She slammed the cup down on the table after a short thirty seconds or so, and Liam Austman reached across the table to fist bump her. “Dude, no way I could have drank that, Charlie. You’ve got balls!”
Felix Messing laughed loudly before a gleam sparked in his eye. There was no way that could be good. Messing was one of the youngest players and had the reputation as the team trouble-maker. “Do you know what else takes balls, Richmond?”
Charlie shook her head as she swatted Sean’s hand away from her ass and sat back on her haunches. I wanted to high-five her for the annoyed side-eye she was serving Sean. “Pantsing Callahan,” Messing said with a chuckle.
“Just gym shorts or the whole enchilada?” His only response was a quirked eyebrow as he turned to look out onto the balcony. I turned with him. Cam’s back was to us, and Lindsey’s arms were around his neck. There was no way they would hear her coming. Charlie nodded her understanding.
She stood, a resolute and tight frown pulling across her features. She tiptoed toward the balcony on wobbly feet, and I suppressed a laugh as she stumbled into the half-open door and paused to ensure Cam and Lindsey hadn’t caught on to the joke. Charlie turned back to us with a wicked grin, and I felt a clenching in my stomach. Goddamn, that smile looked good on her.
“Hey, Messing?” She asked, and he looked up with a laugh. “This doesn’t take balls, this is child’s play. I just feel sorry for you because I know you don’t know what balls look like since you clearly don’t fucking have any.”
The laughter that erupted around the table was loud and raucous. It doubled in volume and ferocity when Charlie took two steps forward and hooked her fingers into the waistband of Cam’s pants. There was a split second pause when Cam pulled away from Lindsey with a shout, but Charlie delivered. A swift tug left Cam exposed to Lindsey, who was laughing along with the rest of us.
Cam quickly pulled his pants up and chased Charlie back into the apartment with a shout. “I am going to kill you, Charlie!” We all watched with laughs as she led him on a wild goose chase around the apartment before stopping at the pub table.
She paused on the side closest to the door, and he stood opposite of her. Her chest heaved, her hair was a flyaway mess around her shoulders, and her cheeks were pink from the exertion of the unexpected chase. Her hazel eyes gleamed behind the lenses of her glasses, and she looked so damn beautiful.
“Oh fuck,” Lindsey said as she plopped down between me and the clingy blonde. She pointed to Charlie and asked, “Do you see that look in her eye? That slightly crazy gleam just sort of hiding behind the surface?”
I nodded as Nate leaned in close on my other side and said, “We call that her danger look. She’s in that sweet drunk space where she’ll do anything. She’s really likes breaking glasses.” I watched her closely. One of her hands was inching toward a pile of restaurant napkins and sauce packets lying on the table.
Lindsey nudged me and laughed. “Ten bucks she picks up those napkins and throws them at him.”
I didn’t have the chance to respond. Charlie’s movement was nearly imperceptible, and only a few seconds passed between her snatching a couple of ketchup packets up, opening them, and then spraying them in Cam’s face. His shocked, spluttering reaction lasted long enough for Charlie to burst out laughing and rocket around the table and down the hall. A slamming door and giggles indicated that she was hiding from Cam in one of our bedrooms.
Cam chased after her as the laughter died around the table. The sound of him banging on a door and her giggling was soon drowned out by gameplay resuming around the coffee table. A few turns passed before Cam sauntered back into the room with a ketchup marred washrag in his hands. He tossed the rag in Sean’s face before depositing himself next to Lindsey. The blonde huffed as she scooted further away from me to accommodate the extra body.
“That’s a feisty one, Tremblay,” Austman said with a chuckle as he spun. “I like her.”
Sean shrugged with a laugh that sounded forced as our teammate landed on the Asshole space.
“Yeah, the feisty one’s holed up in Cote’s room. Good fucking luck getting her out of there,” Cam said once Austman was directed to lick the underside of one of the girls’ shoes.
I grimaced as he grabbed the girl’s leg, and she giggled. Sean laughed along with the rest of the table, apparently unconcerned that his date was making herself at home in my bedroom. “Oh don’t worry,” I grumbled as I stood, stretching the stiffness from my limbs, “I’ll go get her out of there.”
— C —
The world spun just slightly off its axis as I lay half-on, half-off the bed in the room I escaped into. I didn’t mean to get so drunk, planning instead to drink just enough to kill what I was positive would be an awkward buzz around the table. The plan altered massively when Cass-ahn-dra the almighty fancy bitch and her blonde friend sauntered into the apartment twenty minutes after I arrived. She swooped down and kissed Sean on the cheek, and I saw red. Why the fuck did we agree to bury the hatchet and continue seeing each other if he was going to invite ex-girlfriends and bimbos over to parties that he also invited me to?
Danger Charlie showed up that night. Danger Charlie was reckless and likely to do any number of things to wreak havoc. I was honestly lucky that Messing dared me to pants Cam when he did. Otherwise, I wasn’t sure that I could’ve kept myself from reaching over and strangling Fancy-ahn-dra for her snide comments and big, dumb tits. Not to mention the fact that the urge to punch Sean started creeping up over the fact that he couldn’t seem to keep his goddamn hands off my ass.
I sighed and closed my eyes. The bed was seriously comfy; and if I stayed in there, I wasn’t likely to commit any misdemeanors. A familiar scent tickled my senses, and I burrowed deeper into the pillow inhaling deeply and wondering why a sense of calm was rushing over me. I was just starting to doze when knocking resumed on the door. Damn, I didn’t think Cam would come back to try to get me for the ketchup stunt.
A soft giggle escaped my lips, and I called out into the darkness, “I’m not coming out! This is my room now.”
“Charlie, we’re still playing the game, and it’s your turn. C’mon outta there.”
Was that Devon? My stomach clenched at the memories that washed over me from earlier in the week. A smile crept slowly across my face, and I covered my mouth with my hands. I came to the party to spend time with Sean, not get butterflies over his super nice, super hot, super well-hung roommate.
“Nope, I’m a terrible Asshole!” My reply was muffled almost entirely by my hands.
“What was that?” He called, and the handle jiggled to the door. “Charlie, come out, please.”
I laughed as the world spun around me. “Nope!”
“Don’t make me come in there and get you!”
Come get me, Daddy. I giggled at my indecent thought but didn’t reply to the man in the hallway. The handle jiggled again, and I heard a thump and a grunt. The thought of Devon standing on the other side with his head resting against the door wreaked havoc on my sense of decency—and indecency.
Before I could fully comprehend what exactly I was doing, I was on my feet and stumbling toward the door of the room. My fingers fumbled with the lock momentarily. I yanked the door open to see Devon standing there, the brightness of the hallway silhouetting him and giving him a halo of light.
“Hey,” he started. His next words died on his lips when my hand shot forward, grabbing a fistful of his t-shirt, and pulled him into the dark room with me. I pushed the door shut and reached around his body to lock it back. This room was my secret place and only people that I had secret urges for were allowed.
“What are you doing?” He hissed and started to reach around me. My best guess was that he was searching for a light switch. I intercepted his hand and placed it on my hip. I didn’t need lights to run my hands over his body; I could do just fine with my sense of touch and extraordinary imagination. His movements paused entirely.
“Charlie…” He trailed
off as I shushed him. I wanted to know whether or not his lips tasted like whiskey, and I for damn sure was going to finally find out.
Reaching up, I draped my arms lazily around his neck and pulled his face toward my own. I’d heard the term slow burn used to describe a sexual feeling that ignited but took time to explode, but I didn’t quite understand it until that very moment. Every heated second, every angry minute, every tension-filled hour of our tenuous relationship was building to this very kiss, and every fiber of my being was on fire.
My knees gave away slightly at the intensity of the sensations running through my body. A strong arm caught me under the shoulders and another wrapped tightly around my waist. I leaned my head back slightly, desperate for the bite of his kiss to dig deeper than a quick nip. The feeling of his teeth tugging gently on my bottom lip pulled a shuddering breath from me, and he groaned.
“Charlie, we shouldn’t,” he whispered. The syllables of his words were punctuated by the press of my lips to his between each one. My hands and arms began to move, one snaking its way down to press between his shoulders urgently, the other moving upward to tangle in the wavy mess of his un-gelled hair.
I shushed him and pressed my lips against his once more. A delightful shiver passed through my body as Devon gave in to my super sultry feminine wiles. The hand that was resting between my shoulders traced its way upward, and his fingers dug into the hair at the nape of my neck. He turned us forcibly around. My back pressed against the wall, and the space between our bodies all but disappeared as he leaned into me and kissed me with fervor.
The feeling of his lips working urgently against my own was heady. Tremors wracked my body as his hands tugged at the hem of my shirt, pulling it up just enough to allow him to place one hand on the small of my back as the other trailed up to work the clasp of my bra. The realization that his kiss tasted exactly the way I imagined it would hit me at the exact moment the clasp of my bra gave way.
“Oh my god,” I gasped as I pulled away from him. The smoky, peaty taste of whiskey lingered in my mouth long after his hands left my body. A low groan passed my lips at the loss of our contact, and I found myself aching for another taste of his sweet intoxication.
“I’m so sorry,” His response was immediate. The apology in his tone was sincere. I could hear him shuffling toward the door, but I couldn’t figure out why.
I leaned away from the wall, holding my hand out in the darkness to try to find the heat of his body. It was with a whine that I said, “No, come back. You taste like whiskey, and I want more.”
“Holy shit, you’re so drunk,” he whispered into the darkness.
I felt my world spin without him holding me up, and I stumbled backward against the wall with a thud. “I am not that drunk,” I protested.
His warm fingers wrapped around my wrist, and I half lunged, half fell into his arms. The kiss I was aiming for his lips landed somewhere around his clavicle, and I giggled into his chest. “Yeah,” he said as he led me back across the expanse of the room, “let’s get you to bed.”
“Only if you’re coming with me, sailor,” I whispered in my best impersonation of Jessica Rabbit.
The smoldering temptress approach was apparently lost on him. Rather than fall onto the bed with me and ravage me senseless, he helped me lay down before taking my shoes and glasses off for me. Devon tucked me into bed and pulled the covers up under my chin, apparently not caring at all that my loose bra could rebel sometime in the night and strangle me to death. My eyes drifted closed as the warmth of the comfortable bed embraced me fully. I was only minutely aware of the kiss that was dropped on my brow.
Chapter 12
— C —
I woke up topless in an unfamiliar bed. My mind reeled as I sat up and frantically threw the covers off of my lower half. A sigh of relief trickled from my lips. I still wore my jeans with a belt firmly intact. Which means I didn’t sleep with… My head jerked up and my eyes popped open. A jersey flashing the last name Cote was draped over the arm of a chair jammed into the corner of the room. Oh fuck.
My glasses sat folded primly on top of a Kindle Fire on his messy bedside table. For a brief moment, I mourned the loss of my own tablet but shook it off quickly. Get your head out of your ass and figure out what’s going on, Richmond! I jammed the glasses on my face and began the frantic search for my shoes, top, and bra.
The heat of an embarrassed flush raced through my body as broken memories from the previous evening flashed through my head. The crumpled material of my top was found buried in the covers. I found my bra lying halfway across the room. I sat on the side of the bed, each offending article of clothing clutched in a shaking fist, and tried desperately to remember how exactly I ended up topless in Devon’s bed. My head pounded, and I thought I might get sick.
A knock on the door jarred me from heated memories of Devon’s hands traveling my body as he pressed me against a wall and kissed me absolutely senseless. I fumbled to put on my bra as Lindsey called softly, “Hey, Charlie, are you up?”
“Y-yeah, just got up,” I called back, my words muffled by the shirt I was pulling over my head. The memory of Devon putting me to bed and me inviting him to join me caused my stomach to churn. Thank fuck he turned that invitation down.
“How are you feeling?” She called softly.
I slipped my feet into my shoes, which were lined up next to the bed with the same amount of deliberate care that he used for my glasses. I turned to the bed, considering briefly that I should make it but shook the thought from my head. I needed to get away from that bed, out of Devon’s bedroom, and into the cool air of the morning. My head was foggy; and while I knew the majority of the haze was due to my well-deserved hangover, I couldn’t help but feel that part of it was due to the confusion, guilt, and shame wracking through my body.
“A little rough,” I answered my best friend’s question as I ripped the door open. She stood on the other side with my jacket and bag in her hands. Seriously, she deserved some kind of award for bailing me out of yet another awkward situation. “You ready to go?”
She nodded as she handed my jacket over to me. “Yeah, the guys left for morning skate already, but they left those bimbos passed out here. We’ve gotta get going so I can get home and clean my apartment. Cam’s coming over tonight before they leave for the week, and I can’t let him see how much of a fucking disaster I actually am.”
I nodded, but my mind strayed as Lindsey rushed me and an equally hungover Nate out of the apartment. A week wasn’t that long, but I knew it was too long to not address just what exactly transpired between me and Devon the evening before. My sleuth-like mind already pieced together that I’d drunkenly taken my shirt off at some point in the middle of the night, likely because my bra rode up and was strangling me as I feared it might. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be sure of much more than that.
I vividly recalled calling him “sailor” the night before, but did I actually called him daddy? I shuddered. I ignored the mindless chatter of my two closest friends as Lindsey drove us home. Instead, I focused on forcing myself to tap out a reluctant text message.
Today 11:32 AM
Hi, Devon. This is Charlie. I
was wondering if you’re free
anytime today?
For part of the afternoon.
What’s up?
I’d like to talk if possible.
You can just drop by
the apartment anytime this
afternoon. We’ll be home from
morning skate in about thirty
minutes.
Not to seem like an asshole, but
this definitely isn’t a
conversation I’m comfortable
having with Sean or Cam
around.
Okay. Do you want to
meet somewhere for lunch in
about an hour then?
I’m 1000% way too hungover to
even begin considering putting
food into my body righ
t now.
But we could meet at Collective
Coffee Co if that works for you?
You can snag something to eat
there, and I could get some
coffee that probably won’t cause
me to puke on your shoes?
Sure, see you then.
An hour and a few outfit changes later, I found myself sitting alone at a corner table in the coffee shop, sipping a black coffee, and trying to not watch the door for Devon’s approach. I sat the cup on the lacquered tabletop and checked the time. I tracked the second hand’s revolution around the face of my watch and considered the possibility that Devon might have decided that whatever I needed to say to him wasn’t worth his time. I thought back to waking up topless in his bed. Or maybe he just already got what he wanted from you, an ugly voice whispered in the back of my head.
A glance over my shoulder and through the window revealed a busy parking lot and a day teeming with sunshine and gentle ocean breezes. I knew if the door were to open, a rush of cool air would hit my back and cause me to shiver. I thought back to another drunk night that Devon needed to care for me and the shivers that wracked my body on that occasion. I closed my eyes and attempted to chase away the memory that the cologne dredged up before it could take root and disarm me. After my previous few encounters with the man, I knew I needed to be sharp for this interaction.
I glanced toward the door again, and my stomach clenched at the sight of Devon pulling it open. My tongue stuck to the roof of my suddenly dry mouth, and I gulped the coffee to clear the cottony feeling. His skin glowed a warm caramel tone in the dazzling sunlight, and I was taken aback by how starkly handsome the man was in casual clothing.
Breakaway: A Hockey Romance Page 13