The Captain Who Ended My Brother's Career Is on My Table novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Ground Rules

She sets three rules at his condo and breaks the one about kissing while riding him on the couch, then finds cortisone vials dated every game night.

I had his T-shirt in my fist before the front door finished closing.

The condo was dark, with the lake black and moving behind a wall of windows.

Hugo stood in his own hallway, barefoot, with his shoulder strapped in the blue tape I'd put there that morning.

"Rules," I said.

"Okay."

I held up three fingers.

"One. We never talk about my brother."

"Yes."

"Two. You don't kiss me."

His eyes dropped to my mouth and came back up.

"Yes."

"Three. Your hands go where I put them and nowhere else, and you don't come until I say so."

"Yes, Vera."

"This isn't forgiveness."

"I know it isn't."

"I'm here because I want to be."

He swallowed.

"Then please."

I pulled the T-shirt over his head.

The bruise had spread down his ribs, purple and green.

Above it, on the right shoulder, my teeth had left a dark red crescent.

I laid my fingertips on it.

"You wore it."

"All day."

"Under the jersey?"

"I felt it every time I took a hit."

My stomach turned over.

I pushed him backward with two fingers in the middle of his chest, down the hall and into the living room.

His legs hit the couch and he sat.

He looked up at me with his hands open on his knees.

I took off my own clothes one piece at a time.

The sweater.

The bra.

The jeans, kicked into the dark.

He watched with his lips parted.

"Hands flat on the cushions."

He pressed them down.

I climbed onto his lap with a knee on either side of his thighs.

He was already hard, the sweatpants tented between us, and I settled my bare weight on top of it and rocked once.

He groaned through his teeth.

"Look at me."

His eyes were so green they hurt.

I got his waistband down with one hand and took him out, thick and hot and heavy in my palm.

I held him against me, slick and aching, and didn't sink down.

I dragged the head of his cock through my wetness, slowly, over my clit and back, and watched his face come apart.

"Vera."

"Quiet."

"Please."

"Beg properly."

"Please. Please let me be inside you."

The words went through me.

I rose on my knees, lined him up, and took him in one long slide.

He was big.

I felt every inch of him stretching me, filling me, until my breath caught and my eyes closed.

"God. Hugo."

"Oui." His voice shook. "Yes. Yes."

I stayed seated all the way down, shaking, with his cock throbbing deep inside me.

Then I started to move.

I rode him slow, with my hands on his shoulders, careful of the left one.

His hands stayed on the cushions, gripping the leather so hard it creaked.

Every time I came down his hips tried to lift, and every time I pressed my palm to his chest and pushed him back.

"Stay still."

"I can't."

"You can. Watch me."

He watched.

He watched my breasts move, and the place where we joined, and my face.

I found a hard rolling rhythm that dragged my clit along the base of him, and the pleasure climbed my spine in long bright waves.

"That's it. That's good. Right there."

"You're so wet." His voice was hoarse. "Mon Dieu, you feel like something I'm not allowed to have."

I leaned down and caught his lower lip in my teeth, not a kiss, a warning.

"You're allowed what I give you."

"Then give me more."

"Greedy."

"Yes."

I took his hands off the cushions.

I set them on my hips and held them there with mine.

"Now you can hold me. Don't take over."

His fingers dug in, and the whole couch shifted under us.

I rode him harder, and now he helped, lifting me and lowering me in slow heavy strokes while I kept the rhythm.

It was too good.

I felt the heat spread out from the base of my spine, and I clenched around him on purpose.

He swore in French.

"Say what you want," I breathed.

"I want you to come on me."

"Louder."

"I want you to come on my cock, Vera. I want to feel it."

I came with a cry, head thrown back, nails digging into the bruise on his ribs.

My whole body locked around him.

He made a broken sound, and still he didn't take over, and still he didn't come, his jaw shaking, his eyes squeezed shut.

I fell forward, panting, with my forehead against his.

"You're doing so well," I said, an inch from his mouth. "You haven't come."

"I want to."

"I know. Say my name."

"Vera."

It was ragged and wrecked.

He said it.

And the rule I'd made in the hallway turned to smoke.

I kissed him.

I couldn't help it.

I took his bearded face in both hands and kissed him hard, and he opened under me with a sound that was almost a sob.

His mouth was hot and slow and tasted like me.

I ground down on him through the kiss, my tongue in his mouth, and he trembled all over with holding still.

He kissed like a man who had been given one meal and meant to make it last.

"You broke a rule," he whispered into my mouth.

"I know."

"Which one?"

"Mine."

"I like it."

"Shut up and fuck me."

He lifted me.

He did it without asking, both hands under my thighs, and stood with my legs around his waist.

I felt the shoulder protest, and I felt him ignore it.

"Hugo, your arm."

"Don't care."

He turned and set my back down on the cool cushions of the couch and came down over me, and the whole room changed.

Now he had all of me under him.

He stopped there and looked, the way he had in the lamplight, and I let him.

"Touch me," I said. "You've earned your hands."

He bent his head and took my nipple into his mouth.

He sucked it slow and hard, and my back came up off the cushions.

His beard scratched the soft skin under my breast, and his free hand slid down my belly and between my legs.

Two thick fingers pushed inside me, still slick from the first time, and curled forward until I saw white.

"Oh, God. There."

"Here?"

"Right there. Don't you stop."

He worked me with his fingers and his mouth, one breast and then the other, patient as a man with all night.

His thumb found my clit and pressed in circles, and I heard myself begging.

"Hugo, please, I need you in me again."

"Say it."

"Fuck me. Fuck me, Hugo, I need your cock."

His green eyes flashed up at me over my breast.

"Yes, Doc."

He kept one hand beside my head and the other under my knee, and he pushed my leg back and drove in deep.

"Tell me where," he said, rough.

"Deeper. There."

He gave it to me.

He fucked me hard and steady, with his hips snapping and his breath ragged against my neck.

The couch slid an inch on the floor with every stroke.

I wrapped both legs around his back and pulled him deeper.

I raked my nails down the ridges of his spine.

"That's it, baby, give it to me."

"You're going to make me come."

"Not yet."

"Vera."

"Wait."

He shook his head against my throat, pleading, and held on.

I felt it build again, a hot tight coil, faster than the first.

I put my hand between us and rubbed myself in time with him.

"Look at me when I tell you."

He lifted his head.

His face was wet with sweat.

"Now," I said. "Come inside me. Now."

He came with a shout, his hips slamming into mine and his whole body going rigid.

I felt him pulse deep inside me, hot and heavy, again and again.

It tipped me over.

I came a second time with my mouth against his shoulder, biting down on the old mark until I felt him groan.

We lay there on the couch in the dark, tangled and slick, breathing like we'd skated the length of the lake.

His forehead rested on mine.

His thumb moved along my cheekbone.

"You kissed me," he whispered.

"Don't make it a thing."

"It's a thing."

I laughed, and it came out wet, and I hid my face in his neck so he couldn't see.

His hand was already moving again, slow, between my legs.

"Hugo, I can't."

"You can."

He whispered something in French against my ear, low and filthy, and I didn't understand a word of it and felt every syllable.

"What did you say?"

"I said I want to feel you come on my fingers while I'm still inside you."

"You're already inside me."

"I know. Give me a minute."

I felt him thicken and stir, still buried, and I groaned.

His thumb found my clit, swollen and raw, and pressed it in small tight circles.

"Again," he said. "Because I asked."

I rocked on him, helpless, my hands in his beard.

The third one rolled through me gently.

I cried out into his mouth and held on to his shoulders until it passed.

"Now you can stop," I said, shaking.

"I could never stop."

He grinned against my cheek, the first real grin I had ever seen on him.

After a while I peeled myself off him and went to find the bathroom.

It was white and bare, with a window onto the lake.

I washed my hands, and then, because I am who I am, I opened the medicine cabinet.

I wasn't snooping.

I was a trainer looking at a patient's shelf.

Aspirin.

Tape.

A tube of arnica.

And on the second shelf, in a neat row, a dozen small glass vials with the team doctor's label.

Cortisone.

Each one had a date written on the cap in black marker.

I read them slowly, and my skin went cold.

Every date was a game night.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend