End Game (New York Stars Book 1)

WHEN OREN, one of the more recent Bukowski billet brothers, stops a third scoring chance from the Stars, I start to get pissed.

I mean, it’s his job to stop us from scoring, but when did he get to be so fucking good at it?!

It’s a relief to be on the ice, though. A relief to be focusing on the game.

Things have been weird with Gracie for a while, but they’ve worsened since Christmas. Just when I think we’ve stepped things in the right direction, she does a full one-eighty. It’s driving me insane. The irony of that, of course, is the more I fuck up my life, the stronger my game is.

Go figure.

Pittsburgh’s playing aggressively, so it’s a good thing I’m on top of my shit tonight. They’re not giving an inch on the boards.

When Lewis sends the puck sailing toward me, I dig it out of the corner and circle the net. When I shoot, Oren blocks it. Again.

Fucker!

Lewis grabs the rebound and passes it to Kerrigan, who takes his shot.

It fucking goes wide.

Not just that time either.

Why Coach keeps playing him on the first 2 strings is beyond me.

With three minutes left on the clock, they’re up 2-1.

It’s more luck than skill that Lewis and I manage to eke a draw out of Oren, who’s blocked at least ten scoring chances in the last fifteen minutes.

Kerrigan misses a perfect shot in OT, but we finish the night with a 3-2 win only because Lewis and I gun for the victory so hard that we’ll probably be pissing blood tomorrow.

Absolutely exhausted by the end of the game, the only thing I want to do is go home and get Gracie to drink a maple syrup chaser on my behalf.

Which she does.

Except, as she pours the combination of creamer and ambrosia into her mouth, a few drops ooze from the corner of her lips.

For the rest of the night, as she tries to talk about tomorrow’s schedule, that’s all I can see.

There’d been amber striations to the mixture, but the droplets had looked like cum.

Fuck.

After the day I’ve had, that’s what I need too.

To escape through her. To find release in her. To join with her.

When she eventually leaves, citing that, ‘My grumpy ass had better cheer up before tomorrow,’ the first thing I do is head to the guest bathroom because the need is too urgent to waste time heading to my connecting bath.

As I wait for the shower to heat up, I strip to nothing and duck under the spray once it’s tepid.

My cock is an aching, throbbing mess—pre-cum is every-fucking-where and I’m so close to release I feel like a goddamn teenager again.

All it wants is to sink home into her, but that’s not an option right now.

I think about those droplets that had seeped from the corners of her mouth, imagine that was my cum, picture her swallowing every drop and, in the aftermath, that she’d even go as far as to stick out her tongue so I could see the mess I’d left behind.

Gritting my teeth at the imagery that’s better than porn to me, I start to stroke my hand along the length of my dick.

As the water pounds my nape, I think of her sitting on her knees as I lean over and taste myself on her tongue.

With a growl, my fist starts to move faster.

She’d whimper as I kiss her. “Liam, I need you.” She’d moan, her hand slipping between her thighs so she could touch her clit.

Together, we’d—

“Liam? Where are you?”

My eyes flash open as I realize the Gracie mewling in my imagination isn’t the Gracie shouting my name.

Fuck if that doesn’t have my screwed-up brain reacting, though.

Knowing she’s here, that she’s outside the bathroom in the hall has me biting off a snarl as cum slaloms out of me, spattering the shower wall and the cubicle door, sliding into the water before it sinks down the drain.

“One minute,” I yell hoarsely as I pump my hips, eyes closed, brow furrowed as I take every ounce of pleasure I can get.

Breathing heavily, the release of tension a welcome relief, I stare at the tiled floor as the evidence disappears.

Then, I turn off the faucet, grab a towel, and head out to find her.

I catch a glimpse of her in her bedroom, her ass right in my fucking face as she waggles it while she bends over beside the wall.

Wondering what she’s doing, I tilt my head.

That’s when I see it—the vibrator.

Charging.

Fuck. My. Life.

Scrubbing my hand over my jaw as I try to contain my reaction to that temptation, I clear my throat. “You forget something?”

She yelps, drags out the wire from the socket, tosses the vibrator on the floor then, on her way up, manages to knock her head on the stand before she whips around to glower at me.

Her eyes immediately widen as she takes me in.

Her tongue peeks out.

She licks her lips as she gawks at my seminudity.

“Um,” she croaks, “I forgot m-my—”

Despite the torment she gives me on the daily, I have to hide a smile at how blatant her reaction is to me.

Hope flickers inside me with the force of a fireworks display on July 1st.

After the past couple of hopeless weeks, it puts a spring in my step as I stride into the room, prompting, “You forgot your…?”

It should be impossible, but her eyes grow even wider. Those dove-gray irises turn stormy as Gracie, who never squeaks, squeaks, “Nothing! Never mind.”

When she knees the nightstand this time in her haste, my amusement dies as she starts to hop on one foot.

“What the hell did you do now, Gracie?” I grumble as I reach her.

“Fuck if I know,” she whines, cupping her knee as she continues bobbing up and down.

It’s my turn to stare when I see the blood dotting the denim of her jeans. “You’re bleeding!” I rasp, urgency firing through me at the sight.

My gaze darts to the nightstand where I see one of those Stanley knives she uses to cut open my PR boxes and parcels peeping out from the mess she has exploding from the drawers. Her jeans have rips in the knees which is where she was cut.

“Gracie, you have got to be more careful. Why wasn’t the blade retracted, dammit?”

Before she can answer, I sweep her up in my arms, ignoring her shriek as I carry her to the guest bathroom.

It’s still humid from my shower as I sit her on the toilet, which is when she mumbles, “It’s just a cut, Liam.”

I ignore her and reach into the vanity to find the first-aid kit. With that in hand, I kneel in front of her.

She hisses when my fingers carefully move around the cut and I pull at both sides of the rip in her jeans and make the space bigger. “Liam!”

“What? Would you prefer I drag your jeans off, Gracie?” I croon, knowing that’ll stop her whining.

Her lips form an ‘O.’

An ‘O’ that just starred in my fantasies.

“This is totally unnecessary,” she whispers when I force myself to glance away. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

“Good. But there’s no harm in me cleaning it up and sticking a Band-Aid on it, is there?”

She stops arguing then, letting me set out the things I need to doctor the cut.

The steam from the shower makes her skin dampen and when I stare up at her, I can see tiny whorls of hair have stuck to her forehead. But that’s also the moment I realize she’s not looking at me anymore.

No, she’s studying the shower.

With a frown, I follow her line of sight and my eyes flare at what I see.

Cum—streaks of it on the glass cubicle door.

It could be shower gel or shampoo, but the way she licks her lips tells me she’s reached her own conclusion.

Unashamed, I study her and rasp, “Are you ready for the hydrogen peroxide?”

When her head whips around at the sound of my voice, I see that her pupils are pinpricks.

Fuck.

“I-I’m ready.”

With our focus on one another, I carefully press the cotton ball soaked in the peroxide to the small wound. As it fizzes, I ask, “Do you want to spend the night?”

Her mouth works.

Words form on her lips.

I can practically see them and my heart pounds, just waiting for her to—

Her phone rings.

Both of us jump at the sharp noise.

She’s flustered as she reaches into her pocket for her cell, almost dropping it in her haste once she draws it out, then she groans. “It’s Mom.”

What goes without saying is that Hanna won’t stop calling until she answers.

I have no idea what just happened between us, but I can’t help but feel that we made major progress. Progress that Hanna wrecks as she crows about Kow’s win tonight.

With every gloated, bloated, praise-loaded word Hanna utters, I can practically see Gracie retreating from me even though she hasn’t moved a damn inch as she’s reminded of exactly what I am to her—family.

That cockblocking, motherfucker Kow—his timing, I swear, will be the death of me.