Learn Your Lesson: A Single Dad Hockey Romance (Kings of the Ice)

Will

I wished the pool was colder.

I wished I didn’t heat it, that I would have thought to cut the heater earlier in the day so that when I plunged into the deep end, it would be frigid.

I wished that the water stung my skin and stole my breath instead of welcoming me like a warm bath because what I needed right now was an awakening.

I needed a cold, hard reality slap.

I needed to stop fantasizing about my nanny.

When I’d returned home from Ava’s school event earlier, I’d promptly gone into the garage, torturing myself with a strenuous jump-roping session that left me gasping for air and wincing against my sore ribs.

But the pain didn’t last.

Soon, I was in my hot shower, with all my thoughts drifting to Chloe.

Chloe and her sweet mouth that was always sporting the softest smile.

Chloe and her copper hair that she couldn’t resist touching, that made me want to get my own hands tangled up in it.

Chloe and her hand-sewn skirts that hugged her lush hips. It never mattered what top she wore with those skirts, because baggy t-shirt, oversized sweater or spaghetti strap crop top — it was impossible to hide her soft, supple breasts.

No amount of masturbation could help.

So, I’d quickly dried off, dressed, and spent the rest of the evening at the range.

It was highly frowned upon during the season. Coach didn’t want us doing anything where we could potentially injure ourselves. But I kept it mild, just getting in reps and hitting balls as far as I could in my own personal form of therapy.

When I finally dragged my ass home, I dutifully ignored Chloe and her impossibly irresistible smile while focusing all my energy on my daughter. After Ava was down for the night, I disappeared into my bedroom, not willing to chance even a moment alone with Chloe.

I didn’t realize how bad I had it, not with the season in full swing and a playoff run on the horizon. When I had practice and games, it was easy to forget about her until I came home. She only existed for brief snapshots of time before I could snuff out every thought of her and focus on my job.

But it was bye week. I didn’t have any games. I didn’t have practice. I wasn’t even allowed at the fucking arena.

And every waking thought, every dream, every second was filled with thoughts of Chloe Knott.

I swam hard and fast laps in the stupid heated pool, pushing and pushing until my lungs were burning and my shoulders ached. Even then, I went for one more, and then one more after that.

By the time I stopped at the edge of the pool, the muscles in my stomach threatened to seize and take me under. Good. I wanted that pain. I wanted to punish myself like Pavlov’s dog.

Think of Chloe? Shock of pain.

Imagine her naked? Kick in the groin.

Get hard at the thought of her on her knees? Baseball bat to the knees.

I hung my arms over the tile lining the pool, struggling to catch my breath and staring at the pattern on that tile until my eyes lost focus. I was ready to go for one more round when a movement from the pool house caught my eye.

And I shouldn’t have looked.Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

I should have just continued swimming, minding my own business, and keeping my focus on the task at hand.

But I couldn’t help it. I was powerless against the urge to look where I knew she was.

And when I did, I choked on my tongue.

Fuck.

It couldn’t have just been her making a pot of tea or reading on the couch. It couldn’t have just been one of her stupid cats jumping onto a window ledge.

No, it had to be her climbing out of the bathtub.

Dripping. Fucking. Wet.

The curtains covering the sliding glass door of her bedroom were sheer. There were blackout curtains there, too, but they were shoved aside. She hadn’t shut down for the night yet. She probably didn’t think she had to. Ava was asleep. I was supposed to be the same.

Instead, I was sitting here in the pool like a fucking pervert, unable to tear my eyes away from her perfect, round, soft body.

Distantly, I could hear the sound of music, and I wondered what she was listening to as she carefully climbed out of the deep stone tub. The bathroom was at the back of the pool house, but I had a clear shot of her through the sliding glass door, and even over the bed and through the curtain that was between us, I could see water droplets falling from her hair down over her shoulders, her collarbone, her breasts, and navel and hips.

The lower half of her was out of view, but when she turned to grab her towel, she pressed up onto her toes, giving me the quickest view of her plump, wet ass before it was gone again.

She ran the towel over her hair face first, and I watched every second her drying herself before she wrapped up in the towel completely.

Only then did I blink, reality coming back to me.

Only then did I realize that my hand had drifted beneath the water, that I had my cock pulled free of my board shorts and was stroking myself in long, slow pumps.

“Fuck,” I cursed, the word filled with both disappointment in myself and longing not to stop. I rolled my fist over my shaft and watched Chloe looking at herself in the mirror. She hung her towel, assessing herself for a long moment like she was cataloguing all the places of her body that she wished were different. She ran her hands over her stomach, her hips, frowning a bit and making my next swallow harder to take.

I imagined what she’d do if I stormed inside that bathroom right now, if I showed her how hard she made me, how fucking mad I was for her. I wondered what sounds she’d make if I ran my hands over all those curves, if I tested the weight of her breasts and thrust my erection into the crease of her ass and showed her how desirable she was.

I was lost in that thought when, suddenly, a dark shadow hopped up and interrupted my view.

And two green eyes were staring at me from the bed.

The gray and black striped cat flicked its tail at me, amused when I jumped a little like I’d been caught cheating on a test. That judgy cat was a wakeup call, though.

What the actual fuck was I doing?

Watching my nanny through the window with my cock in my hand like a goddamn deviant — that’s what.

With a heavy sigh, I tucked my hard-on back into my shorts and blew out a long, frustrated breath. I continued letting that air out until I drifted down, until my head was under water and that breath turned to bubbles, until all the air left my lungs, and I sank like a stone to the bottom of the pool.

And I stayed there.

I listened to my heart beating in my ears, focused on how my heartbeat slowed the longer I was under that water, felt how I was both weightless and heavier than I had been in all my life in that warm water.

Eventually, my cock softened. My head cleared. All I could focus on was the mental energy it took to fight the urge to push up and out of the water. I harvested my willpower. I challenged myself to stay longer, to make that sip of air last another second, and then another after that.

It wasn’t until I felt like I might actually pass out that I gave in, slowly swimming up until my head crested over the surface of the water. I shook out my hair, brushing it back from my face and wiping my eyes before blinking them open.

When I did, Chloe was sitting at the edge of the pool staring back at me.

“Impressive,” she mused, a sleepy, sexy smile on her pink lips.

No, it wasn’t purposefully sexy. Just sleepy. Curious, Friendly.

But it was still sexy as fuck to me.

“I will admit, I was only going to wait about ten more seconds before I dove in to save you. There’s a fine line between impressive and stupid.”

“I tend to walk that line quite often,” I grumbled, and she smiled wider.

I swam a few feet until I could touch the bottom of the pool, but made sure I was still a full five feet from where Chloe sat. The more distance between us, the better — especially with her looking the way she did right now.

Her hair was still wet and clinging to her neck, tiny droplets leaking down and disappearing beneath the hem of her tank top. I never thought I’d wish for that ridiculous fluffy robe of hers, but I did now. It was too much to see her in tiny sleep shorts and that thin top. It was too tempting, all that damp, warm skin.

She hung her feet in the water, kicking them lazily, her hands tucked under her thick thighs. I tried not to notice how her shorts rode up between them, how the fabric seemed to just barely cover her pussy and hips before it was all leg.

Scrubbing a wet hand over my face, I looked up at the clear sky above us for a moment of reprieve.

“Thank you for coming today,” Chloe said, drawing my attention back to her. “I can’t tell you how much it meant to Ava. She kept running through every moment when we were cleaning up the classroom. She especially loved telling the story of how Charlotte’s dad tried to sneakily ask you for your autograph, but she saw it.”

I didn’t smile, but the sentiment tugged at my dead heart.

“It’s Jenny who actually loved donuts,” I said, and instantly, I wondered why the fuck that had come to me. But it was better than staring at Chloe in tortured silence while I tried not to check her out. “I hate them, actually.”

“No one hates donuts.”

“They’re too sweet.”

“Right. And sunsets are too pretty, and kittens are too cute.”

“Speak for yourself on that last one.”

She rolled her eyes. “Did you tell her that? Ava?”

“No.” I frowned. “I didn’t think to, honestly.”

“You don’t talk about Jenny much, do you?”

It was an honest question. A curiosity. But it hit me like a truck, the weight of it crashing into my ribcage and making my next breath catch.

I didn’t know why, but I’d never faced the truth behind that assessment. I’d never stopped and realized that I really didn’t talk about Jenny — not to anyone, least of all Ava.

Her own daughter.

That hit my heart harder than anything ever had, and I found myself stumbling back a bit, blinking, frowning.

“I… I really don’t.”

“I can understand why,” Chloe said, having more grace and forgiveness for me than I deserved. “I’m sure it hurts.”

“It did,” I confessed. “But it’s… easier now. Not easy, but easier. And I should be talking about her more. I should be telling Ava all about her. I should—”

I clamped my mouth shut, jaw working as I fought against the emotion just thinking of her conjured inside me.

“Maybe it’s something we can do together,” Chloe offered. “We can start introducing Ava to her mom one thing at a time. A food she loved, a place she enjoyed, a song, a movie, a photograph, or memory.”

My eyes roamed hers, searching for an ulterior motive to her suggestion. I waited for my senses to go off, for that familiar feeling of detecting when a woman tried to use the death of my wife to get close to me.

But I found nothing.

Nothing but pure, honest intent to do good.

Fuck, I hated that. I loved it. I detested it. I craved it.

I wanted to warn her to shut her mouth just as much as I wanted to shut it myself, to kiss her hard and leave her breathless.

“Sorry,” Chloe said, reading my stare as me being upset. Which was fair, since I wasn’t sure exactly what I was feeling. “We don’t have to. I didn’t mean to overstep.”

“Stop fucking apologizing.”

“Then stop looking at me like I need to apologize.”

My eyebrows shot up at that. “Is that how you think I look at you?”

“Is it not true?”

I could see how she was breathing harder now, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she doubled down on sitting on her hands — no doubt to avoid fidgeting. There was something bold in the way she stared at me, like she was facing a fear I didn’t realize she had just by talking to me.

“Most of the time, you’re glaring at me or storming away from me. Even today, it was like it killed you to say even a few nice things to me. You left the classroom without so much as a goodbye. You’ve been ignoring me all night. One moment, you’re looking at me like I’m… I don’t know, a blessing or something. And the next, it’s like you wish I’d never been born.”

I ground my teeth together, Adam’s apple bobbing hard in my throat.

But I couldn’t speak.

A flash of earlier that day hit me hard in the chest, when she’d laughed off her job and acted like she was nothing special. I’d wanted to tell her how wrong she was, and I’d started to — before remembering why I never tried to articulate thoughts like that.

I was terrible with words.

It was easier for me to show what I thought and felt through actions, through touch.

But I sure as fuck couldn’t touch her.

So what was I supposed to do?

Couldn’t she see it? Couldn’t she feel it, too? When I looked at her, she squirmed beneath my gaze like it was a heat lamp. When I so much as brushed a part of her skin, I swore I heard her suck in a breath and hold it just as I did.

She had to know I was holding back. She had to understand that I wanted her so fucking badly I was making myself sick trying to refrain from giving in. And if she didn’t know, if she was waiting for me to say it…

How could I tell her the truth, when I wasn’t even ready to admit it to myself?

“You know why I left without saying anything,” I finally ground out, the words raspy and harsh.

Chloe’s breaths picked up speed, her nostrils flaring. I watched that determination slide over her again, despite how she swallowed and paled a bit.

And then, she pressed her weight onto her hands, lifted herself, and slid into the water.

Fuck.

My heart tripped over itself before starting to race, and it beat faster and faster as I watched her body disappear beneath the water. The line of it rested just under her breasts when she was all the way in, lifting the weight of them, her nipples hardening into peaks.

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” she breathed, but that breath betrayed her. Everything about her body screamed that she knew exactly what I wouldn’t say.

Goosebumps spread over her arms and chest.

Her eyelids fluttered.

Her hands shook until she submerged them beneath the water.

She took one small, slow step toward me, and then another, her brown eyes locked on mine.

“Chloe,” I warned.

“Mr. Perry.”

My next breath flared my nostrils, and I curled my hands into fists by my sides to keep from reaching for her, to keep from pinning those soft hips against the wall of this pool and sliding my thigh right between hers. I wanted to tell her to call me Will, but fuck if I didn’t like the way she said Mr. Perry. Fuck if it didn’t make me think about bending her over and making her call me all kinds of names.

She slid another inch toward me.

And panic sliced me like a knife.

“Stop.”

The word shot out of me.

Chloe did as I said.

Her eyes widened a bit like she hadn’t expected that, but she didn’t dare test any more of what little space was left between us.

I could feel the heat of her body through the water.

One step, and I could close that gap.

One touch, and I could witness those pretty eyes of hers fluttering shut, her lips parting for me.

One moan from her would be all it took for me to surrender, to fuck her right here, right now, and not relent until I’d taken everything she had to give.

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t risk Ava losing her just so I could have one selfish night.

And I couldn’t risk hurting her — because I knew I would. I didn’t know how to do anything else, not anymore.

Still, I couldn’t deny myself just one small pleasure.

Tentatively, I took that step, sucking in a breath just as Chloe did when we were close enough for our skin to brush.

Water dripped from my hands as I raised them from the water. I swallowed hard, sliding my hands along her jawbone until my fingers curled at the base of her neck.

She closed her eyes on a stuttering breath, tilting her chin up, waiting.

My heart slugged to a stop at the way her silky hair felt in my hands, at how my jaw clenched hard when I dropped my forehead to hers, our noses brushing gently. She kept her eyes closed for the longest time, and when she opened them, I wanted to die.

I saw every emotion, every want and desire in her luminous gaze.

And I saw every reminder of why I couldn’t get involved.

On a sigh, I dropped my lips to her forehead, wincing against the way just that touch alone burned like the hottest flame.

“We can’t,” I rasped, the words as painful as the truth behind them.

I held my lips against her forehead, feeling how her weight sagged, how her next exhale let out any hope she was holding onto.

And with my declaration final, I released her.

“Goodnight, Chloe,” I whispered, and I didn’t look back — not when I climbed out of the pool, nor when I swiped my towel off the back of a lounge chair, or when I slid inside the sliding glass door to the kitchen.

I hauled ass to my bedroom, and once I was inside, I let my head fall back against the wooden door with a thunk.

And I wondered how the fuck I was going to resist her now that I knew she wanted me, too.