Page 41 of Hard to Handle

“Just a hunch.”

“A hunch?”

“Yeah. Like I said earlier, sometimes it’s good to get a different perspective on things.”

“You’re talking in circles, Dekk. You tend to do that when you don’t want to answer something.”

“Tell me,” I say. “From the last few hours, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?”

“Besides the fear you were kidnapping me?”

“Besides that,” I say with a nod.

“Tennis balls,” he says through a laugh.

The same laugh I’ve heard all night. While he pointed things out to me about the game. Insights I might never have caught as I wouldn’t have known. When he took the tennis balls the people sitting next to us offered and tossed them on the ice as is the school tradition upon the team’s first goal against their rival Princeton.

He was booing and laughing and pointing at the torrent of balls bounding around the ice. It was the most carefree I’ve heard him, and another clue that I might just be right about him being burned out.

“It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen, and that’s coming from a man who’s had the damn octopus flung within feet of him during a game against the Red Wings.”

“I’ve been to the Dartmouth-Princeton game a few times. Sometimes for fun, others for recruiting purposes. It’s the best when those tennis balls get tossed. Chaos and comradery. There’s nothing like a rivalry, like playing a sport simply because you love it, like being a part of something so steeped in tradition.”

“Ah,” he says and tips his glass up, but his eyes don’t leave mine. “Is this where we return to talking in circles?” His tone is playful but his eyes warn me to tread lightly.

I could have figured as much.

“No circles. I just thought after the last game, you needed a night away from the guys.”

“So you took me to more hockey.” There’s amusement in his voice.

“I did.” I shrug unapologetically. “It was an off night before the team moves on to Boston, I had to check out that kid, and so I thought . . . why not bring one of the best along.”

“The best? You keep complimenting me, Kincade, I’m going to start thinking you actually mean it.”

“Maybe I do.” Our eyes meet, hold; there’s a silence between us that stretches with equal parts comfort and flirting.

“That’s why you kidnapped me?” He reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “And here I thought it was for you to use me for your own devious pleasures.”

“Devious pleasure?” I laugh, but hell if that slow, sweet ache doesn’t come to life at the apex of my thighs thinking about Hunter and pleasure.

“So good it’s dangerous.”

“Jesus!” I laugh. “Yes, that’s it. I kidnapped you and then twisted your arm so I could take full advantage of you.”

“Tasered me too.”

“Was it that bad? Is going with me so brutal that tasering is the only option?”

He leans forward and puts his elbows on the table, and for a moment I think he’s going to kiss me. I freeze and then feel ridiculous when he does nothing more than murmur, his voice a low rumble. “You want to know the best part of the game?”

“Hmm?” I’m surprised by his sudden change of topic but entranced not only by his voice, but by how content he seems.

“Everything I do, everywhere I go, someone wants something from me. Time, talent, notoriety, you name it. Do you know how nice it was to go to a game and just enjoy it? To be amazed by talent and laugh at tennis balls and to sit in the stands where no one knew who I was or demanded something of me?”

“I can’t imagine,” I murmur and feel like a traitorous asshole, because I want something from him.

“Part of it’s the Cup, you know.”