Page 17 of Branded (Breakers Hockey)

Seventeen

Smitty

She’d come for long enough that I seriously thought I was going to explode just from dry humping.

Like a fourteen-year-old boy.

But when I’d nearly reached the point of no return, she’d slowed, her movements going jerky, her forehead dropping to my shoulder, her hot breath on the bare skin of my chest.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

Yeah.

Seriously.

Her head shot up, nearly colliding with mine.

Luckily, I had quick reflexes and leaned out of the way, reaching up to slide her hands free of the shelf. Her skin was pale, as though the blood flow hadn’t been good, and no shit , I thought. I’d had her clinging to the shelving with her arms above her head.

Slowly, I lowered her arms, massaging the skin gently, getting the blood flow back and having the bonus of being able to touch her a little longer.

Eventually, though, she pulled back.

And I half expected her to pull back emotionally right along with physically.

Instead, though, she cupped my cheeks and kissed me deeply, breaking the kiss only after I felt like my lungs would explode.

She was breathing just as heavily when she straightened and smiled down at me. “Holy shit, Conner Smith, I should bronze you and perch you in the corner of my room as a statue of honor.”

“Would you pray naked in my honor?”

Her smile widened. “Only if you asked really, really nicely.”

I nuzzled her throat. “Oh, I’d ask nicely. I swear I would.”

Mischief in green eyes. “Kind of like you nicely told me that you wouldn’t let me come unless I shut up and held still.”

“That’s not—” Well, hell. I’d been playing, and I’d thought she’d been with me.

Fuck, what if she hadn’t been?

What if I’d pushed her?

“I like to…um…play,” I said quickly. “I thought you were…I mean…I thought you were with me.” I held her stare. “Was it too much? Should I have?—?”

Hands tilting my face up. “It was perfect,” she said.

“And the only orgasm that I’ve had…” Here she seemed to lose a little steam, her cheeks going pink.

“The only one I’ve had with someone who wasn’t me.

” She shrugged. “In case, it…um…wasn’t clear earlier.

” Her hands lifted to her face, covering up all those gorgeous features.

“I”—palms dropping, green eyes on mine—“could never come with them. Though—” She cleared her throat, gaze drifting away.

“I didn’t exactly do this ”—a gesture between our bodies, during which she seemed to remember that she was topless, and her cheeks flushed again, her arms rising to cross over her breasts—“um, with them.”

I reached beside me, grabbing the towel that had somehow made its way to the bench and wrapping it around her shoulders, covering her breasts so that she wasn’t so exposed.

Her fingers came to the edges of the white cotton, holding it closed. “How?” she whispered. “How do you always know?”

I shrugged. “I just…I look into your eyes, and I see you.” My fingers trailed along her jaw, her skin like silk under my touch.

“And I think part of it,” I said, giving her the other piece that had been bouncing around my head since the morning a few days before, since she’d helped me with the personality test, “is that when I look at you, I see myself in a way.”

Except, she was about a billion times smarter than me.

I was a brute, and she was brilliant. Beauty and the beast.

Big and loud and good at hitting shit. She was finesse and quietly competent.

We made no sense together—I knew that—but luckily for me, she seemed to feel the same connection that was pulling at me, drawing me like the opposite dipole of a magnet to her.

Her expression gentled. “I feel it, too,” she whispered.

“Like when you described what you’ve had to overcome, how you’ve had to learn to live with the dyslexia and how it sometimes seems to get worse when your emotions are high.

I feel that. I mean, it’s not the same. You have an actual clinical issue and mine is just… my mind getting away from me?—”

Whoa.

“Kailey.”

“My brain being weak and unable to cope?—”

“ Kailey.”

She stopped, stared up at me.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, and yeah, maybe my voice was a little too loud, a little too brusque.

Or not too little of either.

It was too loud and too brusque.

Because she jumped, shoulders slumping.

“Come here, little bird,” I said, tugging her toward me, wrapping her tightly in my arms. “I’m sorry. I’m a big, loud oaf. But, honey,” I went on, stroking my hand down her hair, “anxiety is a clinical diagnosis. It’s real and it’s a challenge, just like my dyslexia is for me.”

“I know that,” she said softly.

I pushed back her bangs. “But do you?”

A shaky breath. “I—” Her throat worked, even as her forehead fell forward and rested on my shoulder.

“My family isn’t exactly supportive of me in that way.

They don’t see it as a challenge, but rather, something to be ashamed of.

And…they’re impatient,” she murmured. “And when I can’t always step up and be Little Miss Charming—when I haven’t ever been able to be that charming, carefree woman—their annoyance is like a palpable thing in the air, clawing at me from the outside while the ball of nerves shoots barbs at my insides, tearing me up. ”

Fuck.

I hated her family.

But I didn’t want to add to that angst.

So, I just held her and kept stroking that hand down her hair, keeping her close and giving her the space to talk.

“They don’t understand that I want to be normal, more than anything.

I want to be able to walk into any situation and just be myself.

I don’t want it to take months for me to get comfortable, like it took with Oliver, like it took for me to even consider taking this job.

” Her head lifted. “Do you know why I only slept with three guys?”

“No, little bird,” I said softly.

“It’s because my first time I had a panic attack,” she said, “and he didn’t stop.” Her lips pressed flat then curved up at the edges. “The only good thing was that he didn’t take long.”

My hand fisted in her hair, and I had to force myself to release it, to not yank at the delicate strands. One by one, I straightened my fingers, relaxed my palm, dropping it to her waist and clenching it into a fist there.

Still touching her, but the fury raging through me would mean that I wouldn’t hurt her.

“The second time was in college,” she whispered. “No panic attack, thankfully, but the whole thing didn’t last much longer than the first time. A good thing,” she added. “Because I think he watched that jackrabbit Sex in the City episode because I swear that my spine has never been the same.”

A laugh.

I forced a smile.

Definitely two men I wanted to kill.

And that became three when she went on with the last time.

“It took me years to try again,” she said.

A shrug. “Until last year, actually,” she added.

“We went out a few times, and he was super patient when it came to me wanting to take my time. And…it was okay, but work had been tough around then and I’d had a bad day and after we were finished”—a shrug—“after he was finished, I just laid there, wondering if that was it.” Her shoulders rose and fell again, this time on a sigh.

Three.

Definitely three men who deserved to die.

“What are their names?” I asked darkly.

She went still, fingers lightly trailing through my beard. “You want their social security numbers, too?”

“That would make the crimes I’d like to commit easier.”

Gentle in her eyes, in her expression. “I’m a lot, Conner. You need to know that.” Her nails lightly ran along my jaw. “With you, it’s easy,” she said. “I don’t understand completely why, but I’m going to take the gift the universe has given me.”

The gift?

My heart squeezed. Hard.

“You’re the gift,” she said lightly. “In case you didn’t get my not-so-subtle compliment.”

“I’m not—” A shake of my head, not wanting to argue about that, not right then. “How are you a lot?” I asked.

“Besides the panic attacks?”

I nodded.

“I’m literally a ball of anxiety most of the time.

I worry and rehash every single thing I say.

I get nervous in social situations, and I can’t form words—literally it’s so fucking hard for me to say even one fucking word.

” A sigh. “I’m not good at sports. Hell, tonight was the first hockey game I’d watched, and Oliver spent the entire time explaining how the rules with that box thing worked?—”

Rules?

I bit back a smile.

Her describing penalties as broken rules was adorable.

“I’m not competitive, so the whole plant competition is a fucking nightmare.

And I push myself to interact with people, with others in the organization because they all seem really cool, but I mostly just avoid the invitations and escape to my place so I can read dirty books for masturbation material and take baths and?—”

“Watch Great British Bake-Off?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Smitty,” she warned.

My fists had relaxed, and I took a turn at cupping her cheeks. “What else?”

A frown. “Besides the anxiety that makes me mute and how I avoid situations when I should be forcing myself to be part of them because if I don’t, I won’t ever get better and how I don’t know hockey and you’re a hockey player—one who apparently had a fabulous game tonight that I couldn’t even deduce because while I work for a professional team, I don’t know a thing about hockey?

” She tossed her hands up. “And the hyper analyzing of the things I do manage to say and the fact that my safe places are my bathtub and my computer?”

“Yeah, little bird,” I murmured. “What else?”

“Did I mention the video games?”

Amusement flickered through me. “Yeah, honey, you did.”

“And the baths and reading?”

A nod. “For the record, those are both pluses, especially when they send you flying like they did tonight or on the phone the other evening.” I nipped the tip of her nose. “Bring on the dirty books and the woman who makes the sexiest sounds I’ve ever heard when she comes apart.”

“And the hockey?”

“I don’t give a fuck that you don’t know hockey, little bird. It’s been my life for as long as I can remember. I’ve lived and breathed and existed for the sport.” I pushed back a strand of her hair, tucked it behind her ear. “I’m ready for something different.”

I was, I realized.

I hadn’t thought about it that way until the words slid off my tongue and hit the air.

But I was so fucking ready for Kailey.

“I’ve waited for you,” I whispered. “For my whole life, I’ve waited for a woman like you.”

Wide eyes, pink cheeks, parted lips. “I…” A breath, tears glistening in those wide eyes. “That is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me,” she whispered.

And I had to kiss her.

Had to taste the wonder on her face, the tears in her voice.

A racing heart, rightness settling onto my soul like a warm blanket, the first tendrils of love beginning to unfurl.

Then amusement when she pulled back, her lips swollen, and eyes slightly glazed.

“But did I mention the video games?”

Chafing.

Definitely.

And paired with my sporting an erection for extended periods of time over the last week, one that had threatened to remove all the blood from my brain while casually shuffling it toward my dick, I’d decided that sweats were the way to go.

Along with a messenger bag.

Step one for comfort because I’d jerked off a pathetic number of times trying to get my dick to go down enough after Kailey had come apart on top of me.

Step two for disguising. Because the jerking off hadn’t worked and I was still sporting an erection whenever I thought of her, or remembered the taste of her, or how her breasts had felt beneath my hands, the hard beads of her nipples on my tongue?—

Fuck.

I shifted the bag as I walked into the rink, heading for Hazel’s office.

Another meeting.

I was, apparently, the mental charity case this season, and not that I didn’t think Hazel was cool, and I knew she was seeing other guys too and not just me, but…

It felt like she was looking too deeply.

I was supposed to be easy-come, easy-go, everything slides off my back because I was the joker in the room and my job was to hit shit and make the guys laugh.

Simple.

This looking deeper shit wasn’t good.

But Hazel had asked me to come, so I’d be there.

Because I could add reliable to my list of admirable qualities.

Because I’d do anything for the team.