Page 3 of Play the Game

“She looks sweet but sexy too.”

“She doesn’t belong on a pole.”

“Where does she belong, then?”

I’d like to know the same.

My ears perk up as I turn again. Another group of guys roars from the other side of the stage, and a little grin falls to my lips when I see some guy unlocking Chastity’s chastity belt.

The hockey player with the missing tooth answers his friend, “She looks like she belongs in my bed.”

I roll my eyes as they all laugh. I purposefully keep my ass to them because I have to fix my face before I accidentally show them how irritated I am to be on stage dancing in lingerie.

“Where is the new guy tonight?”

“The new guy?” Sarcasm drips from Toothless. “Don’t act like you don’t know his fucking name. He’s the best goalie in the league right now and has been practicing with us for the last month.”

Emory Olson.

There’s always a hint of nostalgia lingering when I think about hockey. It was one of the only things I had in common with my dad, and it’s the one thing I’ve managed to keep safe from the mishaps in my family. After all these years, I’ve kept my interest alive and burning because it tricks me into believing he’s still here. It’s my own little secret.

“Ah, O’Brian? Is that his name?” There’s a brush of sarcasm to the man’s voice, and I turn to see his face. “Wait. Is it Owen? O’Gregory?”

“Olson,” I say, unable to stick to my plan of playing the part of an obtuse stripper with no interest in hockey. It’s not the first time I haven’t stuck to a plan, so it comes as no surprise.

Toothless’s eyebrows shoot to his forehead, and his white teeth—sans the left front—look even whiter under the strobing lights. “Oh! She knows hockey?!”

His entire gaggle of burly men hoot and holler, and I turn on the pole to shield my reddened cheeks. Money is thrown onto the floor beneath me, so at least there’s that.

The stoic one in the back of the booth, who appears bored out of his mind, speaks up. “Told you she wasn’t like the rest.”

“Not often a stripper knows anything about hockey,” Toothless says, seemingly more interested than before.

My calf wraps around the pole, and I arch backward with my eyes set on the man who rests his elbows on the table. His mouth opens, and I prepare myself for the insult because I can already tell he’s more arrogant than the rest.

“Must be a puck slut.”

My eye twitches.

“Don’t call her that,” another one says. “They prefer to be called puck bunnies.”

I nearly choke on anger.

Air gets caught in my chest, which unfortunately shoves my breasts out even farther. I grab onto the pole tighter, like it’s my lifeline. I swing my body, pretending their faces are being kicked by my outer leg.

“Olson wouldn't be caught dead here. He’s lying low, trying to fix his bad rep.”

The men chuckle, and I recall recently hearing some rumors rolling around about his run-in with the police not too long ago. It was all over the news.

“Those allegations are absurd,” the stoic one says.

“At least he didn’t get her pregnant. You know all about that single-parenting life. Don’t you, Volkova?”

Rhodes Volkova.

“Shut the fuck up,” he snaps.

“If he got her pregnant, she’d totally take all his money,” someone says.

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