Chapter 9 #2
Oh. Fuck. I still and inhale sharply as she squeezes her thighs, and it brings our centers together. She’s pressing against my very obvious, undeniably hard cock now. I stare down at her. “So… umm… I should probably go walk in the snow again.”
“In a T-shirt?”
Her fingers brush over my nipples. “Naked.”
“Now that’s something I wouldn’t mind seeing,” she whispers. I need to stop this. So I do the only logical thing. I put my hand under her chin, tilt her head, and claim her mouth again.
The kiss is all kinds of filthy, which causes my cock to throb, especially when she bites my bottom lip.
But yet, I manage to find the one calm, clear-thinking brain cell I have left and firmly put my hands on her legs and untangle myself from her.
As her legs fall away, I take a step back and run a hand through my hair, leaning on the counter opposite her.
“Jesus… so that’s fun sober,” I say with a chuckle.
“Then why are you all the way over there?” Lola wants to know, and rejection flickers in her pale eyes along with the candlelight.
“Because you’re using this as a distraction from your panic attack,” I say and adjust my protesting cock in my pants.
She watches my hand move over it, which does nothing to make the erection go away.
“And because as much as I want to keep going and explore every inch of you with my tongue, and other parts of my body, it would be a rash decision. The type of reckless shit I used to do drunk. I need to make better decisions now.”
“I’m a bad decision?”
Well, fuck. That came out wrong. I grab my hoodie off the floor and tug it over my head as she hops off the counter and walks toward the front door.
I follow. When she picks up her bag and reaches for the handle on the closet to get her coat, I grab her shoulders and turn her around so her back is against the closet door.
“I’m not letting you go home now. The roads are worse than ever.
The hallway out there is dark as hell, and now the roads have no lights either.
Plus, that parking garage will be an abyss. ”
The defiant determination on her face disappears.
I put my forearms on the closet door on either side of her pretty head and lean in until our foreheads touch.
“You are not a bad decision. But you’re one who deserves to be thought out.
Plus, in case you didn’t know, you’re the sister of two of my teammates.
My defense partner’s twin. There’s a code… ”
She groans and rolls her eyes, sagging in mental exhaustion against the door. “Oh my God, the hockey bro code. I swear, being in this hockey family is my burden in life.”
She slips from under my tented arms and wanders back to the kitchen.
Grabbing the candle, she carries it into the living room and puts it on the coffee table.
Then she drops onto the couch. “For the record, that code is bullshit. You all break it anyway. My last boyfriend played with Callan in high school and didn’t ask if he could break the code.
He just did. And my father and mother wouldn’t be together if he hadn’t dated his captain’s sister, who was also a team employee, I might add.
Also, Landon is dating his teammate, who is the cousin of another teammate. And—”
“Are you saying you want to date me?” I ask, and she flashes the cutest, most horrified look at me. I should honestly be offended, but it’s too cute.
“I don’t want to date anyone.” She sighs and leans back into the couch, grabbing a pillow and bringing it to her chest. “Women can like sex, you know? We can want to have it without the extra emotional stuff.”
“I know that. Hell, if it weren’t for women willing to have meaningless hook-ups, I’d still be a virgin, in every sense of the word, not just the sober kind.
” I follow her into the living room and sit on the couch next to her.
She pulls in her feet so she doesn’t touch me.
Ouch. “Casual sex is all I can handle at the moment. I need to focus on my game and keeping my life on track.”
“My first long-term boyfriend made it clear I’m not good at relationships. And my one hook-up, Pete, has made it clear I’m not good at picking a fling either,” Lola replies and combs her hair with her fingers. It’s slightly wavy from being pulled back in pigtails. “I should become a nun.”
“How long was your long-term relationship?” I ask because I’m weirdly fascinated with what type of man she’d commit to, and why she’s so anti-commitment now.
“Ryan was… he was on Cal’s hockey team, like I said.
But he also took art classes, unlike any of the other jocks.
I was into art in high school, so we had that in common.
And he was a vegetarian, which I also am…
but was actually vegan back then,” Lola says as she picks at the fringe on the pillow she’s clutching.
I have a feeling her eyes are cast downward out of shame, not interest in whatever fluff is on that pillow.
“We started dating at sixteen, and when he said he was going to Maine to play college hockey, I applied to Maine too.”
She doesn’t seem like the type of girl who would follow a man above her own interests, so that kind of shocks me.
She gives a little shrug as if feeling my confusion.
“I mean, Maine had this cool new early childhood program, which I was interested in, and a Doula certification program too. Which is what I do now. So it wasn’t a bad fit.
But staying together… that was a bad fit. ”
“Did he cheat?” I ask because I’ve seen tons of professional hockey players fuck around on their significant others. It’s way more common than it should be.
“No. He was having too much fun making me feel like I wasn’t worthy of him, or anyone else,” she mumbles, but I hear it loud and clear.
I frown at the thought of some asshole purposely trying to dim the light that radiates off her.
“He would say stuff to other people like ‘Lola’s genes make her worth it. Can you imagine the hockey powerhouses we would breed?’ And he once asked me if it was hard being the least successful sibling and knowing that would never change. ”
“What a prick,” I whisper, scowling.
“The best part is I didn’t dump him.” She laughs bitterly.
“He dumped me, and I was stupidly devastated for a long time. He said it was because he was moving ahead in life at a pace I couldn’t keep up with, and it wasn’t fair to me.
I ended up in the hospital for something like a month after we broke up, and he didn’t even text me to wish me a speedy recovery. ”
“Hospital?”
She waves a hand gently between us. “I’m fine now. But still. Four years together and not even a text?”
“He sounds like a Grade A gaslighter.”
“He was, and I know that now,” she confesses. “Anyway, I finally got over him and graduated and decided this would be the summer of fun. But I end up with a one-night stand that won’t take no for an answer, so maybe the problem is me.”
“It’s not you,” I tell her. “There’s an obscene amount of toxic straight men in this world. On behalf of my gender, I apologize.”
I lean over and brush a lock of wayward hair off her cheek. She smiles but leans away from me. “I’m gonna crush the rest of this cheese.”
She turns to the charcuterie board on the coffee table, skillfully stopping any chance we pick up where we left off in the kitchen, which is probably for the best. Every reason I listed that whatever we started should stop is valid.
Even if it sucks to think I won’t be able to kiss her again… or do more.