Forbidden Puck: A Hockey Romance Page 8

  “Oh, I dunno. I just have trouble meeting people, I guess. I'm always working, so I don't go out too much. And all the guys I do meet are just … blah.”

  I shook my head. “Dating apps won't help you then.”

  “Why not?”

  “You won't meet any quality guys on there. You'll only meet guys like me.”

  She giggled and rolled her eyes at me. “Professional hockey sleazes, you mean?”

  “Something like that.” I paused. “You know, that's surprising. I would've thought that dating in New York would be really easy for someone like you. You're obviously a smart, attractive girl, and you run your own business. You've got a lot going for you. And there's so many people in that city. There's gotta be some quality guys out there.”

  “Right? That's what you'd think. But there's only one quality man in my life.” She swiped on her cell phone and showed me a picture of a mottled gray and white cat. “His name is Eucalyptus.”

  “Oh, God.” I slapped my forehead. “I did not have you pegged as a crazy cat lady.”

  She giggled. “I'm not. I swear I'm not. But look, this is how dating is in New York . . .”

  I listened as Ella explained her struggles of meeting a decent man in New York City. As she told it, it was a city full of guys who were only interested in a girl long enough to find out if he could sleep with her. No one was interested in something longer term. She also explained that guys were rather intimidated by her tendency to speak her mind and tell the truth—if not put off by it completely.

  Then she told me about the last guy she was dating. A lawyer named Matthew. She told me about their breakup—and what he said to her. He couldn't stand her, and the only reason he stayed with her was so he could brag to his beer league team that he was banging Lance's sister. And, to add insult to injury, he told Ella that she was a “seven at best” (which is so far from the truth, and such an insulting thing to say to a woman, I ground my teeth in anger).

  “He actually said all that to you?”

  “Yup.”

  I clenched my glass of beer so hard, I thought the glass might shatter in my fist.

  “Where does his beer league play?”

  She answered right away. “Chelsea Piers in New York.” Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Wait, why? You're not going to go beat him up, are you?”

  The fantasy made me smirk. “Would you be mad if I did?”

  She took a second to think it over before she wore a smirk of her own. “I suppose I wouldn't stop you.”

  “Add it to my bucket list, then. One of these days I'll have to swing by Chelsea Piers and body-check some asshole lawyer named Matthew.”

  She let out a dreamy sigh. “Oh, Radar, you can't talk to a girl like that … you'll only get her hopes up and everything.”

  I leaned forward and growled. “Sorry, but I still can't get over that. He was only banging you for bragging rights? Who the hell says something like that?”

  She bobbed her head from side to side, as if she were considering telling me something or leaving it be.

  “Slight correction,” she said at last, “but just to be clear, he wasn't 'banging' me.”

  “Hm?”

  “We hadn't slept together. He was bragging to his buddies that we were, but we hadn't yet. I guess that's why he stayed with me for as long as he did, even though he found me so insufferable.”

  They never slept together?

  A wave of righteousness flooded right through my chest and filled my heart. That was the best goddamn news I'd ever heard in my life. That scum-bag lawyer didn't deserve her, and I was glad he'd wasted his time trying.

  “How long were you together?” I asked gleefully.

  “Four months.”

  “Four months …” I repeated, imagining the lawyer's four-month anguish—and savoring every last second of it. “Good.”

  “Why is that good?”

  “You made him work for it, and he didn't get it, and I'm glad,” I snarled. “Fuck that guy.”

  She looked at me like she didn't quite know what to make of my jealous outburst. Part of her was surprised. Another part of her, a part she tried to hide, looked deeply pleased.

  “Well then!” she snickered at last, speechless.

  Our waitress returned and delivered our dinner. I needed to change the topic, because that lawyer guy got my blood boiling, and I wasn't going to have him ruin my steak.

  “So, Ella,” I asked I sawed off a hunk of meat, “tell me about your job.”

  She gave me a run-down on the interior design business she ran. Apparently, she was growing quite a reputation in the city for quality work and had already had some famous names among her clients—a couple actors, a few NY athletes and local celebrities. She even had a waiting list. She'd really made a name for herself, by the sounds of it.

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  “What does?”

  “That you'd be in your business for yourself. I can tell you're really … independent. You know. Strong. Capable. Whatever.”

  “Thanks,” she said quietly. “Unfortunately, a lot of guys are intimidated by that.”

  “Intimidated? There's that word again. Why are guys so intimidated by you?”

  She chuckled, but she looked a little uncomfortable, and she didn't give an answer.

  “Seriously, I don't get it. Is it just because you run your own business? Or that you expect guys to be honest with you? I mean, I get that it'd be hard … but jeez. Self-employed and honest. Those aren't exactly qualities that I'd think were deal-breakers.”

  “Well … it's something else.”

  “What?” I asked, doubting it could be anything serious. “You've got your life together and you want guys to prove they're worth your time.”

  “Actually. It's a little more complicated than that.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  She inched forward and lowered her voice. “I'm still a virgin.”

  I smiled at her, huge, ready to laugh with her … but she looked completely serious.

  “Wait, you're—you're serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  I rubbed my chin. “Oh. Oh, damn. Huh. Are you, uh, religious?”

  She laughed. “Not really. We moved around so much when I was in high school for Lance's career. As soon as I had a boyfriend at school, it was time to move somewhere else. And I told you that I shared a bedroom with Lance all those years, right? Can you imagine bringing a boy back home to that pig sty? I don't think so. Then I was in college, and you don't exactly meet a whole lot of boys in the interior design program at FIT. And then I graduated and started my business, which exceeded beyond my wildest expectations and ate up all my free time, and voila. Here I am, the 22 year old virgin.”

  “I'll be damned,” I muttered.

  “Look, I don't want make a big deal out of it, okay? And don't tell Lance because he doesn't know and I don't want him to know. I never wanted to make a big deal out of it, that's the thing, it just never … happened. So what? And it's not like I was trying to stay a virgin all this time, either. I just thought, since I waited this long, I might as well wait until I knew the time was right. You know? I guess the time has never been right.”

  “Hey, yeah, gotcha,” I mumbled, my words running together. I stared off into the distance. “Totally.”

  “See, now you're acting weird, and you're just my brother's friend, and we're not even interested in each other …”

  “No no no. I'm not acting weird. I'm not trying to, anyway. Sorry. It's just, that's a rare thing in this day and age, I needed a minute to wrap my brain around it.”

  “It is a rare thing,” she sighed, taking another sip from her drink. “Everyone else is using hook-up apps and I'm stuck at 'third base.' Ha ha. Oh well, it's my choice.”

  “Wait, third base? So you have done things with a guy?”

  “Of course! I'm not completely pure—or anything close to it. I love to sixty-nine, for example.”

  I couldn't help
it—my cock stirred against my leg. She'd put the image, the sensation, right there in my head: her bare bottom right over my face; my tongue busily lapping at her pink folds; the sound of her muffled moans with me buried in her throat.

  I shifted in my seat and tried to push those completely forbidden thoughts out of my head.

  “So, you're waiting for a quality guy?”

  She took a long sip from her drink. “I was. But I don't know what I'm waiting for anymore. I'm kind of sick of waiting, honestly.”

  No no no, not what I need to hear.

  “Don't give up,” I croaked. “You'll find a good guy eventually.”

  “Yeah, that's what everyone says, but where?”

  I felt a heaviness in my heart. “You're asking the wrong guy.”

  A still quiet came between us. Lost in my thoughts, I sawed off one hunk of steak after another and chewed.

  So that was it. She was a virgin.

  That was … unexpected.

  But it made sense. Sort of. Like I said, she's tough, capable, driven … I could see how guys would struggle to live up to her standards.

  Once the shock wore off, I have to say, I felt—relief. Because, the more time I spent with this girl, I had to admit—I found her even cuter, even more irresistible. And she was so easy to talk to. And that scared me, honestly, because it felt like I was starting to actually like her, and making up excuses to be with her. I'd been lying to myself, thinking that I could be around her and control myself.

  Shit, I almost kissed her last night … and here I was, taking her out to dinner?! What was I thinking?

  But now that she told me that she was a virgin, I knew that nothing would happen between us. She was a virgin, and she was looking for a good man and, hell, I certainly wasn't that. She was smart enough not to get mixed up with me. And I was smart enough not to get mixed up with the virgin sister of my teammate.

  Or are you one of those easily intimidated cowards she's known all her life?

  “So how about you, Ryan? How's your love life? Do you ever want to settle down, or are you going to play the field forever?”

  “Well, I'm definitely not in love with anyone.” I pushed my empty plate aside. “So I guess it's the field.”

  “Ew! Radar!” she squealed.

  “What? You asked a question, I gave you an answer.”

  “No, it was just the way you said it while you pushed your empty plate aside. Like women are nothing but a prime rib for you to consume.”

  I laughed. “Pure coincidence.”

  But she was right, in a way, wasn't she? In her eyes, I must've looked like a monster, a sexual deviant. Here I was, bragging to a virgin about going out to meet some random chick I picked up on a hook-up app. Awful.

  Then again, wasn't that perfectly fine? I didn't want her to like me. That'd only cause a whole shit-load of problems. So if she thought I was a terrible sleaze, a man-slut … hey, great.

  We made small talk and joked around until our server came by with the bill. I grabbed the check and paid it and left a generous tip.

  “Thanks for dinner, Ryan.”

  “My pleasure. I'm glad I could get you out of the house.”

  “Me too.” She gave a gracious smile. “Are you off to meet your next cut of meat now?”

  “Whatever.”

  I checked my watch. I still had some time to kill until midnight, when I was going to meet Kara at Regret. I could see if some of the boys were around and if they wanted to meet up until then. Or …

  Hell, why not ask Ella if she wants to come? We're already downtown. She doesn't have anything else to do.

  “You wanna come with me to Regret? I'm not supposed to meet Kara for another hour or so.”

  “As long as you promise I won't regret it,” she said in that over-the-top manner that said she knew that her pun was atrocious.

  “Ba-dum-tssh. But hey, no promises.”

  We left the restaurant. Outside, I hailed a cab and opened the door for Ella. I slid in after her, and the two of us sped off for Regret.

  Chapter 12

  Club Regret

  Ella

  Regret.

  Ryan Ryder and I were in the back of a cab, zipping through downtown Boston, heading to a club called Regret.

  Hilarious.

  I'm not one to be too superstitious, but it sure seemed like a bad omen. Like something out there was lurking in wait for us. Would we run into Lance at the club? Would he flip his shit, automatically assuming Radar and I were up to no good with each other?

  Whatever. After what Lance did with Quinn, and the trouble he caused me? He didn't have any right to be upset just because I hung out with his teammate. Lance was the one who bailed on me in the first place, after all.

  Besides, I knew nothing could possibly happen between Ryan and I. Especially after I told him I was a virgin; the look on his face all but confirmed it. He looked like all the other guys did when I told them, like I just hit them in the gut with a two-ton weight and their world had ended.

  On one hand, I wanted to smack Ryan. Why would it matter to him? It shouldn't matter at all! We said we weren't interested in each other!

  But on the other hand, there was a part of myself that was deeply satisfied. Especially when Ryan got all mad and huffy, with his giant chest puffing up, when I told him about Matthew. That made me so warm and happy inside …

  That's when I realized it: I wanted Ryan to like me.

  I wanted Ryan to like me, for some reason, even if he fit the cheesy, sleazy hockey player mold to a T. I didn't get it. In his favor, he was acting like a perfect gentleman all night, and I enjoyed getting to know the quiet tough-guy a little bit better.

  Then again—I guess a perfect gentleman wouldn't be heading out to meet a one-night-stand. But that wasn't surprising, given what I knew about hockey players. And he was honest and upfront about it, so it didn't feel right to judge him for it.

  And I guess, technically speaking, a 'perfect gentleman' wouldn't be stealing the occasional peek at my chest. That's right, Radar, I caught you looking—more than once.

  Not that I minded too much. Because hey, he's a guy. A hockey playing guy, at that. And when a guy sees breasts, he's just not in control of himself. Right? When a girl offers even a hint of cleavage, guys just have this overwhelming biological drive to look. It doesn't mean that they're even attracted to her, really. He just has to look every so often to make sure that a girl's breasts haven't jumped off her chest and run off, or something. Because tits.

  I don't know, I'm just rambling. I have no idea what goes through a guy's caveman brain when he sees a pair of breasts. All I know is that Radar said I'm not his type, and I'll have to take his word for that …

  And I said that he wasn't my type, too. Actually, I said it first! Yet he's tall and devilishly handsome, broad-shouldered, sharply-dressed yet rough around the edges in all the right ways—

  And I said he's not my type.

  Somberly, I stared out my window, mesmerized by the hectic blur of busy traffic; long trails of red and green and yellow.

  Did I lie to him?

  Did I lie to myself?

  I clenched my fists so tightly my nails began to cut into my palms.

  I thought of Ryan's date for the night. Kara. I wondered what she was like. Probably like all the other puck bunnies I'd met over the years—girls that were obsessed with Lance and his buddies. Loud, gaudy, and with a penchant for putting all her assets on display. Credit where it's due, those girls knew precisely how to ensnare a jock's attention: leave absolutely nothing to the imagination, because they never had much of one to begin with.

  “What're you thinking about?” Ryan suddenly asked.

  His voice snapped me from my trance. I turned to see him, smiling at me, a small and curious smile on his lips.

  “Oh … lots of things,” I said. “You caught me day-dreaming.”

  His grin grew, and so did his desire to know more. “Well, what about?”

 
I couldn't hold his gaze, and I dropped mine to the floor of the cab. “Oh, fine. I was just wondering what this girl you're meeting up with looks like.”

  “You wanna see? I'll show ya. Honesty policy and all, right?” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. The screen lit the back-seat of the cab, and he showed me a picture of the girl that matched my mental image of her exactly: blonde, face heavily painted, too thin. Her orange skin tone told you she enjoyed baking herself on tanning beds. You could call her attractive, because she knew how to package herself and attract attention, but you wouldn't call her pretty.

  Or maybe I'm just being a catty bitch …

  He swiped to show me the next picture. Kara had pulled down her jeans, exposing her silly pink panties with a bow.

  “Wow,” I laughed, a jealous lump lodging itself in my throat. “Straight to the point, isn't she!”

  “Right?” Ryan chuckled. He stuffed his phone back into his pocket.

  The grin he wore—I'd seen it before, with other guys from my past, when I ended up in a situation where I was 'the cool chick' in a group of guys. Grow up with a popular hockey star for a brother, always surrounded by sweaty, trash-talking boys, and you too might easily end up as 'one of the guys.'

  To Radar, the novelty of having a female friend that he could share anything with was just, so badass, man. Even cooler that I was a girl who lived by an honesty policy that meant everything had to be laid bare.

  The cab pulled over to the curb and slowed to a stop. The club's signage was lit in smoky red letters, Regret.

  Ryan paid the cabbie and hopped out. He gave me his hand to help me out of the car.

  Welp, let's see what this place is like …

  ***

  I joined the end of the line to get into the club. I was digging through my clutch, in search of my ID, when Ryan stopped me.

  “No need,” he said simply. He whisked us to the front of the line. The doorman saw Ryan, let the two of us in immediately, and welcomed Mr. Ryder back.

  The crowded club was dimly lit and loud, thumping beats blasted from the speaker system. Ryan took my hand so we wouldn't get separated and led me through a mass of dancing people. The body heat was thick and sweltering, but we emerged on the other side at the bar and were able to breathe again. A bartender spotted Ryan and rushed over to take our order. He made our drinks in a hurry, and when Ryan tried to pay, the bartender reassured him that his money was no good here. Ryan stuffed the cash in the tip jar instead.