Off Limits PUCK (Love on Ice #1)

1. Allie

Chapter one

Allie

I nearly inhale my sip of coffee as I stare at my phone screen. Is this real life? A burst of excitement makes me shift happily in my seat.

I got the job! My dream job as a physical therapist for the NHL hockey team—the Charlotte Eagles. I can’t believe it.

I look around me at the break room. It’s empty, so I let out a squeal of excitement. I love helping my current patients find their mobility again after surgery—it’s rewarding in its own way. But the dream? That’s always been mixing my love for physical therapy with the thrill of professional sports. Ever since that internship at a sports clinic, I’ve had my eye on the big leagues.

I read through the job offer email again, making sure I’m not just making it all up in my mind. Nope. It’s real. The local NHL team really is offering me a job as their PT! I feel anxiety rush through me. I better reply and accept the job—fast! This is a huge deal! I can’t let it slip away.

Amid my excitement, I write a professional reply accepting the job offer. I word the email carefully, trying to sound much older than my twenty-five years. I can’t afford to screw this job opportunity up—my resume is more than a little lacking in the “experiences” department. This is going to put me in the big leagues, should I ever need future work.

“I’ll need this on my resume when I move out of Charlotte and out west to California!” I whisper to myself.

A stern knock sounds on the door and the friendly face of the facility’s director pops in.

“Allie, your two o’clock is here.” He nods briskly and walks away.

I’ll have to give them my two weeks’ notice. For a moment, I feel bad. Then I remind myself that they only hired me because I was readily available to work and they needed someone fast, but the director made it clear that I didn’t have enough experience to be trusted with their more complex cases.

Working as a PT for the NHL! Oh my God! My brain spins and somersaults as I swing between elation and anxiety.

As soon as the director walks out, I’m on my feet instantly, renewed vigor for my work, my career and my future make me giddy. I walk to the kitchenette sink to put my coffee mug in the sink and my eyes land on a local newspaper sitting on the counter.

My breath catches as I look at the newspaper’s cover. There he is, splashed across the front page. Jake Williams, star forward for the Charlotte Eagles… and older brother to my best friend, Mackenzie. I stare at the photo of him on the ice mid-action, and the headline bemoaning his shoulder injury from last season.

As a junior PT for the Eagles, I know I’ll be assigned a bench warming player to work with. I would be a fool to think I’d work with Jake. He’s the team’s biggest name and hockey hero, and this is my first time working with professional athletes… but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to having an almost lifelong crush on Jake—an attraction he certainly did not reciprocate given our seven-year age gap. And an attraction I 100% hid from his sister, my bestie! Mackenzie would poke my eyes out if she knew I’d ogled her brother.

I blush, fantasizing about doing my job as a PT, my hands on Jake’s skin, working out the shoulder tension and assessing the best plan for his recovery. I wonder if the headline about his debilitating injury is even true. It’s probably gossip. And I’ll probably do more watching the senior PTs at work and fetching towels and icy hot cream for them than actually doing any work. But it’s a start, a steppingstone for me.

I can’t wait to tell Mackenzie tonight after work! She was the one who told me to apply for the NHL job besides the nearly thirty other jobs I applied to. It’s funny—the NHL physical therapist job was the only one in our home state of North Carolina. The rest of the jobs I applied to were in California or New York, with one even in Hawaii.

I snicker to myself as I go out to meet my client at this temp job. Maybe it’s fate that I stay in Charlotte and work for the NHL team where my crush, Jake Williams, is their star player!

***

“Red or white?” Mackenzie, Kenz for short, asks me, holding up two bottles of wine as I open the door to my condo that night. “We are going to celebrate tonight, girl!” she drawls out excitedly.

“Both,” I reply playfully, laughing and giddy. “I called my mom to tell her all about me working for the NHL and you know what she said?” I pull Kenz into a hug, squeezing her tight.

“The same thing I’m going to say,” Kenz states sternly, pointing a bottle of red wine at me like it’s a teacher’s ruler and I’m in trouble. “Stay clear of the hockey guys. My brother is the biggest player out there—and I don’t mean just on the ice.”

I swipe the bottle of wine and we walk to my small kitchen. I already went over my improved salary and benefits package I’ll get from my job with the Eagles. Saving for a house is something I'm really looking forward to!

Kenz snaps her fingers. “Earth to Allie. I’m talking about guys. That’s your literal favorite topic.”

I snort. “More like yours.” I open the red wine, pouring two generous glasses of the mid-grade red liquid. Kenz’s brother may be a rich hockey player, but she doesn’t accept money from him. “Did you meet any new guys on your latest flight to London… or where did you go this time?”

Kenz is a flight attendant, always meeting new people, including hot guys. She gives me an eyebrow waggle. “I used my day off to go from London to Greece. Holy cow.” She clutches her phone to her chest. “I met a hottie. Well, several, but one in particular.”

“How you don’t get jet lag is beyond me. You literally just landed at what, three this morning?”

She shrugs, opening her phone and flipping through photos. “You get used to it. Jake travels a lot, too, just not so much internationally.”

She rarely talks about her brother. But every time she does, I feel a secret thrill in me. I don’t know why I still have a crush on the guy—it’s so childish! I mean, he is very handsome. He looks nothing like his sister or his parents. Rumor has it he’s the spitting image of their grandfather, a dashing six foot four muscular god of a man. I bite my bottom lip, thinking about Jake’s latest spread in a sports magazine where he gave an interview on how he stays so fit.

There were lots of shirtless photos in the magazine. I may have saved some on my phone… just to learn his workout routine, of course.

“Here he is. His name’s Nico. We didn’t get into anything sexual, but we did pretend that we were engaged so we could get a free dessert at a restaurant there!” Kenz laughs.

I listen patiently as she tells me about her adventures in Greece. Something changed in her about two years ago. She was dating a man she’d matched with on a high profile dating app she paid to be on. I guess he was a celebrity or something—she never told me his name. But she hasn’t slept with a guy since. It’s like she’s scared to be hurt. Because of this, all of her stories are the same. She meets a guy, flirts, but that’s it.

“He is cute,” I say. “Just not cute enough for you to actually get to know him?”

She laughs flippantly, a hint of sarcasm in her tone. “And have another dude play me? No thanks. Look, Allie.” She brushes an invisible speck of dust off my kitchen counter.

“Oh boy, here comes the same lecture I got from my mom! I know not to date anyone I work with. I know not to date anyone I work for! And that includes hockey players.”

“But you don’t know what it feels like to be there surrounded by testosterone fueled men in a NHL hockey locker room! It’s… a lot. I just don’t want you to be taken off guard and not know how to handle it when they toy with you.” There’s venom in her tone.

“Did Jake tell you all about hockey players, or something?” I’m growing a tad impatient. Both Kenz and my mom are choosing to rain on my parade of excitement instead of being happy for me.

“Yes,” she says honestly. “I also just know. Pro athletes are bad news. Don’t trust any of them.” She wags a playful finger at me, her tone lightening up. “Don’t be alone with any of them. Don’t give your number out. And most definitely do not date any of them!”

We finally change the topic and manage to have a fun evening together, but after Kenz leaves, her words stay with me. I hadn’t considered what I would do if one of the guys on the team flirts with me or asks for my number. I guess I just thought that since I knew it was not proper to date anyone on the team I’m working for, that they would know it, too.

“Damn, at least you and I are happy for me,” I say to my reflection as I stand before my mirror, doing my nighttime creams and potions routine on my skin. “Just two more days, and then I’ll be at the arena, touching all those hot bodies—professionally, of course!”

I laugh a little at my joke, but honestly, I’m nervous. Am I physically strong enough to do some of the stretching and deep tissue work I often have to do on patients—but can I do that on muscled athletes?

I’ll just have to try my best. My phone dings with a text. It’s Kenz. She’s sending me a photo from a gossip news outlet. It’s an article about the team who won the Stanley Cup last year—and how hard they partied afterwards, including with some women they picked up. Apparently, the women did a “tell all” after the experience. And boy, as I skim the gossip column, I actually blush.

Kenz is right—athletes can be very immature and womanizers. I will not be fantasizing about them at all… except for one. And that one I’ll keep a secret.

I slip into bed, my mind thinking about the last time I saw Jake. We shook hands—weird!—like two adults and he said congratulations to me for graduating college. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve seen him in person. But when his hand touched mine, it awakened a thousand desires in me that I didn’t know I had hidden deep inside me.

I reach for my vibrator in my bedside table. I know I shouldn’t touch myself thinking of my best friend’s brother, but sometimes I just have a craving for him. And in my mind, when I’m dreaming up hot encounters with Jake, it’s so vivid and fueled with so much emotion that it absolutely feels real.

And in two days, on Monday morning, I will be in the same building, the same room, as Jake Williams. I give myself two orgasms imagining all the ways I want him to ravage me…