Page 88 of Hockey Halloween
Lilith
I should have spent last night panicking about the fact that I have less than twenty-four hours to salvage my first de la Pena project, instead, I spent it dreaming about the hauntingly blue eyes of Mason McGuffin.
Now, I’m standing watching him shirtless in October in Iowa building a maze for tonight’s charity event.
His muscles flex under the fall sun. The rest of the team are in a similar state of undress, and while I try hard not to ogle them—because they’re men and not pieces of meat after all—my eyes keep coming back to the scowly, towering man who looks a head and shoulders taller than everyone else here.
He has barely looked in my direction since our little run in yesterday at the de la Pena’s house. I think he saw me damn near swallow my tongue when he pulled his mask off, and to him, I’m just another puck bunny who wants him in her pants.
I’m not a puck bunny. No shade to those who are, but it’s not my jam. My ex played hockey, and looking back, he was one of the most toxic, narcissistic, misogynistic bastards to ever walk the face of the earth.
Despite the warm breeze, my body shudders. I stitched my heart back together after our breakup, but the scars still run so deep they often take my breath away.
I’ve been single for over a year. I haven’t so much as looked at another man, never mind another athlete, but something about Mason McGuffin has captured my attention.
Maybe it’s the way his wavy brown hair looks like it belongs in a shampoo commercial, or the way his blue eyes are so vivid, so startling they took my breath away, or the way his jaw looks like it was chiseled from the marble they use to make Greek statues in museums.
As though he senses my stare on him, his gaze flickers from the wall of fake leaves he and two other players are holding between them and lands on me.
Heat swirls in my stomach. The irony that I’m lusting after a hockey player isn’t lost on me.
It should be a massive red flag. It is a massive red flag, but there’s a part of me that spends her life wearing red flags like a superhero cape.
When his scowl deepens and those ice-blue eyes darken to a grey-blue, I sigh.
We definitely got off on the wrong foot yesterday.
I don’t know why he’s so pissy that someone found him attractive.
So I gasped like a swooning girl in the movies.
I’m sure it’s not the first time he’s had someone blinded by his beauty before.
Ugh. What a jerk.
I’m in two minds about whether to go over there and give him a piece of my mind, to tell him that yes, I ovary-acted yesterday, that my body saw his face and, for a fraction of a second, I imagined him bending me over the de la Pena’s front wall and banging me senseless.
But we’re behind on the maze, and in a little over eight hours, ‘no more than fifty kids’—which, if their reputation is accurate, means definitely over a hundred kids—will appear for the fright of their lives.
I can’t distract the man whose shoulders look like he can bench two hundred and fifty pounds every day of the week. Even if there’s a bead of sweat carving out rivets as it leaves a trail down his spine.
Stop looking at him like you’re going to lick him.
Stop looking at him like you’re going to lick him.
Stop looking at him like you’re going to lick him! !
A bump against my hip pulls my attention off Mason.
“You need to stop looking at that man like you’re about to climb him like a tree.
” Athena de la Pena waggles her brows at me.
“He needs to stay focused on the task at hand.” She gestures at the mostly empty parking lot with piles of stuff littered about.
“But if you wanted to bang Mac.” She shrugs. “We could all turn our backs for fifteen minutes until you get him out of your system.” She elbows me. “Unless you’re into exhibitionism. In which case.” Her bottomless brown eyes swirl with mischief. “Some of us will only be too happy to watch.”
Oh. My. God.
One of my bosses is talking to me about being hot for one of the team. My body prickles with embarrassment, tiny little needles of red-hot humiliation spreading across my skin. I can’t even deny it; the shrewd stare on Athena’s face tells me not to bother trying.
“He’d never.” I snort. “He doesn’t even know me, and he loathes me. Have you seen that scowl?”
She chuckles beside me. “Since his face got slashed up by a skate, scowling has been his permanent state.”
I sigh. “I was too distracted by his dreamy eyes to see it at first. Have you seen his eyes?” What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m turning into a fucking high school girl lusting after her first crush.
Athena laughs. “He hasn’t gotten any for a while. He’s kept to himself. Quiet, self loathing, only coming out to team events when Apollo demands it—which is every event—but he makes his displeasure known. See also, example A.” She tips her head to the still-scowling enforcer.
He’s still scowling, and there’s a muscle twitching in his face like he’s clenching his teeth.
I’m not sure if it’s from the strenuous physical activity he’s doing, though.
I think it’s because he knows I’m still staring at him.
Because no matter what I tell my eyeballs, they don’t want to look at anything other than the beautiful beast who body checked me at the Halloween party.