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“I told you not to play this game with me,” she says coyly. “You’ll lose.”
With the slight tremor that runs down my spine with the weight of her against me, I have to admit she makes a solid argument.
Suddenly, she gives my hair a sharp tug that I feel all the way down in my balls, and I only have about four seconds to form a solid “What the fuck was that?” thought before thudding footsteps and Jack’s shouting voice blast through whatever the hell just happened.
“Okay, okay, that’s enough canoodling,” he grouses. “It’s weird as fuck.” He crouches and offers a hand out when I finally manage to tear my gaze away from a still-smug-looking Lila, watching as she slowly unwinds herself from me to take Jack’s hand. “And what are you doing on the ice? You trying to break your neck?”
“Doing dumb shit on the ice is your department,” she fires back, hoisting herself up over the ledge and crawling back under the railing.
I resist the urge to watch her ass as she goes, and to the surprise of no one, it’s incredibly difficult.
Seriously, what the fuck, Ian?
“Save the touchy shit for public spaces,” Jack huffs.
I frown. “This is a public space.”
I hear him muttering something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like: fucking weird, and I have a feeling he would be losing his shit on me if he knew the weird thoughts I’m having right now.
But Lila seems entirely unfazed.
“So I’ll see you next week at the play day, then?”
It takes me a second to realize this is directed at me, and I manage to nod dumbly as I try to remember how to make words while the sensation of her tugging on my hair still racks through my body.
“I’ll be there. For sure.”
Another blinding smile that I feel in a more PG-rated part of my body, and then she gives Jack a stern look. “You too. You might be useless right now, but you can be my assistant.”
“Assistant, my ass,” Jack snorts.
She wiggles her fingers at us, looking breezy and unbothered like she didn’t just leave me with weird thoughts and even weirder feelings about them. “Bye, guys.”
Jack waits until she’s out of earshot to say, “She’s such a pain in the ass.”
I’m nodding at him, mainly because I’m only half listening, but I can’t say that I agree in the slightest.
“Gonna be weird as fuck watching you two pretend to be into each other.” He makes a gagging sound. “Training camp can’t be over fast enough.”
I’m nodding, again, because I’m still only half listening, and again, searching every corner of my brain…I can’t find any shared irritation to this situation to match his.
Even if I have no clue as to what that means.
Later, when the guys are talking shit in between changing out of their gear, I’m still lost in my own head. Every time I think about Lila’s hands on me—of her small, delicate hand grabbing a fistful of my hair and making me feel it in places I have no business feeling—there’s a tingling awareness that creeps along my skin. Like my body refuses to let me forget just how much I felt that mostly innocent action. It’s confusing as hell.
“Yo,” Sanchez calls from across the locker room, drawing me out of my thoughts. “You coming out for beers?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m kind of tired.”
“Dude, we always get beers after the first practice of training camp,” Jankowski says seriously. “It’s tradition.”
“Is this a superstition thing?”
“Hey,” Olsson says. “We don’t judge you for keeping that shaggy-ass haircut.”
I frown, running my fingers through my sweaty mop. “I cut it…after the season ends.”
“Don’t worry,” Jankowski says, puckering his lips. “You’re a total hunk.”
