Chapter 14

I don’t usually like coming home from a road trip. Usually I prefer to be on the road, mostly because home means looking after myself; cooking and trying to figure out how to entertain myself. Now I didn’t have to do any of that.

I had Beth. 

Waking up and hearing her in the shower felt...comforting. Reaching over and brushing my hand across the still warm sheets where she’d slept beside me felt peaceful, as did her scent which was everywhere, not just on the pillow next to me. 

There were those candles that were all along the mantle over the gas fireplace that smelled like cookies right out of the oven and then there was lotion she put on, that scent was everywhere; in the bed, the bathroom and even my car. It smelled...well not flowery and not sugary exactly but something in between. I found I liked getting in my car and catching just a hint of it, or opening the front door and there it was again. It was like putting on my favourite pair of sweats and sitting down with one of those forbidden sugary cereals on a Sunday morning. It made me like coming home. 

Thinking about that made my stomach growl so I rolled over and after a yawn and a stretch I headed for the kitchen. My fridge had never had this much actual food in it before. I had actual choices. I opted for a tub of this Greek Yogurt she was always eating and grabbed the bag of granola she’d gotten me hooked on and headed for the table. 

“How about a bowl?” she slid one in front of me and snatched the tub just before I was about to dump the granola into it. “Do you want oj or apple juice with that?” 

“Uh...coffee,” I replied as she scooped the thick white yogurt into the bowl in front of me. Sometimes it was also a bit like having my mom or one of my sisters around. She gave me one of those ‘were you raised in a barn’ looks and then walked back to the fridge and put the rest of the yogurt away. I watched her move around the kitchen like she’d lived here for years and not just weeks. There were different kinds of coffee in my cupboards now and we’d even bought one of those fancy espresso making machines so that I didn’t insist on going to Starbucks every morning, even though I’d pointed out that it was right downstairs. “Aren’t you eating anything?” I asked when the she handed me a steaming froth topped cup and sat down to nurse one of her own. 

“I will, at the office. They always have stuff there,” she mumbled, staring into the distance. She’d done that, stared into space like that, on the drive home and even after we’d gone to bed where she’d sat with a book propped against her knees. I knew she’d hardly turned the pages at all. 

“Are you...is something wrong?” I wasn’t used to caring about how someone else felt. I mean, apart from my sisters and my mom, I usually didn’t have to. My dad is like me, or I’m like him. We don’t go around just ‘feeling things’ and we certainly don’t talk about it. 

She glanced over at me and gave me half a smile. 

“Fine, you?” It looked like an honest answer but I felt this urge to press her, just to be sure. 

“If you don’t want to go to work or something...,” I began, only to watch her half of a smile become a full one. 

“I like work, actually,” she said and pursed her lips as she studied me through narrowed eyes. “Are you even allowed to pull a sicky? I assume that’s what you’re suggesting,” she added, looking amused. 

“No, not really. I mean...yeah sometimes you say you’ve tweaked something and you get a ‘maintenance day’ but that’s about it,” I replied honestly. She smiled and took a sip of coffee and after a minute I did too while I wondered if I asked her to spend the day in bed with me if she would and if I wanted her to. I felt sort of surprised that the idea appealed to me but then decided it was still too early in the season to be pulling the injury card. 

“Maybe we could do something after you get out of practice, take me for lunch or something?” she suggested. I nodded eagerly.

“We could go to Perry’s,” I recommended, my mouth watering at the thought of the corned beef on rye. She smiled at me over her coffee. 

“Sounds like a plan.” 

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The wolf whistles started before I’d even made my way down the corridor. I shook a finger at Duncs and Seabs who were standing at the end of the bench and I couldn’t help but smile when Pat turned, mid stride, to aim a wide grin at me, which sent him skating full speed into Hoss’s back which, fortunately, didn’t even faze the big forward. It did make all the guys laugh though. Well, almost all of the guys. Jon leaned against the low wall in front of the bench and stared at me with those fathomless dark eyes of his and his lips didn’t even twitch, never mind form an actual smile. 

“I need your signature on a couple things,” I said quietly, holding a clip board towards Coach Q whose expression immediately morphed from murderous to the kind and gentle teddy bear grin that hid behind that big bushy moustache 

As he took the clipboard from me and the rest of the guys went back to horsing around out on the ice, Jon continued to stare at me with this menacing expression on his face, like I’d done something to piss him off. The thought of what I’d done...what Pat and I had done...what he had seen us do made me turn away. 

“So how you fitting in Beth?” Coach Q asked without looking up from the paperwork in front of him. It was a press release, not really something that required his immediate and undivided attention but anything with his or any of the other management’s names in it had to have approval. 

“Fine,” I replied, worried if I said more that I’d give away just how nervous it made me to be there, to have Jon staring at me so intently. I could feel sweat begin to trickle down the back of my neck. 

“Well, you gonna say hello to your young man before I make him skate ‘til he pukes?” he grinned as he handed me the clipboard and I felt my entire face get hot. I told myself he was just being nice, nicer than he had to be, but it felt like everyone knew. 

“Uh...nah,” I smiled back at him. “Y’know, treat ‘em mean....” The Coach’s eyes lit up and he let out a bark of laughter as he laid one massive bear paw on my shoulder. 

“Thatta girl,” he smirked and then blew his whistle so hard I winced. All of the guys raced onto the ice. All of the guys except Jon who remained where he was, leaning against the low wall in front of the bench. I told myself not to look though I knew it wouldn’t accomplish anything to play it cool and still, I looked. 

He tipped one of the water bottles into his mouth. Most of the water went into his parted lips, making the muscles in his thick neck work as he swallowed, but some of it trickled down over his chin, down his neck and disappeared into his jersey. I followed the progress of the clear, cool liquid and licked my lips. I wanted, very much, to lick every last drop from his skin. 

As if he knew I was watching, and he probably did, he turned towards me upended the bottle over his head, sending a cascade of water over his short, dark hair. My breath came out in a gasp as the water plastered his hair to his head, giving me an image of what it would be like to look up at him, sweat dampened, working hard over me. 

I tore my gaze away and forced myself to walk slowly away, down the tunnel. Not run but walk, with measured steps until I could turn the corner of the hallway and lean against the cool concrete wall. I pressed my thighs together, the slight pressure and friction enough to make me gasp and send the clipboard clattering to the ground.

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I dodged the usual smattering of reporters waiting for a sound bite outside the dressing room calling out a good natured apology I didn’t mean at all and promising that Kaner would be glad to talk to them. That would only hold him up a few minutes, if at all. Pat wasn’t one for speech making. 

She was collecting her purse and checking her phone as she got up from behind her desk. She heard me come in but the smile that died the moment she saw it was me standing in the doorway told me clearly she’d been expecting him.

“I have plans,” she hissed, trying to slip by me, which was impossible, or at least I made it so, filling the doorway easily and blocking her one and only escape route. 

“He’ll be here, soon,” I told her, looking over her shoulder to confirm that the GM’s door was open and the room dark. They had already gone for lunch. We were alone. 

 

She had gone very still, the way a bird will sometimes when it knows it is being watched, as if it can fool you into thinking it is a statue or that it doesn’t exist at all. There was no chance of my thinking that of Beth. The scent coming from her skin filled my head and the desire to run my tongue over her skin to see if it tasted as sweet as it smelled was nearly overwhelming. 

“I lost, I’m out,” I told her. She continued to stare at the centre of my chest, as if by not looking up at me she could pretend that I wasn’t there. I wasn’t about to let her fool herself into thinking that. I cupped her chin in my hand and despite her attempt to defy me, I managed to force her angry gaze to meet mine. “But then I think you knew that would happen. You knew that if I couldn’t have you I would make someone a poor imitation.” The corner of her mouth twitched as if that thought would make her smile but she quickly controlled her expression and continued to stare defiantly at me. 

“Is that what she was doing there?” she asked, her voice dripping with envy while her gaze remained more or less neutral. 

“Oh the things that I did to her,” I whispered, lowering my lips to her ear, “I’m sure she’s still having trouble sitting down.” She tried, oh she tried so hard but a shiver ran the length of her body and I could feel it as I run my knuckle along the curve of her neck to her shoulder. “I thought of you when I did those things Beth. I think you would like me to do those things to you.” It’s not a question. I already know the answer. Her breathing shortened and as I pulled back enough to look down into her eyes, her pupils were large and her lips parted, ready for a kiss. A kiss I wanted to give her, but not yet. 

“Does she come every time you call?” I knew that what she’d meant to say was when I say jump Gabby asks how high and the answer was, of course, yes, but I couldn’t help but grin at the double entendre.

“I think I could make you cum just by telling you to,” I whispered, my lips almost touching hers. Her breath hitched and she looked so exquisitely frightened and turned on all at the same time that I had to restrain myself from picking her and carrying her back over to her desk. It would have been easy to bend her over it and the way she licked her lips as she looked up at me with a silent plea in her eyes told me that she would let me do it too. “In fact,” I whisper, pressing her back into the room, “if I told you to touch yourself right now, I bet you’d cum for me.” 

She blinked at me, and it’s there, the vision in her pretty little head and as I watched, she battled with herself over the idea. It was pretty clear to me that something about it appealed to her. Maybe the idea that she’d have some sort of power over me by making me watch, as if that is all that I would do. Still, she gave the idea some thought before shaking her head slowly from side to side. 

“He hasn’t lost yet,” she whispered hoarsely and then made a break for it, trying to deke around me but I haven’t trained for years to be bypassed by some rookie. Before I’ve even thought about doing it my arm snapped out and easily grabbed hers’, stopping her in her tracks and pulling her against me.

“Oh but he will,” I promised her, grabbing both of her shoulders and pressing my mouth over hers’ in a kiss that she fought, at first and then, with a whimper, yielded to. I kissed her hard, wanting her lips to be swollen, to have been kissed when he saw her. He would not ask because he’s a pussy, but he would know someone had kissed her, hard and thoroughly, the way a woman should be kissed. 

It stung when she slapped me but it wasn’t because of the sensation of the palm of her hand coming into contact with my cheek that made me let her go. I only had two choices;  it was that or take her there, in that room, right then and there. It would have been good, I had no doubt about that at all, but it wasn’t not what I want. 

“But he hasn’t,” she gasped and brushed the back of her hand across her mouth as if she can erase my kiss and this time I let her go when she pulls to free her arm and charges by me. I listen to her heels clicking down the hall and hear him call out to her, a happy go lucky greeting that I roll my eyes at. He might not have been so happy if he’d seen me kissing his girl, or better than that, fucking her over her desk. 

The golden boy; I can’t help but think how sweet it will be when he realizes that I’ve taken her from him and with that vision in my mind, I whistled tunelessly as I headed out into the hallway