Hot on Ice: A Hockey Romance Anthology

by Avery Flynn

  “How does one collect?” Lilly didn’t have that much of a conscience. And she also had student loans from the University of Minnesota-Duluth that weren’t going away fast enough on her salary and tips.

  A hot streak of jealousy flared up Dahlia’s skin at thinking about Lilly touching Anders. She liked the guy—she could admit that. She’d known it couldn’t go anywhere while she was flirting with him in the bar earlier. Now, it really couldn’t go anywhere. Even if the idea of being his first—being a little bit special to someone like Anders—appealed to her.

  Why was she thinking about this? Maybe because he was hot, had kicked some ass on her behalf, and looked like dessert to her. She gulped down her wine. “You can take those beers to go. It’s closing time.”

  Dude and Man thanked them both as they walked out, distracted at that point by a debate about who the greatest living hockey player was, Gretzky or Lemieux.

  “You have to sleep with him.” Of course Lilly would jump to that conclusion.

  “No.” Dahlia opened the drawer to count the evening’s till and change out her tips for bigger bills. Maybe, but maybe, she’d made twenty dollars that night.

  “C’mon, you were already thinking about popping your secondary cherry to him. This is your chance.”

  Dahlia lost count and put down the stack of ones—her tips. “I can’t sleep with him, especially now. And if you don’t see that, you need some serious help.”

  “I do need serious help, but not as serious as the kind of help you need.” Lilly smacked the bar for emphasis.

  “Don’t scratch the mahogany. Your dad will blame it on me, and I get enough shit blamed on me.”

  “He thinks you’re trying to take his job, which you’re not. He’ll get over it.” Lilly pointed at her. “Don’t try to distract me. It’s not like you would actually hurt him. You’d get his teammates off his back so he could merrily bonk puck bunnies going forward.”

  “What if I don’t like the idea of him bonking puck bunnies?”

  “Because you like him, don’t you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Dahlia resumed her counting.

  “If you don’t like him, you could have sex with him. It would be a win-win.”

  “How would me having sex for money be a win-win? Everyone already thinks I’m a slut. Having sex for money would not fix that.”

  Lilly stood up. “Fine. Do what you want. But it’s not like regular having sex for money, which I also think people should be able to do.”

  “Really?” Dahlia put the cash in the drop safe under the bar and grabbed her purse.

  “Yes. I wish I could get paid for the bad sex I had with frat bros in college.” Lilly pulled a face that indicated some particularly bad memories. “I think you should have sex with him for him—so he can lose it and feel good about it. Because you like him.”

  Lilly was already walking away to her cabin when Dahlia said, “Do not.”

  3

  Every step on the switchback reverberated up Anders’ calf and stung his still-healing knee. He stepped on a jagged rock and cursed. He shouldn’t be having this much pain months after surgery. Still, he couldn’t hike up a mountain—a hill really.

  The Temperance River swelled over the boulders, falling toward Lake Superior with a roar. The sound of the water moving over the stone, speeding, was remarkably like the sound of a crowd of fans filling the arena. He missed that sound, but he wasn’t sure the lure of the ice was enough to justify the pain.

  What if he was never the same? What if he went back and hurt himself worse? What if everything—even a hike on a sunny day—was painful every day for the rest of his life? Was playing a game really worth that price?

  He’d never had to contemplate the price of his dream before. His love for hockey had always seemed infinite. This wasn’t his first injury. He’d bounced back before, and he couldn’t figure out why it was so hard this time. He should be better now.

  The state park was pretty empty, given that it was the middle of the week, and Anders trudged on until he hit more even terrain, and the sharp pain in his knee turned into a dull throb. It would be worse going down, so he paused on a wooden bridge that spanned the falls. He leaned on the railing and looked out over the vast power of the river, wishing he could let his thoughts fall out and go under the rushing water.

  He heard the patting footfalls of a runner coming from farther up the path. A pang of jealousy hit him square in the chest. God, he’d always hated running, tolerated it because it made him a better skater. But now, he’d give his left nut for a taste of the release he could find from running a few miles. He was supposed to be swimming every day to keep his conditioning, but it wasn’t the same. It didn’t give him the high; swimming laps exhausted him so he could sleep, but it was a reminder of the things he couldn’t do.

  The footfalls came closer and closer until they stopped. He looked to his right, and there was Dahlia. Sweaty and wearing a sports bra and short leggings—like a moving, breathing embodiment of everything he wished he could do. In more ways than one.

  “Hi.” She brushed a strand of purple hair behind her ear.

  “Hey.” Anders couldn’t think of anything better. His teammates would make so much fun of him if they could see him now. He’d always been awkward when it came to talking to girls, more so since the bounty came into the picture. But this was ridiculous. “It’s beautiful up here, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “I guess. I mean, I’ve lived up here almost my whole life, so it’s part of the tapestry, I guess.”

  “I never would have taken you for a runner.” She seemed more like the type to smoke marijuana or clove cigarettes.

  “Because of the tattoos and—” She pointed to her hair.

  “I figured maybe yoga or something.”

  She pressed her lips together and crossed her arms over her chest. He didn’t say anything else because everything he said seemed to dig him deeper and deeper into a hole he didn’t want to be in.

  “You know what happened when you assume things.”

  You make an ass of “u” and “me.” “I can’t seem to stop making an ass of myself around you.”

  “Not everything you’ve done since we met is stupid.” She uncrossed her arms and moved closer to him, leaning on the railing. The wind picked up and he caught her sweat on the breeze. Much better than marijuana or clove cigarettes, it made his groin tighten. He leaned farther away to conceal the effect she had on him.

  “Have I done anything smart?” Not looking at her seemed to help with the not saying anything stupid thing.

  “You’re fishing, but I’ll bite.” She nudged him with her shoulder, and he gasped from the contact. Like a fucking schoolgirl. He could feel her eyes on him, but he stared straight ahead, as though he could dunk himself in the lake if he looked hard enough. “You did defend my honor against those neck beards from high school. Rumor has it they are very proud of the battle wounds they got from a professional hockey player.”

  “It was the least I could do.” He shrugged, and his arm brushed against hers. He didn’t imagine her shivering. Without thinking too hard about it, he shrugged off his hoodie and dropped it over her shoulders. “It’s too cold to be that naked if you’re not running.”

  He risked a glance at her then. She scrunched her nose up, and he worried for a second he’d offended her. Did she not want to wear something that belonged to him? Had he overstepped?

  Instead, she burrowed in, pushed her arms through the sleeves. “Thank you.”

  Her words floored him for a second. It might have been the first thing she’d ever said to him without a hint of sarcasm. And, now that her face had softened, he couldn’t look away.

  “I run because I have to—had to. I’m a chef, or I was until recently, and all the tasting adds up.”

  “Why aren’t you cooking anymore?”

  “My ex-boss, or partner, or whatever, took my share of our business after he told me that he actually had a fiancée.”


  “You were together.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Prick.”

  She put a finger to one side of her nose. “You’ve got it.”

  They watched and listened to the falls for a long moment. Now her standoffish attitude made sense. She didn’t want to be here, and she didn’t trust men.

  “I keep saying and doing the wrong thing around you.” Given what she’d just told him, it would be hard for him to say or do the right things.

  “I kind of like it.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, but you should stop staring at me. It’s getting weird.”

  He looked down at his hands. “I like looking at you.” Being able to talk to her without suspecting her motives made him happy. It made him feel like less of a sideshow and more of a person.

  “It’s nice.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She fidgeted with the strings on his sweatshirt. “That you like looking at me. But it’s not creepy. I haven’t had that kind of attention in a long time.”

  “I hated how those guys talked about you.”

  “Yeah, they’ve always been asswipes. Too bad that back in high school, they were right. I did sleep around, until…”

  “Until?”

  “I don’t know you, okay?”

  Anders turned his body toward her. “But you want to?”

  “That’s not going to happen.” She shook her head, and some of her hair came loose from her ponytail.

  “Why not?”

  “You’re only here for a few more days.”

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t know each other.” He moved one of the loose strands of her hair and smoothed it back. He didn’t know what possessed him. “And if you tell me your deep, dark secrets, I’ll leave town with them. Keep them safe.”

  He’d leaned closer to her without meaning to. Again, they were almost close enough to kiss. “There’s nothing safe about you.”

  He couldn’t help but smile. She had no idea how safe she was with him. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “If I tell you all my secrets, will you tell me yours?”

  For a second, he thought she knew about the bounty. Of course she would have Googled him. She would know by now. He wouldn’t have to tell her, but he’d give her his side. His telling her wouldn’t change anything. If she knew about the bounty, anything that happened between them wouldn’t be about the two of them anymore. It would be about the money, and he couldn’t get past that. No matter how hard he tried.

  “They were friends, teammates, with a guy who got me drunk so he could have sex with me back in high school.” She took a deep breath, which gave Anders the opportunity to move back. No wonder she hated hockey players.

  “He raped you.” His hand on the railing tightened so much he would probably crack the weathered plank. Right then, he felt like Thor. He felt like he could rain fire down on the whole town, and he wished like hell he’d done more damage to that other guy’s face.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think of it that way back then.” She shrugged, as though it was no big deal that someone she went to school with, someone she possibly still had to interact with now, had raped her. “And the rest of the team thought it meant I was a slut.”

  “So you knew what they were probably saying about you when you walked out of the room?”

  She nodded. “It’s the same thing they’ve been saying about me for five years.”

  “And you have to be back here because of your dickhead ex?” He turned back to the view. “Is he still here? The one who raped you?”

  Anders promised himself he wouldn’t go and find him. He wouldn’t be able to stop with a bloody nose or a black eye. He would have to tear the guy to bits and feed him to a bear or something.

  “Nah. He’s in prison for selling oxy.” Thank God. “Not many people get out of town here.”

  “You will.” If she could face down goons like the ones she’d faced down last night, she would get out of town—if that’s what she wanted to do.

  She snort-laughed. “You forget, I got out of town once, and it didn’t work out so well for me.”

  “That doesn’t mean you should give up.”

  She turned on him, her nose wrinkling again, eyes narrowed. “I’m not giving up.” She looked down. “It’s taking me some time to get back on my feet again.”

  A strange idea came to him. What if, assuming she didn’t know about the bounty, he slept with her and found a way to get her the money without her knowing it? No. That would never work. He might not know her, but he knew enough to guess that she wouldn’t like taking money for sex. She deserved it, regardless of whether they had sex.

  He didn’t have time to think anymore, because she grabbed his arm and dragged him up the trail.

  “What are you doing?”

  She looked over her shoulder. “You’re doing that mopey bastard thing. You need some exercise.”

  “But my knee.” He had never used an injury as an excuse to get out of a practice, a game, or a training session. He’d always been the guy trying to defy his doctors’ orders. But now, he didn’t want to go on a walk?

  “The terrain’s even. You’ll be fine.”

  Sure enough, once they got up past the falls, the ground flattened out, and nothing but the dull ache returned. She didn’t talk anymore, and he wanted to say something about what she’d told him, something to make her feel like she was right to trust him with that information.

  “You know, I wouldn’t hurt you. I mean, I’m not like the guys you went to school with.”

  She stopped in her tracks and turned around. He stopped less than a foot away from her. “I know that.” She sighed and reached out as though she was about to touch him, but decided not to at the last moment. “I’m not broken, okay?”

  “I didn’t think you were broken. You must be—I don’t know—traumatized or something.”

  She threw up her hands. “I’m not a victim. So many women have it so much worse. Sometimes they’re stuck in violent, shitty situations for years. Sometimes they don’t get out.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that what happened to you was any less bad.”

  “It sucked. And it sucks having to live here and be reminded of how badly it sucked.” She had a fighter’s stance, and he could tell she was trying to keep all her pain and rage bottled up. It was the same way that he felt most of the time. Especially since he didn’t have hockey to pour all that energy into anymore. “But I’m over it. I’ve had plenty of sex.”

  His whole spine went rigid upon hearing her say the word. And he felt a completely unjustified amount of jealousy of all the sex she’d had with other men.

  “I know that you’re a virgin. About the bounty.”

  Fuck. Seriously, fuck the Internet. He hung his head, ready for the questions people usually asked when they found out about his problem.

  “Your teammates are assholes.”

  “I know.”

  “So, why are so depressed about the knee?” She stepped closer, and he felt his chest seize. When she was close enough to have to look up at him, he tentatively placed his hands on her upper arms.

  “I love the game.”

  She reached out and touched him then; she traced his pec through the technical fabric of his t-shirt. It was his turn to shiver then. “Then, why don’t you resolve the bounty thing once and for all?”

  The only way he could resolve the bounty was to have sex. That wasn’t the problem. In fact, right now it really wouldn’t be a problem. His dick was so hard that he couldn’t think straight. He knew Dahlia had just offered to have sex with him, and he could choose to push her away, knowing that she needed money and probably saw having sex with him as an easy way to get it.

  But it wouldn’t be easy. And after what she’d told him about her ex, and especially what had happened to her in high school, he knew that notoriety as the winner of a bounty on a professional hockey player’s virginity wasn’t what she needed in life.
r />   “Are you saying that you want to have sex with me?”

  Dahlia snort-laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You guess so?” Anders stepped back. “That’s not really a ringing endorsement.”

  “I definitely want to have sex with you, but I don’t want to do it for money.”

  “You want to do it for free.” He touched his hand to his heart in a feigned swoon that made her snort again. “Well, I do declare. That’s the most flattering offer I’ve had in the whole of my life.”

  Her laughter got more intense. She leaned over, putting her hands on her knees. “I take it back. That accent is terrible.”

  “I’ll never use it again.” She looked up at him, raking her gaze over his body and lighting him up inside. She licked her pink lips, and he could have fallen to his knees right then. He had to kiss her. Just for fun, for the two of them. “Stand up.”

  She straightened like it was an order from a commanding officer, and he tried to rein himself in. But his heart was pounding, and he couldn’t stop himself from cupping her cheek. “I’m going to kiss you, if that’s okay.”

  She smirked at him before going on her tiptoes and kissing him. Her thin arms wrapped around his neck as he sank into her plush, gorgeous mouth. For the first time in months, he wasn’t thinking about his knee. He wasn’t thinking at all. Everything centered on soft skin, sweet sighs, her tongue.

  He touched her low back, the dip and curve there. She pressed her body full-on into his, squirming and making him harder.

  It wasn’t like he’d never kissed anyone before. That had happened in high school. His chemistry partner had kissed him on the condition he tell no one. He’d kept his promise.

  And he’d kissed women during college and since he’d been in the league. But this was different. They were both sober and aware of their actions. Nothing about this was sloppy. The way she touched him was intentional, and she heated him. It made him forget about the bounty, and about the fact that he’d never actually had sex before. The throaty sounds she made and the way she clung to him made him feel like a master.