Chapter 11—Wolfe
Even covered in water, Aspen was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Spying those rogue crimson ringlets that escaped the bun-thingy that held her hair more securely than the walls of a prison, Wolfe couldn’t help but feel mesmerized by her beauty.
Even sopping wet, hell, maybe because she was soaked to the bone, he was drawn to her with a power he couldn’t seem to reconcile.
In her soaked state, her complexion was creamier, her freckles more pronounced, her tits plastered so tightly against the wet t-shirt he could see the flowery-lace design of her bra.
He was fucked. As he absorbed her otherworldly sexiness, the confident tough guy he portrayed to the world evaporated and he found himself tongue-tied. All he could do was hold her hands covering the bottles filled with cupcake sugars he’d purchased from .
“I did,” he repeated, and to emphasize his point, Wolfe squeezed her hand as it held the bottles filled with baking glitter he’d thrown in a paper bag before heading to her shop.
He could see a slight blush tint her perfect cheeks as she ducked her head.
“Well, if you’re not going to accept any form of payment, how are we going to settle up with your latest contributions to the bakery, which were heroic, by the way.”
“I don’t know about being a hero, but being in the right place at the right time sure came in handy.”
He kept his hand closed around Aspen’s dainty fingers.
The feel of her cooled skin beneath his own drove a ridiculous desire to warm all of her parts.
He could envision sliding his hands under her wet t-shirt to expose the expanse of alabaster skin on which his eyes would feast. He pictured her against the charcoal-colored sheets of his bed, his fingertips tracing every single sexy curve with a kiss to follow in its wake.
The irony wasn’t lost on Wolfe. His fantasies always seemed to find BB in his bed, a place where no other woman had graced. Ever.
Wolfe needed to diagnose that new element, but not right now. Now he focused on the gorgeous woman standing in the middle of her bakery.
“Wolfe, I must compensate you. It’s not right that I continue leaning on you like this.”
What wasn’t right was just how quickly his cock was thickening behind the fly of his jeans at the silky words slipping from her pillow-like lips. Lips that he could envision bringing the ultimate pleasure when suctioned around his needy dick.
He cleared his throat and begged the hockey gods to spark his inner badass. “Seems to me, we have a dinner to redo on tap,” he rumbled out in a nonchalant voice. “How about I order in for us here?”
Aspen took so long to answer, he thought he may have overstepped the bounds with this woman who managed to see past the impenetrable shell he exuded to all around him.
Jesus, he didn’t know which way was up with this woman.
“How about I make some pot stickers and salad for us?”
“Interesting combo.”
“Yeah, I bought some in a moment of hunger during a presentation on a television shopping channel. I thought I ordered a dozen, but it seemed I requested twelve dozen pork pot stickers be delivered to my apartment.”
Aspen called over her shoulder and went to the freezer in the bakery to pull out a bag of the Asian-style appetizers. She shook the bag in Wolfe’s direction for effect.
He’d dine on blackened tumbleweed if it meant spending time with the boss baker.
“I’m game.”
Wolfe was game for so much more than finger food, but that would wait.
“Great, let me lock up behind us and we’ll head to my apartment,” Aspen tossed the frozen bag of appetizers toward Wolfe, which he caught easily with one hand, while she moved to make a final check of the bakery before closing the shop for the night.
“Besides, I need to get out of these wet clothes. I’m freezing. ”
Wolfe envisioned all sorts of things he could do with Aspen and her wet body, but slowed those thoughts before he was unable to walk to her apartment with his dick slammed against the zipper of his jeans.
“We’ve got nothing but time, BB.”
Although, now focused on her perfect heart-shaped ass as she climbed the stairs in front of him, he needed that time to mentally recite his own hockey stats. If she turned around, he didn’t want her to witness the biggest woody he sported in history of all his woodys.
“Here we are,” Aspen said with a nervous flutter in her voice as she unlocked the door of her apartment three flights above the street. “Home sweet home.”
Wolfe took in the smallish great room that housed a living area, dining table and kitchen.
Her place featured comfortable looking furniture with a handful of watercolor paintings around the space.
The kitchen was lined with honey-colored oak cabinets and featured bar stools pushed against the island that held the sink.
“Great place,” Wolfe continued his perusal of the space, including a handful of framed photos resting atop a narrow sofa table pressed against a wide couch.
“Thanks,” Aspen looked around the room as well. “I’ll, uh, go get changed and get dinner ready. It won’t take but a few minutes.”
“I can get started with dinner. Take your time.”
“And yet, that would defeat the purpose of me making you dinner to pay off my debt.”
The last thing Wolfe wanted was Aspen thinking that she owed him. He wanted them on the same plane. He wanted to eliminate her notions that she owed him for his help around her shop once and for all.
“BB, wait.” Wolfe snagged her hand and turned her body toward his before she could make her exit from the room. “You. Don’t. Owe. Me. Anything.”
To emphasize his point, Wolfe reached out to cup her face in the palms of his hands, his thumbs instinctively brushing against her cheeks.
Big mistake.
Her skin was as silky-smooth as he’d envisioned during his right-armed jacking fantasies. His instantaneous desire to press his lips against her nearly brought him to his knees.
“No...”
“Yes, BB,” he said with a tone of command in his voice. “You have no idea how I loathe idle time. Outside of being on the ice, construction projects, big and small, fill me. They help me—”
“Help you what?”
Forget. Outrun grief and guilt. Be close to you.
Wolfe was so close to saying it all.
“Help me pass the time until the season starts and we complete our quest to win the Cup,” Wolfe lied.
He swore he could see a flicker of disappointment skitter across her moss-colored eyes.
“Well, it’s hard for me to not feel like I owe you for... everything.”
“And yet, I’m a professional athlete who—not to sound like a douche—has enough money to not bat an eye at helping out a friend.”
“And I’m your friend, Connor?”
Was she challenging him?
The reality was he wanted to add lover to the list and jump her gorgeous fucking bones on the spot, but he knew slow and steady were the order of the day.
“I’ll be anything you need me to be, BB.”
To emphasize his point, Wolfe trailed his calloused hands from her face, across her shoulders covered in the wet cotton material to her hands. He then slowly dragged her hands to his face and kissed her fingers while holding her gaze.
“I’ll be right back,” Aspen squeaked and retreated to her room.
Wolfe watched her every step like a lovesick teen, and once again reminded himself of his kiss-his-ass personality and that he fawned over no one, let alone let a person see the real him.
A broken shell of a man who could protect no one.
It was a shame his lecture about controlling the situation didn’t connect with the drive to consume BB in every conceivable way being pulsed by his body.
Wolfe grabbed the bag of pot stickers and began working in the kitchen to prep the appetizers while BB changed.
He did a doubletake and his tongue threatened to roll out of his mouth and waterfall to the floor a-la-cartoonville when Aspen entered the kitchen several minutes later.
“Jesus, BB. You’re stunning.”
Wolfe took in her statuesque appearance, his hands frozen in the towel he’d used to check the pot stickers browning on a cookie sheet in the oven.
Actually, stunning didn’t capture her beauty.
Her hair was free of the militaristic style she wore in the bakery.
The coppery-reddish curls tumbled over her shoulders and down her back in a mass of thickness that urged him to wrap it around his palm and pull smartly as he rammed into her wetness from behind.
Her goddess-like hair combined with her sweet curves tucked in navy blue yoga pants and a light tee that showed just how perfect his hands would cup her tits left him in a daze.
“You working to make dinner isn’t too shabby a look on you either,” she teased.
His eyes never leaving hers, Wolfe set down the towel on the counter and took two long strides toward her so they were standing toe-to-toe.
Hypnotized, he glided his hand down one of the squiggly curls and let the silky strands pour through his fingertips.
“As I said... stunning,” he whispered, his voice rough with lust.
Lips parted, Aspen clutched his forearms like she was hanging on for dear life, as Wolfe made a slow and deliberate descent to her lips.
The chime from the oven signaling dinner was done was the equivalent of a teacher interrupting teens shimmying their good parts together during a school dance.
Aspen ducked and moved around him, grabbing his discarded towel to pull the cookie sheet from the oven.
“Would you mind grabbing the dipping sauces and dressing from the fridge?” she called out in a tinny voice over her shoulder, as if Wolfe wasn’t moments away from planting her sweet ass on the counter and launching a barrage of kisses against every inch of her exposed skin.
“The salad is in the glass bowl on the second shelf.”
Wolfe gusted out a sigh laced with longing.
“No problem.”
They worked together to put the finishing touches on their meal. The crackle of hearty sexual tension hung in the air like a thick fog covering an English countryside on a cool summer morning.
“Do you mind eating on the couch?”