"Ahhhhhhhhhhh" the pulsing rushes of water hammered at his body. Over the deceiving purr of the motor, he could hear the agony of his chilled to the bone muscles weeping in gratitude.
Instant relief! He was in good shape from the academy training but damn, life on a hockey pond in Alaska tended to leave one a tad bit achy. It was an ache he preferred. After all the training and hard work of preparation to take over the mantle of Baylor public servant tradition, there was still nothing that gripped his heart and his guts like the playing of hockey.
That gut gripping need was why Kinetka Tok called to him so loudly this one last season. His last hurrah. His last year of sheer, ballsy, body checked, high sticking joy. Next year, he'd turn the sticks over for a badge and a billy club. And though Deerling wasn't exactly on the top 100 dangerous places to live, if he was going to ever have to club something, he'd rather it be an opponent's goalie. If anyone was ever going to end up incarcerated for shooting a weapon, he'd rather it be him ending up in the penalty box after a well shot puck. And if he was ever going to walk a beat, he'd rather it be as kick ass coach, not a kick butt cop.
He'd put the academy off for as long as family pressure would allow. Time to be *a man*, time to step up to the time honored family tradition of being a cop. Time to forget life-long dreams of black-ice glory. But he could think about that tomorrow.
As his muscles released their death grip on his bones, he slid down to let the spurting jets of hot water assault his body. But it wasn't just his walking muscles that ached. Damned that Tiger Lil! Why was she so fucking different than all of the other women he had encountered so far? Why couldn't she be like the rest of the fawning resort crowd ... holding him at arms distance with their upper class arrogance but molesting him with their eyes. They were easy to stay away from. He only needed to be civil.
Even the rest of the park staff women constantly kept their distance ... admiring his athleticism but somewhat disdainful of his rural Deerling upbringing. No one wanted to get involved with a transient man heading back to a small town existence with even less glamorous potential. They wanted someone who would take them out of the frozen tundra, not winter them in for life! Most of the females his age still were searching for a ticket out of small town. Or simply a ticket to ride.
So why had Lilly let him in? Why when there were far more appealing specimens available, would a mildly older, pretty, experienced, divorced, totally self sufficient woman want to have raging hot fuck and an ice cream battle with a younger, scruffy, sport obsessed wannabe going nowhere but back to his roots? He wasn't smooth or chiseled or the least bit socialized. A playtoy? A belt notch? And why was the thought of being those things to her sending an unmistakably exciting prickly message down his sticky chest and into the core of his loins?
The tingling in his gut grew stronger as he envisioned his hands back on those legs, slowly moving up her inviting flesh, coming to rest on her waist.
As the massaging bubbles worked their magic on his tensed muscles, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, sighing. Her waist! The soft curve where hip rounded, the gentle dip where a muscle flattened abdomen became soft yielding woman. John's mind explored her body's hollows and peaks with a steady pressure of his palm. In his minds eye, they were back on the island in the kitchen. He moved his hands to her back, stroking up and down her spine, cupping her sassy ass that drove him to distraction when she flounced away from him in disgust. And all through this dreaming exploration, Lilly simply smiled. A lovely, knowing woman's smile across her beautiful life-weathered face.
John envisioned that face as if she stood before him. The diamond eyes, crinkling as she smiled wickedly, thirty some years of life etched along her brow and manifested in the charming laugh lines playing at her lips. Lips he craved to taste. Lioness hair to tangle in his fists. He imagined the resistance she so readily flung at him melting away and her leaning forward to mold her body to his, arching her head back, exposing the whiteness of her throat to float within inches of his mouth ... waiting ... inviting....
Urges usually suppressed came racing forward and a small moan escaped from his throat.
John slightly opened his mouth and could almost feel himself press his mouth to her neck ... and at the same instant a splash of water smacked him directly in the face.
He sputtered and shook his head to clear his mind. What the ... ?
Lilly shook the water from her hand that she had just scooped across the surface of the Jacuzzi. She shifted her weight onto one hip and brushed off imaginary lint from the gym shorts and tank top she had changed into after her quick shower. In the other hand she held a glass of ice in water, took a long, slow slurp, smacked her lips and smirked.
"Sorry, did I interrupt a good one? Pity ... by the way John, spa policy is that you shower and strip before using the hot tub. More sanitary "she winked."But don't worry; I can wait till you're done."
John squinted up from dangerously half closed eyes, wiping the water off his face.
Lilly smiled lazily and stretched her neck to the side rubbing her hand over her throat and down over her chest, arching her head back, not unaware of the havoc her stretching created between John's thighs.
He purposefully pulled himself out of the warm bubbly, not the least interested in suppressing the male vibrations banging through his nerves. The damn little tease!
"Why wait?"
Lilly wasn't sure she had heard the words, so smoothly were they uttered. John reached a hand out and plucked the glass from her grasp, putting it on the Jacuzzi deck.
"HEY" she caught John's devilish expression the instant his hands gripped her arms and had no time to shift her weight as she was unceremoniously pulled up and into the tub.
)
Hideaways. They're perfect until you bump into someone with just as much to hide. Lilly Canavan, leaving behind her failed marriage and broken life in Chicago's three piece business suit district, flees to the frozen tundra of Alaska. Setting up a temporary life managing Body Check, a spa in the ski and ice hockey resort town of Kinetka Tok, she wants nothing more than her unobstructed independence and a warm fuzzy male body to occasionally fulfill her earthy desires. Enter John Baylor, ten years her junior, a god on hockey skates, effortlessly sensual and twice as smart. Riding into her life on a roaring snowmobile, he rocks her sexual world with body checks of his own kind and threatens her new-found peace of soul. They have no idea that they're both skating on thin ice, straight towards the biggest challenge of their hearts.
