Chapter 4
BLAKE
“Why the hell do I hear Sabrina Carpenter?” I snapped at Trey as we headed past the locker room and out through the tunnel onto the ice. The pop star’s voice annoyed the crap out of me. Everyone on the team and the staff knew that. Someone was fucking with me.
I was in a bad enough mood as it was; the anticipation of seeing Lucy had made it impossible to sleep the night before, and my coffee maker had died this morning.
I was tired, uncaffeinated, unfamiliarly antsy, and what’s more, according to Lucy’s RA—who I had paid off to keep an eye on her—Lucy didn’t get back to her dorm room until midnight, completely disregarding the curfew that I’d imposed.
Furthermore, she hadn’t responded to any of my texts demanding she check in and show me proof that she was at home, safe and sound.
The first chance I got, I was going to install a GPS tracker on her phone so I always knew where she was.
And the first person to piss me off today was going to get the figurative version of a blade to the neck.
When we reached the rink, I stopped short.
Lucy—in a short flippy pink skirt and a white top that revealed her entire lower back—was on skates, laughing, as Emory, the player Trey had claimed had girl trouble, pulled her along the ice.
Was Lucy the cause of his girl trouble?
Heat filled my stomach, the cue that I was about to lose my temper.
“You’re doing great,” he told her as he pulled her. “You’re a natural.”
“It’s all you,” she said sweetly. “I’ve always been too scared to go on the ice.”
Bull fucking shit. Lucy had grown up on skates—she was as comfortable on the ice as I was. She was playing games with my team, and obviously with me.
Lifting my whistle to my lips, I blew it.
Emory released Lucy, who stumbled, making my heart catch in my throat. There was no way I could get to her in time…that ice would hurt, scrape up her bare legs…
…but she righted herself and spun around, looking at me with innocent eyes.
“Oh, should I not be on the ice, Coach?” she asked sweetly. “Your players were being such gentlemen, teaching me how to skate.”
I couldn’t respond to the minx, not with my tongue as dry as it was.
Because Lucy wasn’t wearing a bra.
It was the most stunning, horrifying thing I’d ever seen. Her areolas darkened the fabric, pert little nipples pushing it out into points. They better have been hard because she was cold, and not because skating with Emory had turned her on.
I blew my whistle again.
“Ms. Braverman, come over here and take those skates off. I hired you to help the team by sweeping the ice during practices, gathering pucks, and bringing the team towels and water. Not for you to get free skating lessons.”
I could feel her anger from across the ice.
“You didn’t hire me to help, you hired me to babysit me,” she pointed out, flipping her damn hair. To Emory, she called, “If Coach won’t let you teach me here, maybe we can do some…private lessons? There’s so much I want to learn.”
Her innuendo was clear. Emory laughed.
“Sure thing, cutie,” he called.
I saw red. Not metaphorically. Literally. My vision turned red while I imagined Emory covered in blood as I took his own damn skates to his neck.
The fantasy calmed me down…slightly.
“Lucy, you don’t get to fuck around with my players. Period,” I snapped.
This led to a bunch of chortling and muttering from my team about how they’d like Lucy to fuck around with them. Lucy just smiled, but I knew better, the way she played with her hair gave her away. It didn’t matter that she’d done all this intentionally. If they embarrassed her, I’d kill them.
“Ms. Braverman, now. Don’t make me wait,” I said, voice low and steady and not fucking around one inch.
Glaring at me, she skated without difficulty to the edge of the rink, hopping gracefully off the ice and onto the insulated sub-floor.
“I’m here, your highness,” she snapped. “At your bidding.”
Oh, she had no idea what sort of bidding I actually wanted. An image of Lucy, naked, those nipples on full display and hard for me appeared in my mind. In it, she was kneeling, her hands tied behind her back with her panties, her mouth and throat full of my—
Bad man. I was a bad man.
“Stop mouthing off,” I told her, swallowing down the rest of what I wanted to say, which was or I’ll give your mouth something better to do.
Then I blew my whistle again.
“Team, Ms. Braverman is here with us for the rest of the season as my assistant. She’ll be helping out by sweeping the ice, bringing you water, getting my dry cleaning…
all sorts of fun activities, mainly because she keeps breaking the rules.
And you all know how I feel about rulebreakers.
Which means you all have a new rule. Any single one of you looks at her funny or touches her, even her hand, and you’re out for the rest of the season.
Think about her inappropriately and I’ll know, and you’ll be riding the bench. ”
“I’d rather ride the brat than the bench,” Paul Westlake, who was my first line defenseman, muttered to Emory.
“Westlake, you’re out for the rest of the season,” I said, voice echoing off the boards and through the entire arena.
He gaped at me. “What the hell, Coach!”
“You heard me.” I turned my head, making sure to look at every other member of my team. Including Emory and Mason, who were both smirking. “Anyone else have something to say?”
Silence.
Just the way I liked it.
Lucy was tugging on my sleeve, whispering, “Don’t take your frustration with me out on them.”
I ignored her.
“Okay, the rest of you are skating suicides for the rest of practice. I don’t care if you puke, you’ll keep going.” To Lucy, I said, “And you’ll be the one cleaning up the puke.”
Her face turned green.
Under my breath, I said, “You want to fuck with me? I’ll fuck with you right back.”
She didn’t need to know that the “with” felt optional.
After practice was over, I left Lucy to clean up the three piles of vomit on the ice, satisfied that I’d taught her an appropriate lesson, and made my way to my office.
Trey followed me.
“Blake, this seems like a real mistake. Paul’s one of our best players, and you benched him for the season for a dumb joke any of his teammates were probably thinking in their heads.”
Trey was right, but I didn’t want to hear it.
It was the least I could’ve done in that moment, instead of ripping each and every limb off of Paul’s body, including his dick.
He’d embarrassed Lucy, even if no one knew but me.
What’s more, none of them were going to make a move on her now, which was exactly what I wanted.
“I’m setting an example,” I told him as I entered my office.
To my annoyance, he followed me inside, grabbing the chair facing my desk, and turning it around so he could straddle it.
“Are you setting an example? Or are you pissing—inappropriately, I might add—all over your ‘territory’ like a college punk so the rest of these college punks stay away from her?” He put territory in quotes, and the accusation made my whole body go stiff, and not in the way it did when Lucy paraded around in one of her little outfits.
How much did he know?
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I told Trey, sitting in my own chair and typing my password—Troublemaker—so I could access my laptop and do work, ignoring the steaming pile of shit Trey was serving to me.
He raised an eyebrow. “I see it. I’m sure the players see it. The only ones who don’t see it are Lucy—and you. It’s a real problem, Coach. You can’t have an affair or date a freshman at the university you work at, especially not when she’s employed by the team.”
“She’s not really employed; she’s doing her community service.”
“Still. You’re in a position of power over her. It looks really bad. She’ll either have to drop out, or you’ll have to quit. It would hurt you both—”
“Lucy’s not dropping out,” I barked. “She’s going to vet school after college. It’s her dream.”
Trey stared at me. “Shit, this isn’t just a case of being an old asshole who wants some young pussy. You have actual feelings for her, don’t you?”
An image came to mind: Of me rising to my feet, grabbing Trey by the throat, and slamming him against the wall, and then again, and then again. No one talked about Lucy’s pussy. No one talked about her like she was nothing more than pussy. I wanted to kill him for it.
Instead, I took a deep, long breath, reminding myself that attacking my assistant coach would be bad man behavior. As much as I wanted to, I needed to keep my shit together—now and forever.
I steepled my fingers. “Of course I have feelings about my legal ward,” I lied easily, playing with semantics.
“But if you’re suggesting I’m romantically interested in her…
well, your guess is as off as your aim was the last time we went golfing with the dean.
” I cleared my throat, hating what I was about to say next.
“In fact, I was going to ask if you could give me your sister’s number, so I could reach out to her about going on a date. ”
Trey frowned at me. “You already have her number.”
Damn it. He was right. It had slipped my mind.
“You wouldn’t be using her as a way to cover your own ass, would you?” he continued.
I straightened my shoulders. “Last I checked, I was your boss. So, I suggest you don’t ask questions like that going forward, if you’re interested in keeping your job. I must have not saved her number. Now, if you don’t want to give it to me, that’s fine, but I would like to take her out, so…”
God, I was a real asshole. Still, Trey swallowed, nodding and reciting his sister’s number so I could put it in my phone. I had forgotten her name but figured that part didn’t matter. I’d needed to get him off the scent, and I had. That was the important thing, even if I hated myself for it.
As he sat there, I shot off a quick text to his sister, letting her know who it was and asking if she wanted to get dinner.
It was barely a minute before she responded with a Yes!
The idea of going on a date with anyone made me feel sick to my stomach, and I had to remind myself that I wasn’t in a relationship with Lucy.
I wasn’t in anything with Lucy, except for poorly misguided lust. Probably fucking someone else was the way to go.
Even though I knew my dick wouldn’t get hard for anyone but her.