Page 2 of Edging Coach
He pushed open the locker room door. Voices chattered and gear creaked, and someone laughed at something. Typical sounds of a team getting ready for practice.
“Gentlemen,” Emil called out. “Your new head coach is here.” As the men turned our way, he put a hand on my back. “I’d like you all to meet Jack Showalter.”
There were handshakes and hellos after that, and then they continued getting ready. It occurred to me then that maybe his approach of practice first and ask questions later was a good one; there was no way in hell I was going to remember everyone’s names. The guys were also putting on jerseys like I’d expect to see during training camp—the ones with their numbers and names on the backs instead of blank practice jerseys. I appreciated that.
Behind me, the locker room door opened again, and I turned around in the same instant a familiar lyrical voice strafed my senses.
“—smaller than Toronto, but I’ll manage.”
My breath hitched.
He halted.
I stared.
He stared.
And my heart went wild.
Because there I was. In the locker room of the team I was here to coach.
Face to face with the man who’d put me on my knees last night.
The lean white man with reddish brown hair, clean-shaven and gorgeous light-brown eyes. Every ache and bruise on my body lit up like Christmas lights, reminding me of the hotel carpet biting into my knees and?—
And my scalp stinging in his iron fist as his perfectly average and rock-hard dick slammed into me.
Oh.Fuck.
“Devs?” The guy standing next to him—one of the other players, I assumed—elbowed him. “Hey, you good?” He peered up at me. “Oh, hey, you’re the new coach, right?”
I nodded, extending my hand. “Jack Showalter.”
“Connor Clausen.” He shook my hand. “I just got here, too. From Anaheim. Everyone calls me Claus.”
“Claus. I’ll remember that.” Trying my damnedest to keep my cool, I turned to the other guy, hand extended. “And you are…?”
He swallowed hard. Then he cleared his throat and accepted the handshake, oblivious to the goose bumps beneath my sleeve as that lightly callused and very familiar hand metmine. “Devon Jarvis. The, uh…” He coughed again. “My other team called me Devs.”
“I’ll remember that,” I croaked.
I would. I definitely would. Even though I’d already forgotten myownname.
We were both rescued by a sharp bark of, “Let’s get rolling, gentlemen!” from Emil.
Devon snapped out of it first, offered me a subtle nod, and then brushed past me.
I closed my eyes and pushed out a breath through my nose. Well,thiscould turn into a disaster in a hurry, couldn’t it?
Except it didn’t have to. It was a one-night stand. Devon undoubtedly valued his career as much as I valued mine, so he wouldn’t breathe a word about it to anyone. He sure as shit wouldn’t suggest a rematch.
Not even when we were staying two floors apart in thesame goddamned hotel.
I wiped a hand over my face, then headed out of the locker room to get my skates from my office. That should’ve been a clue, shouldn’t it? When the hookup app had told me that hot, toppy guy was staying in the same building? In the best hotel in Abbotsford, where at least two other recent Grizzlies acquisitions were staying?
But I’d been too horny to think, and his profile had whetted too much of my appetite, and now here we were—coach and player, less than twenty-four hours after he’d growled, “You don’t come until I say you come,” in my ear while I’d beenthis closeto losing it.
I hadn’t come. Not until he’d given me permission an eternity later.
