28
WHO TURNED THE HEAT UP?
Olivia
THERE’S A HOCKEY BAG ON my front porch.
A pair of sticks, too, and when a brown leather weekender bag falls to my oor, the soft thud kickstarts my heart.
But the six-foot-four hulk of a man in front of me still doesn’t seem real.
“Carter?” Popping the buttons of his wool coat, I slide my hands inside, pressing my palms to his chest. He’s solid, so damn warm, and when I press my nose to his chest and inhale, he smells good too. My gaze rises, nding his, amused and curiously soft, and I launch myself into his arms, wrapping my legs around his waist as I crush myself to his body. “You’re here.”
“I’m here. Flight got delayed and I thought it was too late to call but then I was miserable and I… I wound up here.” He smooths my hair from my face, hesitant eyes moving between mine. “Is that okay?”
I drag his mouth down to mine, answering him with a kiss. “I missed you.”
“Fuck, that sounds so good.” His hands glide down my back, cupping my ass.
“Why do you have a blanket wrapped around your ankle?”
“What?” I untangle my limbs from his body, and sure enough, when he sets me on my feet, the corner of my blanket is wrapped around my ankle. “I got tangled in my blankets,” I murmur as he hauls his equipment o my porch, throws it into my living room, and kicks his boots o. He slips his tie over his head, grinning when he slips it over mine, winding it around his st and dragging me into him for a scorching kiss.
“I’m starving,” he whispers against my mouth, pressing me against the wall.
“For you.” His tongue glides against mine, slow and hungry, and my knees wobble. Then he claps a hand to my ass and pulls me to my kitchen. “And for food. You got any?”
I’m xated, watching as he tugs his shirt from his pants and rubs his hand over his rippled torso, checking out the contents of my fridge. He glances over his shoulder, hitting me with a dazzling smile as his gaze coasts my body.
What is he doing? Did he just come for a midnight snack? Is he… staying?
“Would you get rid of that damn blanket before you hurt yourself? If I have to take you to the hospital tonight, it’ll be because I impaled you too hard with my cock and fucked you into a coma, not because you tripped on that fucking blanket and broke your ankle.”
Well then. That’s one way to turn up the heat in here.
And I’m taking too long, apparently, because Carter bends and unwraps my ankle.
“There. You’re safe.” He pulls my leftovers from the fridge, inhales, and moans. “Fuck, this smells so good. Can I?”
The second I nd a fork, he yanks it from my hand and digs in. I genuinely don’t think he’s even breathing, just shoveling my Cajun chicken pasta into his mouth.
I shake myself out of whatever trance I’m in, smiling at the way Carter licks the fork after he’s nished. “Guess I’m eating cafeteria food tomorrow.”
He freezes. “This is your lunch? Aw, Liv. Why didn’t you tell me?” He sets me on the counter and pulls my legs around him, stung his face in my neck. “I ate your lunch. I’m so sorry. I’m a big boy, though, and I was practically wasting away.”
I snort a laugh, but it quickly dies a whimper when his mouth opens on my throat.
“As much as I love you in my clothes…” His ngers dip beneath the hem of his hoodie that I’ve been living in, brushing against my skin. “This hoodie needs to fucking go.”
It’s on the oor a second later, and everywhere his gaze touches singes my exposed esh.
“This tank top,” he growls, brushing his thumbs over my nipples, taut against the thin material. His ngers dance down my belly, nding a hole by my waist. “I fucking love this tank top. But I’m gonna ruin it.”
The quiet night lls with the sound of my top shredding. The cool air dances over my esh, and I shiver when my body erupts with goose bumps. Carter frowns, examining my ngernails, an interesting shade of blue, though they have no nail polish.
His own shoulders shake, and he rubs his hands up and down my arms. “It’s freezing in here, Ol. Can I turn up the heat?”
He’s on the move before I can tell him not to bother, and I follow him to thermostat in the front hall, picking his sweater up and covering myself back up.
“Forty-nine? Ollie, it’s only forty-fucking-nine degrees in here!”
Humiliation burns my cheeks as he tries the buttons.
“Why does it say heat mode o? And why won’t it let me turn it on?”
My gaze falls. I grip one arm with the other. “My furnace is broken.”
“Shit.” His hand runs along the edge of his jaw. “For how long?”
“Um…” I scratch my temple. “A week or so?”
“A week? Olivia! You can’t—that’s not—” He cups my face. “Fuck. That’s too cold for you, Ollie.”
“Hence the outt.” I gesture at my bundled body. “And the blanket wrapped around my ankle.”
“Where’s your furnace?” He points to my basement door. “Want me to take a look?”
I grab his hand, stopping him, because Carter doesn’t wait for anyone, which means that as soon as the question left his mouth he was already halfway to the door. “You can’t x it. My brother already looked at it. It’s been in and out since last winter. I need a new one.”
“Oh. Are you… are you gonna do that? Replace it?”
My ears burn. I can’t look at him. I shift on my feet, ddling with the bun on
top of my head. “I’m saving.”
“You’re saving?”
Tears of embarrassment prickle my eyes, and I look away before he can see. “I can’t aord it right now. Please drop it.”
“I—”
“If you’re cold, Carter, you’ve got ve replaces at home to warm you up.”
The corner of his mouth quirks. “Seven.”
“What?”
“I have seven replaces.”
Heat pools in my cheeks, enough to keep my warm tonight. “I’m sorry I don’t have any,” I whisper as I move by him.
“Hey.” His palm wraps around the nape of my neck, gently guiding me back to him. His eyes hold nothing but sincerity. “I’m gonna need you to tell me why
you got so upset back there.”
“Because you said—”
“I know what I said. I asked you if you were going to replace your furnace.”
He watches me take my lower lip between my teeth. “Are you embarrassed that you can’t aord it?”
I focus on his chest, the awless skin peeking out from his opened buttons.
Even in the middle of winter, he’s such a perfect shade of sunset gold.
“Look at me, Ollie.” He pulls the tip of my thumbnail from my mouth, where I hadn’t noticed it migrated, and brackets my chin between his ngers, forcing my gaze to his. “You never need to be embarrassed about that. You work hard, and you’re doing the best you can. I’m proud of you, and I hope you are too.”
My heart thuds quietly, my chest tightening at the sweet words, the compassion he holds in his steady gaze.
“It’s hard not to compare myself to someone like you,” I admit. “I know we’re on dierent playing elds, but everything you have is so beautiful, so incredible, and—”
“Including you, Ollie. You’re so beautiful, so incredible, all of you. Don’t you get that everything else doesn’t compare? I’d trade it all in for you.”
Butteries take ight in my stomach, and when I lay my cheek on his chest, I can breathe again. “I like your replaces. All seven of them.”
Carter chuckles, twisting us back and forth. “I’m gonna snuggle the shit outta you tonight and I run hot, so you won’t need all these clothes anyway.”
“You’re staying over?”
His expression says duh but his mouth says, “All I wanna do is fuck you into tomorrow and fall asleep with my girlfriend in my arms.”
Oh look, there’s my heart, beating in his hands.
Judging by the pink tint painting his cheekbones and the way he’s pulled his lower lip into his mouth to gnaw on it, I’d say this exceptionally large and condent man standing before me is currently feeling shy.
“Girlfriend?”
He nods, scratching at his head. “Is that okay? I know I want to be with you.
I know we’re compatible. I don’t need time to see if this will work, if I’m serious about you. I already know all that. I want you to be mine and I don’t want to share you with anyone else. So be mine. Please.”
My hand slides along the stubble lining his jaw. “How are you single?”
“Because you’ve been playing hard to get for the last seven weeks, give or take.
Because you’re keeping me standing here, waiting around for an answer to my question when the answer seems pretty obvious to me.”
“Pretty obvious, huh? And what’s the obvious answer?”
“The obvious answer is yes, because you’re obsessed with me. You can’t stop thinking about me and my pretty eyes. And my dimples.” Hot breath rolls down my neck. “You love my dimples.”
“Your arrogance never fails to amaze me.”
“What you mean is condence, and you love that about me too.”
I wind my arms around his neck, ngers curling into his hair as he hoists me to him and heads for my bedroom. “Is that so?”
“Uh-huh. I know you like the back of my hand.” He lays me on the bed and steps back, working the buttons of his shirt before he slips it o, revealing his impeccably chiseled torso, that deep V that runs like a trail of raw desire right down to where it disappears in his pants.
“What am I thinking right now?”
“That you want to come,” he replies simply, ditching his pants on the oor.
His boxer briefs follow quickly, and a heady need unfurls in my belly as his knees hit the mattress. “Around my ngers, on my tongue. All over my cock.”
My heartbeat settles between my thighs, and something raw and feral squeezes in my throat as he prowls toward me. He hooks his ngers in the
waistband of my pants and drags them down my legs. His rough palm scrapes over my torso, squeezing my breast. A moment later, the sweater I’m wearing is on the ground, leaving me naked and exposed.
There’s something about the heat stacked behind his gaze, so dark, so starved, that makes it hard to breathe when he looks at me.
I reach for him, but his palm lands on my collarbone, forcing me backward.
“Ah-ah, pretty girl.” Tender lips nd the delicate skin of my inner thigh, tasting. “You haven’t answered my question yet.”
Fuck. What was the question again?
He trails the tip of his nger up my slit, and my head falls back with a moan
when he grazes my clit.
“God, yes.”
“Yes? Is that your answer or are you simply letting me know you enjoy the way I touch you?” His half-lidded gaze holds mine as his tongue traces around my aching center, making it cramp with need. “Be more specic, Ollie. Are you mine?”
He sinks one nger inside me, achingly slow, and all thoughts leave my brain.
“Yes,” I cry. “Yes, I’m yours.”
“Ding, ding, ding,” he whispers. “Right answer.”
My back arches, my hands in his hair and his name on my lips when he buries his face between my legs. His mouth is a wet dream, his tongue a lethal weapon, and I’m ready to let this man destroy me.
And oh God, does he ever do it well. Thrusting ngers, grazing teeth, and a wicked tongue that never quits, I come undone with an explosive orgasm that leaves my legs quaking.
Not until Carter crawls up my body do I realize his hands are trembling.
Catching my breath, I stroke his cheek. “What’s wrong?”
“I like you so much,” he blurts. “I like everything about you. Is that right? Is it okay to tell you how much I like you or am I supposed to keep it to myself?
Tell you once and never talk about it again? Tell you every single day? I don’t know, Ollie; I’m new at this. All I know is I really wanted to tell you, and also, I’m super fucking terried.” He rests his forehead against mine and breathes.
When his eyes open, the fear in them tells me I’m not alone. “I don’t wanna mess this up.”
I turn my head, kissing the inside of the palm that rests against my cheek. “I like you so much, too, Carter. And I don’t think you’ll mess it up. You’re already so great at it.”
“Yeah? I mean, I’m great at most things, so—hey!” When I deliver the rst whack to his shoulder, he captures my hand and pins it above my head. “Don’t make me tie these hands behind your back,” he whispers against my lips. “I have no idea what I’m doing, Ollie.”
I don’t either. I’ve been in two serious relationships, yet I’ve never felt what I feel for Carter. This intensity that vibrates between us, the magnetism that draws us closer and closer, it’s as confusing as it is addicting. I can’t nd a pause button, and it’s daunting.
You’re not supposed to fall this quickly.
Carter settles onto his side, pulling me back against him. “Slow and steady tonight, ’kay? I just wanna feel you.” He lifts my leg, guiding his cock between my thighs. I grip the sheets as he pushes in, and his ngers lace through mine.
His mouth sweeps down my neck, across my shoulder, teeth pressing into my skin as he rocks his hips against mine. “Every inch of you. It’s all my favorite.
You’re my favorite. My princess.”
A shudder leaves my lips. “That nickname is ridiculous, but I think I love it.”
He releases my hand, running his ngers up my arm, then down my side.
Fingertips dig into my hip as his pace quickens, each thrust deeper, more powerful than the last. He strokes the tight bundle of nerves at the cleft of my thighs, and I forget my name.
“You want another one? What about pumpkin? How ’bout it, Liv? You wanna be my pumpkin pie?”
“You’re too much.” I barely manage an eye roll, and Carter swallows my
breathy laugh with his mouth.
“I think you wanna be my pumpkin.”
“I wanna be your anything.”
His hand glides up my belly and closes over my throat, angling my face toward his, his movements never slowing. “How about my everything?”
My heart stops beating at those simple words. Carter doesn’t dare tear his gaze o mine as he keeps moving, driving forward, panting. His forehead creases, eyes closing for only the briefest moment before his mouth devours mine in a kiss so erce, so hungry, I feel it right down to the tips of my toes. I cry out his name, and he buries mine in my neck when the world shatters around us.
Carter crushes me to him, folding me in his arms. Beyond the soul-crushing orgasm that makes it hard to catch my breath, the feelings I have for him are suocating me right now. I bury them in my throat, and my face in his heaving chest.
Then his stomach grumbles, and he rolls on top of me. “I hate to ruin this moment but I’m hungry again.”
“You are a bottomless pit. I made blueberry muns. They’re in the—”
He leaps o the bed with a squeal—yes, a squeal—and I watch his bare ass disappear into the hallway faster than I’ve ever seen this man move when he’s not on skates. He returns thirty seconds later with his cheeks and hands full.
“Found ’em.”
“—pantry. Wow. Three muns, huh?”
“Four,” he mumbles, pointing at his chipmunk cheeks. He swallows, oering one to me. “One’s for you.” He pulls it back into his chest. “Unless you don’t
want it. Then I’ll eat it.”
“Carter—”
“Yeah.” His head bobs as he kneels on the bed, tearing one mun apart.
“You’re right. Sharing is caring.” He stus a piece between my lips and ops onto his back, legs hanging over the edge. “Your bed is too small for me.”
“It ts me just right.”
“That’s because you’re pint-sized.”
“And you’re monster-sized.”
He looks down at his crotch, swiveling his hips, making my favorite of his muscles dance. “Hear that, big guy? We’re monster-sized.”
I shake my head. “What in the hell have I gotten myself into?”
He chuckles. “Did your kids give you any more trouble after Monday?”
Pouting, I snuggle into this side. “One of my boys called me a puck bunny.”
“He sure did, and you lit him the hell up for it. I knew you could back all that sass up.” His ngers trail a slow path up and down my spine. “Everything else go okay? Em said your brother was upset.”
I gnaw my lip, but when he tilts my head, bringing our gazes together, I sigh.
“He wasn’t happy at rst. He wanted me to stop seeing you.”
“Oh.” His gaze falls, but I touch his cheek, bringing him back to me.
“Then I told him how happy you make me, and that was all that mattered.”
Green eyes move eagerly between mine. “Yeah? I really make you happy?”
I grin, so wide my cheeks hurt. “What do you think?”
His own grin is detonating as he brings my lips to his. “I think I love your smile more than anything in this world.”
When he turns out the light and holds me tight against him, I realize he was right earlier when he said I wouldn’t need all those layers to keep me warm. All I need is him and the re that fuels in my belly when he’s with me.
His lips dot my shoulder with kisses as he sings softly, those same words he sang to me back in December while he held me in his arms and spun me around a crowded dance oor.
“I’m so lucky to be the man who gets to keep you by his side, Ollie.” Burying his face in my neck, Carter makes a soft, happy noise. “Goodnight, pumpkin.
Like you.”
“Like you, too, Carter.”
IT’S ONLY SEVEN IN THE morning and my Thursday is already shaping up to be as fantastic as my Wednesday night, because Carter’s body is still wound around mine.
“No,” he growls, thick and husky as I try to slip free when my alarm goes o.
His hand closes over my throat, hauling me back to him, and he throws a leg over me, a quiet hum of satisfaction rumbling from his chest. “You stay with
me.”
“I have to go to work, Carter.”
Long ngers skim down my belly, pushing their way between my thighs.
“You feel hot. Sick day.”
I turn in his arms and kiss his sleepy face, his dark lashes resting against his cheekbones. “You keep sleeping. I’ll leave my spare key in the kitchen.”
“Can I eat more muns?”
“Are you gonna eat them all?”
He sighs. It’s a resigned sigh, but pleased, like he’s happy I know him well enough to ask the question. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
I think he’s asleep when I’m ready to leave a half hour later, so I don’t bother saying good-bye. That’s a mistake; he screams my name from bed when I open the front door.
I lean against the bedroom door. “You rang, sir?”
He reaches up, curling his ngers into his palms. “Need a hug and a kiss.”
Oh my God, he’s adorable.
I sink into the crushing hug, that full feeling that comes with it, and when he releases me, he gives me a pat on the butt.
“Have a good day, pumpkin.” He rolls himself into a perfect burrito, muttering to himself about the size of my bed and the ungodly temperature in my house.
My day only gets better when my lunch is hand-delivered by someone who looks suspiciously like the limo driver who gave me a ride home last weekend, and even better when I pull out the bacon carbonara and slice of chocolate cheesecake topped with an Oreo.
When I get home from work, it smells dierent. Cozy, somehow, or maybe it’s just knowing Carter was here. Either way, I smile to myself as I take o my coat and head to the kitchen.
The bright display on my counter has my stomach somersaulting. Pink, orange, and yellow tulips ll a glass vase, but it’s the note that makes me happiest.
Pretty and bright, just like you.
Can’t wait to wake up with you this weekend.
Like you lots, Carter
I fan at my face, trying to disperse the heat rushing to it right now. When that doesn’t work—I’m freaking sweating right now—I yank o my sweater. But I’m still hot, so I start pulling my leggings over my hips and— Why am I hot?
My eyes ick to the thermostat. Hesitantly, I take one step toward it, then another. Another, and my heart nearly pounds out of my chest when I nally look at it.
Seventy-two. It’s seventy-fucking-two degrees in here. Quite the stark contrast from the frigid air that’s been circulating for the past several days.
I get halfway down the basement stairs before I turn and run up them again.
Two more tries before I nally make it down. My jaw dangles, my hand shaking on the railing as I gawk.
At the shiny, brand-new furnace that absolutely, 110 percent, was not here this morning.
