Page 2 of Flirty Pucking Wolf

“How about I just call you princess?”

“Okay, arsehole.”

Stifling a bark of laughter, I straighten to my full height. I break out my cheer smile, that fake curve of the lips I used for years as a cheerleader. I was expected to smile and make everything look effortless while holding a grown woman over my head with one arm. She’d be fifteen feet in the air, giving the same fake smile and praying I didn’t drop her. And I’d be praying the same thing, hoping she wouldn’t break an arm or crack her head open.

Sophie’s got the same fake smile now, probably hoping I don’t break whatever this is happening around us, and just like I did during cheer, after delivering my partner safely back to the ground after a stunt, I hold my hand up and wave at the cheering crowd.

1

TREVOR

Three dayslater

I love being in the rink with my teammates. The scrape of blades on ice and the thwack of sticks against the puck have a rhythm that I feel in my blood. It’s almost musical. The plays are like a choreographed dance we need to practice if we want to perform them correctly. Dancing with the puck on the end of my stick is the only waltz I want to do. The power play is my paso doble. And the penalty kill is the bane of my existence. For some reason, we aren’t gelling on it lately, and we need to work it out. We don’t incur a lot of penalties. We’re a pretty disciplined team. But even only one failed PK per game can result in the game-winning goal for the opposing team and the loss of our place in the league standings.

Defenseman Stone Waller practices the power play this round, stripping the puck from our teammate playing offense on the line. Stone passes it to me, and I take off down the ice toward my opponent’s goal. As much as we want to stop being scored on during penalty kills, we want to make shorthanded goals if at all possible. I pass the puck to another teammate, and it sails right past him. He was two strides behind where he should’ve been. When Coach blows the whistle, I slam my stick against the ice in frustration and skate to the bench for some water. My regular linemate, Sophie’s brother Mac, is sitting there with a cast on his hand. He broke it punching a wall when his girlfriend’s mother wouldn’t let him see her. His girlfriend, Randi, is my best friend from college, and I understand he’s in love and her mother’s a bitch, but hebroke his handbecause he was heartbroken. He’s not going to be able to play for a few weeks, meaning he’ll miss the PHL’s first All-Star Game. He let his emotions screw up his hockey career.

“He’ll get it,” Mac says in his Scottish-Irish brogue. “Crosby’s a hard-working player. He’ll keep at it. You’ll be okay.”

“Only if we can get enough reps in.” I look up at the scoreboard to check the clock and sigh. I’m out of time. “Hard to get the reps in if I’m not here. I need to go practice with your sister.”

If I had my way, I’d blow off this first dance practice, but Coach knows the schedule and is looking at me with a raised brow. Damn it, time to go. With a curt nod to Coach, I leave the ice and change in the locker room.

I head to the Devil’s Den Theater, where Sophie and I are practicing. They have a stage and a dance studio space. We’ll practice for two hours before I go back to the rink to watch video before tonight’s game. It’s a weird week—a home game and then flying down to Florida for the PHL All-Star Game, and somewhere in all of that, we need to practice for our first dance. This is going to be a routine with rules. It’s not going to be fun and freedom.

“Good morning!” Sophie calls out as I approach the stage. She’s in leggings and a fitted T-shirt. I’m in a T-shirt and joggers.

“Hey,” I say. “How are you?”

She shrugs. “All right. Eager to dance. If I’m dancing, then I can forget about everything else for a while.”

I get that, it’s how I feel on the ice. “Okay, let’s do this. What’s our first dance?”

“Cha-cha.” She cocks her head. “Have you ever danced it?”

“Nope.” I watched some videos online, but I don’t know if that will win me points or not.

“I’ll text you some links if you want to get an idea of what to expect. It’s a Latin dance that originated in Cuba in the 1950s. It’s sharp hip and leg action and footwork. Here comes the camera person. They’ll have you walk back in, and we’ll have this conversation again. If we can give them a bit of friction, that will make it more interesting.”

I’d like to give her some friction, but not on camera. I haven’t been able to forget our midnight kiss, no matter how hard I’ve tried. Speaking of hard, my dick wants to point north anytime we’re in the same room. I try to keep my focus where it needs to be, but it always strays to her.

A tall, lanky man with a mop of yellow hair and a camera perched on his shoulder walks toward us with an easy grin. “Good morning! I’m Nigel, one of your camerapeople. Your producer, Nancy, will be here in a moment.”

“Hi, Nigel.” I hold out my hand to shake.

Sophie shakes his hand next. “Hey, Nige, they shipped you over too?”

“Yeah, there’s a few of us from the mother ship here. Not just you.”

“Mother ship?” I ask.

“That’s what we call the UK version ofCelebrity Dance Dare,” Nigel says. “That was the original show, and all the others are spin-offs from that. And for Sophie, with her mother being one of the judges, we meanmothership.”

A woman rushes in, and it looks so natural that I think rushing is her normal gear. She must be the producer. Her black pencil skirt and tightly tucked white blouse scream no-nonsense business. Her hair is cut in a severe black bob, emphasizing her pointy little chin. No smile graces her razor-thin lips, but what really catches me off guard is something ugly in her eyes when she looks at Sophie.

“Oh good, you’re here,” she says, sounding anything but happy. “Yes, Sophie’s mother. Howfortunateshe is to have that connection.” Okay, whatever this woman’s name is, she will forever be Bitchy McBitchface to me. The way she emphasized the wordfortunate, it’s clear she meant the only way Sophie had a spot on the show was because of her mother.

Sophie sucks in her breath and slowly exhales. That bitch hurt her, and Sophie’s doing her best not to show it. I don’t need it spelled out for me. I hear whispers that I got my spot on the team because the coach is engaged to my sister. I know I must work twice as hard to prove I earned my spot and deserve to be on the ice. It seems Sophie knows exactly what that’s like.

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