Benched

by Elise Faber

  She turned her head and glanced back over her shoulder at Mandy. Okay, glared. Because, dammit, she’d been pressed against those muscles of Stefan’s and didn’t want anyone else touching . . . or fantasizing about touching.

  Mandy grinned. “Guess that look says it all.” She dug her fingers into a sore spot, and Brit grunted in discomfort. “Come on, just dish already. A little girl talk makes the world go round. Plus, who else am I supposed to talk to. Rebecca? You know she’s about as fun as watching paint dry.”

  With a snort, Brit plunked her head down on the pads. Rebecca was pretty serious and not a whole lot of fun.

  “Point made,” she said. “But I’m not really good at the whole girl-talk thing.”

  Especially with non-hockey-playing girls. At least she could connect with the guys on the team about the sport, but chatting with Mandy about hair or men made her downright uncomfortable.

  “We’ll practice.”

  Which sounded about as fun as talking with Rebecca, but Brit sighed and didn’t protest as she endured the alternating pain, pleasure, and icy cold that was the storm of Mandy’s fingers mixed with the therapist’s patented muscle cream.

  Good God, the woman had strong hands. If she weren’t all of five-feet-and-change, Brit would have told her to get her ass in gear and start playing. “You’re not funny,” she muttered.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’d admire Stefan all day, but when it gets down to it, I like my men a little burlier.”

  “You’re so little, they’d smother you— Fuck!” The therapist had dug firmly into a particularly sore spot.

  “Sorry.” Mandy chuckled. “Okay. No, I’m not. You’ve got a smart mouth on you.” She popped Brit on the shoulder then dropped down onto the table next to her. “We can’t all be tall and willowy like you, Brittany Plantain. Some of us girls have a little meat on us . . . and like our men with the same.”

  “Meat?” Brit stopped and glanced over at Mandy, lips twitching. Sometimes her mind went really dirty, she couldn’t help it. Okay, she could help it, but being around guys and their plethora of sexual innuendos and bad jokes has turned her into a twelve-year-old boy. “Really?”

  Twin spots of pink appeared on Mandy’s cheeks, clashing with her pale skin and red-hued hair. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Uh-huh. I think there’s a dirty mind in there. Hiding under two tons of cuteness.”

  “Two tons?” A grin. “Jeez, girl, I just told you I was insecure about my size, and you bring up my weight.”

  Panic seized Brit for one long moment. Until she saw the humor in Mandy’s eyes. The other woman was devious.

  Biting back a smile, she said, “Okay. Maybe three.”

  “Bitch.”

  They looked at each other and cracked up.

  When they’d finally gotten themselves back under control, Mandy bumped her shoulder against Brit’s. “Did we just become friends?”

  Brit nodded solemnly. “I think so.” For once, she might have actually met another woman she could be herself with, another woman where things weren’t her trademark awkward.

  “Good. I’m tired of hanging out with cavemen all the time,” Mandy said.

  “Other women besides Rebecca work for the Gold.”

  “Yeah.” Mandy shrugged. “There are a group of us, but I’m the only one that travels with the team.”

  “Well then, we’ll need to stick together.”

  The other woman snorted. “Heck no. Any spare time you’ve got will be spent with Stefan.”

  “It’s not like that,” Brit protested, even as she wondered why she bothered. Management wanted it to be more. She and Stefan wanted it to be more. So why put the qualifier on it now?

  “Then what’s it like?” Mandy asked. “Because the pictures of you two are smoldering.”

  “It’s attraction.”

  And possibility. The delicate hope for more.

  But it was also a fragile future that could be easily torn apart if Stefan found out the real reason for her initial interest, for her moving forward into something she wouldn’t have normally touched with a ten-foot pole, chemistry or not. Probably, the same was true for him. They both understood that any relationship between them would be complicated.

  Inter-office dating on steroids.

  With an inner sigh at the mess that was her life, Brit rose from the table and tested her shoulder. No matter what they said about Mandy, the woman knew what she was doing when it came to muscles.

  Just hopefully not Stefan’s.

  “If that’s attraction, then sign me up,” Mandy said.

  Brit chuckled, but it wasn’t filled with humor. Or at least not entirely. “Attraction complicates things.”

  Mandy stopped cleaning the table with a disinfecting wipe and raised a brow.

  Way to go. Draw even more attention to the convoluted mess between her and Stefan.

  “I’d say be careful,” the other woman murmured, “but it seems like you already know that.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mandy tossed the wipe then walked over. “Okay, then I’ll say this. Stefan might seem like an open book, calm and with his shit together, but he feels as much as the rest of us. He’s just really good at keeping it bottled up, making it seem as though everything is superficial and doesn’t matter.”

  “How do—?” Brit bit back the question then shook her head at herself. She wanted to know—despite feeling jealous that Mandy might understand Stefan better than she did—and asked anyway. “Did you and he—?”

  “God no. I don’t shit where I eat, no matter how much fun it is to look. Plus, remember? Burly men.” She shrugged, her expression going a little serious and a whole lot wicked. “But I work closely with you all on a daily basis. It’s hard not to get to know each of your nuances.” She raised one brow, chasing it with a penetrating look. “All of them.”

  “So what you’re saying—”

  Mandy’s lips tipped up into a smirk. “Is that I know all.”

  Now damn, that was a frightening thought.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  “Come out with me?”

  Brit jumped at the sound of Stefan’s voice ambushing her the moment she stepped outside the room.

  “Jeez, ninja. Don’t sneak up on me.” Her hand pressed against her chest, tried to soothe the racing tattoo of her heart within. “And it’s late. I want to shower and sleep.”

  “I can help with that.”

  She snorted. “It’s a simple matter of you wash my back . . .”

  “Exactly.”

  Walking into the locker room, Brit noticed that the pile of jerseys and undergarments in the center of the room had disappeared. Her gear was stacked and waiting for the equipment manager to store for their next plane ride.

  Never let it be said the Gold staff weren’t efficient.

  The guys had already finished with their showers, and the room was hushed. Which meant she was showering back in the hotel room.

  Maybe it was crazy to feel like a crowd would save her if any of the guys tried to grab her again. A group hadn’t stopped the men in the past, but she’d also been the only one showering when it happened.

  And so somehow, the notion had become hard for her to shake.

  She felt safe when she wasn’t showering by herself. She felt exposed when she was.

  In the twisted logic of her mind, it made sense.

  Maybe someday, she’d get past it.

  Today wasn’t that day.

  Because seriously, she had enough crap on her plate.

  “I’m exceedingly skilled with a loofa.”

  Her mouth dropped open at the soft words, their cheese factor nearly infinity. She was just about to give Stefan a boatload of crap about it when she turned and saw the expression on his face.

  It appeared superficial. It seemed light.

  Until she looked closer and realized the offer was much more significant than that.
He was trying to make her laugh, to relieve some of her stress . . . because Stefan knew there was something about the empty locker room that made her nervous.

  That was when Brit knew.

  She had to tell him. Needed to be honest in this way, since she couldn’t in so many others.

  “I was . . . well, I want to say attacked, because that’s what it felt like.” She cleared her throat, pushed past the lump in it. “But it wasn’t so much that as some sort of sick ritual the guys had for new players.”

  His nostrils flared, and his eyes darkened, the light blue going almost navy. “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “A few years ago . . . the team I was playing on . . . well, they have a tradition.” She swallowed hard. “I wasn’t immune.”

  “What. Do. You. Mean?” he asked, somehow managing to inject intensity into the question without actually raising the volume of his voice.

  “I mean”—she sucked in a breath and told him the truth—“they waited until I was alone in the shower then came up behind me, held me down, and doused me with icy cold water. It was a way at making me feel like part of the team . . . every single player endured it. I-I just thought it was going a different way.”

  “You thought they were going to rape you.”

  The air in her lungs shuddered out on a long, shaky exhale. The floor became blurry through the lens of her tears, but her voice was rock steady. “The way”—her eyes closed—“Their hands. I—” Finally, she breathed out and lifted her chin. “Yes.”

  And there was the truth. The piece that had shaken her to her very core. Those men had taken something from her—stolen her safety net, ripped away a place where she’d felt protected.

  Hockey had been her happy place. Until then.

  It had taken her years to find her way back.

  Stefan’s voice shook with fury. “That’s assault. It’s wrong.”

  “Yes.”

  “But why—”

  Brit knew what was coming. It was the inevitable course of questioning. Why had she let it happen? Why—

  “Didn’t I do something?” She laughed without mirth, the words coming fast now, almost frenzied in their effort to escape. “Except I did. I reported the incident to the head coach. I thought it was a matter of misunderstanding, that they needed to know it was wrong to do it to anyone, male or female. And they . . .” Brit blew out a breath. “ . . .they said all the right things, even made a show of pulling the guys into meetings. But at the end of the day, I was the one they let go. It was me who scrambled to find another team, another contract, and position. That’s why this thing with Bernard—”

  Shut up!

  The thought burst through to the forefront of her mind, silencing the flow of words.

  Stefan watched her for a long moment. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t to question her further, to pounce on the slip. No, his words, when they came, were supportive.

  “You did the right thing.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not so sure.”

  “You did.”

  “My career suffered.” It had been rough trying to find another team, and even though she’d eventually managed to secure another contract, Brit had thought her dream finished.

  “Maybe,” Stefan said. “But you’re here now.”

  He took a step toward her, raised a cautious hand. That tentative action undid her, and she closed the distance between them, nestled into the expanse of his chest. His arms wrapping tight around her were better than making a tough-as-hell save.

  Those arms soothed, managed to make the past feel like it was very much in the past.

  “Did you ever think about going to the media?” His question was gentle in a way that might have pissed her off, if it were anyone else, but coming from Stefan, it was okay.

  Brit didn’t allow herself to think about why that might be.

  “Yes,” she told him. “But there were pictures, and I thought if it all came out, the pictures would too. My career couldn’t recover from that.”

  The old saying that pictures were forever was true. They shaded a person’s image, always crept back in when someone was in the news. And a story about a hot button issue?

  That would have been regurgitated time and again.

  Every time a frat house went too far, the media would have said, “Remember that time when the professional hockey team got caught hazing Brit Plantain?”

  She could have never just been a goalie striving to make it like other players.

  She would never have been just the first female goalie on an NHL team.

  No.

  She would have been a victim.

  And Brit couldn’t abide that.

  “Come on,” Stefan said a few minutes later. He dropped his arms, and the sensation of their loss was intense. She wanted to stay curled against him forever, to stay safe and warm. Protected.

  Then his fingers laced with hers, and the warmth returned, melting the frosty numbness making popsicles of her insides.

  “We’ll go to the hotel,” he said. “You’ll shower. I’ll order room service, and we can eat.”

  Her eyes flashed to his, suspicious. “Are you trying to finagle an invitation to my room?”

  “Who me?” he asked, anything but innocent.

  She felt her lips twitch. Stefan was charming for all his deviousness, and delight replaced the hooked tendrils of the past.

  “And what will you be doing while I’m showering?” she teased.

  “Watching TV.”

  Uh-huh. “So this is all about using my TV?” she asked.

  “Yup.” Stefan shook his head. “I’ve heard your room is nice than mine.”

  Brit rolled her eyes, but just as she was about to call him on that bit of BS, he leaned close and whispered in her ear, “I’ll also be imagining you naked and wet. My mouth on those perfect breasts, my hands on your ass. Picturing pulling you close as I dropped to my knees and . . .”

  The rest of the image he painted in her mind was hot and dirty and . . . sexy as hell.

  She wanted—

  But he didn’t let her catch her breath, just continued painting the scene, his husky voice sweeping over her like calloused fingers drifting down her spine. “I’ll be imagining all of that, planning, knowing that when we actually get to be in a shower together—one that’s not filled with a bunch of our teammates”—he added with a rough chuckle—“it’ll be even hotter than I can imagine.”

  Holy hell.

  Her thighs trembled, the ache between them intense.

  And that was only with words.

  Still, Brit had never been one to let someone else win, not in sports and not in life.

  It wasn’t in her nature.

  So she found her voice, rose on tiptoe, and whispered in his ear, “But what if I wanted there to be a bunch of other dudes?”

  He shivered, his fingers clenching on hers. But then her words must have penetrated because he reared back in comical outrage and glared at her.

  She smirked. That would do.

  “Come on, Romeo,” she told him. For once, she was in the moment, and the tenterhooks of the past were very far away. “I like your plan.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Stefan

  Stefan hadn’t been kidding when he’d told Brit he would be imagining her naked and wet, droplets of water skating down her skin . . . all that creamy skin exposed for his mouth, his fingers, his co—

  He cursed, grabbed the room-service menu off the desk in her hotel room, and tried to push the images from his mind.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want Brit—the raging boner tenting his pants was more than enough evidence to the contrary—but it was too soon.

  She was vulnerable . . . and they were on date three.

  Of course, his dick would like to remind him that the countless hours they’d spent together in the company of their teammates and the dinners with Blane and Max and Dan adde
d to that.

  They did.

  But it was still too soon.

  Stefan had slept with enough women in his lifetime to understand that sex was just sex.

  And he wanted more than sex with Brit.

  But that wasn’t the only reason for his hesitation. Although she’d opened up to him, he couldn’t help but feel there were more secrets she was hiding, more he needed to know before they took that final step.

  Not to mention they had practice and a game tomorrow. If they were going to sleep together, he wanted to take his time, to keep her up for hours into the night.

  This wasn’t the right moment.

  Which he was going to remember, even if ninety percent of his blood was currently in the southern half of his body.

  The shower turned off.

  “Christ,” he muttered and quickly phoned in the order before sinking down onto the edge of the bed. He turned on the TV and cranked the volume, not wanting to engage his imagination further by listening for any faint clue of movement as Brit dressed.

  His phone buzzed, but he ignored it because the door to the bathroom opened, and he nearly swallowed his tongue.

  He’d seen Brit naked, but this was somehow even sexier.

  Her face was washed clean, her blond hair pulled back into a scattered ponytail—which was all he registered before his eyes were drawn back down to her body.

  A pale pink silk tank top encased those breasts he’d been fantasizing about, her nipples beaded beneath the thin material, clearly illustrating the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  He bit back a curse, struggled for a semblance of control. She was the personification of temptation.

  Her legs were bare except for the smallest pair of flannel shorts he’d ever seen, miles and miles of bare skin flushed slightly pink from the heat of the shower.

  Stefan’s fingers actually ached with the need to touch.

  Brit tugged her ponytail, a nervous gesture that made her appear all of fifteen-years-old for a moment, but when she smiled and gave a rueful shrug, any thoughts of youth disappeared.

  She was all woman.

  He wanted her.

  “I don’t really do the matching lingerie thing,” she said.