“Guessing you don’t like those women,” Griffin asks.
“They’re puck bunnies.”
He chokes on his drinks. “Excuse me, what did you call them?”
“Puck bunnies. Women who go after hockey players, like a gold digger.”
Griffin’s eyes widen. “How can you tell?”
“You just can.” I look over at the girls, and they have all clocked the intruders. The girls work with warp speed, and before I know it, Fish has his arm wrapped around a brunette. Bouch is suddenly very animated. Even Evan looks slightly less miserable, while Nelly is chatting with a blonde.
Forget about them, they are grown-ass men, and you are talking to a gorgeous guy.
“I’m guessing that happens a lot,” Griffin says, watching me watch the puck bunnies.
“You have no idea.” I sigh. My eyes flit over to where the giggles are.
Griffin subtly places his finger under my chin and redirects my attention back to him. “Think I might have to distract you.”
“Distract me?”
“You’re not at work right now. They’re big boys, they can look after themselves.” He shifts closer.
He’s right. I have this gorgeous man in front of me. Who cares what those guys are doing? “How are you going to distract me?” I ask him, my eyes falling to his lips before looking back up into those molten chocolate swirls. I look at him. Really look at him. Square jaw. Dark eyes. That easy grin that hasn’t faltered once all night, even when his friend was making a fool of himself by fanboying over Fish. He’s been sitting here talking to me while the chaos unfolded around us, and not once did he try to go back and join the hockey conversation. He stayed when many before have left me in their dust to get closer to their idols.
“I have my ways.” He smirks.
“Which are?” My heart thumps wildly in my chest. Is he going to kiss me?Please kiss me.
And thankfully, he does. Griffin’s hand slides to the back of my neck as he pulls me in close. His lips are warm and sure, he tastes like whiskey, and I kiss him back because why wouldn’t I? He’s gorgeous and he’s not a hockey player, and right now in this bar, no one is watching, and no one cares, and it feels so good to just be a girl getting kissed on a Friday night. His other hand finds my waist and pulls me closer. I let him because his mouth is doing things that are making it very hard to remember why I should be sensible right now.
We pull apart, and he’s grinning, and I’m grinning, and my heart is hammering in my chest.
“That’s how you distract someone,” he says.
“Consider me distracted.”
He chuckles and kisses me again. This time it’s slower, deeper, his thumb tracing circles on the back of my neck. I lose track of how long we stand there because the bar has faded, it’s just him and me, and his mouth and hands, and the way he keeps pulling me back in every time I think about pulling away. When we finally come up for air, my lipstick is definitely on his face, and I don’t care.
“Lettie, sorry to interrupt, but we’re going,” Eve says. Oh. Damn. I look at Griffin, I’m not ready for the night to end. “Are you coming or staying?” she asks.
“Come home with me,” Griffin whispers in my ear, sending goosebumps down my neck.
Yes. Say yes. Say yes, right now. You need to get laid.I want to. God, I want to. Every single part of my body is screaming at me to say yes. But I can’t. Because fifteen feet from my bedroom door, there are two six-foot-plus French-Canadian men who will absolutely hear me not come home tonight, and by morning there will be a search party.
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” he asks.
“Can’t. Trust me, it’s not a won’t situation.” I pull back enough to look at him properly. “I live with my brothers.”
It takes him a second for that information to sink in. “The hockey-playing, suffocatingly protective brothers?”
“Those ones.”
“So, if you don’t go home tonight ...”
“There will be a manhunt by sunrise, and you will be murdered by your favorite hockey players.”