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The world could be exploding and all a goalie should be doing was watching the puck, anticipating where it was going next, and doing whatever it took to stop it from going past the posts. That level of clear-headed focus was something that every goalie needed to make it in the pros.
In his playing days, Cal had always excelled at having a central focus, a laser beam of attention that didn’t veer, didn’t bend, didn’t go even the least bit off course.
And now he was standing in the middle of his tiny kitchen unable to remember how to make pasta because Astrid was humming off-key as she dropped two pieces of white bread in the toaster.
“This is just the appetizer toast,” she said before planting her palms on the counter and doing a spin lift thing so she was sitting on it. “To hold us over until the pasta’s done. You are going to put that in boiling water, right?”
That’s right. Making pasta is really hard there, Matsen. You wanna take a remedial course on how to breathe next?
Cal dumped the box of penne into the pot on the stove. “Just like Mama used to make.”
“Did your parents cook a lot?” Astrid asked as she fidgeted with the twist tie that had been around the bread bag. “We lived on takeout growing up.”
“Family dinners every Sunday and each of us kids had to plan and make dinner once a week—a chore that wasn’t always used for evil but it definitely happened.” He used one of his forks to push the penne all the way into the boiling water. “One time my sister made black bean and broccoli pizza—which was as bad as it sounds—but she’d made it specifically because I was going out on a date that night. About halfway through the movie, the raffinose and fiber hit. The sounds I was making would have your stomach growls sound like whispers.”
“Wow.” Astrid got the single word out and then pressed her lips together as she tried to fight back a laugh that kept coming out in little bursts of high-pitched squeaky sounds. “I am both frightened and impressed.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to cross my sister, Roxy. She’s very creative.” Pasta doing its thing for the next few minutes, he buttered the toast when it popped up and handed one of the slices to Astrid.
She held it up close to her face and took a deep inhale. “Oh my God. Is there anything that smells better than buttered toast?”
Cal was about to respond with “a fresh sheet of ice,” but he stopped himself right in time. There wasn’t a Fuck Hockey jar at his house, but he wasn’t going to push his luck. Then she took a bite of toast and let out a moan heavy with the reverence of someone standing close enough to the Stanley Cup to see the dent from when Patrick Roy dropped it.
It was enough to make him rethink his aversion to kitchen sex—especially when she sat there on the counter with her legs spread just enough that he couldn’t stop looking at the apex of her thighs. Then she leaned forward, and the V-neck of her T-shirt dipped lower and gave him enough of a glimpse of her tits that he wanted—needed—to see more. He couldn’t remember exactly why he’d always been a no-food-and-fucking-in-the-same-place guy. Her gaze steady on him, she curled her full lips into a sly smile as if she knew every single dirty thought he’d ever had and ever would. Why? Because she had the same ones.
Desire, need, fucking bone-deep want rushed through him. He didn’t think. He didn’t plan. He didn’t weigh the options. It was like the bar all over again. He just acted.
Cal turned off the burner heating the boiling pasta and closed the distance between them in two strides, not nearly enough time to figure out what he was going to say and at the same time not nearly fast enough. Standing between her legs, he laid his palms flat on the counter on either side of her hips—close but without making contact because the second he touched her, he knew he’d lose control.
“I don’t fuck in my kitchen,” he said, the words coming out low and rough.
“Boundaries are important,” she said, all sugary insincerity. “I’m sure there are a bunch of folks who have the same rule. They like it in the bed, lights off, no talking.”
Having his balls busted shouldn’t be so much fun, but here he was fighting off a grin again. Astrid was nothing but trouble in a pair of jeans he couldn’t wait to peel off. “You say that as if those are bad things.”
She broke a corner of her toast off and held it an inch from his lips as if him opening for her was a foregone conclusion. It was a ridiculous fucking assumption that he had no intention of making come true—until, a whole half second later, he did. She fed the toast corner to him, her fingertips brushing his lips and sending a blast of desire through him.
“Oh, they aren’t bad. They’re just…” She paused, glancing up at the ceiling as if the right word was up there waiting for her to find it. Then her gaze dropped back to him, and she gave him a little shrug of apology. “A little boring.”
“Sex in a bed is boring?” he asked, inching his hands closer to her voluptuous hips until his thumbs brushed against her jeans.
She let out a shaky breath but otherwise kept her cool, answering his question with a quick lift of her eyebrows in a you-said-it-not-me response.
He moved his hands, running them across her splayed thighs so his thumbs rest on the inner seam of her jeans. “And fucking in the dark is boring?”
A flush ate its way up from her chest, and she bit down on her bottom lip as she nodded her agreement.
“And nothing but the sound of your wet pussy getting filled with a hard cock, that’s also boring?” He glided his thumbs up toward her hot center, giving her only the softest pressure as he got close—so fucking close—without making the contact they both wanted. “And the feel of every touch, every stroke, every thrust when I pump my dick into you gets turned up to a million because your eyes and ears can’t distract you. That’s just boring?”
“So boring,” she said, her desire-darkened gaze steady even as her voice shook.
“But if I talk my way through this in the kitchen with the lights on…” He dipped his head lower, inhaling the sweet scent of her, his lips nearly grazing the curve of her ear, the line of her jaw, the fucking A-level temptation of her mouth before straightening back up. “That’s not boring?”
A delicious spark of fuck-you-and-your-teasing snapped in her eyes half a second before she grabbed his T-shirt and yanked him close. “Enough, Cal.”
Then she kissed him. No bullshit. No artifice. No demure brush of her lips against his. Fuck that. Astrid kissed him like a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and lucky fucking Cal, what she wanted right now was him.
A switch in him flipped, a need he couldn’t pinpoint or name. All he knew was that playtime was fucking over.
