Page 4 of Sexting the Coach (Pucking Daddies #6)
Weston
I’d like to do a lot more than just check you out next time.
I wake with a start to a knock on my door, so faint I think I’ve almost imagined it. When I swing my legs over the side of the bed, I realize that somehow, mercifully, the pain from my hip is gone. I stand and cross the room, and it doesn’t twinge even once.
Elsie is in the doorway, her long blond hair loose, falling gently over a little nightgown that falls halfway down her thighs. She’s tall enough that it’s practically risqué, and from the way she’s looking at me, I know what she’s here for.
I know that she sent that text for a reason.
Reaching out, I hook my arm around her back and draw her into my room, pressing her against the wall and shutting the door at the same time. I don’t want anyone to see her in here with me as I bring my mouth to hers and kiss her.
Even as I know this is a bad idea—all the same reasons why still apply, the scandal, this coaching job being important to me—it’s like all at once, they don’t matter. The only thing that matters is getting my hands on her, touching her, pulling this nightgown up and off her body.
And so, I do, the fabric soft and silky, impossibly light in my hands. It comes off instantly, easily, and I walk her backward toward my bed, kissing her the entire time.
I’m hard. It feels like I’ve been hard since the moment she left my room earlier, like my body isn’t going to be satisfied until I have her.
“Weston,” she rasps, when I push her down into the mattress, crawling up between her legs, mind already spinning with the possibilities of having her here, like this.
Over the past few weeks, I hadn’t allowed myself to think about how much I wanted this.
How much time Elsie Montgomery has spent occupying space in my head.
“Yeah?” I ask, roughly, hoping she doesn’t, for some reason, change her mind about this now.
She doesn’t answer for a second, and when I look up at her, her lips are pressed together in a pitying sort of look. “Wake up.”
“What?”
But she doesn’t have to say it again. I’m already coming to the surface, the sun hot and red against my eyelids. I open my eyes and find myself alone in the bed, sunshine coming in a straight beam through my window.
The only thing that’s carried over from the dream is how hard I am, laying face down in the bed.
“Wolfe!” a voice comes through the door, and I realize it must be what woke me up in the first place. The person on the other side jiggles the handle, and I’m glad I thought to lock the thing last night, after the incident with Montgomery.
“What?” I call back, already getting a headache at the knowledge of that grating voice on the other side.
“You coming?” Fincher asks, his voice tight, impatient, and annoying. “We start in five.”
“I am aware,” I call back, trying not to sound as pissed off as I feel. Not only was that dream a fucking tease, but the text itself has been playing through my mind again and again. I hardly got any sleep, and when I did, Elsie Montgomery was right there, toying with me.
I’d like to do a lot more than just check you out next time.
It came from an unknown number, but all it took was a very fast look at the staff directory for me to know who it came from.
At first, I thought it must have been some sort of mistake—it didn’t seem like Elsie at all, to send something so bold.
She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would sext you after an encounter like that.
Especially considering the fact that she practically sprinted out after.
I decided I would forget all about it, even though I couldn’t bring myself to delete it from my phone.
Then, no matter how hard I tried to forget about it, the words kept playing through my head, and in her voice. My mind kept supplying me with images of her walking into my room, her eyes as they hungrily moved over my body.
The way she had touched me.
Outside the door, I hear Fincher huff out a noise and turn to walk away, and I haul myself up and out of bed, grumbling to myself as I walk to the bathroom and crank the water to cold.
This is her fault. How hard I am. The fact that I didn’t get any sleep last night.
And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
I won’t do anything about it. I’ll pretend like I never got it—maybe I’ll go out and change my number, just to have plausible deniability.
Maybe the entire thing was a joke.
As I step into the freezing cold water, hoping it will do the trick to cool me down, I grit my teeth and try not to think about Elsie.
But I can’t stop myself.
I can’t stop myself from thinking about the way she walks into the arena during practice, looking impossibly chipper.
How her badge swings from a lanyard adorned with little pins.
The way she braids her hair back from her face, or how fucking excited the guys get when they find out they get to work with her.
And the constant positivity. During meetings, she holds the door, smiling at everyone who comes in. At a sponsor’s event last week, she went around to basically everyone in the room, laughing and kissing cheeks and clinking champagne glasses.
Every time I see her, I can’t help myself from thinking that nobody is that happy. She’s just much, much better than the rest of us at hiding her shit.
I’m out of the shower three minutes later, scrubbing the towel over my head and pulling on a pair of shorts, a Squids shirt, running back every reason why doing anything with Montgomery would be a bad idea.
One—she’s the daughter of a very famous player. That makes us both high-profile in the NHL. It would turn heads if anybody found out something was going on between us.
Two—Elsie is too young for me. I’m not actually sure what her exact age is, but I know it’s off-limits.
Three—public relations has already been up my ass about being better at press conferences, trying to clean up the image problem the last coach caused for us.
By the time I emerge from my room, I find Fincher at the end of the hall, abruptly ending a phone call when he sees me coming.
I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of looking like I give a fuck.
“You’re finally up,” he says, falling into step behind me.
“How long have you been loitering outside my room?” I ask as we walk into the dining hall.
He grumbles something from behind me, but I don’t quite catch it, because of course, it’s just my fucking luck that the moment I walk into the dining hall, I get a clear view of Elsie sitting on the other side.
She has her hair done up in two buns today, a little higher on her head, colorful pastel clips scattered throughout. She looks like she could be a princess, the main character of a show I’m too old to be watching.
And when her eyes meet mine, she quickly pulls her gaze away, saying something to the tall, dark-haired girl next to her, who turns and glares right at me.
“Wolfe?” Fincher says, stepping in front of me and obstructing the view, his pinched face pissing me off more than usual today. His hairline is receding, his nose the kind that’s a little too sharp and pointy not to think of a bird when you see it. “You listening?”
“No,” I snap, turning and walking for the food, knowing I’m going to need protein and coffee to get through this fucking day. “Leave me alone, Fincher.”
“You need to consider my ideas. I’m your assistant—”
“Hey, guys,” Bernie says, appearing in the line for food and glancing between the two of us. “Did they put out more omelets?”
Fincher rolls his eyes and turns, heading right out of the dining room.
“Thanks,” I mutter, reaching for a paper cup and filling it with coffee. The coffee here is surprisingly good, coming from a local roastery. “I can’t deal with him right now.”
“He still trying to talk you into changing the lines.”
“Yup,” I say, trying not to grit my teeth at the thought of it. From the moment I got the head coach position over him, he’s been up my ass constantly with new ideas—which are really just his opinions on how he’d be doing things if he was in my position.
At first, I took him at face value, assuming he was just doing his best and trying to get used to the new situation. It’s weird to go from being co-workers with someone, to recognizing them as your boss, and I gave him some grace.
But last year, that grace ran out with an “anonymous” source went to a sports news outlet, claiming “inside sources” were convinced I was too difficult to work with, and my assistant coaches could never get a word in edge-wise.
When I went to Karlee about it, she’d brushed it off as being a puff piece, a bunch of nonsense. But I’m pretty sure Fincher is behind it, and I don’t think he’s going to stop at that when it comes to trying to take the head coach position.
“Maybe he’ll cool down when the season starts,” Bernie muses, taking a sip of his coffee as we find a table today.
“Maybe,” I say, though what I really want to say is, doubt it.
“Alright, everybody,” a counselor says, walking into the dining hall with the GM at her side, a clipboard under her arm, and a whistle hanging around her neck. “Who’s ready for another day of team-building?”
For the next four hours, as we move through the various activities at camp—boating, a long hike through the woods, and a water balloon fight—Elsie does everything in her power to avoid me.
She ducks away from the counselor counting off one, two, one, two to make sure we’re not on the same teams. When we end up near each other during the hike, she kicks it into gear and is sitting on a rock, trying to catch her breath again when the rest of us get to the top of the summit.
The problem isn’t that she’s avoiding me, it’s that she’s not subtle, and each time it happens, I start to feel like everyone is noticing. That her efforts to stay away from me are going to make it very clear that something happened.
“Okay, everyone!” the counselor says, when we’ve had a minute to rest after the hike. “Our next activity is always a favorite. I’d like everyone to grab a pair of gloves from the box, please!”
She brings the box around, and we all take a pair of gloves, some of us reluctantly—these have obviously been worn a lot of times.
“Now, look at the lining,” she says gleefully, returning to the front of the group and setting the box on the ground. “Blue on that side, red on this side. Line up, please!”
I move to my side, not realizing Elsie is near me until we’re lined up beside one another. Apparently, she doesn’t realize either, and I hold my breath to see if she’s going to make a scene of avoiding me.
Luckily, she stays in place, remaining perfectly still, like I’m a T-Rex that won’t be able to get her as long as I can’t see her.
For the first time today, it occurs to me to wonder why she’s working so hard to keep away from me. Is she embarrassed that I didn’t text her back? Was she hoping I’d come to her room last night?
I’m so busy thinking about it, and her, that I don’t realize what the game is until they’ve already laid the rope out in front of us, drawn a large white line down the center of the grass in chalk.
“Make sure you get a good grip on the rope!” the counselor says, stepping over it and walking down the line, her eyes a little too bright. “Scoot in, everyone has to fit!”
I’m pushed forward, and Elsie is forced back, and within seconds, her ass is basically in my lap as the game begins, and we’re all pulling.
My gaze locks in on the nape of her neck, the little hairs curling downward. The smooth expanse dropping down into the collar of her shirt. If I leaned forward, I could press my lips to that little spot just at the crook of her neck.
For a moment, I think about dropping the rope, giving up. Or feigning that I’ve lost my grip. But that would just be more proof that she and I are avoiding one another.
She lets out a grunt and rocks backward, her ass grinding against me, and I bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood, losing all my concentration on the game and instead flooding my mind with images of my grandmother, the San Jose Sharks, anything to keep me from getting a fucking erection right now.
Does she even realize I’m behind her? Does she feel how close we are? Does she realize what the tugging, rocking motion is doing to me?
A second later, our side hauls the others over the white line and victory is declared. Elsie, breathing hard, drops the rope, and, without even looking over her shoulder at me, launches into a dead sprint for the cabins.
“Must need the bathroom,” the counselor laughs, waving in her direction. “Sorry, we should have looped past them before coming this way.”
“You’re all free to go and clean up before dinner,” Karlee says, but she sounds distracted, her eyes on Elsie Montgomery as she disappears around the side of the cabins.
Karlee knows Elsie, they’re some sort of family friend to one another. And if she’d been paying at least a little attention to her today, she would have picked up on the tension between the two of us.
After a second, Karlee turns, her gaze wandering over to the spot that Elsie just occupied, and I busy myself with helping them wrap up the rope, doing my best to maintain my usual I don’t give a fuck facial expression.
Karlee looks away, and relief floods through me.
As much as I don’t trust myself to, I’m going to need to talk to Elsie before this entire thing gets me into really fucking hot water.