I let the issue drop, standing still to allow Echo to move around me and make her decision, while I tried to figure out why Fox’s silence on the issue bothered me so much. It hurt. But it wasn’t a personal hurt. I felt hurt on his behalf. It had to be difficult finally tackling the big leagues while things were so difficult personally. I hated the idea that he was hurting over something and I was too oblivious to notice, or he felt too weirded out to talk to me. Sleeping with him had changed everything.

  To my surprise, he was already at the apartment when I returned from work.

  “Hey Sash,” he said in greeting as he sorted through his duffel bags in the living room.

  “You’re back. How’d your first game go? I mean, I did watch it so I know you did great. But how are you feeling about it? Were you nervous?”

  He chuckled. “A little distracted, yeah. But good. I just didn’t realize the announcement was going to be made when it was. So I had to field questions.”

  I put my purse and keys down and headed over to where he’d been crouched on the floor, and knelt beside him. It was an awkward feat in my pencil skirt, but I managed. Reaching out to slip an arm around him and rest my head on his shoulder, I said, “I was just worried about you. Are you okay? It must be a pretty tough thing to have to deal with. Especially as you already have all this pressure.”

  Fox shrugged. “I’ve known he was sick for a while now. But he didn’t want people to know until he was ready, and…”

  “It wasn’t your secret to tell,” I finished for him. “I get it.”

  “It was worse when he and Mom first told us. Well, when Echo let it slip and they had to admit to what was really going on,” Fox corrected himself. “His doctors were still trying to figure out what was wrong with him, so that was pretty scary. The not knowing. It was easier once they said it was an autoimmune thing, though. I’m still not completely sure what that means, I just know it isn’t cancer. Anyway, once it had a name and they could give him stuff to treat some of his symptoms, it got easier.”

  “If there is anything I can do for you, you know you just have to ask and I’ll do it. And if you want to move back in with your parents—”

  “Whoa, now,” Fox’s brows drew up. “It’s not that serious. And there isn’t really anything I can do to help one way or another—”

  “I’m sorry. I just…I know you moved in here as kind of a favor to me, and I wasn’t sure if maybe you felt obligated or something to stay, but since I’ve started working with Echo, money isn’t as tight as it was, so—”

  He put his hands up. “You needing financial help was the excuse for me to move in here with you. I’d have done it anyway, if you’d asked. I love living with you,” he assured me.

  Something tingled low in my belly. Okay, maybe a little lower than my belly.

  I sighed with relief. “And I love living with you. Now, if you don’t really need cheering up over what’s going on with your dad, do you want to celebrate your first official NHL game? You were pretty impressive. A four-to-two win for the team, never relinquishing the lead, and those two goals were totally not your fault. I mean, those two guys on your team should not have both been penalized, and if it had only been five on four during the power play instead of five on three, that goal never would have gotten in. And pulling the goalie during the last minute of the game? I mean, I know everyone does it but they weren’t going to make up the three-goal difference.”

  Fox laughed. “Well, I’m still not happy about them. The one at the last minute, especially. But thanks. It was a bit nerve-wracking. I still think it’ll be worse for my first home game in net, but we’re in an every-other-day pattern for a while, so it could be another week before I get in there again.”

  “I still say we should celebrate,” I insisted, carefully using Fox’s shoulder to brace myself as I struggled to rise.

  “After what happened last time, you really want to go out to a bar with me again?” Fox joked but then stammered. “Not that—”

  “I know what you meant,” I cut him off. I didn’t need him knowing I didn’t mind the idea of things ending that way a second time. “Actually a few friends of mine from college are having a little party of their own. Want to try that? We might find you that girl you’re looking for.”

  His eyes narrowed a little, and he said, “So…a college party?”

  “So you’ll come? I don’t know how crazy it’ll be. If it’s crazy at all.”

  “Fine,” Fox nodded slowly. “Take me to your college party. Show me your academic ways.”

  “Hop in the shower and put on something casual. You smell like a locker room. I’m going to go figure out what to wear.”

  Fox

  * * *

  The party was in the early stages when we arrived. I couldn’t explain it, but I immediately felt out of place. I was happy I’d tossed on jeans and a T-shirt with just a funky blazer over it, instead of the button-down I’d planned on. Sasha was wearing a see-through shirt, so that the dark outlines of her bra were clearly visible. It wasn’t the lacy one I was so intimately familiar with, but damned if I didn’t want to be. She’d paired it with a sassy, floating skirt. The moment I caught sight of her long expanse of leg, I wanted to spread them wide open and bury my face in her heat. Licking her until she screamed. I was so caught up in the fantasy that I missed what she said. “Huh?”

  Sasha frowned at me and rolled her eyes. “Relax. You’ll be fine,” she assured me. “You’ve been to a million parties.”

  She was right. And this wasn’t my first college party. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were on a date. After introductions were made, we found the keg, and my mood vastly improved. All it took was one frat-boy wannabe trying to perform a handstand on a keg and failing miserably for me to decide it was worth attending.

  “Let’s grab something to drink and walk around a bit,” Sasha suggested, clearly pleased that I seemed to be enjoying myself. “I need to find the rest of my friends and introduce you.”

  Her friends were grouped in the living room, chattering loudly and laughing raucously. Sasha and I sat at the outskirts, listening raptly and doing our best to fade into the background so as to not draw too much attention to ourselves. But that didn’t last long.

  “I thought you said you were bringing your boyfriend?” one of her friends whispered loudly to Sasha. I flushed and explained just as loudly that, no, I had broken up with Ryan more than six weeks ago.

  “I said I was bringing my roommate,” Sasha clarified.

  “But you live with your boyfriend,” the friend insisted. Everyone laughed at the extent to which the poor girl was intoxicated, and when she heard everyone else laughing, the drunk friend laughed, too.

  “I was living with my boyfriend until I broke up with him and I kicked him out,” I explained again.

  “Don’t bother,” another friend chimed in while mixing a few types of juice with vodka and sipping the mixture until she nodded in approval. “She won’t remember what you tell her anyway, and I don’t think any of us care.”

  “Gee, thanks guys,” I said, taking a sip of my own rum and coke.

  “Let’s play ‘Never Have I Ever,’” the deeply inebriated friend suggested.

  “How do you play that?” I asked, to a round of giggles that made me feel a little ridiculous.

  “Don’t worry, not-boyfriend,” the drunk one said, jovially elbowing me in the side. “We’ll teach ya.”

  And teach they did. Over the course of the next hour, I learned all sorts of things about Sasha. Sexual things. Things that would drive me crazy later.

  For example, she’d never had sex in public. She’d never been tied up. She’d never had anal sex. At the rate we were going, I’d be wasted in no time.

  The rules were to drink if you had done whatever was called out. And I had done…a lot. Turns out, I was a very bad boy.

  When one of her friends announced she’d never had sex in a car, I gawked when Sasha didn’t drink. “You’re joking?”

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  Before I could stop himself, I said, “We are going to remedy that at the earliest possible convenience.”

  11

  Sasha

  Holy shit, Fox was so sexy. His voice, low and hushed so only I would hear, sent shivers through my body. Did he plan on us remedying that problem tonight? Because I was game. No, dumbass, he’s teasing. I’d had to excuse myself so I could splash water on my face. “Behave.”

  “I’ll try.”

  When I returned, Fox was missing, along with Nell.

  “Hey Erica, where did Fox go?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Erica said with a shrug. “She whispered something to him, and he helped her get up and they went that way.” Erica pointed toward the stairs leading up to the bedrooms.

  An unexpected stab of jealousy and disgust pierced my heart. But I don’t want him. Liar. Damn, that hurt. We weren’t together, a point I’d been emphasizing for weeks. There were times when I thought that being with him was something I might want, but I was so damn scared. I needed our friendship.

  After that memorable night, I’d been less afraid of sex messing with our dynamic, but there was still so much that could go wrong.

  Fire burned in my belly. He wasn’t mine. I had no right, and I knew it.

  I turned the corner at the landing and spotted Fox quietly closing a door behind him and turning to come back down the stairs. He was alone and looked startled, but a wide smile spread over his face. I jogged up the stairs to join him.

  “You wandered off,” I said gently.

  “I didn’t ‘wander’ anywhere. Your friend leaned in and made me a proposal that she probably thought sounded interesting.”

  “You didn’t take her up on it?”

  He frowned and stared down at me. “I told her to lead the way, and when we got to her bedroom I put her to bed. Tucked her in and everything, even found her little trash bin and put it on the bed beside her so she won’t have to look for it later. And she will need it. Hopefully, she can sleep it off.”

  Relief flooded me, quickly followed by guilt. He didn’t have to justify himself to me. I was ruining this. Why couldn’t I be normal?

  “Thanks for taking care of her,” I told him. “Sorry about…” I shrugged, unable to put everything into words. Uncertain how he’d react if I tried.

  “No problem. Besides, I came with you.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.

  I reached down and took one hand out. “Come on,” I said, leading him down the hall, glancing at the rooms on either side until I spotted one with an open door. Melissa’s name was plastered across the front. I was pretty sure I’d spotted Melissa cheering her boyfriend and his friends on in a game of beer pong set up on the dining room table, so it would be some time before they came up looking to use the bedroom.

  I ushered Fox through the door and closed it behind us, instinctively turning the lock. “There you go,” I said with a flourish. “Peace and quiet.”

  Fox flipped the light on and looked around the room. It was pretty small—Melissa had forced a queen-sized bed into a room that was only meant for a twin, leaving little space to move around. She wasn’t one to keep things neat and tidy, either. Her dirty clothes littered the floor, and were interspersed with textbooks and notebooks for her various classes.

  “Is this what it looks like in dorms?” Fox inquired, pointing to one of Melissa’s bras hanging by its straps on a bedpost.

  “Actually…” I looked around at the posters, decorative lights, and multitude of mirrors. “Yeah. I’ve seen my share of dorms that look just like this.”

  Fox laughed and plopped down on the bed, leaning back on his elbows for a moment before laying all the way back. “God. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until now. Though some of it might be the beer.”

  I lay down beside him, both of us stretched sideways on the bed with our legs hanging off. We both stared at the ceiling, the only surface of the room Melissa hadn’t gotten around to decorating. Our shoulders touched, our arms running alongside each other down to the backs of our hands.

  “I’m sorry about your dad being sick,” I whispered.

  “Me too.” Fox’s voice was quiet and thick.

  “Do…do you think that, him being sick, you being worried about him, do you think that was part of why you didn’t make the team during the tryouts? Was it too distracting?”

  The bed moved as Fox sighed deeply.

  “No,” he finally answered. “I think I wanted it too much, and I have a nasty habit of sabotaging myself.”

  I propped myself up on an elbow. “You do not sabotage yourself.”

  “Come on,” Fox challenged. “I choke all the time. I can take care of what I need to do until the pressure gets turned up, and then…” He raised his hands to his throat and made wheezing noises until I elbowed him gently with a laugh.

  “Well, you didn’t choke during the game the other night,” I reminded him.

  “What do you call letting a goal in during the last minute of the game?”

  “Nerves. I think you get in your head and can be too hard on yourself.”

  “How is that different from self-sabotage, exactly?”

  “Because with self-sabotage there’s an element of thinking. Particularly that on some level, probably subconsciously, you don’t deserve what you’re trying to get…or you’re unaware that you don’t really want it. But I know you. You do want this. And you deserve it. You know you do. So, you’ve just got a bad case of nerves to work out.”

  “I do want it,” he admitted after a minute. He raised his hand enough to run his fingers along my forearm. “And I’m not just talking about hockey. I think my self-sabotage goes beyond that.”

  I shifted on the bed so that I was on my side, facing him, and could throw my arm across him and rest my head on his shoulder in a sort of hug.

  “There you go, being too hard on yourself again. You’ll get it. You’ll adjust and be fine,” I assured him, then raised my head enough to give him a comforting peck on the cheek before resting against him again and closing my eyes.

  He slid his right arm over to clasp my left hand where it rested against his chest, stroking the back of my hand with his, twining his fingers with mine. I snuggled closer against him so his left arm could circle my back instead of being crushed between us. In the process, he pressed my body against his. Something shifted between us, and when I reopened my eyes, I found him watching me intently, leaning closer.

  “What are we doing?” I asked softly.

  “I’m going to take care of a few things on your ‘Never Have I Ever’ list,” he told me, as he eased my legs open and crouched at the side of the bed. I started to sit up, but he upset my balance when he slid his hands under my thighs and wrapped his arms around them, leaving me completely open to him.

  “Fox?” I panted in anticipation as he rubbed his cheek against the tender skin of my inner thigh.

  He’d shaved sometime in the morning, so while there was no scratchy stubble, there was still a distinct friction. “There were a few things you didn’t drink to that everyone should have to drink to,” he murmured against my thigh.

  I didn’t have to ask him which of my responses he intended to rectify. My fingers dug into the bedspread as Fox’s tongue went to work on the sensitive skin of my thighs. Then, with his thumb, he eased back the elastic of my panties. “Fuck, you’re wet.” He settled my legs so they were hooked over his shoulders, while he ran his right hand from my knee up over my hip to my navel. The muscles in my belly contracted violently, as I fought to direct the course of his tongue by wriggling my hips. When he sucked on me, I dug my heels into his back, arching and crying out as I shook in ecstasy.

  I was still trembling when the warmth of his head between my legs disappeared, and he reappeared hovering above me, grinning. I managed a weak smile in return as he dropped his lips to mine for a kiss, his tongue finding mine so that I could taste myself.

  There was warm pressure along my left side where he was gently grinding his erection against my hip, the bulge impossible to ignore. I tried to loop my leg around him to show I was ready for him to enter me, but I couldn’t get my leg to follow my direction. I couldn’t get any of my limbs to respond just yet.

  “So that’s one,” Fox teased, pressing kisses along my jaw and playfully biting my earlobe.

  “You…had more…in mind?” I managed to say.

  Fox rose to a kneeling position so he could unfasten the belt below my breasts. “Every woman deserves multiple orgasms. And the other night doesn’t count. We slept in between, so I’m going to fix that.”

  “Fox—”

  “I have another road trip coming up next week. East coast, this time, so I’ll be gone a few days.” He slipped the belt from around my waist and dropped it onto the floor, then unsnapped my blouse. “I was thinking it would be nice to have a few keepsakes that I can look at to keep me from getting too lonely.” He kissed the valley between my breasts, but I slid my hands in his hair and then tipped his head back so I could meet his eyes.

  “You want to take pictures of me? You first. Wouldn’t porn do the trick?”

  Fox put a gentle hand over my mouth to get my attention. I bit at the palm of his hand playfully, remembering that it was Fox I was dealing with, and not Ryan.

  “You want to know why I want pictures of you, specifically?”

  His hand was still over my mouth as I nodded but he removed it to take my hand and gently lift it off my blouse so he could push the fabric aside. “You might not think so, but I could pick your breasts out of a lineup,” he told me. My skeptical expression made him laugh. “It’s true,” he insisted. His fingers skimmed the edge of one cup of my bra, raising goose pimples on my skin.