Back on the Ice

Even as the thought crossed her mind, she felt her toes curl and a single moment of weightlessness swept over her. Then she was coming, her muffled cries swallowed by Mark and her body convulsed under his. Even with her body trembling around him, Mark maintained his steady thrusting; the only sign of reaction an increase in his breathing.

Hilary held on as he continued to rock against her. Every thrust rubbed his body against hers and made her vibrate with the remaining waves of her orgasm. She didn't know how he was managing it and wanted to tell him to hurry up. She wanted to feel him let go. He pulled his lips from hers and buried his face against her neck. The car was filled with the sounds of their heavy breathing and the slow, erotic push of their bodies together.

"Oh Christ," Mark groaned and his body jerked within her embrace.

Hilary sighed and held him close as he came. She grinned as he thrust erratically for a long moment and then was still. All that remained was the steady drumming of their hearts where they were pressed together.

"I can't believe we just did that," Mark murmured and lifted his head to look into her face.

Hilary felt heat suffuse her cheeks and nodded in reply, unable to voice her thoughts. There were just too many and they were too jumbled up to make any sense of them. For a long minute, they just stared into each other's eyes. Hilary melted under his soft gaze and felt her heart stutter when a gentle smile curved his full lips.

"Can you forgive me?" he asked.

"Forgive you?" she replied and shook her head, trying to clear it. He was still inside of her, and she could still feel the lingering pulse of their lovemaking deep inside her body. "For what?"

He opened his mouth to reply but a nearby car beeped as someone activated the keyless entry. Hilary froze, her eyes going wide as the reality of their situation sank back in. Mark shushed her with a finger over her lips; as if she was going to say anything to alert anyone to their presence. Footsteps sounded very close to them and then a car door opened and closed. The engine started and fired as the car moved away, fading into an echo as it left the parking garage.

"I can't believe we did this," Hilary managed to say, her voice coming out as little more than a squeak.

Mark chuckled and nodded his agreement. He shifted, separating their bodies and carefully pulling her clothes back together for her. An unexpected knot formed in her stomach at his gentle actions, and Hilary blinked against the stinging in her eyes. At every new moment, Mark surprised her and made it harder to figure out how she felt about him. The stinging, negative emotions rushed back through her as she tugged her jacket closed. Mark looked into her face for a moment, questions obvious in his gaze, but he didn't say anything. It was like he sensed she wasn't ready to explain and he let it go, straightening his own pants instead.

A minute later, he gestured at her to stay down while he lifted his head up to look around outside the car. "It's all right," he said. "There's no one around."

Still blushing and more confused than ever, Hilary sat up and ran a hand through her tangled hair. Mark met her eyes and grinned, causing her blush to spread. He leaned forward to steal a kiss before he opened the door and climbed out. He held a hand out towards her and helped her out. They got into the front seat, like normal people who hadn't just dissolved in a fit of passion in the back seat. A few minutes later, they were on their way to his place.

***

Later, in his bed, Mark made love to her like he'd wanted to, like she deserved. He didn't know what had come over him back at Verizon Center. He couldn't believe he'd taken her in the middle of the parking garage. Even more surprising was the fact that she'd allowed it. In the back of his mind, he supposed it might have been his way of claiming her before he had to leave town. She deserved better than that.

On the drive back to his place, he mentally slapped himself upside the head and kicked himself in the ass. Hilary wasn't like other women and he'd just treated her like a common tart. However willing she might have been, he could do better. He wanted to do better for her.

So once they got back to his place, he gathered her into his arms without a word and took her to his bed. She melted into his embrace, just as easily as she had when they'd been at the arena. Mark undressed her and laid her on his bed, caressing her all over until she was moaning with pleasure. He loved listening to her, and hearing her stifling her cries in the back seat of his car had nearly done him in earlier. It had been a miracle he'd lasted as long as he had.

Now, the memory faded as he undressed himself and knelt between her thighs. He drove her mad with his fingers and tongue before sliding his aching cock inside her. She clung to his shoulders, arching off the bed and exposing her beautiful, flushed throat to him. He kissed her, dragging his tongue over her skin until their lips met again in a passionate kiss.

Much later, after they were both sweaty and exhausted, Mark wanted to talk to her. He wanted to talk about his road trip and what it would mean to their relationship now that he was heading back into the lineup. Neither of them were in the right frame of mind for the discussion ,and when Hilary curled up against his side with a satisfied sigh, Mark decided it could wait.

***

Sometime during the night, he stirred. He reached one arm out, instinctively searching for the warm body and felt nothing but cool sheets. Lifting his head, he stared around the dim bedroom and frowned when he saw no sign of Hilary. He pushed the covers back and searched blindly on the floor until he located his underwear. Standing up, he pulled the boxers on and walked out of the room to look for Hilary.

He didn't have to go far; she was stretched out on his couch, watching TV with the sound very low. "Hey," he greeted her and lifted her legs up to sit down. She was wearing her Capitals T-shirt and nothing else, making him hard in an instant.

"Hey," she replied and smiled. "Did I wake you?"

He shook his head as he settled with her legs in his lap. She shivered as he ran his palms up and down her legs, stopping with his fingers caressing the backs of her knees. "No," he answered. "I just woke up to find you gone."

"Sorry," she murmured and rested her head back on the arm rest. "I couldn't sleep."

"Everything all right?" he asked, telling himself that he had to listen to her response and not think about sliding his hands between her luscious thighs. He glanced up to see her shrug. The smile was still on her face and her eyes looked sleepy.

"Well, why don't you come back to bed and I'll help you get to sleep?" he suggested, sliding one of his hands further up the back of her thigh as he watched her face.

Her eyes drifted shut and she sighed. Mark licked his lips and eased his fingers around her thigh until he felt her damp curls.

"Haven't you had enough?" she asked, opening her eyes to give him a playful look.

Mark shook his head, caressing her as he watched her face. "I can't get enough of you," he replied and it was the truth.

Her expression changed, the playfulness disappeared and she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. Mark smiled, drawing his fingers from between her legs and rubbing his palm over her soft hip instead.

"Tell me what's wrong," he urged, wanting to make her feel better, and not just so he could take her to bed again.

"It's silly."

Lifting his eyebrows, Mark smiled. "If it's keeping you up at night, it's not silly."

Hilary managed a weak smile and she struggled to lift herself up. Mark held onto her, pulling her into his lap and holding her around the waist when she tried to move to sit beside him. He pressed a soft kiss to her lips, her cheek, and the hollow of her throat before meeting her eyes again.

"Talk to me," he murmured.

He felt her relax against him and grinned at the tiny victory. Bit by bit, she changing from the abrupt and prickly Hilary he'd first met, and every time she relaxed with him, he felt the success deep in his bones.

"I'm worried," she began and stopped.

"About what?" he prompted, lifting a hand to brush her silky blond hair over her shoulder. He wanted to kiss the skin he'd just exposed but he waited to listen to her response.

"You're leaving tomorrow," she confessed and his eyes went back to her face.

"I'm not leaving for war, Hilary," he said with a smile. "I can talk on the phone and I'll be back in a few days."

"I know," she replied, her eyelashes dropping low over her blue eyes. "We've just... this isn't a normal relationship."

Mark's eyebrows went up and his smile grew wider. "Isn't it? I guess most people don't have it this good, but we're far from being unique."

She shoved him, a smile curving her lips up at the corners. "You know what I mean. You aren't around like normal boyfriends."

"That's true," he agreed. The life he led didn't make it easy to maintain a steady relationship. So far, he'd kept himself limited to casual dating but he wanted more from Hilary. He thought she knew that, but from the way she was speaking now, he wondered if she did.

"I don't want you to think I don't want you to have a good time on the road," she said. "I know how excited you are to be traveling with the team again."

"Yeah?" Mark replied, unsure where she was going with this.

"It can't be easy trying to stay in touch while you're traveling," she added and glanced up at him.

He looked back and forth between her eyes, trying to figure her out. She sounded nervous, a rare tone from her; more than anything, she usually sounded sharp. Listening to her now, sharing with him like this gave him a strange mixed feeling of happiness and wariness. "I will call you, Hilary," he said at last. "I don't want to lose touch with you over the next nine days."

She didn't say anything, just looked into his eyes for a moment before turning her face away. "I know how... tempting it can be," she whispered. "On the road, with all the... women..." she let her sentence trail off but Mark knew what she was saying and he couldn't for the life of him figure out why she would think that about him.

"I'm not going to sleep with anyone else while I'm gone, Hilary," he said, perhaps a touch sharper than he'd intended.

She kept quiet again, biting her lower lip and keeping her eyes averted. Clenching his jaw, Mark reached up and cupped her chin in his hand, turning her to face him.

"Hilary," he whispered her name. "I wouldn't do that to you. Haven't you figured that out by now?"

Shrugging, she met his eyes. "You haven't gone away yet," she replied. "We've been together almost every day since we met and we don't know what it'll be like with you on the road."

"I'm not going to cheat on you, if that's what you think."

"I don't," she said quickly.

"Then why are you even bringing it up? What made you think that?"

Hilary opened her mouth to reply then snapped it shut, a blush staining her cheeks as she shook her head.

"Hilary, come on," Mark urged. "I don't understand. You have to explain this to me so I can make it right."

He guessed he'd chosen the right words because the hint of a smile came back to her face.

"I never told you about my ex-boyfriend," she said in a soft tone.

Mark's eyebrows shot up and he shook his head, never taking his eyes from Hilary's face. An ex-boyfriend, he thought. So some asshole cheated on her and she hasn't trusted anyone since. That would sure explain a lot. Out loud, he said, "What about him?"

"You don't want to know," she replied with a frustrated sigh. She shifted on his lap and he thought she might be trying to get up. He wouldn't let her go. He hadn't come this far, and tried this hard with her, to give up now.

"I want to know everything about you, Hilary," he whispered and moved his hand to cup the back of her head as he kissed her. He teased her lips with his tongue and squeezed her waist as he pulled her closer.

"You're definitely not what I thought you'd be," she whispered when he pulled back.

"No? What were you expecting?" he asked with a smirk, even though they'd had this conversation before. In the past, she'd told him she'd thought he'd be more arrogant, cocky and even a snob.

Now she smiled at him and touched his cheek as she leaned close for a kiss. "I thought you'd have given up on me by now," she told him.

"Why?" he asked with a chuckle.

"I haven't exactly been easy to get along with. I don't understand why you still like me."

"Neither do I," he confessed and laughed when she poked him in the ribs, hard. "I'm just kidding." Reaching up with both hands now, he brushed her hair over her shoulders and cupped her face in his hands. She smiled so sweetly at him, looking so apprehensive, that he felt a pull deep in his stomach. "I've never been one to back down from a challenge."

Her eyebrows lifted and a wry smile spread across her face. "I'm a challenge? Is that all you see me as? Like a... a... like a game seven away from home?"

He laughed and shook his head, drawing her close so he could kiss her. "You're much more difficult to crack than that," he replied. "I mean it, Hil. I want to know everything about you." He paused to brush their lips together. "So start with the loser you mentioned before."

Sighing heavily, Hilary put her hands on his shoulders and met his steady gaze. "It wasn't just one guy."

"You were dating multiple men?" he asked incredulously.

She smacked him on the arm this time and he laughed until she started squirming in his lap. Dropping his hands, he grasped her hips to hold her still, determined to focus on her words and not how warm she felt against his body.

"I wasn't dating more than one guy at a time," she clarified in a haughty tone. "What I meant was, I wasn't... screwed over by just one guy. It was several."

In a slow and halting voice, she told him about her romantic past. The guy in high school who'd only been seeing her for help with his homework. The jerk at summer camp who'd had a bet with his friends to see if she was a natural blond. The numerous guys between adolescence and adulthood who'd never followed through on different occasions and lastly the guy who'd left her for a younger woman he'd knocked up.

Mark listened patiently, feeling stranger and stranger the longer she spoke. He couldn't explain the burning sensation in his gut and he didn't understand the tension he felt sinking into his shoulders. Hilary was still warm and naked beneath the T-shirt, and he was still throbbing for more than just her sitting in his lap. Something kept him from laying her down on the couch and making her forget all about those other dumbasses.

"So you're afraid I'm going to treat you like every other guy in your life?" he summarized when she fell silent.

A guilty blush spread across her cheeks but she didn't back down from his direct question. She nodded and met his gaze head-on.

"That can't be all," he murmured, frowning now. He sensed that she was still holding something back. She'd shared a lot with him just now, more than she had in all the days since they'd first met, but he still had the feeling that there was something missing.

"We don't need to rehash my sad boyfriend history, Mark," she whispered. "I think I want to forget about them and move on."

"But you aren't," he replied. "Moving on, I mean. You're... abrupt and bad-tempered more than you're in a good mood when we're together. I've been patient, Hil, because I want to know you but you're still not letting me in."

"What do you want me to do, Mark?" she demanded, dropping her hands from his shoulders and pulling away. "This is who I am. I'm not pretending to be anything or anyone else and this still isn't good enough for you?"

"It's not good enough because it's not you," he replied and she scrambled off his lap, leaving him feeling cold.

"We've only known each other a few weeks," she said. "You think you know me, but you don't."

"I've been asking you all along to tell me!" Mark snapped, feeling frustrated. He didn't want to yell at her or fight but she was deliberately keeping parts of herself closed off. Maybe it was early in their relationship, but they'd skipped a lot of the preliminaries when they'd first hooked up.

"What if I don't want to?" she threw back at him. "You seem like a nice guy but what do I really know about you?" she demanded and stood up with her hands on her hips. "You're a hockey player who twisted his ankle four weeks ago. That's it."

"You know more about me than that," he replied, not liking how she was turning this around on him.

"Like what?" she asked with a harsh laugh. "I don't know what you're like on the road, or how you are in a relationship while you're traveling with the team. We haven't got to that part yet and I've got to say, you're not filling me with a lot of confidence here, Mark."

Huffing out an annoyed breath, Mark stood up and moved away, pacing his living room floor as he ran his fingers through his sleep-mussed hair. "Look," he said, holding his hands out towards Hilary. "I think this is all going in the wrong direction."

"What is? Our relationship?"

"No, of course not. I just mean right now, this conversation. I never intended to upset you," he replied.

"Well, you're been doing a bang up job of it," Hilary commented sarcastically as she crossed her arms over her chest.

He scowled at her. She met his look with a narrow one of her own and for a long moment, neither of them said anything.

"Maybe we just need a break," he suggested. "Let's go back to bed and sleep on it. We can talk in the morning."

She shook her head and walked past him.

"Hilary, come on." Mark followed after her as she stalked to the bedroom. "I don't want to fight. We need to talk about this."

"I'm done talking," she replied as she shoved her feet through her pant legs.

"Don't be like that. I just think we need to get some sleep and talk tomorrow."

"You're gone tomorrow!" she exploded, grabbing her underwear and bra from the floor and whirling on him. Her beautiful blue eyes were cold and snapping with anger. "We can't talk about this in the morning!"

Mark reached for her to try to stop her again but she dodged his grasp, running from the bedroom. He hurried down the hall after her, still pleading with her to calm down and talk to him.

"I can't do this anymore, Mark," she replied as she yanked her jacket on. "I thought I could but I just can't."

"Can't do what?" he asked, his stomach dropping at the resignation in her tone. He didn't like how this was happening. He'd been frustrated minutes ago but now he was fighting the urge to fall to his knees and beg her to stay. His pride wouldn't allow him to; that and the fact that he didn't think he'd been asking too much of her to share her thoughts with him. "You can't talk to me? We always talk."

Hilary shook her head and when she met his eyes, there were tears in hers. He swallowed and reached for her again. This time she let him pull her close but she turned her face away when he tried to kiss her. It felt like he'd been sucker-punched.

"Us, Mark," she murmured and pushed his hands away. "I can't do... us. I'm sorry." She turned and stepped into her shoes, opening the door at the same time.

Mark stood there staring out into his hallway as she walked away. He couldn't believe it had come to this. "Hilary!" he called, darting out his door. She was already down at the far end, but his cry made her jump and turn around. "I'm going to call you tomorrow."

She stared at him but said nothing before turning away and leaving. Mark sighed heavily and shut the door, locking himself inside his lonely apartment.