Clipped by Love (Bellevue Bullies #2) (7 page)

Passing the puck back to her, I say, “I think you’re full of it.”

“Full of it?” she asks, holding my gaze as I skate toward her. Sweat is dripping down her neck, down into the valley of her tits, and it’s very distracting, but I refuse to allow her to use her hotness to throw me off my game.

“Yeah, I think you’ve played a bit more than a little bit.”

Grinning, she bats her eyes, and I can’t help but grin back as she asks, “You do?” -

“Maybe we should start cooking?” Delanie asks, but both of us ignore her.

“I do, and you’re going down,” I say, lining up in front of her.

“Is that right?” she asks, her eyes challenging mine, and soon my body is so fucking hot, I feel like I’m dizzy. I love a girl who has confidence, but even more, a girl who has a competitive bone. She moves the puck back and forth, holding my gaze as I nod. I don’t know what she is thinking, but man, I’d pay to be in her brain.

Because I can’t figure out if she wants to fuck me or beat me.

Maybe even both.

Clearing my throat, I say, “Oh yeah.”

Her eyes darken and sharpen a bit before she asks, “Are you challenging me?”

“Yeah,” I say, moving my neck back and forth to pop it. I then say, “Jude, Jace, step off.”

“Huh?” Jace calls out.

“I’m about to kick this girl’s ass at some one-on-one,” I say, my eyes never leaving hers.

She laughs, moving the puck around in circles, trying to distract me, but I’m not some rookie. I know what she is doing, and she’s fucking going down.

And then I’m going to have sex with her.

“Are you serious?” Jude asks. “She’s getting lucky breaks; it’s not a big deal.”

“No, it is,” I say, looking at the top of her head. “She thinks she’s good and that we won’t play hard against her. Time to show her that I will.”

She laughs at that, shaking her head. “Oh, get over yourself.”

Locking gazes, we both glare at each other as silence fills the air.

“Maybe we should cook,” Delanie suggests.

“Yeah, I’m hungry,” her sister says.

Looking at me, her eyes are sparkling as she says, “Yeah, maybe we should eat.”

“No, me and you have business to tend to.”

“You can’t beat me,” she says under her breath, looking down at the puck and then back at me.

“Oh, I can,” I challenge back.

“Are you sure?”

“Damn right, I can,” I say, squaring my shoulders.

She eyes me, a little sneaky smirk on her face. “Hmm. Sure.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

But she doesn’t move. Grinning, she says, “Maybe I should know your name before I kick your ass. I heard it was Jamie, but I don’t think you’re a Jamie.”

“You think right, sweetheart, it’s Jayden Sinclair.”

Still smiling, her eyes cut to me as she says, “I’m not your sweetheart.”

“My apologies. Tell me your name so that when I’m scoring multiple times, I can yell it out each time.”

Her throat flushes with color as her mouth lifts up at the side. “It’s Baylor Moore,” she says, backing up a bit, still moving the puck with ease in and out of her legs. “And you won’t be scoring today, buddy.”

Scoffing, I look up from the puck but still keep it in my peripheral gaze since I don’t trust her at all. “Hmm, that’s up for debate. But good luck to you, Baylor.”

With a heated gaze, she says, “Oh, there isn’t a debate. You will not score, and I don’t need luck, Sinclair. But you, you might need it.”

“I, again, think that’s up for debate.”

She shrugs. “Fine, then I hope you’re ready to beg for mercy, because I’m about to murder you.”

I want to laugh. I want to wrap my arms around her and kiss the shit out of her. But first, I have to beat her. I’ve never met someone who wanted to challenge me like this, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t turned on to the point of pain. Not that I would ever let her know that. No, she is my competitor at this moment.

Holding her gaze, I say, “Bring it.”

Stopping the puck, her eyes bore into mine as she moves the puck between us, lining it up like a face-off before sending me a grin. She is going for the tough-guy act, but I see the heat and determination in her eyes. She wants me, but she wants to beat me more. I don’t know which one is hotter. Swallowing hard, I suck in a deep breath, pushing my desire back into its cage and unlocking the fury that I’m about to unleash on her.

She may be a girl, but she’s going the fuck down.

T
his guy has no clue who he is messing with.

Smiling to throw him off, I deke left, but to my surprise he is on to me and follows. So I grin harder, falling back a bit to put some space between us. He’s making it hard to concentrate, and I don’t like that. I don’t want him to have an advantage on me, but for the first time, I feel like I have an actual competitor on my hands. Usually guys are cocky and think they can beat me, but they can’t. This guy, though… He has the advantage to beat me with those naughty green eyes, and for some reason, that makes me hot as hell. And I think he knows that. I like a man who can play some good hockey, but most of all, I like when they don’t care that I’m a girl. Usually I get babied until they figure I can hold my own. Then they are just plain mean, taking shots and being dicks, but this guy, no, he wants to beat me fair and square.

But he won’t.

I go left again, and when he follows like I wanted him to, I throw the puck to the right, going around him fast. But he’s on me, following, and he poke checks the puck from me. But it doesn’t get far out of my reach, so I take it and spin around once more to go to his right, but when I do, I come down on my knee. I hear the little audience gasp, but I don’t even feel the pain. Jayden doesn’t seem to care one bit because he steals the puck, rushing it back to the goal, looking at me with determination but maybe a bit of concern too.

Laughing, I skate toward him. If he were smart, he would have rushed the goal and tried to score while I was down, but I respect that he wanted to wait for me to be on my feet.

“Oh, so a fair player, eh?”

He laughs, his eyes trained on mine but at the same time on the puck. I can see that he is calculating his next move, and I have no clue why I am turned on by that, but I am. “Canadian, are you? Is that why you think you’re good?”

Shaking my head, I square up in front of him. “Nope, my dad is. Kind of a habit to say ‘eh,’ and I’m good because I was born to do this.”

He nods. “So you’re finally dropping the ‘play a bit’ act?”

I shrug. “I think you knew from the beginning that it was an act.”

He gives me a knowing grin, one that has my belly fluttering. What a stupid feeling, but it’s happening to me at that second and I refuse to allow it to get me off my game.

“The socks gave you away. No girl takes stinky socks.”

I actually giggle, which is pathetic, but I can’t help it. I like this asshole.

“I’m not like other girls,” I say, and he looks up at me, giving me his full attention.

“I can tell, but I hope you don’t cry when I beat you. I don’t like when girls cry.”

“You’re in luck ’cause I don’t cry,” I say, and I take the opening, poking the puck out between his legs, and rushing around him for the puck. Once I have it under my control, I haul ass toward the goal, but like I knew he would be, he’s on me, trying to push it away. But I’m quicker, pressing my hip into his stomach as I inch my way to the goal. Somehow, he’s behind me, almost holding my stick as he tries to push the puck away. My ass is in his groin and I swear he is hard, but I have to ignore that! I have to score.

With the puck, of course.

As I press my elbow into his gut, he lets out an oomph and I take that opening, turning and shooting. I miss though, to my dismay. Cursing, I rush with him at my side toward the puck. We reach it at the same time, both throwing elbows and hips, trying to get away from each other.

“Damn, Jay! Take it easy,” one of his brothers says when his elbow connects with my ribs, but I doubt he hears them. Hell, I hardly hear them until he comes up with the puck, skating toward the pink line.

Looking at me, he grins. “You okay there, Moore?”

“Just dandy, Sinclair. You can’t hurt me.”

Well, he could, but I wouldn’t allow him.

“Good to know, because I don’t see you as a hot, innocent girl in short shorts and a sexy tank that shows the sides of her tits when she skates hard.”

A grin comes over my face as it heats to color. “So what you’re saying is, if I wasn’t about to kick your ass, then you’d see me that way?”

Skating backward, he moves the puck back and forth as he holds my gaze. “Maybe.”

I chuckle a bit. “So instead, what do you see me as?”

“My competitor.”

Yup, I like him a lot.

“Dude, calm your tits, she’s a chick,” one of them calls.

“Don’t say that. She’s a dude in a chick’s body. She’s kinda mean,” Delanie says and I grin harder.

“I am,” I say with a wink.

“I’m not scared,” he says, holding my gaze. “Not one bit.”

“Then stop babysitting the fucking puck and try to score,” I challenge and he nods.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and then to my surprise at his size, he cuts left. When I go with him, he goes the other way, getting around me like I’m a fucking rookie and I’m left chasing him. When he goes to shoot, though, I lift his stick, hip checking him, trying to put my weight into him to throw him off, but he hip checks me instead, pain going up my side. Somehow though, I end up with the puck, and when I shoot, this time it clinks on the side of the pipe.

Since my dad isn’t here, I throw my arms up and grin. “Booyah!”

“Booyah? What are you, ten?” he asks, getting the puck and skating toward the line.

“Aw, are you upset? Did I dent your ego?”

“Baby, you have no effect on me.”

I laugh at that. “Please, I can see how bad you want to beat me.”

That has him laughing. “Yeah, I do, but then I want to fuck you too. Can you tell that too?”

I gasp, my eyes going wide as his bore into mine. His statement has me a little taken aback; he’s so damn blunt and fucking hot! When he flashes me a sexy little grin, I think it was his plan to distract me, because then he’s off to the races, and before I can even try to block him, he shoots, hitting it off the pipe.

Throwing his hands up, he points his stick at me and says, “Booyah.”

“Asshole,” I say, taking the puck to the line. “I’m pretty sure you said that to distract me.”

He shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. You’ll never know.”

Shit, why do I want to know? He means nothing to me. Damn it.

I square off to him and hold his gaze as I move the puck, calculating my next move. I could go left, even right, but a part of me wants to go right the fuck through him. Just to show him not to mess with me. I’m mad that I want to beat him and that I want him too. I don’t like this feeling. It’s weird and scary and I just want him to go away, but then I want to wrap my arms around him and make him tell me I’m pretty.

I’m insane.

Deciding that showing him who he is messing with is a good idea, I send the puck through his open legs, and then I go into him with all my might. But he’s a solid fucking wall, and instead of knocking him on his ass, I fall hard on mine.