Chapter 37

“We’ll talk more, later, after the game. I promise,” he continued, his cheek resting against the top of her head, his arms still wrapped, vice-like around her.

“It’ll have to be your place,” Mya sighed as he finally unwound himself from around her and stepped back. “Paying my heat and electric bills weren’t exactly on my priority list,” she added with a shrug and a meek smile that he returned with a grin as he reached out to brush a strand of hair from her cheek where it had no doubt become stuck in the tracks of her tears.

“I’ll take care of it,” he offered, ever the magnanimous good Canadian kid with the heart of gold. “It’s the least I can do,” he quickly added before she had a chance to complain. “Considering...,” he added, his voice turning soft as his hand cupped her cheek. “You have keys. Go to my place, let yourself in. Get warm. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Mya nodded though she felt her cheeks heat as his adoring and indulgent gaze began to work its magic and turn her knees to honey. “I’m just glad you came home,” he added, leaning in to press his lips once more to the spot on her brow between her eyes.

Mya allowed herself to lean into him once again, finding the familiar heat of his body and the scent of well worn hockey gear, mingled with sweat and mildew oddly comforting. Her solace only lasted another minute or so before they could both hear the shuffle of bodies in the hallway, the familiar banter of ‘let’s go boys’ and ‘let’s do this’ indicating that the line up before the team took the ice for the anthems had already begun.

“You have to go,” she whispered, turning her face up to his to find his eyes closed and a dreamy smile on his face that seemed to say he too had been luxuriating in the nearness of her.

“I know,” he sighed, once, heaving his shoulders before he opened his eyes and looked down at her. “I love you My. You do know that don’t you?” he asked, suddenly deadly serious. She nodded, blinking back tears. This time they were tears of relief; maybe even tears of joy. He nodded once, as if to assure himself of this, and then he turned and bent to pick up his discarded gloves and stick, turning back only once as he walked through the doorway.

Mya merely stood where she was and watched him go before wiping away her tears, squaring her shoulders and heading out into the hallway herself, turning to go the other way, towards the exit telling herself that the last thing she wanted to do was distract him further.

“Mya.”

She turned at the sound of her name, knowing full well it wasn’t Sidney calling after her. Though he was always one of the last of the Pens players to hit the ice, the line had already begun to shuffle down the short walk way underneath the stands and she knew that once he had joined his teammates Sidney would never look back.

“Kristopher,” she smiled, finding herself face to face with the long haired defenseman who was standing in the hall, his jersey half tucked in, his hair dishevelled, his helmet in one hand, his gloves and stick in the other.

“So...you’re back?” he asked quietly with a quick, furtive look around to see who might be overhearing their conversation.

“I think so,” she shrugged, glancing towards the dark corridor and then back at his young, troubled face. “Thank you, by the way, for the flowers...and the card. At least I knew someone cared,” she added, giving him a smile that she hoped was as sincere as her words were. The delivery had been an unexpected surprise but a welcome one. “And I’m sorry about the wedding. Do I owe you anything for renting a tux or...?” His quizzical expression made the words dry up in her mouth and Mya found herself staring at a man who wasn’t just passing the time of day.

“I was worried for you, we all were,” Kris assured her seriously, his dark gaze searching hers before he too turned to gaze towards the dark hall down which the rest of his teammates had already disappeared. Mya sincerely hoped he wasn’t supposed to be in the starting line up out on the ice. “He’s been miserable,” he added, turning back to her with a sly grin that was more like the witty young Francophone she’d known, “and I don’t just mean his stats.” Mya could only nod, her voice caught beneath a ball of emotion in her throat. She wondered if it would always be like this between them, strained and yet...sweet. “He loves you, he really does,” Kris added softly, dropping his gaze shyly from hers’ for one long moment before he turned those dark chocolate eyes up to hold hers’ captive. “If he didn’t...I would have killed him for what he did.”

Kris didn’t wait for her to respond, he only leaned forward and pressed his lips briefly but insistently against hers’ before turning and heading down the hall, pressing his helmet down over his head and disappearing from her view.

____________________________________________________

He stood at the end of the bed, watching over her sleeping form, thinking to himself that all was right with the world. His scoring draught was over and his woman was in his bed. He’d been longer than he’d have liked after the game but after a five game losing streak and an even longer streak of mumbling three word answers to the press, he’d felt he’d owed them something so he’d stayed until the bitter end.

He didn’t mind one bit that Mya had decided to slip into one of his t-shirts and curl up and go to sleep. A fuzzy, happy sort of warmth spread through his gut and chest at the idea of her feeling at home enough to do so.

That or she was just that knackered and had passed out from sheer exhaustion. Sidney knew how hard it had been for him to be without her but then she’d had so much more than him to worry about, he thought as he sat down on the edge of the bed to tug off his socks. The baby hadn’t really felt real to him, not yet. He hadn’t felt it move, hadn’t felt it kick. It was an idea, an exciting, exhilarating idea, but no more than a concept. Not to him anyway. To her...Sidney turned look down at his sleeping girlfriend and the sheets tugged away from her torso.

She was lying on her side, facing away from him. She was wearing one of his grey t-shirts, the one from the last years run to the cup and a pair of his boxer shorts, both too big for her so that the t-shirt rode up and the boxers had slipped down, leaving the small of her back bare. His breath caught in his throat, the memory of the fine, lace-like spider web pattern that had been in the same place on Randi’s back stealing his breath. But this was not like that. This was small and dainty and it stole his breath in an entirely different way.

It was a tiny pair of angel’s wings on either side of a golden halo. Inside the halo was a date. Sidney’s hand wavered in the air above the small of her back, not wanting to wake her and at the same time, wanting very much to run his fingertips over that date the way he always ran his fingertips over Randi’s name on the marker on her grave.

That was all they’d ever have, he thought as he gently traced the halo with the tip of his finger. There would be other chances, he knew, and children, he felt sure of that. But this had been their first.

Tears sprang to his eyes for the first time since it happened. He hadn’t ever really cried about it. It hadn’t seemed real enough, not present enough to grieve over. But this...this drawing, etched in the back of the woman he loved brought it home and crashing down all around him.

Mya sighed in her sleep and brought her knees up but didn’t wake. Sidney wiped at his tears and shook his head at himself. He’d almost lost her. Everything happened for a reason, that’s what Natalie had kept saying to him and he believed it. He’d loved and lost Randi so that he would know love when he felt it again. He’d lost her so that he would know he didn’t want to lose anyone that close to him every again and he’d almost done it anyway. He’d been an incredible ass. He’d been thinking so much about himself, been trying so hard to protect his own feelings he hadn’t been able to see hers at all.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, bending to press his lips to the tiny halo decorating the small of her back. She made a small humming noise but didn’t wake, so Sidney pressed his lips to each wing in turn and then began to kiss his way up her spine, pushing the thick cotton of his own t-shirt up by inches as he did so.

He knew when she woke, when her warm, languid body went rigid, just for a moment and then she scooted back towards him and Sidney couldn’t help but smile as he slid his hands around to cup her heavy breasts as he laid another kiss between her shoulder blades.

She could have tortured him, he knew as she pressed her round ass against him. She could have made him grovel, made him beg and he’d have done it. She could have kept her distance and he would have respected that. He would have allowed her the space and waited until she was ready, but that wasn’t Mya. When she gave, she gave everything and held nothing back. When she loved, she didn’t hide away pieces of herself. She didn’t pretend and hide behind a facade. It had been that way from the very first. It had been part of the immediate attraction he realized now as rolled her nipples between his thumb and forefinger and listened to her whimper. She’d never pretended to be anyone or anything other than who she was and she never failed to give him less than one hundred per cent of herself.

“God I missed you,” he whispered into her ear, his lips brushing through her floral scented hair as he slid his hand down over her hip, over her warm, smooth skin and down into his boxer shorts. She gasped as his fingers slid between into the soft velvet of her wet cleft. Her back arched, her head thrown back to rest on his shoulder as his fingers found the hard little pearl within her folds that made her entire body shiver when he touched it. “Do you want me?” he asked, half afraid her answer would be no. He told himself not to be disappointed if she did refuse him, though his mind had already raced ahead and he could nearly feel the hot wet heat that would engulf him and his body ached with the need to become one with her.

“Yessss,” she hissed, her arm snaking back over his to brush the front of his suit pants, making his cock twitch uncomfortably in the confines of the briefs he was wearing. “Take me, hard, now,” she insisted in a hoarse whisper, her hand sliding over his hip so that her fingers could dig into the meat of his ass, pressing him closer. “Just...you have protection right?” she asked in a smaller voice, reason taking hold as he slid away from her to drag his pants down over his hips. She turned then to look up at him where he kneeled above her, pain making her eyes bright in the dark. “I just...I don’t want to go through that again. At least...,” she glanced away from him, hiding her face from his. “At least not until we’re sure about...about things.”

__________________________________________________

Mya could feel him staring at her and the silence grew between them until it was so heavy and so present it felt like a great iron wall had grown in the few inches between them on the mattress. She was holding her breath, waiting for his reply. Her heart was racing and not from his touch, although that had done its work as well.

Would he be angry to be reminded of his cowardice? Would he be hurt? Would he turn from her now and the pain start all over again?

It was only as his strong, solid and warm body curled around hers and his arms pulled her close that Mya allowed herself to breathe again. The width of his chest pressed tightly to her back and his thickly muscled leg even wrapped around hers as he molded his body to hers.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, his breath warm against her cheek as his cheek rested against hers. “I understand if you don’t trust me. I’ll earn it again My. I’ll make you see how much you mean to me,” he promised, pressing his lips against her neck. “I’ll make it up to you. You’ll see. I promise, you’ll see.”

She felt tears welling in her eyes and squeezed her eyes shut, willing them back. Now was not the time to cry, to allow herself to fall apart. Now he needed the reassurance of her body as much as she needed the safety of his arms.

Not trusting herself to speak, Mya only reached for the drawer on the bedside table and dug around in it until her fingers found the smooth cello packs with their hard little rings and pulled one out, reaching back blindly to hand it to him. She listened to him fight with it, a little smile tugging at the corners of her lips as he swore under his breath once, twice before he managed to tear the packet open.

Then he pressed her down into the mattress and the pillows, face down, his hands digging almost painfully into her hips as he pushed his way inside of her. Mya’s fingers dug into the sheets, scratched at the headboard as he pulled her hips back, his pelvis pressing into her ass he pounded his body into hers’, filling her, reaching deep inside of her, pushing the air out of her lungs so that all that she could do was open her mouth and howl soundlessly.