Come Undone: A Hockey Romance

by Penny Dee

  We traveled all over the country together and man, I can’t tell you how good it felt knowing she was right by my side.

  And at the end of the season when we placed fourth on the leader board and secured our wild card entry into the Western conference campaign, there was no-one else I wanted by my side.

  When she was gone I missed her. Like my right arm. But then she’d fly in and when I’d pick her up from the airport she’d run toward me and leap into my arms, and wrap her legs around my hips as we kissed like we were absolutely thirsty for each other. And I was thirsty for her. Always. When we were apart I longed for her. When I was training, I was counting the time until I was with her and could do all the things to her that my body begged me to do.

  It was also a magical time of getting to know her body. A time of learning what she liked. Of what made her moan that long, drawn-out moan of hers as she writhed and came undone in my bed. We spent hours exploring one another’s bodies in the shadow and light of my bedroom. Touching. Licking. Caressing. Discovering. It was an incredible time. One that filled me with a vibrant happiness that I didn’t even know existed before her. We would make love and she would evoke things in me, make me feel things I had never imagined, make me hope for things that I had given up wanting or believing in when my life had taken its downward spiral. She made me want to breathe again.

  She was my everything.

  I knew she loved me and I longed to tell her that I felt the same way. But I had never traveled down that path before, had never said those three words to a woman before, and I had no idea how to say them.

  Until one night.

  It was at the magnificent Galveston Festival of Lights that I turned to my amazing girlfriend and finally told her that I was in love with her.

  We had just brought ice creams and were strolling hand in hand through the resplendent forest of lights when I stopped walking. Mackenzie swung around, her ice cream paused mid-lick as she looked at me questioningly. “Everything okay?”

  Standing there, in the glow of more than a million lights she looked like an angel. A beautiful, mesmerizing angel I now knew I couldn’t live without. My heart swelled in my chest.

  “I love you,” I said. As simple as that.

  Mackenzie looked at me with surprise. “What?”

  I didn’t move. “I love you.” And I meant it with every atom of my being. I shook my head as if I couldn’t quite believe it. “I’m so in love with you, Z.”

  A slow smile spread across her beautiful face, and light from overhanging light-icicles bounced off her incredible lips as she closed the space between us.

  “You love me?” She looked up at me, her dimples deep in her cheeks on either side of her lovely mouth.

  I slid my arm around her waist. “Baby, I’m so crazy in love with you I can barely think straight.”

  She bounced up on her toes to kiss me and I pulled her up into my arms and kissed her hard. Her ice cream toppled to the ground and we both turned to see it splatter across the concrete. When she turned back to me she stared into my eyes.

  “I love you, too, Jake. More than I could ever show you.”

  We made our way along a pathway paved in fairy lights and animated light displays, and in my room back in the house on Seawall Boulevard, I made love to her long and slow, savouring every inch of her, relishing every touch of her skin against my skin, every touch of her tongue on mine. It was so damn magical I felt swept away by all the sensations.

  As she lay in my arms afterwards, I felt an overwhelming feeling of joy in my chest. Despite the cold weather outside, sweat beaded on her forehead from our lovemaking.

  “I never thanked you,” I said, wiping a lock of her blonde hair from her eyes.

  “Thanked me for what?”

  As I gazed down at her I tried to make sense of all the new emotions coursing through me. My emotions were running deep tonight. “For giving me a reason to breathe.”

  Lines creased her brow. “You didn’t need me to do that, Jake.”

  I looked down at her beautiful face.

  “That’s the thing, Z,” I replied. “I did.”

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty

  Mackenzie

  In May, I was back home in New York setting up a sponsorship deal between Jake and the leading mens’ toiletry brand, Chisel. They knew Jake’s story, knew he was being touted as the latest come-back kid and were keen to have him advertise their line of shaving products.

  While home, I was also getting in some much-needed catch-up time with Meg and Anna in the form of some seriously fun girls’ nights out. Anna was dating a girl called Violet and a guy named Oscar, and neither had any idea about the other. While Meg was nursing a mildly broken heart over a guy called Boomer, who had wined and dined her for three weeks and then took her home to meet his stepmom. Who Meg suspected was a little more than his stepmom.

  “Stepmom was three years younger than him,” Meg had explained. “Daddy is rich and likes them young.”

  “But what made you think there was more between the two of them?” I had asked.

  “Pretty much when she tongue-kissed him hello.”

  “Riiiight.”

  After a very awkward half-hour where stepmom and stepson were very touchy feely with one another, Meg had excused herself to use the bathroom, escaped out the front door of the exclusive Upper West Side apartment, and deleted Boomer’s number from her phone.

  Now she was absolutely convinced there were no suitable, un-weird single men left in New York.

  “Seriously, Mack, that’s the only criteria I have—that they are un-weird!”

  Seeing her frustration, I thought of Jake and how lucky I was to have such an incredible man in my life. Love and longing flared in my chest. I hadn’t seen him in almost three weeks and I physically ached for him.

  The day before I was due to fly back to Galveston, I was reading over the Chisel contract with a cup of coffee in my hand. Meg was in the shower, while Anna entertained Violet in her bedroom.

  My phone rang. It was Macy Carmichael, Daisy’s publicist.

  She didn’t waste time with greetings.

  “Goddamnit, Macca!” Macy was Australian, and from the very first moment I had met her she had shortened my name to Macca. “Talk some sense into that girl, will you, before I throttle her for being such an imbecile.”

  Inwardly, I grimaced, bracing myself. “What has Daisy done now?”

  “She’s goddamn gone and dyed her hair blue!”

  She did what?

  “Goddamn blue!” I could feel Macy’s irritation seep through the phone. “I swear to God, Macca, that kid is doing my head in. You need to reign her in or you’ll be sending my Christmas card to Rikers.”

  The moment she hung up, my phone rang again. It was Daisy.

  “I hate everyone,” she snapped in my ear. “I hate John. I hate Macy. I hate—”

  “Do you hate your one-point-two-million-dollar Bella Dea deal, as well?” I asked abruptly.

  I could tell she was taken back. “What?”

  “You know, that very lucrative endorsement deal you have with Bella Dea hair products. The one where you tell everyone how you owe your beautiful honey-blonde hair to their Blonde Goddess range. Remember the very famous catch phrase, Daisy? Blondes really do have more fun.” I put on her Nashville accent as I repeated the catchphrase in the renowned TV commercial, and mimicked her famous giggle at the end. Everybody knew the commercial. Everybody knew that giggle. “Do you really think they’re going to want you to do that while your hair is blue?”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “No, you didn’t. And it’s getting tiring.” I flicked through my business card portfolio at my desk. “I’m sending you a number for a hairstylist in Beverly Hills. He’s expensive as hell but that’s because he is so goddamn good. Phone him. Fix your hair and don’t ever—and I mean ever—do anything to your hair again. Do you understand what I’m saying, Daisy? Don’t make me come to LA and drag
you there myself!”

  She raised her voice in a final show of defiance. “It’s my hair!”

  To which I raised mine back. “No, it’s not, Daisy. It’s Bell Dea’s hair. All one-point-two million dollars of it! So, unless you want to hand back all that glorious cash, fix your goddamn hair.”

  Frustrated, I hung up. Seriously, when was she ever going to learn?

  Pinching the bridge of my nose I began to mentally count down the hours before I saw Jake again. I was tired and stressed, and I needed him.

  The sexts he sent me weren’t enough. I needed my man to fuck me.

  A knock at the door made me jump. Mentally sorting out what bottle of red wine I was going to open, I crossed the room and opened the front door and was surprised to see Jupiter casually leaning against the doorframe.

  And he was baring gifts of wine and flowers.

  Of course he was.

  “Jupiter, what a lovely surprise,” I said, rustling up as much enthusiasm as I could on a day like today.

  He grinned that charismatic grin of his. “I’m taking you out. Now I know how you don’t like to mix business with pleasure, but technically I’m not on the job. I’m in town on personal business. So how about it, fancy hitting the Big Apple with me?”

  I sighed. It was definitely time to let the secret out of the bag.

  “How about you come in,” I said, opening the door wider. “I think there’s something you should know.”

  We sat on the window seat overlooking the Village. Outside the shadows were growing long as the sun began to disappear into the horizon.

  “So where are we going for dinner?” Jupiter asked confidently in that glorious British accent.

  I grimaced. “See, that’s the problem.” I sighed, not relishing the idea of letting him down. “Jupiter, you’re so adorable but I already have a boyfriend.”

  He looked aghast. “A boyfriend?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  He took a moment to register what I had said.

  “Damn.” He sighed. And then asked cheekily. “Is it serious?”

  I thought of Jake and my heart sped up. “Yeah, it’s serious.”

  Jupiter’s eyes went to town on my face. “Well . . . he’s a lucky guy. My hat goes off to him. He’s found himself a wonderful woman.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you.”

  Jupiter exhaled deeply. “Well, then, this suddenly seems wildly inappropriate.” He held up the wine and flowers. “Perhaps I should be going and we could both pretend this never happened.”

  He stood up to leave but I stopped him.

  “There’s one more thing . . .”

  He looked at me. I had to tell him because when Jake and I went public with our relationship, I didn’t want there to be any weirdness between us.

  “My boyfriend . . . ”

  “Yes,” he prompted.

  “. . . well, it’s Jake.”

  It took him a moment to process what I was saying.

  “I’m sorry, what?” he asked.

  “Jake,” I repeated. “He’s my boyfriend.”

  He looked surprised, as if it didn’t make any sense to him. “As in the Sasquatch?”

  Again, I nodded. “The one and only.”

  He slowly lowered himself back down onto the sofa. “Well, I’ll be goddamned. That sneaky little bugger.”

  That was when Meg decided to wander in dressed in a fluffy pink robe with a towel wrapped around her head. She had a white face mask smeared across her skin making her look like something from a Day of the Dead celebration.

  “You must be Mackenzie’s hot hockey player,” she said, not at all concerned about how she looked.

  Jupiter leapt up. “Not Mackenzie’s hot hockey player, but a hot hockey player, nonetheless.” He grinned and extended her his hand. “James Charles Arbour, how do you do?”

  “Meg Brown,” she replied, giving me a quick glance as she questioned why she had just given her surname to this complete stranger.

  “It’s lovely to meet you, Meg Brown.”

  “Likewise.” My best friend said slowly. And I could see it slowly tick over in her mind that this gloriously beautiful man standing in front of her was not just beautiful and sexy, but quite possibly available. Then she realized that she was standing there looking decidedly unbeautiful and unsexy in her robe and towel.

  Her eyes widened and she reached up to touch her face. “Oh, hell.”

  But Jupiter was clearly not put off by any of it and that night he took Meg out to dinner. At two-thirty in the morning when I got up for a glass of water I heard some tell-tale noises coming from her bedroom that told me their date was going extremely well.

  I grinned as I skipped past her bedroom door on the way back to my bedroom.

  Meg had found her suitable, un-weird guy after all.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Mackenzie

  The next day I flew into Galveston. It was time everyone knew about me and Jake.

  Landing just before lunch I took a cab to the rink where the Fury were mid-training, and walked onto the ice and right up to Jake where I leapt into his arms and mashed my mouth to his. I was done with this façade, and judging by the way Jake was kissing me back, so was he. It had been pointless.

  I vaguely heard a hockey stick drop and a couple of gasps from his teammates. Michael Angelo wolf whistled. While Loki sounded confused as he asked, “Isn’t she his agent?”

  But I was too consumed by the pair of strong arms around me, and the sweetest pair of lips sending shivers through my body, to notice much else. I felt Jake grin so I pulled back.

  “Is that obvious enough?” I asked.

  “I think they get the picture,” he replied, his smile as bright as a floodlight.

  Coach’s voice interrupted us. “When you kids are ready, you think we can get back to hockey? This isn’t The Bold and the Beautiful, you know.”

  Still secure in Jake’s arms, I turned my head to him, unable to stop grinning. “Is that your favorite soap, Coach?”

  Coach looked unimpressed. “You’re fucking hilarious, kid.”

  “Sorry, Coach.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “No, seriously. I’m sorry, because I have to steal Jake away from you for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “You do?” Both Jake and Coach asked at the same time.

  I looked at Jake, packing as much heat in my eyes so he knew exactly what sort of afternoon he was in for, and he grinned.

  I turned back to Coach. “Yeah . . . it’s, um . . . business. And it can’t wait.”

  Coach pointed a finger. “He’s back here at eight AM tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “You got it, Coach,” Jake said, grinning.

  Coach wandered off, shaking his head.

  I looked at Jake and then kissed him. “I missed you.” And then I couldn’t stop kissing him because it felt so damn good to be in his arms.

  He skated us over to the edge of the rink. “I’m so damn hard right now,” he whispered in my ear, setting off every sexual charge in my body.

  “Good because that’s about to come in real handy, real soon,” I said, finding his lips again.

  I slid down from his embrace, making sure I moved slowly over the firmness in his shorts before finding my feet. Raw need was rampant on his face. We hadn’t seen each other in almost three weeks and I was desperate for some naked time. And going by the heat in Jake’s eyes and what was happening in his shorts, he felt exactly the same.

  “You need to get me back to your place quickly,” I said.

  “Baby, I’ve already planned the fastest route in my head.”

  Less than twenty minutes later, we were rushing up the front steps of his house and then crashing like pinballs down the hallway as he kissed me fiercely en route to his bedroom. We fumbled with one another’s clothes, desperate to get the other naked.

  “I want you so badly,” he moaned urgently between
kisses.

  “Then show me,” I breathed as he pulled my bra from my body and flung it behind him. Securing his hot mouth to mine he lifted me up and walked me to his bed where he thrust himself hard and deep into me. Instantly filled, a breathless cry left me, and I gripped his round shoulders as he began to satisfy me as only he could.

  I had learned a good lesson while we were apart. Three weeks was too long to be without him. Because as much as Jake needed me; I needed him more.

  * * *

  Three days later, the Galveston Fury beat the Yellowstone Yetis to win the Western conference. This meant, the Fury were going to face off with the winners of the Eastern conference for the Stanley Cup.

  The NYC Ice Cats.

  * * *

  Jake

  Stanley Cup pregame light shows were legendary and the Galveston Fury versus the NYC Ice Cats pregame show was no different. The darkness of the arena was lit up in colourful glory by a multi-million-dollar lighting system

  Like the Detroit Redwings had Al the Octopus, the Fury had a slinky, black-as-coal panther called, Priscilla. During the light show, Priscilla would appear on the ice as a 3-D projection, her big black paws slapping on the ice as she walked slowly across the rink. When we heard her roar, it would be time for us to enter the rink.

  In the tunnel waiting to enter, I sucked in a deep breath to settle my thumping heart. Out in the arena it was a frenzy as the light show tantalized the crowd and Robbie Williams’s Let Me Entertain You blared through the speakers. We heard the renewed thunder of the crowd as Priscilla appeared on the ice, her heavy purring heard over the music. I looked at my teammates. We were all nervous as hell, but after a pregame rev-up from Coach we were ready to do what needed to be done.