Page 66 of Dirty Pucking Player

I’ve become addicted to the way he kisses me, the way he touches me, the release I get from his skill in the bedroom.

It would be the best way to celebrate this win and our advance to the playoffs.

One of his hands drops and presses into my lower back, then drifts down. He squeezes my ass and pulls his hand away. “You coming home with me tonight, Coach?”

I keep my eyes on the room, watching for anyone who may be paying attention to us.

Biting my lip, I try to remember that I’m still mad about what happened at the youth league. But I want to go home with him. I want to so badly.

Yet the longer this goes on, the harder it’s going to be to hide it.

The way he looks at me.

The way he smirks.

It’s written all over his face that he owns me.

Only by some miracle has no one sensed something going on. And now he’s getting reckless in front of everyone—leaning in close, whispering, touching me…

I shake my head. “I really shouldn’t, Bash. We really shouldn’t.”

“Whether we should or shouldn’t is irrelevant, Coach.” His bourbon gaze meets mine, his intent clear in the darkening orbs. “Just tell me if you’re coming or not.”

I close my eyes and suck in a deep breath. The war I’ve been fighting since the day Bash winked at me and skated out onto that ice has never let up, but one side is almost completely defeated.

Every moment I spend with him decimates the remaining troops and practically hands the win over to the side willing to give him everything.

“You know I am.”

* * *

BASH

It’s exactly what I had hoped she would say.

Nothing is sweeter than hearing yes from this woman.

Because the more time I spend around Greer, the more time I want to spend with her. She’s intoxicating. A complex mix of sweet and sassy. Hard and soft. Reserved and reckless.

And the constant push and pull for control between us is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Even now, she’s fighting it, trying to deny what she feels pulling us together. And I get it. She’s mad about how I acted the other day, and she probably has every right to be.

I didn’t mean to snap at her. The pain in her gaze in that moment matched the one I felt when she started asking questions about Dad. It’s something I never wanted to see in her eyes, never wanted to put there, but some things are just off-limits for me.

I’ve been willing to break some of those rules for her. She’s the first woman I’ve spent this much time with in my entire life. Usually, I enjoy a night or two, sometimes even a week, with a beautiful woman then send her on her way to get back to focusing on my job. It’s the way I like it—keeping up a wall that doesn’t allow anyone close enough to ever hurt me. But Greer finds cracks in that wall. She somehow slips through those tiny little fissures and fills the gaping holes in my life that I wasn’t even aware were there.

But when it comes to Dad, some things should stay buried.

No matter how close I might let her get, that part of my past needs to remain there, tucked safely away so it can’t haunt me anymore.

Still, I never meant to hurt her with my response, and the strange tension that’s existed between us since then—neither of us bringing up our argument or broaching the subject of us—has been eating away at me.

And now, we’re in front of the whole team here, and I’m doing everything in my power to encourage her to forgive me because in an hour, we won’t be surrounded by all our colleagues, and I’ll be able to do what I’ve been thinking about since we last left my bed.

It’s the only way I know to show her how sorry I am for the way I acted. All I’m capable of when it comes to expressing that type of emotion. It’s warped and fucked up, not being able to say the words, but Greer knew what she was getting into when she chose not to walk away again that night. She knew I wasn’t a hearts and flowers, happily ever after kind of guy. I’m the guy who makes her come unraveled and find ecstasy for a while, until things get too complicated and it isn’t fun anymore.

We’re dangerously on the line of that after our argument, but I’m not ready to let go of this or her yet.

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