Chapter Twelve

A/N: This one is short, but another is coming soon. Promise.
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I took Evie straight home from Jordan’s. No way I was leaving her unsupervised near a computer or television tonight – there was something I needed to do first. We entered quietly into my side of the house and walked up the stairs like it was something we’d done a thousand times. It almost felt that familiar, when in fact I had only known Evie for a few weeks. Her silhouette coast on the wall as light shone through the living room picture window and I wondered what it would be like to have my own place, our own place, and not feel like we were sneaking into my parents’ house every time we went home together.

She hung her coat and bag in my room with eerie familiarity. It was like every move she made begged for me to act. She’s had her chance to panic, the blanche, to run and hide at the hint of pressure. But she’s simply smiled a challenge across the bowling alley, looking right at me. That’s what she saw: me. Not Sidney Crosby, superstar. Through the overhead track lighting and the cheap disco ball, Evie saw me.

Without a hint of self-consciousness, Evie stripped to her panties and t-shirt and went into the bathroom. I pretended to take a long time changing, instead watching her through the open door. Her legs were impossibly long, her backside high and perfect as she leaned over the mirror to clean makeup off her eyelashes. It was a simple, private gesture and more intimate than anything I could think of. My heart beat hard through my body.

I brushed my teeth next to her, fighting the urge to smile because it sent toothpaste everywhere, and rushed into bed. I wanted to be the one to dictate terms. Finally she crawled in next to me. I stayed on my side, elbow bent and head supported on one hand, while she lay on her back with her side pressed against me. The slow, deliberate way she moved told the truth – today had taken a lot out of her. Still her gray eyes were clear as she looked up at me.

“How’d I do?” she asked.

I leaned down and kissed her. My entire body wanted to roll on top of her, but it would be the last move I made tonight. Nothing would keep us apart after that. So I stayed balance on an arm and settled for hooking my leg over hers. Tonight had been a long time coming for me – maybe forever. A source of constant, stomach-turning fear. The reason I had discarded planet of girls – both real and theoretical – because they weren’t up to today. Evie had waltzed it and stolen the show.

If you’d told me last month it would be so smooth, that the only thing in my life I’d ever really doubted would come true like a wish, I would have wept with relief. Instead I lay mostly naked looked down at the girl of my dreams. Everything about us was crazy. The way we met, the fact we were together, the way she’d handled today. So why stop?

“Let’s get our own place,” I said.

She lifted her eyebrows in the barest hint of surprise. But it wasn’t my rushing our relationship that got her.

“You’re going to move in the middle of the season? Captain Lucky Jockstrap?”

Of course, she was right. One of the reasons I loved her.

“We might not find a place we like right away. And if we do… we could decorate it and stuff. And move in at the off-season. But I want to. I want to spend every night I can with you. I’ll….” I drew a deep breath before putting this issue out there for the first time. “I’ll buy us a place.”

She smiled. How she ever came into being, how it was ever so easy for her, I will never know.

“I might like that.”

Forget the staying on my side. I collapsed over top of her, in case she harbored any thoughts of ever leaving my bed. Her knees were no match for the width of my thigh and her body spread open at my insistence. Our mouths met greedily. She was out of her panties in a second and I was sliding down her body.

Evie tasted different as I moved. Her neck was tart and saucy – pomegranate or something that made my heart race. Her breasts were vanilla, the skin smooth and creamy beneath my lips. The flat plane of her stomach and the indent where it creased against her abs was brown sugar: warm and inviting. The insides of her thighs were juicy, like a peach or melon.

She gasped as I stroked my tongue across her swollen slit. More than anticipating, she was already ready for me. But I wasn’t looking to rush things – I had a lot to thank her for tonight. I pressed her legs apart and went to work.

Evie’s fingers twined into my hair – still not long enough for her to really get a hold of me. Her hips raised and lowered as I went harder and softer between her folds; she wanted to drive and I refused to hand over the keys. Finally she got the hint and lay back. I swirled my tongue deep into her, tasting honey and desire, and sucked her pearl gently between my lips. The sounds of her panting made me grind my lonely lap against the mattress.

“Sidney.” It was the only thing she needed to say. I felt her back arch in pleasure and took it as my cue to slip two thick fingers inside her slick pussy. Instantly she cried out, begging for more. And I was in no position to make her wait tonight.

“Oh God,” she said, her voice dropping low as I stroked against her g-spot. My other hand held her hip flat to the mattress – I didn’t need any help getting her off. With a flick on my tongue and a press of my fingertips, Evie came apart beneath me. She sobbed loudly and burst like ripe fruit. I lapped against her like a kitten, taking everything she had in exchange for the sensation of my tongue on her trembling flesh.

I had to have her. Before she was finished shaking I teased the tip of my rock hard cock between her folds and held still.

“Say you will,” I told her. It wasn’t a question. “I want to be with you.”

Her eyes flashed like she might sass me with a smart remark. I nudged an inch deeper into her soaked snatch, watched her eyes go wide with the sensation and then give in.

“I will move in with you.”

Between the head and the base of my cock, I lost myself completely. By the time I was balls deep in her I wanted to ask Evie to marry me for real. It seemed the only solution and so obvious. She was the one. She had proven it a hundred times in two weeks. Maybe I believed in the kind of fate that gave me matching month-day and birth year, or contracts worth that exact amount. Fate that brought the puck to my stick in the overtime period during my country’s Olympics against our arch rivals. The fate that let it be me, time and time again, had also taken things from me that normal people couldn’t fathom. For the longest time I assumed it had taken, as its price, the chance to find something like this.

“I love you,” I said, meaning it more than I ever had.

“I love you,” she said, simply meaning it.
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The look on his face could have broken my heart. If I wasn’t already in love up to my neck, I would have fallen that night. But I never would have made it that far.

In the bowling alley, when Flower called me over to challenge Sid, I was relieved to get this part out of the way. It was coming and putting it off only made it worse. But my heart thumped like I’d run the Kentucky Derby as I lined up next to him. My hands shook so hard I could barley hold the bowling ball. Then I looked at him and for the second time since I met Sidney Crosby, there was fear in his eyes. He’d been afraid to tell me he loved me but this was worse. This was telling the world he loved me: the world that had asked so much of him and given so much in return – without ever asking what price he was willing to pay. He looked at me like a man seeing a mirage. Move too quickly, run too fast and it might fade away before you can claim your prize.

I let myself go then, knowing he felt this as strongly as I did. He would never have put me out there if he wasn’t sure. As much as I was afraid of moving too quickly I was mostly afraid of my feelings – that they couldn’t possibly be real, be right. Not this soon. But Sidney’s face said the same thing: Please jump. And so I dove.

“I love you,” I told him honestly, filling my heart with the words as he filled my body with his. It was exquisite, so perfect as to be almost painful. The way he moved in me made it hard to breathe, hard to think, impossible to concentrate. He took everything that wasn’t important – the world at large – and reduced it to just him and me and us and now. Of course I would live with him. I would have married him in that moment.

Sidney stroked his perfect body deep into mine, bringing me more pleasure than I could have imagined. I joined in his effort and it worked, judging by the look on his face and the words on his lips.

“Evie. God you feel good,” he whispered. I pulled his short brown hair between my fingers. My muscles were tightening, winding down like a screw. Before long, the thrusts of Sid’s hips were driving me right through the floor.

“Baby,” I whispered before I kissed him, lifting my body off the bed to get the full force of his cock making my body hum. As I ground against him he let loose a muffled curse in my ear, something he’d definitely learned in the locker room. I was going to have to learn to talk a lot dirtier if I planned to keep up with the Penguins. Now I settled for what I knew would work. “Make me come, Sidney.”

His muscles coiled and sprung, capable of maneuvering his body like a sports car. A hairsbreadth left or right with just a twitch and he could make me scream. He knew it too, teasing me. I dug my nails into the magnificent musculature of his ass. I only touched the mattress on the downswing now and even those were getting shorter. He pressed up with his biceps, flexing inhumanly, then dropped me into the bed and followed with a hard, grunting slam. The second time I screamed. The third time, I came.

“Ohgodyesssssssssssss,” I moaned loudly, not caring if the entire Pens management heard me cheer their captain’s most intimate efforts. It tore through me like someone jumping on bubblewrap – endless popping from every direction, erupting all at once and lasting ages. The skin of his shoulder was soft beneath my teeth as I marked him for revenge.

Before it finished rocketing through me, Sidney clenched and held. With a grunt he came hot and hard, pumping into my hot mess and releasing the last of a tension I knew he’d held forever. As his body buried itself in mine, part of it wanted to stay there. The part that could never take this away from us.

“I love you,” I whispered again.

His cock pulsed hard, still deep inside my body. It matched the heartbeat in his chest.

“Good thing you’re my wife, or I’d have to go for a ring right now,” he laughed.
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Wait for it…

Evie laughed. She laughed at my wife joke. Thank God. Otherwise the ring I’d picked out would stop looking big enough.

That’s right, I picked out a ring. I did it online – Lord knows I couldn’t go to the store – but Tiffany’s had a really easy design-your-own ring function. At first I tried their traditional settings, even the biggest ones, but none were right. None of them were Evie.

Of course, I didn’t really know that. But I’d trusted my gut more with her than ever in my life and so far, so good. So I scrolled away from the flashiest bling and actually enjoyed trying to build something from scratch that I thought would make her tear up. Because in my book, she had to cry. She had to be overwhelmed and surprised and most of all, she had to say yes. Because this was absolutely, completely freaking insane. And if I was going out on a limb, I didn’t want to go alone.

A simple band of braided white gold with a single oval-shaped diamond in a low setting. Of all the rings I made it seemed to say “Evie” the most. But I worried – it wasn’t that big. Tiffany’s sold rings up to half a million dollars, and that was just online. Surely in the store I could go much bigger. And people would expect me to. The entire world would spend months asking to see the ring, oohing about how big it was then sniping behind her back that it wasn’t big enough. Evie wouldn’t care, I knew that for sure. But marrying me wasn’t like marrying me. It was like marrying an entire sport, and entire country.

In the end I sized the ring up just one notch. After all, I wanted her to love it more than anything. And if people talking shit about it, it would leave a nice mark when she punched them in the face.

I still had to go and get it. Evie had passed her first true test today and now I had to pass mine – I had to show my face in public buying an engagement ring. Then I had to ask Evie to marry me before it ended up on the news. “Crosby proposes, film at eleven” would not go over well beforehand.

Her breathing slowed and she went slack in my arms as she drifted off to sleep. I curled closer to her – there were a lot of things in my world that would try to derail us. If I held on tight enough and just kept moving, I was sure we could outrun them.

I fell asleep dreaming about spending the rest of my life with Evie. When I woke, I lay on my side with Evie curled around my back like a spoon. Her arm lay protectively across my side and her leg nestled between mine. Even though she was fast asleep, her posture left me wondering exactly who would be protecting who in this relationship. I knew she’d be there, I knew she would never run or hide when things got rough. And they would get rough for me a lot if I played hockey as long as I intended to. Even if we were a dynasty like the Oilers, which was damned near impossible, I’d win four Cups in twenty-plus years. Three Cups in the next fifteen or more. Even in my wildest dreams I was looking at eleven years of disappointment and heartbreak. It would take a lot of woman to sign up for that ride. While I was thinking about Evie being strong and fearless, she dug her arms in an squeezed hard around my middle.

“Mmm, little spoon,” she said.

“I like it,” I admitted.

Her hand was barely halfway across my stomach though her arm was stretched to full length. “Everybody likes to be the little spoon.”
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