All right, so here we go. This one actually starts with a prologue, so that's what you'll get for now. Enjoy!
KEITH
As a player in the
National Hockey League, hooking up
with a random guest—regardless of how hot this random guest might be—at your
team captain’s wedding was a bad idea, plain and simple. It was definitely not
something I would ever do, but I had
a pretty strong suspicion that a few of the boys had done exactly that when
they’d left the reception.
I had been a member of the
Portland Storm since a couple of years after I was drafted, and our captain
Eric “Zee” Zellinger had been around that whole time. Zee and I weren’t best
friends or anything—that was Brenden Campbell’s role for him, known as Soupy to
the guys, and I don’t think I’d ever had anyone in Portland I’d call my best
friend, anyway—but we were good
friends. I was one of his assistant captains, and I couldn’t get behind the
idea of running off with some girl who might have been one of his or Soupy’s
best childhood friends when I was only in town for their joint wedding.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, Zee
and his bride, Dana, and Dana’s brother—coincidentally Soupy—had invited tons
of chicks to the ceremony in Providence, so there were ample opportunities. This
was where the three of them had grown up. But the last thing I wanted to do while
I was in their hometown was to take some girl who was a friend of theirs back
to my hotel room for the night. Doing something along those lines would
undoubtedly require strings, and I
didn’t want any strings, even if I wouldn’t have minded having a little company.
I’d flown in a couple of days
ago, in time to participate in the rehearsal and bachelor party and all that
jazz, and I’d been feeling a strong itch, if you get me, all fucking day. There
had been so many women—amazingly gorgeous women decked out in pretty summer
dresses that amplified all their curves—surrounding me the whole damn day, and
I was in bad shape. And my flight back to where I grew up in Nova Scotia wasn’t
until Monday. I intended to spend the rest of my summer there, at the cabin I’d
built on the bay in Annapolis Valley.
Don’t ask me what I had been
thinking when I planned this trip or why I hadn’t scheduled the return trip for
tomorrow, but it’d be two more full days before I could get back home. Even
then, I didn’t know who I might find to help me scratch this particular itch. I
mean, there were plenty of girls who would,
but that didn’t mean I wanted to open that can of worms. So many of them were
just looking for daddies for their babies, guys who had the money to get them out of Nova Scotia, and that wasn’t my
idea of a good plan. Again, it all came down to strings.
That was why, once I had made
sure Nicklas Ericsson, one of my teammates who I had been worried about all day
long, got back to the hotel safely, I returned to my own room for the night and
found myself looking through the Providence area “Casual Encounters” listings
on Craigslist. I didn’t really expect to find anything that would pique my
interest. Mainly I was looking for a diversion, a way to pass the time. But
then I stumbled on an ad that made me stop and think. The subject line read: BBW, no strings, I just need a boost in
confidence, w4m.
No
strings? That, plus the part about needing a boost in confidence,
definitely got my attention enough that I opened the listing to see if it was
legitimate or some sort of scam—a prostitute looking for a job or God only knew
what else. Surprisingly, what I found not only seemed genuine but it made me
seriously think about replying.
I think
I’m probably crazy for posting something here. I hope I don’t end up regretting
this decision. You hear all sorts of horror stories about this kind of thing, but
a girlfriend suggested I try it and I attempted to convince myself that maybe
they’re just stories. I hope so because I don’t know what else to do. Here’s
the deal: my longtime boyfriend spent years telling me I was getting too fat
for him, that he didn’t find me attractive anymore, that I had to get back to a
size two or he wouldn’t be able to get turned on any longer. I tried everything,
but I have a thyroid problem. That was what caused me to gain the weight, plus
a few other things, and even with medication I couldn’t get back down to the
size he wanted me to be. He cheated with a woman who looks how I used to look,
and he left me, and I’ve been trying to find a way to believe in myself ever
since. I don’t want to date right now. I don’t even want a friends-with-benefits
kind of thing. I just want to have an experience with a man who finds me
attractive as I am, so maybe I can start to believe it again, too. No real
names. I want to meet at a hotel or somewhere equally neutral.
She hadn’t attached a picture,
which was probably the safe thing to do. Those stories she’d heard about? They
weren’t just stories. Some bad shit definitely happened as a result of these
ads, so you couldn’t be too careful.
Not only did this posting feel
legitimate to me, it pissed me the fuck off. I mean, I’d seen firsthand the
horrendous results that could come from picking on someone because of something
they had no control over. What happened to my brother, Garrett, the way he’d
ended up taking his own life, was something I had to live with every day of my existence.
I never wanted to see anything like that happen again, even though there were
horror stories just like it on the news every day. Not only that, but I love
women. I love women of all shapes, colors, and sizes. They are the most fucking
beautiful, amazing, wonderful creatures on this earth as far as I’m concerned,
and any asshole who would do something like that, who would make a woman feel
like she wasn’t good enough for him because of a fucking problem with her
health? It made me want to do a lot of things that would land me in prison.
But it also made me want to
answer her ad.
So I did, emailing her through
the system.
I’m only
in town for a couple of nights—I fly out tomorrow. I would love to meet you and
help you to see how beautiful I’m sure you are and how you don’t need a son of
a bitch like that guy in your life anymore. I’m already at a hotel. You can
come to me if you want.
I added my hotel information and
took a picture—of my face, not my dick, like a lot of asswipes on Craigslist
do—and sent it to her.
Then I waited. I brushed my teeth
and jumped in the shower, just in case she actually decided to show up. When I
got out and checked my email again, there was a response from her.
I’ll be
there at eight with condoms. I’ll call you Jacob, and you can call me Allison.
She didn’t attach a picture, but
I hadn’t asked for one. It made me wonder if she was so ashamed of how she
looked that she couldn’t even bear the thought of sending a photo of herself
through email. Thinking about that possibility only made me want to beat her ex
to a bloody pulp even more than I already did.
I glanced at the clock. It was
already 7:45, so I wouldn’t have to wait long. I pulled on a clean pair of
shorts and dug out a University of Minnesota T-shirt from my college days
before I’d turned pro. Then I stretched out on the bed and turned on the TV so
I would have something to do to pass the time.
At two minutes to eight, a soft
knock sounded at my door. I flipped the TV off and checked the mirror out of
habit. Everything looked good.
When I opened the door, I was
floored by the beauty of the woman standing in front of me. She had long, strawberry-blond
hair and midnight-blue eyes and the most perfect little pixie nose, and she had
on glasses with chunky frames that could have looked awful but on her they
looked smart and sexy. And she wasn’t anything close to fat, no matter what her asshole of an ex had told her. She had curves
everywhere, though—hips that flared out, a waist that dipped in, a rack I was
already salivating at the thought of burying my face in. I could see all of
those curves even though she was wearing a loose, floor-length skirt and an
ill-fitting, short-sleeved blouse—not something that was designed to accentuate
her assets. She wasn’t skinny, but she definitely wasn’t fat.
She was beautiful. She was
perfect.
“Hi,” she said shyly. “Jacob?”
“No, I’m Kei—” I cut myself off
when I remembered she wanted this to be anonymous. For tonight, I wasn’t Keith
Burns, top defenseman for the Storm. Tonight, I was Allison’s Jacob. “Yeah,
Jacob. And you’re Allison?”
She gave me a little nod and
glanced over her shoulder, like she was checking to see if anyone had noticed her.
“Can I come in?”
I stepped back from the door so
she could pass through, and I closed it after her, intentionally leaving the
lock undone. I didn’t want her to feel like I was going to try to force her to
stay.
“Want to sit down?” I asked. This
whole situation was awkward. Did she want to talk first or just get down to
business? I was leaning more toward at least talking for a little while. It
might be anonymous sex, but that didn’t mean it had to be cold and distant sex.
Allison nodded and went over to
the chair in the corner, pulling the tote bag she’d brought with her onto her
lap. “I’ve never done this before,” she said.
“Me neither.” One-night stands?
Yes. One-night stands with perfect strangers? Never. I smiled and pulled the
roller chair out from the desk, turning it so I could face her. I couldn’t stop
myself from staring, practically devouring her with my eyes. I was already
hard, and she hadn’t even been here for two minutes yet.
“You’re a lot bigger than I
expected you to be from your picture,” she said.
She was a lot hotter than I’d
expected her to be, but that didn’t seem like the right thing to say at the
moment. She was a little younger than I’d guessed she would be, though. Maybe
even a few years younger than my twenty-eight. I’d thought she’d have lived a
little more life based on the things she’d said in that ad. Still, she was
definitely old enough that she ought to know how gorgeous she was, no matter
what her fucking ex had said and done.
And now I was back to wanting to
bash his face in.
I shrugged, as though that could
force aside all the negative energy I was feeling toward some man I’d never
met. “Yeah, well, I’m a— Wait…do you want fact or fiction?” I didn’t want to
make her any more nervous about this than she already was. If she didn’t relax,
this wouldn’t go well, and I wanted it to go well for her. I wanted it to be
the best damn sex of her life, and I wanted her to walk out of here believing
in herself, knowing she was as amazingly sexy as I thought she was. All of that
meant I needed to give her what she wanted, though, whatever that may be.
“How about partial truth?”
Allison suggested. “Don’t lie about anything, but don’t tell me everything,
either. Hold some of it back.”
I could do that. “Okay. I’m big
because I work out a lot.”
She nodded. “It’s hard to tell
things like that from a single picture.”
“Did you pick me because of my
picture?” I’d always known I was a good-looking guy. Women had always hit on me
because I was the whole package, at least the way they saw it. I looked good, I
took care of myself, I made a shit-ton of money, and I was relatively famous
without being paparazzi-worthy. It was fun to be me. At least on the surface. Sometimes
it could be lonely, too.
I owned this huge house on the
river back in Portland—some of the guys called it a mansion, and I supposed it
wasn’t far from one—but it was just me and my dogs living there. It was a lot
of space—almost 15,000 square feet—and girls I picked up in a bar and brought
home for the night didn’t tend to stick around long enough to really share it
with them. Sometimes I had parties there, but that was only a temporary means
of filling up all the empty corners and quiet rooms. Everyone went home
eventually, leaving me to my solitude until I couldn’t take it anymore, until I
needed fun and noise and companionship again or else I would wallow in my loneliness
until my guilt ate me alive, and then I would throw another party so I wouldn’t
have to think about it anymore.
That wasn’t to say I disliked my
life. I enjoyed being single. I enjoyed being able to party and have a good
time and not have to worry about anyone but me. I definitely took advantage of
all the advantages I’d been given. But sometimes the thought of having someone
waiting for me at home when I got back from a road trip sounded nice. Sometimes
I missed the noise of growing up in a house of three boys, with friends coming
and going, and everyone yelling, and chaos reigning. I missed hearing my mom
shout over our noise to tell us to keep it down, insisting that the neighbors
would complain.
My neighbors in Portland
sometimes complained, too. Only when I had those parties, though. Otherwise, it
was only me and the dogs and a ton of silence and empty space.
And yet, here I was, sitting in a
hotel room in Providence, getting ready to have sex with a woman I’d never met
before and whose real name I didn’t even know. I supposed that was yet another
way of filling up the empty spaces inside me, if you wanted to look at it that
way.
Allison shrugged, and then she
blushed, which only made me think about things I could do to make her blush
some more. “I picked you because you were the only one who responded with a
picture of your face and not of…other parts of you.”
“I don’t really want pictures of my
anatomy floating around the Internet,” I joked.
“Yeah. Good. I don’t either.”
“So what do you do, Allison?”
“I teach,” she said cautiously.
I could definitely picture her in
front of a classroom full of kids. That probably meant she had an entire closet
filled with clothes like the ones she had on, though. Maybe a little more
professional looking, but nothing that would emphasize her figure or draw
attention to how beautiful she was.
“You’re not from around here?”
she asked. “You said you were only here for a few nights.”
“I’m from Canada,” I replied. She
had asked for truth, but not the whole truth. I lived in Portland now, at least
most of the time. Still, I was definitely not
from Providence. “Some friends got married here today. I was in the wedding
party.” All of that was truth.
Gradually, she started to relax.
Her shoulders weren’t so tense, and she even set her bag down on the floor
beside her instead of holding it on her lap as though it held the last vestiges
of her sanity.
“So you really won’t stay long,
then? And you’re clean?” she asked. “I should have made sure of that before I
agreed to come over here, but I was so nervous about what I was doing that I
didn’t even think—”
“I’m clean,” I interrupted. “I’m
not a saint. I’ve slept with a number of women, but I always use protection and
I’ve been tested recently.”
“All right. Good.” She nodded as
if she was trying to make it all okay in her head. “I’m clean, too. I had three
partners before…well, before him. No one since. I’ve been tested, too.”
She was so nervous that a part of
me wanted to tell her we didn’t have to do anything if she didn’t want to. But
I worried that she might take that as a sign that I wasn’t interested. Given
what she’d talked about in her ad, and the fact that her confidence seemed
almost fragile right now, I didn’t want to do anything she might misconstrue. I
needed her to feel wanted, especially since I really, truly did want her.
“How long has it been?” I asked.
She’d said that they’d been together for a long time, but I had no idea how
long it had been since he’d cheated on her and hurt her so badly.
“Almost a year.”
“And you haven’t dated anyone
since? You haven’t had anyone tell you how beautiful you are in all that time?”
“I don’t—” She cut herself off
and thought for a moment before continuing, taking her time as though she was
weighing each word. “It’s hard to believe I could be beautiful these days
because my body has changed so much, and he told me how fat I was for so long
that it’s all I can see.”
“Well, it’s a fucking lie.”
Allison stared at me for a long
minute, and then she shook her head. “I wish it were easier to believe that.”
“That’s why you’re here, though.
So I can help you start to believe it again.”
“Yes.” She took a deep breath,
and I watched her chest rise and fall with it. “Can I… Do you mind if I kiss
you?”
“I’d mind if you didn’t.”
She nodded and bit down on her
lower lip like she was trying to build up the courage to do it.
“Come here.” I stood up and
closed some of the distance between us, trying to make it easier on her. She
didn’t have to be the one to initiate everything. It had to have taken a ton of
courage to post the ad in the first place. I held out my hand, waiting for her
to take it.
After a moment, she got to her
feet and took my hand, and I gently eased her closer to me. She stopped when we
were inches apart, bracing her hands on my biceps. I rested mine on her waist.
She was soft and warm, and the gentle slope of her hips made me almost
desperate to get my hands on her ass. But that had to wait. If I rushed her,
she’d probably leave.
“This is nice,” she murmured.
Even this small amount of contact already had her breathing a little heavier,
and I knew her pulse had to be hammering through her veins—just like mine was.
I nodded. Nice wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t want to think too much about
trivial things like that. The heat between us seemed to intensify her perfume,
but maybe it was only that we were so close together now. It was sweet and
powdery, and it made me want to bury my nose against her neck so it could fill
me.
Allison laughed, a nervous sort
of laughter, and she licked her lips. Luscious lips. Full and pink, and they
looked amazingly soft. “Should we just go for it?”
Instead of answering her, I went
for it.
She sucked in a breath right
before my mouth met hers. Her lips were even softer than they looked, and I
sucked the lower one between both of mine. It took a few moments, but she
relaxed into me and hummed against my lips, moving hers apart far enough that I
could slip my tongue in her mouth.
I teased her for a minute, my
tongue brushing lightly alongside hers and flicking every now and then, until
she started to mimic my actions. She angled her head, taking the kiss deeper,
and she slid her hands up my arms to settle on my shoulders.
Or I thought she would settle
them there. Instead, she started to glide them everywhere, her palms and
fingers seeking out the ridges of every muscle. The flats of her palms came
down my chest, exploring my pecs before traveling lower, to my abs. I felt my
muscles ripple beneath her touch, and she sucked in another breath in response.
I kissed her cheeks, her neck,
settling my lips on her collarbone even though the soft fabric of her blouse
was still in the way. “Allison?” I hadn’t moved my hands from her waist, even
though it was killing me to keep them still. I wanted to cup her ass and draw
her to me. I wanted to delve under her shirt and mold her breasts to my hands.
I wanted—God, how I wanted—to slide that skirt down her hips and explore her
slick core with my tongue.
“Yes?”
Her voice hitched on the word, and she slipped her hands around to my sides so
they tickled my ribs. Then she tugged me closer to her, until her nose hit the
dip of my clavicle and my cock pressed into her belly.
“Do you
want me to touch you?” I needed to hear her say it. I couldn’t assume and take
what I wanted. It wasn’t enough for me that she had come to my hotel room with
sex being the intention. Because with little I knew about her, I needed her to
give me explicit consent.
She
nodded, and I hoped she wouldn’t stop there. She didn’t. “I want to feel your
hands on me,” she said.
An inch
at a time, I dropped my hands back and down until I had a cheek in each palm.
Her ass was as soft and sweet and curvy as the rest of her. I squeezed her,
drawing her closer still, and she let out an almost inaudible moan.
I’d never
been this turned on before while still fully clothed. My cock was hard enough
to jackhammer through a fucking concrete wall. Allison stretched up on her
tiptoes, putting her arms around my neck and holding on tight. That pushed her
breasts right up against my chest, twin cushioned pillows with rock-hard little
nubs poking into me. I let out a groan at the sensation.
“I want
to take your clothes off,” I said. Allison was nodding and reaching down to tug
the hem of her shirt up almost before I got the words out. I put one hand on
hers to stop her. “No. I want to do it slowly, using my hands. My teeth. Every
time I uncover an inch of your skin, I want to kiss you there, to see you and
taste you and soak you in. And then when I’ve got you naked, when I’ve kissed
and licked and sucked every hot, trembling, silky-soft inch of your amazingly
beautiful body, I want to lick your pussy until you’re writhing and moaning and
coming all over me with the best fucking orgasm of your life.”
With
every word out of my mouth, the pounding of her heart grew more frantic, her
breathing more agitated, and her eyes—those gorgeous midnight-blue eyes—got
bigger and darker and more intense.
“Oh,” she
said, breathy and soft.
“And
while you’re still coming, while your pussy is still clenching and quivering,
and it’s all hot and slick and wet, that’s when I want to lift your legs up,
rest your feet on my shoulders, and fuck you like you’ve never been fucked
before until you come again.”
“Yes,”
she said finally, a strangled sound coming from her throat. “Yes, Jacob.”
Jacob? Oh
right. That was me. “You’re sure?” I needed for her to want every bit of that
as much as I did.
“Positive.”
“You
brought condoms?” I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. I wanted them ready and
waiting when I was—when I had her
ready for me.
Allison nodded.
She backed away and bent to her bag, pulling out a brand-new box that was still
sealed. She set it on the nightstand closest to her.
Before
she could turn around, I picked her up and tossed her into the middle of the
bed. I kissed her again, covering her with my body while she moaned with
pleasure.
Then I followed through
with each and every one of the promises I’d just made her.
