Page 247 of Branded

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Blowout

Breathe

A Breakers Christmas

Blazed

Bound

One

Cas

I was a hockey player who’d had fun.

Lots of fun.

I liked women—curvy or slender, tall or short, breasts or ass or long, shapely legs, blond or black or brown-haired or a redhead. It didn’t matter to me.

I just liked women.

But over the last months, I’d concluded that I liked one in particular.

She was smart and a hard worker. She had an ass that could make a grown man weep (and maybe it had brought a tear or two to my eyes once or twice, mostly because I was growing so desperate to see and touch and kiss the lush curves of Jules’s ass that I was living in a perpetual state of blue balls).

Tonight was the night my balls got some relief—or maybe the night that they lived in even more agony for at least a bit more time…

Because tonight I was going to ask Jules out.

And if she said yes, then I’d be lucky enough to spend more time with her.

Which meant my balls would spend more time in her vicinity.

Hence, a lack of relief.

Hence, me almost wishing for my balls to continue their agony.

Hence…I was an idiot who was delaying.

I was going to ask Jules out.

It had taken me an embarrassingly long time to work up the courage—harkening me back to my high school days—to ask her to go on a date with me, but I was a professional hockey player, dammit. I’d dated plenty of women.

I could ask one more out.

Easy to think.

Harder to accept.

Because as I slid from the bustling barroom and followed Jules down the hall, my pulse was pounding in my veins, sweat was pricking on my nape.

Because…this meant something.

She pushed out through the back door and I followed, slipping into the evening air.

CeCe’s, one of my favorite places to come—both because this woman worked here and because it had good food—was in a bustling part of the city.

Tonight was no exception.

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