Parental Guidance (Ice Knights #1)(40)

“I brought you a present.” He handed over the plastic bag.

She pulled out a Baby Ruth and the wine. Since he knew next to nothing about wine, he’d picked the label more than the bottle, but he must have done okay judging by the happy sigh she let out. Shit. He was in trouble. If Blackburn could see him now, the only thing the captain would say was told you so.

“Okay,” Zara said, stepping back and giving him room to enter. “You’re allowed in.”

He made it all of three steps in before Anchovy loped over and helpfully lifted Caleb’s hand with his head.

“You want a pet, huh?” Caleb delivered that and then reached in the bag Zara still held, pulling out a tennis ball with the Ice Knights logo on it. “Figured you might want a smaller one every once in a while, too.”

Anchovy woofed his approval, took the ball from his palm, and then trotted off to the part of Zara’s studio designated as a workspace. The dog lay down on a blanket under a table covered with miniature furniture and books.

The candy bar wrapper crinkled as Zara tore it open. “You’ve made a friend for life.”

“Does that mean I can stay for a while?” That tight sense of anticipation made his nerves vibrate as she looked him up and down.

“Okay, but I’m invoking the rule that I don’t have to pretend to be in a good mood.”

He kept the victory grin off his face. “Works for me.”

Two hours later and the fast-cars-and-loud-explosions movie was winding down while they sat next to each other on the couch. The bottle of wine was half empty, three crumpled-up candy bar wrappers sat in the middle of the coffee table, and Zara was tucked in against him. The team plane took off for Toronto at O-dark-hundred in the morning and he still had to pack, but he wasn’t ready to go.

As the credits rolled faster than his brain could process the jumping letters, he let his eyes droop closed. This was what had happened last time. Just the no-pressure ease of sitting there together had lulled him into the kind of super-relaxed state that he usually only experienced after a hard-fought win. It was the kind of feeling that sank deep into his bones, melting away everything else until there was only the good of that moment. That’s what it was like sitting on the couch with Zara. It made absolutely no sense, but there it was. However, unlike last time, he wasn’t going to crash out, not when they had to stop pretending that nothing had happened.

“Are we going to talk about what happened the other day?” he asked, the words out of his mouth before his brain had time to think better.

“You mean when you gave me my first non-solo orgasm ever.” Zara’s eyes rounded as she whirled around to face him, slapping her hand over her mouth in horror.

Caleb could practically smell the smoke from the sizzle of his brain exploding.

First.

Non-solo.

Orgasm.

What in the hell?

She dropped her hand to her lap and looked up at the ceiling, her eyes squeezed shut. “Ignore that. I did not say it. You did not hear anything. Fuck.”

Yeah. That was not gonna happen. How in the world had she never— Ohhhhhhhh. Okay, this was a first for him since he’d lost his own V card.

“It’s no big deal,” he said, working to keep his tone neutral. “Being a virgin is cool.”

Her responding groan of misery was loud enough to wake up Anchovy, who had been asleep on the floor using his new tennis ball as a doggie chin pillow.

“No,” she said, fanning her face with her hands, but the movement didn’t do anything to lessen the redness of her cheeks. “I’m not a virgin, and no, there is nothing wrong with being a virgin. I just don’t happen to be one.”

Caleb pivoted on the couch so that instead of sitting side by side, he was facing her. “And none of the people you’ve been with have helped you get there before?”

She shrugged. What a bunch of sad-sack losers. He wanted to go out and find every single one of them and smack them upside the head. How could they have done that to her—left her wanting—when there was nothing better than watching her come? It wasn’t necessary for him to close his eyes to picture how she’d tossed her head back, arching her body in ecstasy above him. He wouldn’t be forgetting it anytime soon. In fact, he couldn’t wait to see it again.

He sat up straighter, pride puffing out his chest. “But I helped you come.”

Egotistical ass? Him? Well, fuck yeah, he’d helped her get where all the rest of those assholes had failed to go.

“Yes.” Opening her eyes, she shook her head and let out a sigh. “It’s probably just because I was half awake.”

Not his technique? Not even a little? He let out a grunt of protest.

“Sorry, what I mean is that we agreed that this”—she gestured between them—“is a temporary arrangement and not a relationship, so there’s no pressure. Sex can just be sex. I don’t have to think about how it will impact anything once we have our clothes on.”

Pride pricked, he turned that over in his head for a minute. Sex for him had always been about wet friction and hard orgasms for all involved—but not for Zara, and that made him want to beat the crap out of all her old boyfriends again.

“What a bunch of selfish assholes,” he muttered. “You wanna give me names and I’ll go pay them a visit?”