with her, but I was afraid it might. Love was a dangerous business. I tended to screw loving relationships up, and there was no better example of my failures in that department than the brother who was currently upstairs with one of my teammates.

I couldn’t screw this up, and we’d gotten things off absolutely on the wrong foot. Now, Brie was giving us the chance to turn back time, in a sense, to slow things down and build a foundation for whatever came our way.

However difficult it might be to keep my hands off her, I was bound and determined to do precisely that.

Brie was worth it.

And, damn it all, so was I.

K
EITH HAD SET
me up in one of the guest bedrooms downstairs, part of the closed off grouping of rooms that my cats had access to. There was a definite part of me that wanted to go to bed with him, but I knew it was too soon for that. Jumping his bones wasn’t going to accomplish anything other than satisfying our lust, and lust wasn’t what I was after.

Well, maybe a little bit. But really, I wanted a relationship, one built on a lot more than merely hormonal drive and sexual connection. That meant we had to keep building on what we’d started in recent days. The thing was, I was about 99.999 percent sure I was falling for him. The last thing I needed was to lose my heart to him and then come to find out that we had little more than the physical to keep us going.

That was the main reason I’d agreed to stay with him for the Christmas holidays. It would give us plenty of time to talk, really talk—and having Shane and Cole around would only encourage Keith to open up more than he’d already started to. Or at least that was what I’d told myself. I hoped it was true. Considering that the relationship between the two brothers was severely strained, regardless of why that was the case, I might be hoping for more than was likely. Or even possible.