The Hockey Captain Wants the Size 20 Team Chef Every Night novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Cropped

Doran refuses to pose without her, Hank backs her, and the night ends in her apartment with the lights on; then the road-trip list leaves her off the plane.

Doran took one look at the empty spot where I'd been standing and took one step backward out of the front row.

"Captain," Delphine said. "We're on a clock."

"Then run it," he said. "I'm not in the picture."

The photographer lowered his camera.

Forty players turned their heads.

"Not without the chef," Doran said. "She's on this team. She fed every man in this room last night."

"Mr. Beaulieu, she's staff, and the brand guidelines are clear."

"Which guidelines?"

"Rule one."

"I haven't seen rule one," Doran said, "and I'm the captain."

Pavel Ruzicka stood up in the back row.

"I am also not in this picture," he announced. "I am a goalie and very emotional."

Then Hank Doyle stepped forward with his arms folded and his whistle bouncing on his chest.

"Delphine," he said. "Put my cook in the photo."

"Hank, the sponsors."

"I hired her. I'll answer for her. Put her in the damn picture."

Delphine looked at him, and then at me in the doorway, and I saw her decide to wait.

"Of course, Coach," she said, and smiled with her teeth.

I stood at the end of the third row between Pavel and a defenseman.

The camera clicked.

Doran looked back over his shoulder at me the whole time.

Later, in the empty hallway, Delphine stopped me with two fingers on my sleeve.

"You're very good at making a scene without making one," she said quietly. "Be careful. I'm very good at the quiet kind."

She walked away.

I stood there shaking.

At seven that evening, Doran's black pickup was idling outside the Training Center when I came out with my bag.

He leaned across and pushed the passenger door open.

"Get in," he said.

"I have a bus."

"You have a truck."

I got in.

He drove a little too fast through the dark streets to Elmwood Village and didn't speak until he'd parked in front of my building.

"I'm sorry about this morning," he said. "I should have known before you did."

"Known what?"

"That somebody here wants you small."

I laughed, short and bitter.

"I'm not small, and I'm not going to be.

A year ago a restaurant in Pittsburgh fired me because the new owner wanted a lighter look at the pass."

His hands tightened on the wheel.

"What did you say?"

"I said fine. I cleaned my station and walked out.

I cried in a parking garage for twenty minutes, then went home and made stew."

"I'd like his address," Doran said, very quietly.

"No."

"I'd like to put his head through a wall."

"No, Doran. I wanted you to know before you walked into my apartment.

I don't shrink. Not for the brand, not for a sponsor, not for you."

He turned and looked at me properly.

"I asked Hank to hire the stew woman," he said.

"In August, somebody posted a video of you at the diner."

"You were yelling at a dishwasher and laughing at the same time."

"I thought, that one. I want that one to feed me."

"I thought Hank found me."

"Hank found you because I wouldn't shut up."

My breath caught.

"Come upstairs," I said.

My apartment was one room and a kitchen.

It had a lamp I'd found on the curb and a bed I'd bought with my signing bonus from Hank.

He had to duck under the doorframe.

The bed looked like a toy under him.

I turned on the overhead light, the hard white one, and stood in the middle of the floor.

"Lights on," I said. "Look at everything."

"I intend to."

He crossed the room and undressed me like it was the best job he'd ever had.

My top, my bra, my jeans, my underwear.

I stood in front of him under the bare bulb, belly and hips and thick thighs and all.

His breath went out of him.

"Fuck," he said, soft. "Fuck, Corinna."

"Say what you see."

"A woman who could break me in half."

His palms slid up my sides.

"Round and soft and mine to hold. I want to lose my hands in you."

I tugged his shirt over his head, and the whole massive length of his chest came into the light.

He lay back on my bed, and the frame groaned.

I stripped his jeans off and my mouth went dry.

He was hard and thick, bigger than I'd imagined, bigger than my hand could close around.

"Corinna," he said. "Ride me."

I climbed over him, my knees on either side of his hips.

His hands spanned my waist, thumbs meeting over my navel, and he lifted me an inch with no effort at all.

"Take it slow," he said, though his voice shook. "Take what you need."

I sank down on him inch by inch.

It stretched me wide and deep, and a breath tore out of me that was almost a laugh.

"You're so big," I said.

"You're so fucking tight."

When I had all of him, I stopped, shaking, my hands flat on his chest.

His eyes never left my face.

"Look at you," he said. "Look at you taking me."

I started to move, a slow roll of my hips.

His hands guided me up and down his cock, and every time I came down he groaned.

My breasts swung between us.

He caught them in his big palms and thumbed my nipples hard, and I cried out.

"That's it," he said. "Ride me. Use me. God, you're perfect."

I went faster, grinding my clit against his pelvis, chasing it.

His hands slid to my ass and squeezed, lifting me and dropping me, and the pleasure came up from my knees.

"I'm going to come," I said. "Doran, I'm going to."

"Come on my cock."

I came apart screaming his name, clenching around him.

He held me through it, hands on my hips, teeth sunk in his lip.

Then he rolled me onto my back and fucked into me twice, hard, and shouted my name into my neck.

Afterward he lay with me tucked on his chest, and his heart thudded under my ear.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand.

I reached for it without sitting up.

It was an email from the front office, with the road-trip charter list attached.

Forty-two names, in alphabetical order.

Prendergast was not on it.

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