Page 25 of Tricky Puck

“Mmm.” She looks over her shoulder and glances at me from under a curtain of sleep-mussed hair, her eyes half-lidded, not quite hiding the blue sparkle. I don’t remember seeing anything so sexy in my life—and that includes last night. The sexy slide show of Delaney in various states of arousal flickers through my mind, and my morning wood turns petrified.

She gives me a slow smile. “You’re wide awake.” She wiggles her hips, and I clench them in my hands to stop her.

I lean over her shoulder and give in to the compulsion to kiss her mouth. The spark of our instant connection forces a groan from inside me. “God, I wish I didn’t have to catch a plane this morning.” Reaching over her, I check the clock on the nightstand. “Fuck.”

“Don’t tell me it’s late,” she says. “It feels like the middle of the night, and I have hours more of sleep to go.”

“It is late, and I’ll be lucky to catch my flight if I get up right now.” I start to rise, swearing in my head that I’ll make it up to my blue balls another time as I move away from her warmth.

As she rolls to her back, she puts a hand to her head, and her brow furrows slightly.

“You have a headache, don’t you?” I stand, not bothering to hide my full staff salute and enjoying her admiration despite her headache.

“Whiskey’ll do that to a person,” she says, then she pushes up onto her elbows. “How do you feel?”

“Besides lucky—and horny as hell?” I grin and then disappear into the bathroom, fill a glass of water for her, and grab some Advil from my bag. It’s always packed since I often need it after games for one ache or another. I don’t bother putting on my pants before I return to her and hand her the glass and the pills. “Advil. Works every time.”

She sits all the way up in bed. A look of surprise turns into the sweetest smile, and her face goes from sexy to girl-next-door so fast that, if I didn’t know better, I’d think she was one of those nice girls instead of the naughty woman she is—or was last night.

“Thank you.” She watches me dress as she tosses the Advil in her mouth and drinks down the glass of water—all of it in one go.

Watching her all bed-mussed and breathing in the scent of sex that permeates the room makes my dick twitch. Fuck. I check my watch. I’m cutting it close. Then I notice the message alert from the airline, and as I thumb it on, a surge of desire has me by the balls because I’m hoping it’s a delayed flight notice.

Then I read it. Oh shit. The alert was sent last night sometime between us stripping naked and her devouring me whole. There was no delay. The flight time was moved up by twenty minutes. Another quick check of the time has me swearing under my breath.

“You missed your flight,” she says as she sinks back onto her pillow. “How awful.” She licks her lips, and her dark-fringed blue eyes drag me toward her.

“It’s not a good thing,” I say, knowing I’m right and not feeling it at all. “But I may as well make the best of it.” I pull my shirt off as I stalk back to the bed. I’ll catch the next flight.

In the taxi on my way—not to the airport—back to Grandma’s, I try to get back in touch with the cool guy who says fuck it to whatever the problem is and deals. But that guy got tangled up in the sheets and pried out of me sometime last night because I’m not feeling myself right now.

By the time Delaney was finished with me—because that’s how it felt and that loss of the upper hand is disconcerting enough—I’d missed any flight that would have gotten me to the arena on time for our meeting this morning. Now, I’m going to be fucking hours late.

It wouldn’t be so bad, except this is the first day of the official season and a must-show. Coach Spence made that clear, and Coach Nash put an exclamation point on it with his mean scowl, threatening the locker room after our last pre-season game before they let us have three days off.

I toss some bills—I don’t know how much, and I don’t care—at the cab driver, who says some happy shit I don’t understand, and I head for the front door of my family’s triple-decker home.

They might give me crap for being out all night, the taunting kind, but that’s nothing. I see right through it all, and none of the crap matters because I know they have my back. Grandma will be especially happy, and that makes me smile by the time I get inside.

The problem weighing on my mind isn’t that I missed an important flight, it’s why I missed my flight. Delaney. Fucking Delaney, to be exact.

I need to take back control of my life.

Grandma appears from the kitchen as I shed my jacket. She wears a big smile on her crinkly face lined with wisdom and kindness, making her a vision of beauty every time I see her.

“You had a good time,” she says.

I nod, cracking a smile because hers is contagious. “I did.” It’s the god’s honest truth, and said truth stabs me with a sharp pain of guilt. Guilt? Since when do I feel guilty for doing nothing wrong?

The deal to pretend we’re dating is why. I’m planning to lie to Grandma from now until Christmas. The stabbing pain doubles up, but I’m a big boy, and I can take it for the team—for Grandma.

“There’s hope for you, yet,” she says. “I expected more of a fight from you.”

She’s right. I need to skate a thin line on this pretense and not go overboard.

“Last night was a good start, but it was just one night.” The need to keep as honest as possible wars with keeping the happy smile on Grandma’s face. “I’m catching the next flight back to Portsmouth.” I don’t mention that I missed my plane, or that I’m already late. That mistake has me reeling with disgust at myself. That fuck-up isn’t something I want to admit to the person I love most in the world. The one who’s as invested in my career as I am.

Not that she would think any less of me. Hell, she might be happy about it.