Page 28 of He Has MVP (Boston Brawlers Hockey)
Chapter 11
Pink
Isit up abruptly. Monday morning comes with the sound of surf thundering like the water’s crashing close by. Aiden is gone from his spot next to me in bed. The downdraft of emotion sucks the air out of me. I shiver.
When I try to stand I almost fall to the floor, the muscles in my legs screaming for mercy. Every muscle in me complains and other parts too, awakened by the all-night-sex marathon. And in case my mind is too fuzzy on the details, my body reminds me as I walk across the room. The full dawning of my shameless passion from last night colors me as I rush to throw on clothes.
Did I actually have a one-night stand with Aiden Liam Cavanaugh? It didn’t feel like a one-night stand, but his absence this morning begs to differ. He’s a Brawlers hockey player. Notorious. The MVP. Player as in heartbreaker. Man-whore. Playboy. Lothario. Whatever other label fits.Pirate. He’s the least likely guy on the team for a relationship. Not that I’m looking for a relationship, but I’m not into being a notch on someone’s belt and I’m not into collecting my own notches.
Maybe that’s a good thing after all. He won’t take this seriously. One night in bed is business as usual for him. And a one-time excusable mistake for me.
Right?
Wrong. This is why I don’t do one-night stands. I’m not built this way. I can’t help feeling tenderness toward him no matter how much I try to hide it from myself. I’m not sure if he can tell but I hope to hell not. Probably not. He’s too used to the women who throw themselves at him every time he goes out with no expectation beyond a night to brag about.
This is the reason the guys on the Brawlers are off-limits no matter how hunky they look. They’re shallow and easy. The players take home puck bunnies on a routine basis—a practice I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t witnessed it firsthand for the past couple of years since we’ve all been hanging out. It’s been easy to call them off-limits. They’re hounds. Every last one of the single guys on the Brawlers and Aiden has been king of the bed-‘em-and-leave-‘em crowd.
For fuck’s sake, he was already on the phone with another woman when I came back from the ferry not an hour later. What was I thinking last night?
I was thinking about how he told me about Jillian, that she meant nothing, that she was a puck-fuck chaser. A puck bunny, a disgusting turn of phrase that makes me shudder, unsure what that makes me right now.
But mostly I wasn’t thinking at all last night. I was feeling. All that pleasure I’d been lacking I got in spades. Time to give myself a break. Time to get rid of any notions of more of the same. Time for distance from the hunky man who’s exploited my weakness.
That’s not fair.In truth, he’s been a perfect gentleman and I’ve been weak without much provocation at all. But no more. I’ve had my fun, broken the drought. Exploded the fucking dam of man-induced orgasms in spectacular Technicolor fireworks.
Throwing open the patio door, I rush outside and look around. It’s still windy, but the rain has stopped. The sky has some brightness and I hope that means an end to this weekend, finally.
Mostly. Looking around, I see Aiden at the edge of the patio lifting a giant bag and straining. I rush down to him, remembering. High tide. Fifty-foot waves. Didn’t he say if the waves got to fifty feet they could compromise the rock seawall?
I rush toward him. The crashing surf is already close to the wall and the tide is coming in. There’s a stack of bags on a hand truck and he’s already laid some of them to shore up the patio wall against the alarming surf. The bags look impossibly heavy, but there must be some way I can help. He’s been working while I slept.
“How long have you been out here?” I shout over the clamor of the wild ocean, guilt rising above any dismay about last night.
He looks up at me and a big smile, the kind where his eyes squint with true pleasure, transforms his face from the serious concentration that held it a second ago. His eyes travel down the length of me and his brows crease. I forgot, in my rush to join him, that I’m barefoot and wearing nothing but an oversize shirt and panties.
“What the fuck, Pink? Go put on some proper clothes.”
“This is no time to worry about my wardrobe. It’s high tide. We were warned about the possible storm surge this morning and it’s here and then some. We can’t let the water get into the house.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not going to argue with you. I’ll lift the bags off the truck and you see if you can position them.”
We work to drag the sandbags into place and get out more from the storage room, further shoring up the patio wall against the waves. Cold sea water splashes over the wall, soaking us.
“Go inside and put some dry clothes on,” he says again, his breath heaving. I shout back.
“If you can stand it, I can. It’s now or never to get these bags out there.” I heft the end of a bag up and into place against the stones.
Wiping seawater or sweat or both from his brow, he comes closer. “You’re stronger than you look.” He’s serious and the look in his eyes sends a shot of desire through my gut right down to my amazingly resilient pussy. There’s seriously something wrong with me. I’ve had my fun, quenched my thirst for passion and then some last night. I couldn’t possibly need more.But maybe Iwantmore.
I was once a ballerina,” I joke, deflecting his scintillating look, the admiration too real, too disturbing. “Plus I work out when I’m not working.”
He goes back to the job, lifting the last bag from the truck. He grunts and I’m not sure if it’s derision or the weight of the fifty-pound bag he’s just tossed on top of the wall. He’s already dragged more than two dozen bags out here and I can see the sweat mingling with the ocean spray on his bare chest. The clouds on the horizon swirl darkly, signaling that it may rain again.
“I think the brunt of the storm is past us. I can tell,” I say watching him straighten and push the hand truck back up toward the house.
“You an amateur meteorologist?” he says as I follow him.
I’m not. But I’ve seen storms come and go before, haven’t I? I wave a hand.
