Page 32 of Hockey Halloween

Delaney

Did I expect to be making out with the goalie for the Las Vegas Vipers tonight—or ever? No. But it’s a hell of a welcome Halloween treat. Hudson can kiss.

He's holding me, defying gravity, with just one hand splayed across my back.

His lips are firm, his tongue has no hesitation against mine.

It's like he's decided I'm his and he's tasting whatever he wants, and it makes my whole body heat and respond.

His hair is thick and soft as it slips through my fingers.

I hear a tearing sound, but I don't care.

Hudson mustn't either because he doesn't pull back or let go.

Not until my brother demands it in a low, hard hiss.

“Enough. People are staring!”

Only then does he slowly pull back and start to right us both. One of my hands moves to the middle of his back to steady myself as he tips me upright and I feel nothing but smooth, warm skin… all the way down—almost to his butt. He’s ripped his costume wide open.

“My sister isn’t a puck bunny,” Ryan snaps.

“Pretty sure I have a thing for goalies all of a sudden,” I murmur as a smile insists on parting my lips .

Hudson looks at me and winks. Ryan swears under his breath. "Well, do yourself a favor and pick a better one than this, D."

I turn to Hudson, breathless. His chocolate eyes are glassy and darker than before, like the heat from our kiss singed them.

I bite my bottom lip as a guy dressed like Velma approaches on my left and lets out a gasp.

“Dude, the whole back of your costume is… shredded. You’re the Hulk now, not Fred. ”

I turn Hudson by his shoulder. Yep. The seam from collar to waist is split wide open. I stifle a giggle. "I have an idea. How long until they announce the winners?"

"They said they'd do it at midnight, so, like, forty-five minutes," Velma tells me.

“D…” my brother says in a warning tone.

I ignore him and focus my eyes on Hudson’s ruggedly handsome face again. I let my hand slip down his arm from his shoulder to his hand, which I grasp. “I happen to have a room. Here, at the hotel. We should go there.”

Okay, that sounds like a proposition. My cheeks instantly flame. He grins. Ryan curses. "Don't be a whore."

Did my brother, the king of casual sex, just call me a whore? Hudson gets in his face again. “Hey shithead, she’s talking about fixing my costume. But I shouldn’t have to tell you not to call any woman a whore, for any reason, especially your sister.”

He squeezes my hand in his and turns away from my brother like it's physically difficult.

I bet he'd much rather punch him, and I would like to let him, but that's not going to win anyone this costume contest. So instead, I flip my brother a middle finger and lead Hudson through the ballroom to the doors.

We don’t speak, but we hold hands the whole walk through the lobby and to the elevators. I use my keycard, which I kept tucked into the sleeve of my outfit, to swipe and punch the floor number. He finally turns to face me as the elevator chugs upward. “Are you okay?”

He looks so sincere and concerned and… familiar. It’s weird. “Nothing Ryan says or does really bothers me. We’re not close and I’ve come to accept we never will be. ”

Not entirely true. I had felt a glimmer of hope that this event would bond us, but that's dead now. Oh well. I sigh. "I'm sorry he's such a dick to you."

He shrugs his broad shoulders. “I don’t give a shit. I mean, in a way, maybe the fact that he’s showing himself to be a total asshat will make me try harder at stopping his shots. If Coach starts me against the Saints in a couple of days.”

"You don't think you'll get the start?" I know a bit about hockey, and I know that a team always has a number one goalie.

If you're the number one, you start more games than not.

Maybe Hudson isn't their starter? I suddenly regret not paying closer attention to the local team.

I only watch games on TV if Ryan is in them and I've got nothing better to do.

"I mean, I should, but… your brother wasn't joking. I have shit the bed recently against his team. And especially against him," Hudson confesses as the elevator doors open and he motions for me to exit first.

His hand lands at the small of my back, casual, but delightfully intimate, as we walk down the long hall to my room.

Yes, I live in Vegas and have a great townhouse just twenty minutes from here, but I wanted a place to get ready on site, store my stuff—car keys, wallet, etc.

—and so I decided to turn this into a mini-staycation and treated myself to a junior suite with a jacuzzi tub.

I swipe my keycard at my door and push down the handle. I step in, flip on the lights, and motion for him to join. "I know that I get better amenities than most because it's a suite, so here's hoping there's a sewing kit."

I leave him by the door and head into the bathroom. I rummage through the neatly placed silver tray in the corner of the vanity filled with courtesy items. “Bingo!”

I step back into the hotel room and hold the sewing kit in the air like it’s a trophy. He grins. “Awesome.”

I motion for him to follow me as I walk deeper into the room.

There's a small velvet sofa, a table by the floor-to-ceiling windows, and a California king against the wall across from the massive television.

I start to tear open the little sewing kit and glance at him again.

"I can't sew it with you in it. I might stab you. "

“Your brother would love that,” Hudson snarks.

“I’m not doing anything that would make my brother proud tonight.” Yeah… that came out dirty. Oops. Sorry, not sorry , I think as I watch his eyes flare and a small, heated smirk tug at the corners of his wide, full mouth. That smirk is oddly familiar.

For the hundredth time tonight, the weird feeling that I know him floods my brain. "I don't have anything on under this. Like, nothing. Not even undies."

“Grab one of the complimentary robes in the bathroom when you change out of it,” I suggest, and he gives me a little nod and disappears into the bathroom.

When he comes back out, he's now giving the soft fabric of the hotel robe a run for its money. "How can a bathrobe be too small?"

“I’m six foot seven and two hundred and forty pounds. I have an ass roughly the size of a hatchback and shoulders the size of?—”

“What did you say?”

He blinks and blushes, which is hella-cute. "I'm not bragging. I mean, I can see how it sounds… gross and egotistical. But I just mean, goalies are big. Skating gives us enlarged glutes. I was a forward before I took up goalie as a kid, so I skated more than most goalies…

I stop listening and the words replay in my head, but in the gravelly, uneven voice of an awkward but totally lovable fourteen-year-old boy.

Ass the size of a hatchback. “Hudson, do you have any siblings?” I ask. “A brother? Who also plays hockey?”

He said the exact same words my very first real crush said to me at summer camp…

about how he felt weird because he was so tall and so skinny but had a big butt from hockey.

That kid… Palmer. He played goalie in the camp’s ball hockey games, and he was good at it.

He had been thinking of asking his coach back home to switch to goalie.

"No siblings," he says. "Just me. Also, you don't have to call me by my last name. The guys do that because it's a hockey thing. My first name is…"

He pauses, most likely because I’m staring at him like I just saw a ghost. Because I think I did. Same hair color. Same deep, dark, soulful eyes. But he's so much taller and so… filled out. And he's got a more defined jaw, and everything looks… bigger. Slightly different but… the same.

"Palmer," I say his name at the exact same moment it leaves his mouth.

He blinks and nods slowly. “You know? You follow the team?”

I shake my head, drop the sewing kit onto the table, and walk over to him. He thinks I’m coming to get the costume and extends his arm to hand it to me. I look up into those eyes that I think… I think I’ve dreamed about on-and-off since my fourteenth summer on this earth. “Camp Magog.”

The costume slips from his hand, which seems to have stiffened like the rest of his muscles. “Wh... What? How do you know that name?”

It occurs to me that I haven't told him my name, and Ryan has only called me D. God, how is this happening after all these years? I reach up and gently grab the lapel of the robe, tugging it back to reveal his left collarbone. Same birthmark—a pale brown splotch I decided back then was the shape of the state of Maine, where the camp was located. My friends teased me when I talked endlessly about him when I got back from camp. My best friend Lauren, laughing as she said, “I bet you think the universe branded him with the place he was going to meet his future wife. You’re such a sap, Delaney.”

“Is your name Dee? He called you Dee.” His voice is faint.

“D is for Delaney,” I clarify and smile up at him. “Hi again, Palmer. You’ve grown up.”

“Holy shit…” The words hiss off his tongue as he stares.

“Yeah.” I blurt out the next part even though I’m pretty sure it’s stalker-level ridiculous. “I never thought I would ever… get to kiss you again. ”

“I’d like to kiss you again now, when I know who I’m kissing,” Palmer says as his hands cup my face.

I just nod and wrap my arms around his neck as his lips ghost over mine lightly before he presses harder, his tongue parting my mouth. It’s surreal and amazing and so damn… perfect.

He moves his tongue into my mouth with a confidence and expertise he lacked as a kid.

He palms my ass through the tight costume, and when his wide palm slides down the back of my thigh, I lift my leg and hitch it over his hip.

He pushes into me, our cores bumping and his erection making itself known as it presses into my center.

My God… there's so much to say, but it can wait. I didn't have this level of desire when I first met him, but as I grew older and became more sexually experienced, I occasionally wonder what it would have been like to see him and kiss him again.

I never in a million years thought it would happen.

I never even tried to make it happen. I didn’t know his last name.

The email address he gave me was [email protected], and although I sent him several emails, he didn't respond, so I stopped after the first three months.

I never got one from him, even though I gave him my email address too.

“You never wrote,” I murmur as he breaks the kiss to move his lips to my jaw and trails kisses down my neck.

"Your email was in the pocket of my shorts," he whispers. "My mother demanded I take a shower as soon as I got home. Said I smelled like wildlife. When I got out of the shower, my clothes were gone from the bedroom floor. She'd tossed them in the wash, and the paper disintegrated."

I sigh as his tongue traces my earlobe. “I wrote you.”

His whole body stops moving. He pulls back so our eyes can meet. “I never got anything, I swear.”

“Hockey Palmer ten at Hotmail.”

“No. O the letter, not zero. Hockey Palmer one-o at hotmail.com”

“You should have clarified.” I feel a wave of annoyance even though the incident was decades ago .

"I was going to, but then I kissed you and everything just imploded in my mind," he replies and brushes his fingers over my cheek where the mask hits. Can you take this stupid thing off so I can see you again? Really see you."

I let go of him, and he lets my leg drop to the floor. His robe is now precariously loose and on the verge of falling open in the front, and I can't say I mind. In fact, I'm eagerly anticipating it. I reach up and pull the headpiece off my face, dropping it on the edge of the bed to our left.

His smile could light up the Vegas sign. It's so big and bright. "Damn, you got even more beautiful. How is that possible?"

The compliment washes over me with a warmth that feels old and new.

Like he feels. It's intoxicating and making me braver, bolder, and happier than I've felt in a while.

I step into him, and he immediately cups my face.

"We have…" I glance at the clock on the bedside table.

"Thirty minutes until they announce winners. I can sew that costume really well, and we can get back downstairs in time. Or I can sew that costume haphazardly, and it will barely hold together, but we can use the extra time to get reacquainted. Your deci?—”

His lips crash into mine before I can finish my sentence, and God, I'm so happy with his choice.