23. Colton
COLTON
“Shit,” I hissed as I quickly stepped back.
Both of us moved as quick as lightning to try and fix ourselves up.
Brynn pulled out her bun and redid it with a fanciful flick of her wrist. I swear, I didn’t know half of the magic women used on their bodies.
How they got those towels to stay on their heads after showers?
How they did braids in their hair with lines and shit?
They were goddesses of magic as far as I was concerned.
But the clicking of Victoria’s heels down the hallway jumped me into gear.
There was no way in hell we could cover the fact that we were on a date, but we sure as hell could cover the fact that I’d just face-fucked that woman’s daughter in my office. Goddamn it, no wonder that pussy of hers was so tight. How the hell Brynn was still a virgin was beyond me.
Jesus fuck, I owed her… something. An apology. An explanation. A… tutorial.
The guilt hit me somewhere around the sternum and sat there like a brick.
Twenty-six years old and she’d never been with a man.
Not because she couldn’t have been. Because she’d been too busy putting her whole goddamn life on hold for other people.
And the first time someone got close enough — the first time she let someone in, it was me.
In my office. On my lunch break. Like some kind of sloppy, impatient animal who didn’t stop to think about the fact that this woman might need something different than what I’d been giving her.
I wanted to throw the food out the fucking window and ask her about it right then and there. But Victoria’s heels were already close, and Brynn had that quick-thinking look on her face that told me she’d already moved on to problem-solving mode.
So I didn’t push it. But I made myself a promise right there: dinner.
Saturday. I was going to say everything that needed saying.
And then I was going to do everything right that I’d done half-assed the first time.
She deserved that. She deserved a man who took his time with her.
Who made sure she understood exactly what she was walking into before she walked into it.
No wonder I had to coach her through the whole damn blowjob.
And yet, it was the hottest thing I’d ever done.
Which said something, because I’d been around the block a time or two.
Hey, coaching hockey on a professional level was stressful as fuck, and there are only so many outlets we’re allowed.
And as I watched Brynn quickly place all of our food back on my desk, she pointed to my desktop as her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Don’t turn on the light, but turn the light on your computer all the way up. It’ll cast enough light that she won’t be suspicious.”
I nodded. “Good thinking.”
While I fucked around with the display light on my computer, she somehow put herself back together in a picture-perfect version of a fucking angel. I raked my hands through my hair before she came over, our anxiety being timed by her mother’s fucking footsteps as they paused down the hallway.
“Here, you’ve got something… there,” she whispered as she wiped a dollop of her out of my stubbly beard.
My cock already pulsed with unrelenting need, and I didn’t even try to hide what happened next. While she wiped at my beard, I shoved my hand into my pants, pulling my erection against my body, and shifted my jeans so that it wouldn’t look like anything.
Brynn giggled. “Struggling?”
I locked my stare with hers. “You have no idea.”
She swallowed hard as she looked up at me.
Her cheeks burned with all sorts of unanswered questions and promises, but when her mother’s clicking started back up, she quickly backed away.
I smoothed my hands down my shirt as she quickly wrapped back around my desk, sitting in the chair I just christened with her body only moments ago.
I eased myself back down into my own office chair before my eyes bulged.
“The door,” I hissed.
Brynn rushed up from her chair like a bat out of hell and silently unlocked my office door. She tiptoed back, quickly easing herself back into the chair, and I took a few massive bites of the food I had forgotten about since the instant Bry walked into my office in that dress of hers.
I hoped that Victoria would simply head into her office and not think twice.
But instead, I watched her shadow creep beneath the lower slat of my closed office door before she knocked.
“Coach,” she said as she came in, her knock merely announcing her presence, “I wanted to speak with you quickly about—why is it so dark in here?”
She flipped on my office light, and I grunted with its intrusion. Brynn shielded her eyes for only a second, but it was enough for Victoria’s eyes to harden on both of us as they darted from me to her.
Me to her.
Me to her.
Then, back to me.
“Yes?” I asked as I took another bite of my vegetables.
“Everything okay, Mom?” Bry asked.
Victoria kept her eyes squarely on me, though. She didn’t move from the doorway, either.
Fuck.
Victoria cleared her throat. “I wanted to speak with you about the upcoming game this weekend. It’s the first game, and usually we do a big thing out in the parking lot where The Hideout provides basic essentials for any pre-game cookout or tailgate. I need to know if the team is going to attend.”
I shook my head. “Last thing the team needs is to fill up on meat and carbs before their game. I can bring them around to rile things up maybe half an hour before we fill the stadium, but anything more than that and it risks their abilities on the ice.”
She nodded and jotted a few things down onto her clipboard. “Sweetheart?”
Bry peeked over at me before she looked back at her mother. “Yeah, Mom?”
Victoria didn’t look up from her clipboard as she turned around. “You gonna be home for dinner?”
Brynn cleared her throat. “Uh, yeah. I’m not working tonight, so I’ll be home.”
That’s when Victoria picked her gaze up from the clipboard and looked between the two of us one more time. Her eyes lingered on me, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. Or, rather, I had a few ideas as to what she was most likely thinking.
How much she wanted to wring my neck.
How long it took for me to seduce her daughter.
At what point in time Brynn went from trying to hook us up to trying to hook up with me.
But instead of asking us a billion of those questions, Victoria simply nodded her head one last time before leaving.
I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath until Brynn stood from her seat. “You didn’t take anything from me.”
My gaze quickly snapped to hers. “What?”
She walked back over to the door and closed it, then turned and leaned against it. Her voice was soft, most likely due to the fact that her mother’s office was right down the hallway from mine. But I heard her just the same.
“You didn’t take anything from me,” she said as she sauntered toward me.
She leaned her hip against my desk, and I had to stand just to keep my body from reaching for her. She was like a magnet for my palms, and her mother was in the office.
I had to keep my distance.
“That’s not how first times for anything should go,” I said as I stood over her, gazing down into her determined face.
She crossed her arms across her chest. “Well, I don’t regret a single moment of it. Do you?”
“I could never regret you.”
She blinked up at me and that’s when I realized…
it’s the truth. I’d never regret her. Fuck the press.
Fuck the past. Fuck what people might think.
Fuck her mother, if it pissed her off. Just because her mother didn’t want to be happy, hell, just because my mother didn’t want to be happy, didn’t mean the two of us had to be miserable along with them.
I found my angel. The angel that the demon inside of me wanted to ruin.
It was enough for me to scoop Brynn into my arms, bringing her ripe body against mine.
“Colton,” she gasped as her hands settled against my chest.
“I will never, ever regret you, Brynn,” I said as I gazed into her eyes.
She reached up and cupped my stubbled cheek. “Thank you for lunch, Colton. It was lovely.”
My jaw clenched before I gave into the whim. I let my eyes fall closed as I nuzzled my cheek against her warm, soft palm. It was like a cloud.
It made me want to put her back on my desk just so I could rest against her.
I have to find a way to shield her from the press.
Because I sure as hell wasn’t going to hide whatever the fuck brewed between me and Bry.
I finally pushed off from the desk and stood in front of her while she tried to get herself back together. She was smoothing her dress. Fixing her hair. Doing everything except looking me in the face. Which was exactly why I tilted her chin up until she had no choice.
“Stop trying to set me up with your mother.”
Her mouth dropped open. “I wasn’t —”
“You were.” I kept my voice even. “Since the day I walked through that door. You’ve been pointing me at her every chance you got. Working her into every conversation. Making sure I knew how great she was, what she liked, what she needed.” I held her eyes. “You want to tell me why?”
She swallowed. Looked away. Looked back. “She’s lonely.”
“That’s her problem to solve, Brynn. Not yours.”
“I know that,” she said. Too fast. Like she’d said it a hundred times and still hadn’t convinced herself.
I studied her for a second longer than was probably fair.
But I needed her to hear it. Really hear it.
“I’m not interested in your mother, Brynn.
I’m standing in my office with you right now and I think you know exactly what that means.
So either you’re going to stop hiding behind her, or you’re going to walk out that door and we can pretend none of this happened. ”
She didn’t move.
Good.
But I also wasn’t going to let the press devour her alive once they caught wind of what was happening.
“Have dinner with me Saturday night,” I said as I massaged the dip of her waist with my fingertips. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
Her smile lit up the entire room. We didn’t need lights in here, so long as I kept her smiling. “Sounds like a plan to me. I’ll text you my address.”
I brought my lips back down against hers, plunging my tongue into her depths.
She bowed against me, her curves melting into my embrace as I pulled her so close to me that she stood on her tiptoes on top of my boots just to keep in time with me.
I wrapped her up. My hand cupped the back of her head.
She tilted hers off to the side, and I followed suit in the opposing direction until I didn’t know where my tongue ended and hers began.
I finally pulled back just so the two of us could fucking breathe, placing my forehead against hers.
“Plus, if you’re a good girl for me this week, I’ll show you Saturday night how all of this should’ve been done.”
I relished the shiver that took over her body.
I checked the time on my desktop before clapping her ass softly with my hand. “I’ve got endurance work with the boys in thirty.”
“Text me when you’re done?” she asked.
I grinned as I begrudgingly relinquished her. “If you want.”
She beamed up at me with a smile. “I do.”
I nodded. “Then I will.”
“Good,” she said as she took a few more bites of her food and then scooped up her root beer. “Mm, getting me another one of these before I head out.”
I chuckled as I watched her saunter toward my office door. “Be safe heading home.”
“Oh, we only live a few minutes—”
“Be safe. Going home,” I stated again with a bit more gruffness in my voice.
She swallowed hard before nodding. “You have my word.”
I winked. “Good girl.”
A flush that worked its way across her cheeks before she slipped out of my office was a pretty little picture that I knew would hang in my head during the team’s afternoon endurance work.
Which was more than I deserved from an angel like her, if anyone asked me about it.