Next week, training sucks. I’m given the all clear by the doc to hit the ice, but Coach’s three-game suspension is still in play. This means I have to train extra hard to keep up. Emmett stays with Mom because it means he’s closer to Sadie, and the cabin is quiet. Too fucking quiet. So damn quiet that I hold a party after the game. It’s mostly just for players, but as with any hockey party, it’s packed with bunnies. Several of the girls I’ve fucked in bathrooms, cars, and empty hallways are in attendance. They slip in and out of the hot tub in their skimpy bikinis, walk around my damn house dripping wet and next to naked, and I don’t give a shit. I also don’t care for any of it, so I make my way upstairs to my bedroom, and I slip into a hot shower. When I come out completely naked, Veronica—a bunny with black hair, ruby red lips and skin so creamy white she turns all pink when you fuck her—is occupying my bed. She’s naked.
“I locked that door,” I slur, indicating to the door in question.
She shrugs. “I’m handy with a lock-pick.”
“And I’m not in the mood.”
“Is it about that country singer? Because she is dumb as fuck. If you came to Nashville looking for me, I’d drop everything and suck your dick right there in the middle of my driveway.”
My dick stirs, despite my revulsion. “Yeah, well that’s what makes you not her.”
“Oh please, she’s a virgin. Or did you pop that cherry?” She climbs off the bed and moves toward me, her hips swaying rhythmically. “Either way, I’d be willing to bet it’s not like fucking a woman who knows what she’s doing.”
She drops to her knees, and involuntarily, my hand threads in her hair. I’m not wearing any clothes, so there’s nothing to stop her, and she wraps her hand around me and takes my semi-hard dick in her mouth. I groan. My cock likes the sensation an awful lot, but there’s something wrong. This doesn’t feel right. I want to fuck this girl. I wanna pound the shit out of her and fuck her mercilessly in a way that I never could with Stella, but I don’t want her. I don’t want to bury myself inside her. I want Stella, and Veronica is part of the reason I can’t have her.
It took me a while to figure out what Stella was talking about last time we met, but Ronnie here had been one of the bunnies who had spilled all on live radio about NHL players and their voracious sexual appetites. I’d been one of the players that they’d talked about. My agent threw a shit fit, and two of my endorsements almost walked.
I jerk away and knock her off her stripper heels in the process. I pick up her shit from off my floor and pull her to her feet, shoving the clothes at her. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
“Oh my god, you’re throwing me out?”
“Yeah, I’m throwing you out. Fuck off.”
“Asshole.”
I want to call her a bunch of names in response, but I don’t, because it’s true, I am an asshole. I step out onto the landing and above the noise, I shout as loud as I can, “Get the fuck out of my house, all of you!”
Eli glares up at me from his position on my couch in the den. He has a bunny on his lap, and I’m pretty sure his hands are in her panties. I stalk back into my room, and hear him telling everybody, “All right, party’s over.”
I slam my door behind me and toy with the lock, but it’s fucked. So, I do something really stupid in my inebriated state and slide my dresser that weights a ton across the floor in front of it, barricading myself in. My shoulder aches, and I’m sure it’s going to hurt like fuck in the morning, but my heart’s hurting like fuck right now. I climb into bed and snatch my phone off the dresser. No messages, but then it’s not like I expected her to call. She still doesn’t even have my goddamn number. Unless she’s opened my Facebook message, but the ballbuster probably controls that aspect of her life, too, and would have no doubt deleted it.
Instead, I scroll through my photos and find the one of her sleeping on my couch. I hadn’t noticed before but there’s one of me there, too. The time and date stamp tell me it was taken on the same day. It’s of me. Obviously, Stella took this, which means she saw the photo of her and didn’t delete it. I swipe back to the image of her, and jack it three fucking times while I stare at her face and wish it was her mouth wrapped around my cock instead of my hand.
Fuck this. Fuck me. Fuck her. And fuck feeling like shit for almost screwing a puck bunny when all I am to Stella is a mistake.
Fuck Stella Hart.