So I get busy.
And it knocks the wind out of her.
“Oh, my God!”
Her knees buckle from the sudden pleasure of me alternating between sucking on her clit and licking her clean. Damn, she tastes amazing. I knew she would.
I know I need to stop this before I take her right here in the fucking hallway. She’s so responsive that my dick protests what my brain knows is the right decision.
But the bigger head prevails, and I make myself stop.
I stand back up.
Lips moist from her pleasure. Forehead to hers. Both of us wrecked.
“Why’d you stop?” she asks.
“Not here,” I say gruffly. “Not against a wall with your father ten feet away. When it happens, you get a door that locks and a whole lot more of my attention than two hundred boosters will let me give you. You deserve the best of me, baby.”
She nods against my forehead, shaking, but there’s a contented smirk on her face.
“Okay,” she whispers. “But no more two weeks of radio silence. If you’re scared, you’re scared next to me. New rule.”
“New rule,” I say, and I’ve never meant anything more.
“For the record,” she says, still catching her breath, “I had a whole speech ready for when you finally grew the balls to end it. I rehearsed it in the car.”
“Yeah? How’d it go?”
“Very dignified. I came off extremely unbothered and a little above it all.”
“Good thing I didn’t end it, then.”
“Good thing,” she agrees, and I feel her smile against my jaw, and I swear it does more to me than what we just did.
Then we both hear it. The ballroom doors, voices spilling closer, somebody calling for the coach’s compliance officer because they want to move her seat to table nine.
She moves first. I watch her do the thing I hate most in the world. She straightens the dress, smooths her face, and packs all of it away in about two seconds flat.
“Go,” I say. “I’ll wait, then come out the other way.”
She slips back into the noise. I give it a minute, then follow, and I find her already at her father’s side, talking to some grey-bearded booster who’s staring at her like she’s a piece of chicken.
I want to fuck him up.
He’s got a hand on her shoulder, steering her toward a table, talking over her head to Coach, and she’s nodding at whatever they’re both saying, invisible again.
I know her father isn’t a bad man, but he doesn’t even look at her while he talks. And he doesn’t notice that a man twice her age is eyeballing her.
Does she even see it?
As I stand here in my bad suit, I finally get it. I’m not just up against a man who can kill my career. I’m up against twenty-three years of a girl being told the only safe way to be loved is to disappear.
But this is the thing, I want to play hockey because I love the sport and I’m good at it. I also want to help my family. But I’m also done helping Jasmine disappear.
There’s got to be a way for me to have both.
And I’m going to find it.
