Delayed Penalty (Crossing the Line, #1)(55)

I said what my eighteen-year-old brain wanted. I wanted Evan.

"Have sex with me," I said with sudden boldness.

He pulled back away from my lips, smiled sweetly, avoiding my eyes. "Don't say that…" He placed a cool finger to my lips. His eyes were on fire, his cheeks flushed, and that calm demeanor was slowly fracturing.

"Please."

I closed my eyes, doing my best to listen to him and calm myself down, but damn he had ways without trying. Callie was right.

My hand slightly trembled and between my legs was an entirely different story. I could feel him there, hard, wanting what he wouldn't give into. I pressed my knees together, suppressing the urge to groan out in frustration.

"Evan…" I whispered.

He looked up at me, sweeping his eyes from my exposed breasts to my eyes. They were hooded and begging.

"We can't do this in here, Ami," he whispered. He laughed, too, softly, the sound shaking my own chest with how close we were pressed together. "I know it's hard for you, but you're young and went through something horrible. I can't take that from you."

"I'm—"

"Shhh." Evan moved, trying to set me on my feet, but I wouldn't let go. He touched my thigh, my knee, and then my calf, trying to get me to let go. I wouldn't. He shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "This is where I try to be a f*cking gentleman and tell you that we have plenty of time for this shit later, right?"

I smiled, not knowing what to say. Somehow we had moved away from the boards. Evan held me securely around him.

"Come on, Ami. Tell me to be a gentleman, please." He looked scared that I was about to tell him not to. I hated the fact that he was so hung up on my age. I was only three years younger than him. That wasn't that big of a difference. He groaned when I didn't answer, and he jostled me around and then slammed me up against the boards again. A deafening boom sounded through the arena, followed by both of us panting. His eyes searched mine. His hands moved desperately over my body, everywhere he could. One second his hands were on my hips, assisting in him grinding against me, and then they were back to my face, guiding his mouth and mine together. His mouth, gasping, aching as badly as mine, moved from one spot to the next, searching for relief. He tried to pull back more than once, only to crash right back to me, every time letting me know this was a struggle for him. He may have been trying to do the right thing, but his body had other ideas, just like mine.

Evan was shaking, trying to hold back, when he removed his mouth from mine, gasping. "Tell me to be a gentleman and not take this from you here. Please."

The problem was that I wanted Evan to take this from me, I did. When a girl was raped, it didn't matter if she remembered, if she knew that she was raped, there's still a sense of control and power that'd been taken from you. Intimacy is something you give to someone else, not something that should be taken. For me, I wanted that control back. I wanted to choose who I was with and how intimate I was with them. For me, that was Evan.

I knew Evan had stronger feelings surrounding what happened to me because he remembered. He was the one that saw firsthand what I went through. That wasn't easy on him, and for that reason, I knew I couldn't push this with him. I may not remember, but Evan, his memory was enough for the both of us.

"Be a gentleman." I smiled, not wanting to push the issue.

He sighed in relief, dropping my legs completely and skating a few steps back. Steadying myself against the boards, I adjusted my bra that he'd handed back to me.

He seemed agitated and annoyed as he tried to gather clothing that had been shed on the ice. He picked up his shirt first and then his compression pants and my shirt that were together by the goal before skating toward me.

Evan was right. We did have time. But then there was a good part of me that knew that we might not have time. Andrew and Leslie didn't. What if Evan and I weren't any different? What if Evan was killed tomorrow? What if on the way home we died in a car crash. Those what ifs were sometimes overwhelming.

I had an ache for something. I had an ache to belong to someone again. I grew up loving Josh. At the time, I loved him for what he was to me. Josh was my high school sweetheart. With Evan it was different. I felt different emotions, stronger ones, insanely intense emotions that had me forgetting those sucky parts of my life.

This feeling, with Evan, it burned in the pit of my stomach and consumed my thoughts at times. I was drawn to Evan completely and felt as if I'd known him my entire life. To me this felt right, and my age and the circumstances in which we met had nothing to do with it.

Evan must have sensed my mood change and pressed against me again, his body still warm and a nice contrast from the cold chill in the United Center.

His now warm palm, pressed to my cheek. "I'm sorry…I just can't take this from you like this."

The problem with that ache I had for him was it never stopped, and times like this, with him so close, I couldn't control it. I wanted to stop, but couldn't, and before I knew it, I was kissing him again, and he wasn't stopping.

Evan had just as much of an ache, I knew that. I saw in it the way he looked at me and the way he touched me from the very beginning.

"Fuck…" he groaned. "We have to stop, or I'm not going to." His mouth moved from my lips to my neck and then my bare shoulders, and back to my neck and lips. His air was my skin. "It'd be so easy right now. Fuck…I want you so bad right now." His hips moved again, and I knew his want was mirroring my own.