Page 45 of Pucker Up
A horn blared as I stepped onto the icy pavement. Tires screeched as a Mini Cooper skidded to a stop. Snowflakes swirled as I hopped out of the path of the car.
“Watch where you’re going, asshole.” The woman in the driver’s seat rolled down her window to flip me off. On the ice, I could sense a defenseman looking in my peripheral vision, but had missed an entire car bearing down on me on the street.
A camera flashed behind me. Ace Bailey getting run over would be front page news. I didn’t care about that. There was only one thing on my mind, and she was only three lanes of traffic away from me. Her eyes were wide, her hands clasped over her mouth. This time I looked both ways before sprinting across the Queen Street traffic.
“You almost got run over.” Her voice trembled as I reached the sidewalk.
“That?” I turned and waved it off. “A hit from Plushenko would do more damage than that little thing.” My adrenaline was pumping and I was slightly out of breath from the short sprint.
“I listened to your messages.” She stomped her feet on the icy sidewalk.
“Yeah, about that. I should have—”
Goldie flung her arms around my neck and the crowd across the street erupted into screams and cheers.
Her quivering lips were on mine. Professor Goldie was fucking kissing me. It took my hockey player brain a few seconds to catch up with what was happening in real time and pull away. “Your study,” I whispered.
“You’re fired.”
“For realsies?” Goldie’s hands were still on my neck. Her pretty eyes stared intently right into my brain, or my soul, or whatever was in there. Her intensity fueled the butterflies in my stomach. This particular set of butterflies had stronger wings than the ones that had been in my gut before my first NHL game.
She smiled sweetly and raised her brows. “For realsies.”
This time I moved first, grabbing her hand to lead her around the corner and away from the Ultimate Sports spectators.
Pressing her against the bricks, I held her waist and let my lips linger lightly on hers. It was a tender kiss. The kind I’d seen in movies, the kind I thought were stupid—until it was Goldie’s lips on mine. I wanted it to last forever. Goldie arched her back, pressing her shoulders into the brick building, jutting her hips towards me—and the bulge in my pants.
“Are you sure?” I whispered, resting my forehead on hers.
“I can’t be turned on by one of my subjects. I would’ve had to kick you out anyway.” Her fingertips found the front of my jeans.
“Your hands are like ice cubes.” I winced and then realized I was still holding her coat in my arms. “Goldie. You need to put this on.”
I held up the coat and she slipped her arms into the sleeves. I took the mittens from the pocket and held each of them out so she could slide her frozen hands inside. “I’m so sorry, Goldie. I guess I got sidetracked.” The girl had been standing in the cold waiting for me and all I’d done was press her against a freezing cold building in an alley next to a dumpster. What kind of gentleman was I?
“I like your way of warming me up better.” Instead of frozen fingers, it was wool mittens on my neck this time. “I was actually hoping we could lose a few layers, not put some on.” She smiled, but then wavered. We were both drunk. As much as I wanted to pull out my dick right in that alley and have a drunken outdoor fuck, I wanted more with Goldie. So much more than acting like a couple of teenagers outside a house party. “I owe you a date. A real date.”
“We’ve been on a real date, remember? Pizza after you saved my dog.”
Holding her hands, I squeezed the mittens. “You said that wasn’t a date.”
“A girl can change her mind.” Her eyes sparkled and frost had clumped her eyelashes together. She looked like a snowy princess.
“We need to get out of the cold.” I shrugged out of my jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “What about the whole not-dating-a-hockey-player thing?” I grabbed her hand and led her to the busy street.
“I’ve met a lot of hockey players, Ace, but none quite like you. Are you sure this won’t be a distraction from the game?”
I regretted ever telling her that women were a distraction, and I had chosen focusing on the game over relationships. We had started walking, hand in hand, without a destination in mind. “Are you kidding?” I stopped and cupped her face in my hands. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to my game.”
“Ace, I want to do this with you, but I think we should keep it on the down-low until my study is over. Even if you’re not in it, I want to be taken seriously.”
If it wasn’t Goldie, I would’ve sworn I’d been being served a line. “That makes sense, I guess. Although, at least two hundred people saw that rom-com moment back there. I was basically Adam Sandler running across the street.”
She laughed. “It was like something from a movie.” There was a light skip in her step. “Ace, when the study is over, you can take me on a date.” The whole point of quitting her damn study was so we could hang out together in a not professor/student or scientist/lab rat capacity.
I wasn’t happy about it and tried to keep the disappointment from my voice. “I’ll wait as along as it takes.” My cock pulsed, reminding me of his existence—he wasn’t pleased about this development either. I shifted him to the side, trying to forget how Goldie’s lips tasted. “Let’s get you home. There’s probably a furry dude staring at the door waiting for you to walk through it.”
Her footsteps fell out of sync with mine as she patted the front of her coat. “He’s with my landlord tonight. He looks after Morty when I have long days.”
