Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 656(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131271 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 656(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
18
HAYES
“You did what?” I gape at Jacob, my fingers tightening around my helmet as he adjusts his gear like he didn’t just drop a bomb on my life.
“I jerked off in front of Riley.” He pulls his helmet over his smug face like this is all normal behavior.
My brain glitches. I blink, and Shawn folds over with laughter, nearly falling off the bench. The sound grates against the roaring in my ears, and I glare at him until his laughter dies, leaving only the faint wheezing of a man teetering between the poles of hilarity and fear.
“And she did what?” My voice drops dangerously low.
“She passed me the tissues and told me to come on my belly.”
Malik and Buttons stomp past us, oblivious. “Get your asses in gear,” Buttons mumbles. “Coach is raging. Must have had a row with the wife.”
Coach’s bad mood would usually freeze me in my tracks, but I’m already frozen. I imagine Jacob and Riley having a moment while I was upstairs sleeping. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
“The healing effect of the orgasm,” Jacob replies, sweeping his arm out like he’s presenting a Nobel Prize-winning discovery.
Shawn snickers, shaking his head as he grabs his stick, but I take hold of his arm before he can follow the others onto the ice. “Don’t you go anywhere.”
“What?” Shawn grumbles, his brows pulling together. “Jacob’s inability to keep his cock in his pants has nothing to do with me.”
“Says Mr. I like to watch.”
He raises his hands in surrender. “I do like to watch.”
Jacob reaches for his stick, but I snatch it away. “What the fuck is going on here?” I demand, pointing the stick between them like a weapon of war. “You both want Riley now? Are you trying to muscle in on my girl? Because if that’s the case, we’ve got a big fucking problem.”
“I asked her if she’d like to be the meat in our triplet sandwich,” Jacob says casually, like my eyes aren’t already bugging out of my head.
“You did what?”
Shawn bites back another laugh, which only makes my rage bubble higher.
“I suggested we all help her out with her little problem?”
That’s it. That’s the thing that takes me from simmering anger to a full-blown nuclear meltdown. Jacob knows something about Riley that I don’t. Did she confide in him? Was that before or after he got his dick out in front of her? My chest tightens, and it’s not jealousy; it’s something worse—betrayal, confusion, and the sharp edge of possessiveness forming an unholy mix.
“What little problem? I grit out.
“Her unpopped cherry.”
I choke so hard, I nearly drop Jacob’s stick, spluttering so badly I have to thump the center of my chest to tug in a rasping breath.
“She told you she’s a virgin?”
“She might have let it slip.” Jacob inspects the tape on his gloves like he’s got all the time in the world.
My chest tightens further. My eagerness to get her naked last night is colored a lot differently by that little factoid—the way I touched her, and the things I wanted to do to her. Suddenly, my eagerness is reckless. She didn’t confide in me when we were intimate.
Did she feel more comfortable with Jacob?
The thought is a sharp shard that pierces, knowing we’re both virgins, but neither of us were honest enough to admit it. I swear under my breath, but before I can interrogate him further, Coach’s voice booms from across the locker room.
“ICE, NOW,” he roars. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HAVING A MOTHERS MEETING WHILE YOUR WHOLE TEAM IS OUT THERE WAITING FOR YOU?”
“Sorry, Coach,” we all say in unison. With my insides twisted into knots, I follow my brothers onto the ice, my brain still stuck on Riley and Jacob and their midnight confessional.
And the tissues. The fucking tissues!
***
Practice starts fast at the kind of pace that doesn’t leave room for thinking, which is good because my thoughts are a tangled mess of Riley, Jacob, Shawn, and every idiotic word that came out of their mouths.
We’re split into groups for drills, and I’m skating laps when I notice Jacob leaning lazily against the boards and chatting with Shawn like he hasn’t got a care in the world. He laughs. He fucking laughs, and I snap.
“Skate harder, Drayton!” Coach yells, but I’m already heading straight for Jacob.
By the time he realizes I’m coming, it’s too late. I shoulder-check him into the boards hard enough that he stumbles.
“What the fuck?” Jacob spins on me, his eyes narrowing.
“You think this is funny?” I hiss, keeping my voice low so that Coach won’t overhear.
“No,” he says. “But this. This is funny as fuck.”
His flippancy lights a fire that rushes into my hands. I shove him again, harder this time. “Why can’t you just keep your hands—and your mouth—to your fucking self.”