Page 26 of Pucking Billionaire

I glare at Mason, who gives me a look that says, “Are you really going to take this away from your best friend?”

“Okay.” I snatch the tickets from Mason’s hand—a big mistake because my fingers brush his, and it’s like all the electric power of Thor’s mighty hammer zips through my body. “Thanks,” I grumble as I jerk my hand away.

Mason looks wonderingly at his fingers that were just holding the tickets. “No… problem.”

“Well, then,” I mutter. “We have somewhere to be.”

“Have coffee with me.” He makes this sound like a foregone conclusion.

Shit. Am I really tempted?

As if sensing my weakness, Spike rubs himself against my leg, purring like an overactive vibrator.

Wow. Has he trained his cat to wear me down?

Maybe not just the cat. At my side, Abigail’s nodding so fast that she looks like a human bobblehead.

“I’m sorry, but no,” I say more to Spike and Abigail than to Mason.

And before feline cuteness is further weaponized, I sprint for our building’s entrance.

It’s not until we’re both safely inside the apartment that I realize something that should’ve occurred to me earlier: I own the team and the stadium, so I don’t need tickets to go to the game. In the same way that I don’t need an invitation to come to my own party.

Grr. To think that for a second, I felt grateful to the man.

“So why not have coffee with him?” Abigail demands as I’m still processing that he somehow pulled a fast one on me.

I grit my teeth. “Because he’s a jerk, and it was just an excuse to talk to me about buying the team.” As I speak, I turn on the most luxurious item in our place: the tiny cappuccino maker.

Abigail watches me with exasperation. “Look at what you’re doing. You’re even craving coffee. You totally should’ve said yes.”

If craving something were a reason to agree, I’d have two. “I just need caffeine for my lecture on Platonic idealism.”

Abigail snorts. “I don’t care how much you plan to lecture me; I will not agree that keeping things platonic with a man like Mason is ideal.”

Unsure if she’s kidding or not, I can’t help but explain, “According to Plato?—”

“Your right boob or the ancient Greek dude?” she interrupts.

I sigh. It was a mistake to tell her the secret nicknames for my breasts: Plato (on the right) and Socrates (on the Left). I named them thus because my mammary assets are big, and in philosophy, it doesn’t get any bigger than Plato and Socrates.

“I meant Plato the Greek,” I grumble. “He believed that the physical world is not as real as ideas—or forms—are.”

“The dude must’ve been on something,” Abigail says. “Or watched The Matrix one too many times.”

I know this comment is to bait me into geeking out about all the philosophy in The Matrix, so I ignore it. “Things in the real world are mere imitations of the ideal forms. So, for example…” I gesture at the micro-microwave. “Somewhere—don’t ask me where—exists the Platonic ideal for a microwave, and ours is a lousy imitation of that ideal.”

“Which can be said of a microwave inside the Matrix,” Abigail says triumphantly.

I shrug. “Maybe that’s what I’ll learn in the lecture, but I’ll never know unless I’m awake. There’s a reason everyone calls our professor Ambien.”

Finally, she leaves the issue of coffee with Mason alone, and we have breakfast and caffeinate before I rush to my lecture.

I’m sitting in front of an ice rink, eyes bulging at the sight of the players: all naked as mole rats, but much, much hotter.

Then I spot Mason, and he’s hotter than all his comrades combined, and that’s before I notice his tight fist clenching his hockey stick and his other fist stroking his hard cock.

Everyone around me cheers, as if jointly urging Mason to come.

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