by RJ Scott
This was them.
And, this was the last woman he would ever be with; all others paled in comparison.
They kissed with a passion bordering on obsession, even when he lifted her and they moved to the kitchen chair and she straddled his lap and they kissed even more, sat so close there was not one bit of space between them.
When he left for practice, they kissed beside the front door but didn’t talk. Nothing about the implications of what had just happened, or whether they would even see each other again.
Then, “What is this?” he asked as he stepped onto her porch.
She stayed at her door, leaning on the jamb, with an unreadable expression. “I don’t know. I like it, though. But for now, maybe we should keep it quiet? Not tell anyone.”
He nodded. God yes, he didn’t want to face the fallout with Loki yet, because right then he felt odd, like he was fucking and running. The one thing he’d promised not to do.
“I’m sorry, I have to go. But I want us to talk about what this is between us.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need to talk.”
Disappointment swelled inside. He wanted to ask her why, when all they ever did before this was talk. From the weather to the Dragons, they debated and talked until they were blue in the face. Why would either of them want that to change?
“Will we do this again?” God, he sounded needy, pathetic. If his rivals could see this, they’d be rolling on the ground laughing until they cried. Or they’d use the vulnerability to get through him and hurt his team.
He pulled himself together, forcing to the front the strength to stay in control. She smiled at him, and the control instantly unknotted in his chest. Just a smile and he was done, wanting to drag her over and kiss her right on her porch where anyone could see.
“Yes,” she said. And shut the door.
CHAPTER 11
How Kat made it through the rest of the day she didn’t know. Score one for an orgasm with a hot guy in her kitchen, but it left her all off balance. Because the hot guy was the one person she thought she could never have.
After work, when Nicky turned up at her door without his crutches, because he was bored on his own at his and Ryan’s house, the guilt kicked in.
Nicky was dropped off by Simba, who waved as he backed out of the driveway. And come to think of it, her brother looked like he really needed to get something off his chest.
Nicky went straight through to the kitchen, filled a coffee cup, leaned back on the counter—that counter—and sipped at the dark brew. He looked so serious. Part of her wondered if he’d somehow found out what had happened here this morning.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“After coffee,” he muttered, and sipped some more, closing his eyes and bowing his head.
She opened her books and resumed note-taking.
“And?” he added very pointedly. His voice held a note of laughter.
Kat looked up from her notes, glancing at the coffeemaker. She was studying for her annual reviews and fit it into every spare minute that she wasn’t working or sleeping. “And what?”
Kat didn’t want to look at Nicky when he was leaning right where Ryan had given her the orgasm of her entire life, or where she’d then proceeded to suck Ryan off, a memory that made her heat from the inside.
She could feel the heat rising. Ryan had had to leave that morning. Training camp didn’t stop for sex, or talking, or even more sex, and a lot was left unsaid between them. That followed her onto her shift. She’d been honest and called on him not to fuck around while they were doing this.
Doing what? she asked herself for the millionth time that day.
Ally had called her on her distraction, commenting that Kat looked like she’d got lucky. All Kat could do was put it down to a bad night’s sleep. There was no way she was ready to share any of this with anyone.
That was the only thing she and Ryan had actually agreed on. That this was just fooling around—her words, not his, spoken when he’d splintered after she blew him. When she’d said it, Ryan hadn’t exactly come out and said that casual was what he wanted… didn’t matter that he frowned at her words. But they’d agreed there and then that whatever they had would be exclusive and they wouldn’t tell a soul.
Particularly not my brother.
“I could have got you one of mine.” Nicky pointed at the shirt she’d pulled on when she came off shift.
Kat was covering days for the next five, and the best part of that was having a proper evening where she could shower, change, and chill. She hadn’t expected Nicky to visit, but he was clearly pissed about something, and sometimes a man needed his sister to get him out of his funk, and they were always there for each other.
“One what?” She looked down at what he was pointing at. Oh. The jersey.
“Flynn. I can’t believe you’d choose an idiot of a D-man over this sexy exciting forward,” he said, in a grumbling tone, tapping his chest with a thumb.
She had a retort on her lips but didn’t say the words that would likely expose her as messing about with Ryan. Instead she went for the sisterly jugular. “Well, if my brother had bothered to ever give me one of his jerseys, I might have worn one.”
“Might have?” He looked at her suspiciously.
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m not completely sure I want anyone to know we’re related.”
That made Nicky smile, but the smile didn’t last long; he stared down into his coffee.
“What’s wrong, Nicky?” She stood and crossed to stand in front of him. “Did you see the team docs today? What did they say? Is it your knee? Nicky, is it bad news?”
She knew better than to crowd him or anyone in pain—she often had to get relatives to move away from a patient—but this was Nicky, and the thought of him hurt made her professionalism take a side seat. He’d been at training camp, working on rehab and strengthening. Had he pushed things too far? Surely the trainers knew better? Of course they did; it was the hockey players who weren’t honest about their injuries. What if Nicky had lied and pushed things too far?
“It’s looking okay,” he admitted. “They think I’ll be ready for the season opener. We’ll work on upper body strength for the moment.”
Relief flooded her. “That’s good news. So, what’s wrong?”
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, thumbed to his texts, and passed it over. “This.”
She read the content but there was no senders name, just a number, so her reaction was muted until she realized just what she was reading.
I had no intention to take you out permanently, and I hope there are no hard feelings.
“This is from Mark Rafferty?”
“I checked with Karly, he was a rookie with the guy, that’s his number.”
“What did Karly think?”
“He didn’t say a word, just looked at me.”
The text was worded in perfect English, with grammar and full words, as if he’d taken the time to consider what to write, what to say.
Nicky huffed. “What the fuck do I say back to that? Who does this kind of shit? Stuff like this stays in the game. Hockey players don’t talk about our fucking feelings.”
Kat wasn’t used to Nicky sounding so confused. He was a rock. Her rock.
Yet somehow this simple text cut through the confidence and swagger and exposed something much deeper. “What do you want to say back to him?”
Nicky grimaced. “That he was a fucking asshole. That I expect to be checked, but not right in the back when I didn’t even have the puck. That he crossed a line, and he deserved losing more than one game. Hell, that if I’d been turned a little more, with my head down, this could have been worse than just a busted knee.”
“So say that, then.”
Nicky closed his eyes and exhaled noisily. “That’s not what we do. We do all our talking, physically, on the ice, you know that.”
“I know. What happens on the ice, stays on the ice.”
“
Yeah, and it’s Ryan’s role as enforcer to take him out next game. Gloves off, let his fists do the talking, on the ice, and then we’re even.”
Being an enforcer was a role Ryan took seriously, and he was good at it. That freaky code of his had him protecting the entire team.
“Okay… so…?”
“I took it to Coach, and he got up and shut the door—he only does that for serious shit—and he said that I needed to be the professional. The grown-up, right? I mean, how the hell did Rafferty even get my cell number? That’s some freaky shit right there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t hand out my number, Kat. I could count maybe twenty guys who have this—team, management.
“Maybe he got it from Karly?”
Nicky sighed. “Karly said he didn’t. I don’t want to think it was management, but then Coach calling me in? Why would he try and talk me down? That can only mean one thing.”
“What? I’m not following?”
Nicky shook his head and worry rested on his face. “That they’re interested in Rafferty and he’s on management’s watch list for a potential trade.”
“What? Who would they trade for him?” She knew Rafferty was an enforcer and Ryan’s equal, although he’d been described as having two-way skills, so they weren’t the same. But still.
A sudden realization hit her and she let out a soft sound of distress. “No.”
“Yep, you got it.”
“Traded for Ryan? The team wants to trade Ryan?”
“Fuck knows,” Nicky spat and thumped a fist to the counter.
“Okay, there are other defensemen that they could be thinking to replace, Karly maybe, or possibly management wanted to deepen defense or something. She pulled all her logic into one place so she could get her head around things, based on her understanding of the game through growing up with it in her life. What she couldn’t think of was the idea of Ryan not being part of their daily lives now. Instead, she made a mental list of things to worry about first.
“Okay,” she began. “We can’t think like this.”
“What do I tell Ryan? Should I say something?”
“Look, let’s get this text out of the way first.”
“Shit, Kat, I don’t know what to say.”
“Imagine it was Ryan. If he made a hit that wasn’t right, what would you say to him if he texted you?”
She was more than aware of the double standards. A bad hit on your team by the opposition was horrific, but if one of your own guys took another team’s forward out, then that was the game. Brutal but honest. It was one of the things she liked about hockey, that absolute transparency in what the players would do for one another, and what it meant to be a team.
“Ryan wouldn’t hit high like that. He would never check a player in the numbers.”
A violation of the code, the unwritten code of hockey and the ethical code that every player out there followed.
“I didn’t see the hit.”
Kat hardly attended games and only watched them afterward if she knew Nicky and Ryan had made it through unharmed. She hadn’t even watched the bad check on YouTube, although Nicky was kind of proud that the clip had over three hundred thousand hits. Kat was convinced that whoever had posted it had added sound effects that would make her feel sick.
She held up a hand to stop him talking when it looked like he was about to speak. “But Rafferty’s extended this olive branch, whether it’s team mandated or part of his disciplinary make-good. You could just send back a simple okay or something like understood.”
Nicky nodded, passed the phone to her, grabbed his crutches, and moved away. “Can you do it?” He slumped down on her sofa; seemed like he was here to stay. “And don’t mention this to Ryan.”
Like she would do that. Ever. The trade market was harsh, one minute you were a Dragon in the northeast of the USA, the next you were playing in LA or Dallas, and you’d have maybe a day to get yourself together between one game and the next.
She wasn’t ready to think about Ryan being so far away. And Nicky had just signed through to the 2020–21 season; he was here for the long haul. But Ryan had only one more year on this contract. He could end up anywhere if the Dragons didn’t tie him down. Hell, he could be gone a long time before that if he was traded.
“What are you going to say?” Nicky’s question jarred her back to the room.
“How about…?” She paused and typed in okay and then showed Nicky. He gave a sharp nod and she pressed Send without a further thought.
“It’s not okay, though,” he groused. “Asshole’s on Ryan’s shit list for the first game against him and the Phantoms next season. Ryan will drop gloves on him as soon as the puck drops. Rafferty knows that, and if he thinks that shit will get me to call Ryan off… hell, Ryan is his own man.”
Each mention of Ryan’s name had guilt curling inside her, because in all of this, her thoughts went back to him. She didn’t dare to think that what they were doing was anything other than short-term, just a way to scratch the itch for Ryan. It didn’t matter how deep her feelings ran, she needed to get some perspective here.
“Ryan will do what he needs to do,” she murmured, because that was what Nicky expected her to say.
He nodded. “Fucking enforcers.” He blinked away the sleep that threatened to take him under. He’d probably taken painkillers, and likely today’s rehab had taken it out of him. “Even Ryan, all mad, bad, and up in your face, pushing you, chirping at you…. They’re dangerous men, all of them. I wouldn’t trust any of them with a puppy.”
Kat snorted a laugh and made Nicky smile. He pulled a cushion from beside him and with a sigh, he leaned his face on the soft material.
“A puppy?” she said.
“First thing I thought of,” he said softly, and then between one breath and the next, he was asleep.
She cradled her coffee and picked up her phone, looking at the screen and wondering if Ryan was going to text her. Because yes, she’d become that girl.
What was stopping her texting him first? Because if you do, you give away too much of yourself. Because you might let it slip that this infatuation, which started so many years ago, means more to you than just a few weeks in the sack.
She turned on the TV and channel-surfed for the longest time, with Nicky softly snoring next to her. She only jumped a little when her cell chimed with an incoming text.
You at home?
She stared. What did that mean? A booty call?
Yes, with Nicky asleep on the sofa next to me.
There was a pause, and she imagined if Ryan had wanted to come over for more of the same, then he was likely disappointed. Either that or he regretted what had happened and was punching the air with thanks that he could get out of seeing her. He hadn’t seemed to regret it this morning, leaving her with a kiss and a promise to call her.
Or text her, she guessed. Then another message came in.
Been thinking about you all day.
The text sat there in all its glory, staring up at her.
Yeah? Because that was all she had.
The way you came apart.
Shit. What? Why would he send that? That was nearly sexting, wasn’t it?
Nicky huffed in his sleep, moved a little, and she panicked, dropping her phone into her lap and concentrating on the television where a bride from Ohio wanted a black wedding dress with pink ruffles.
She was squirming at that text, at the simple sentence. Her cell vibrated again, and she peeked at it as though it was a live grenade.
I want to do it again. I want to use my mouth on you.
Jesus.
She typed out a simple Stop it, but didn’t send it. She had to take control of this.
You sext with your puck bunnies? she teased, smiling as she sent it.
The response was quick. Never. Just you. I’ve never sexted before.
She sighed. How was training?
Don’t change the subject. Then another one came thro
ugh like an afterthought. Hard. I ache everywhere.
Now that was opening him up for teasing of epic proportions. Thought nothing hurt the enforcer? Aren’t you unstoppable?
Trainers are sadists.
“Who you texting?” Nicky asked on a yawn.
She fumbled the phone in shock, so lost in chatting to Ryan that she’d taken her eyes off the ball. “No one.”
“Well, this no one is making you smile.”
“Just Ally, and work stuff.” God, she was getting good at lying.
He yawned again. “I need to call a cab.”
“I’ll take you.” Kat stood up, extended a hand, and helped him to stand. “Let’s go.”
He groaned and moaned all the way to the car, and louder as he got his body inside and onto the passenger seat. His face was a little pinched, he looked like he was in pain, and she did what sisters did best. “Don’t be such a baby, big brother. Suck it up.”
Nicky grinned at her wryly and buckled up. He slept the fifteen minutes from her place to his and then limped slowly into the house without his crutches. She locked the car and followed.
“You’re coming in?” He sounded surprised.
“I need one of your jerseys,” she teased.
He grunted and stood to one side, letting her in. “Get dressed, Seventeen. Girl in the house!” he called.
She shoved him. “What the hell?”
“Ryan could have a bunny here. He could be naked. I don’t want you seeing that shit.”
What her brother couldn’t know was that one of those things made her feel possessive and annoyed, the other had her getting kind of hot. She’d love a proper look at Ryan’s body, to know it from the Dragon tattoo on his arm to the taste of his skin. She wanted to get some of that, and soon.
“I thought we had a deal. No girls until the knee is fixed.” Ryan’s voice echoed from the corridor where his room was.
Her cell sounded with an incoming text at exactly the same point Ryan walked into the kitchen dropping his phone into his sweatpants pocket.
“Hey,” he said without missing a beat. He moved straight to the coffee machine, turning his back on her. But not before her gaze had flickered low to the Dragons logo tattooed on his arm and to his face where she saw the flicker of heat in his eyes.