Page 24 of He Has Pluck

“Ooo-kay. I just thought…” He stops and shakes his head. “Never mind.” He slips his pants on then gets up and finishes dressing. He comes over to me as if he’s going to give me a goodnight kiss or some shit, and I stiffen, folding my arms across my chest.

“Just go. We have work tomorrow.”

He stops short, but he’s close enough to lean in and drop a kiss on my lips all the same, just a wisp, but enough to make my body shudder like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I’m way too easy for him. I stiffen my spine and push him away.

“All right, I’m going.” He snorts and shakes his head, muttering something like so damn prickly as he walks through my bedroom door. I don’t follow him. Instead, I listen for the front door to close behind him. When it does, I exhale, a long whooshing breath.

“Fuck,” I say to no one but myself. I need to cool off.

Chapter Six

JASON

I walk out of her bedroom, my legs still like mush, and she doesn’t bother showing me to the door. Thoughts of making her come and me exploding inside her mouth, and the kind of intimacy I don’t remember being there with other women, cascade through my mind as I hit the street, barely registering the cold air. I don’t remember ever getting so lost in a woman, so fucking overtaken like the world disappeared.

Her last words play in my head. We have work tomorrow. Fuck. What do I do tomorrow with the picture of her naked, pink with arousal, golden hair splayed on the pillow and limbs tangled in the sheets, running through my head on a non-stop loop because that’s how it’ll be. I’m addicted to that moan and the vision of her perfect features tightened into agonized ecstasy.

Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed to give her that one last orgasm, but I couldn’t resist, had to see that face, had to make her lose control one more time. I walk back to my hotel through the dark empty streets of Boston with a growing sense of unease.

The exhaustion that’s been held off by my hormones slams into me as I make it back to my room, barely, and I collapse onto my bed. Tomorrow, we leave on a road trip to our last game of the regular season, and a win will cement our first-place standing and home-ice advantage for all of the playoffs until the finals.

Juliette is traveling with the team. I’ll need to perform for the camera and for the team to keep neutral in her presence, to keep my…whatever—let’s call it obsession—for her from showing. I’m not a game player, except on the ice, but I feel like I’ve been suddenly tossed ass-deep into a twisted game of seduction with the consummate player, the Ice Chip herself.

My heart hammers with excitement mingled with fear, the way it always does when I play to win, until I finally fall asleep as the faint light of dawn seeps in the window.

When my phone alarm rings, I startle awake, and my head pounds. I sit up and every muscle in my body protests. My limbs feel like rusty old parts borrowed from someone’s grandpa and filled with lead.

How the hell am I going to play hockey tonight?

* * *

There’s no training room in our visiting team locker room, so I lie on the grubby floor with guys all around cramped in the space while Vicky works like hell to stretch my legs, to loosen the knotted-up muscles enough so I can somehow skate at full tilt, to make my moves without seizing up.

“Your legs are worse than your shoulders, new guy. What the heck did you do—never mind. I take that back. I don’t even want to know.”

One of the older guys—which is everyone on the team—walks by and gives me an accusing look, but I stare him down. I refuse to apologize or be intimidated. My personal hell is personal, and no matter how much it hurts, I will make sure I perform on the ice. That’s the advantage of being young, still young enough to play through shit, to burn the candle on both ends on occasion and live through it.

On occasion. My problem will be tonight and all the other nights after this, trying like fuck to keep myself from turning occasions into any time I can manage because that’s how my body, hell, everything in me, reacts to her every time I see her, or hear her or even smell her, maybe especially when I breathe in a whiff or hint of her scent. The memories grab me in a vicious hold like I’m their prisoner.

I’m fucking obsessed. Or I’m just plain fucked.

Except not in the literal sense, and as Vicky pushes my leg high over my head, stretching my glutes to their limit, my dick ticks to life, and if I don’t get the idea out of my head that I need to fuck Juliette, good and hard and thoroughly, my dick will turn into a diamond cutter in no time. Because the need has hold of me now, twisting my gut and grabbing hold of my dick, and most of all, planting deep and irretrievably in my head.

Fuck. Later. I’ll deal with this later. Once and for all. I’ll fuck her—because I know it’s mutual, that she was on the edge of making me her private sex slave and fucking my brains out last night. Damn, stop thinking about that. I bite down on my lip and force Coach’s image front and center in my head.

“Am I hurting you?” Vicky says, easing up on my leg.

“No. No more than usual.” My voice sounds almost normal. I try a smile.

“Liar. Let’s get you some icy hot patches.” She drops my leg and helps me from the floor. When I turn, I see Juliette walk through the room, her camera on her shoulder, and I tense then follow Vicky to the equipment room where she’s keeping her first aid stash.

“Shit, Jason,” Vicky says as she spreads on a slimy medicated patch that smells like witch hazel. “You’re in such bad shape, you’ll probably have a super game. I see it happen all the time with the young bucks.” She lowers her voice. “Just don’t make a habit of it.”

“You’re right.” I’ll push myself through the game, use my reserves to play at my top. All I need to do is ignore Juliette.

In the meantime, she’s doing a damn good job of ignoring me, no more than nodding before she turns away as if I’m a meaningless rookie, which, guess what, I am. If it weren’t for my role in this damn documentary, I would never have gotten more than ten seconds of her attention. That’s more than I’m getting now as I return to the locker room to finish dressing, the sharp scent of muscle balm like a repellant, keeping out all the other scents including hers, and inspiring me to erect my wall of concentration, blocking out all but hockey and the impending game.

* * *