Her lips still taste like strawberry. I pick her up and carry her to the corner booth saved for us.
She slides onto my lap like she belongs there, which she does, and hooks her arm around my neck. I rest my hand on her thigh and pull her closer.
“Mmm. Finally. I get to have my hands all over you in public.”
She laughs. “You do.”
I lean in and put my lips against her ear. "You know what I'm going to do when we get home?"
"Collapse from exhaustion?"
"I'm going to strip your pants off, leaving you in just my jersey, and bend you over the kitchen counter and make you scream my name."
Her breath hitches. She shifts on my lap. "Alex."
"Then I'm going to carry you upstairs. I’ll run a bath and wash your hair. You're going to sit in my lapand tell me that I'm the best hockey player you've ever seen."
I kiss her ear and she writhes against me. "You're crazy."
"And then I'm going to eat your pussy until you cry." I nip her earlobe. "You'll be polite about it, though. You'll say please and thank you, like the good girl I know you are."
Her thighs clench against mine. I can feel the heat of her through her jeans. My cock is already thinking about going into overtime.
"You can't say things like that in public," she whispers, her face scarlet.
"I just did."
Across the bar, Beck is nursing a beer and watching us with a scowl. His jaw works and he doesn’t look very happy for us. But hey, he’s not punching me. That’s growth.
I catch his eye and raise my glass. He flips me off behind his beer bottle, which Mollie doesn't see but I do.
Fair enough.
Mollie settles against my chest, her hand on my jaw, her thumb tracing the fading bruise from Beck's punch. The bar is loud and warm, and full of the people I care about most. Gordie is back at the houseboat with Slothra, probably destroying one of his stuffies. The season stretches ahead of us, long and uncertain and full of games I might win, and games I'll definitely lose.
But right now, my girl is on my lap in a booth at my favorite bar, wearing my name on her back, and she's whispering dirty things in my ear.
She's mine. My girl. And this is exactly how life should be.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Konstantin
The champagne cork pops loudly, shooting off down the table full of smiling people. A brunette, dressed in the identifying lilac lace dress as the rest of the bridesmaids, yells, "To Claire and Matthieu!"
The whole room, over 350 people, all toast. I wince, reaching up to turn down the volume on my cochlear implant. This kind of gathering isn't my idea of a good time. There's too much noise in this giant event hall. It leaves me extremely fatigued from trying to keep up with the echoing toasts and bellows from the groomsmen.
My brain feels like it's on fire.
Matthieu, the groom, catches my eye. From his seat at the head table, he signs, you okay?
Having fun, I sign. I lift my glass of whiskey to him. He pulls a face.
Liar. Thanks for sticking around.
His new wife leans close to his ear and whispers something, dragging his attention away from me. I'm fine with that; Matthieu and I are old friends who grew up playing hockey together in Quebec, but if we both weren't partially deaf, I doubt we would still be friends. Once I got drafted to play in the NHL, my life got insanely busy.
"So Konstantin," the perky redhead sitting to my right says. We're at the singles table, much to my chagrin. "What do you?—"
