Page 11 of The Defenseman

6

Eric

Kissing should not feel like this. Kissing should not make his heart thud against his chest and make his toes curl and his stomach drop and his groin tingle. Kissing should not make him feel awed and filled with wonder at such a simple gesture he had participated in multiple times to the point where there was nothing especially moving about it, save for the fact that it was a precursor to sex. Kissing should not make him want to kiss her again and again, with no regard to whether sex came after it or not.

And yet, Eric experienced all of that as he kissed Alexa.

After he finally left for morning skate, it was as though he had stepped out of a dream or finally emerged from a spell he had been under. And yet, said spell was his own doing. He had come to her place so early in the morning to kiss her—their next lesson.

Except she seemed to be the one doing the teaching.

He didn't like to think that there was more for him to learn when it came to the act of physical pleasure. Not necessarily because Eric thought he knew everything, but more because he didn't want to go deeper with anyone than he already had. But Alexa was like a big wave and Eric was like an amateur surfer. Stubborn and determined, Eric swam to the giant beauty of nature with the intention to master it, to teach it a lesson, and it wasn't long before she pulled him under, dragging him deeper, to a place he had never been before.

He didn't know how to feel about that.

Eric participated in morning skate, but to say he was present would be too generous. His head was still swimming with thoughts of Alexa, with what she was doing, with questions of when he was going to see her again and if he should see her again at all. He didn't like feeling out of control. He didn't like being confronted with the fact that he didn't know everything the way he thought he did. More than anything, he did his best to avoid Dan simply because Dan was more intuitive than Eric realized, and the last thing Eric needed was Dan realizing he was making out with Dan's sister as a way to educate herself on the art of pleasure.

Instead, he tried to focus more on what his coach was telling him but it was difficult to do so. In fact, Eric was sent to skate laps during a water break like he was back in Sweden, a boy of nine or ten, being punished for getting a drill wrong one too many times.

This was not how things were supposed to go. Eric was not supposed to lose his head over a woman. Even a woman as beautiful as Alexa.

And yet…

He refused to finish that sentence, even internally, because he didn't want to see what he would find at the end of it.

When the skate was finished, he decided to break habit and take a shower there rather than wait until he got home. It allowed him to focus his thoughts and linger on those he wanted solutions to. Of course, all that permeated his thoughts were Alexa and the way she felt against his body, how she clung to him with desperation, how she made that whimper and he'd realized controlling himself around her would practically be impossible.

His breathing started to quicken just thinking about it. He shifted in the shower, extending one arm out to hold on to the tile in front of him so the water pelted his lower back like a massage. The stretch caused him to groan and he pushed his shoulders down like a cat and moved his body to the left and to the right.

It was almost as though he was taking a shower to cool himself off.

Silly.

He never needed a shower to do something like that before.

When he finished, he turned off the water and allowed himself to stay in the steam and take a moment for himself. Burying these feelings he had never had before wasn't as easy as he thought it would be. As such, he wasn't quite sure what to do with himself.

"Move," he muttered, inwardly rolling his eyes at his helplessness. "Don't just stand around here—move."

Forcing himself out of the shower and back into the locker room, Eric clenched his teeth together, shaking his head. He should not be feeling so utterly helpless around one woman who was his best friend's little sister. He should have more of a grip on himself. He had never acted this way before because he never felt this way before and he didn't know how to snap himself out of it.

He pulled on clothes and pushed the thoughts away. He had a game later tonight, and then the team left for Chicago. He was looking forward to the trip because it meant time away from this place. He never should have agreed to educate Alexa on pleasure. He never should have let himself get so caught up in this mess that was now too complicated to get out of.

By the time he stepped from the locker room, Eric had banished nearly all thoughts of Alexa from his head until he saw Dan and a couple of the other guys in the parking lot.

"Finally," Dan called when he saw Eric.

Eric frowned. It almost looked like they were waiting on him.

"Princess needs her shower?" Cian asked, crossing his arms over his chest and arching a brow. He was a big guy on the team but one of the weaker links. Houston needed size though, which was why he had yet to be traded.

"Needed to wash off your mom's smell," Eric quipped. "What are you assholes doing in the parking lot like some kind of delinquents?"

"Waiting for you," Dan said as though it was obvious.

"Waiting for me?" Eric glanced to his car nearby before looking back at them. "Why?"

"Because we figured you wanted to come," Brett Ellison said. "We're heading to Hickory, that barbeque joint on Seventeenth Street. You know, where the waitresses wear the cute red miniskirts?"