Penalty Kill

Jake

The silence of our car ride back to her apartment is a drastic backdrop to the chaos of thoughts clashing inside my head. Sure I'm holding her hand, our interlaced fingers resting casually on her thigh as if it was the most nonchalant gesture in the world. My thumb is tracing over her soft skin at an even, steady pace—perfectly concealing the erratic beating of my heart that just won't seem to calm the fuck down.

I don't know what I'm doing. I somehow managed to tell her back at the rink that I'd be gone for the next week. And by some miracle, I also managed to bite my tongue and not mention that I was having a hard time not thinking about her, and that I felt like I'd miss her even though we literally just fucking met. I've been nothing but calm and cool, even though I'm a panicking wreck on the inside.

If only she could've heard how I'd been cussing myself out in my head all day—starting with showing up at her apartment unannounced, like it was completely normal. The only place I hadn't been at odds with myself was when I was on the ice with her. In my element, it was easy to let go and let my instincts take over. Guide her through drills, skate with her, play around and be silly with her. With blades strapped onto my feet, I felt unstoppable.

But that moment we'd shared together on the bench after we'd cooled down and had some snacks ... Of course I'd found it necessary to run my fucking mouth. The comment about laying her down on the bench, well, sure I'd meant it. But that didn't mean I needed to fucking say it. My filter had slipped, and lucky for me, it didn't blow up in my hands like a grenade.

Instead I decide to follow up my brilliant reveal of my inner monologue with a kiss on her cheek. A gesture that led to her actually kissing me. Our first kiss, shared on an old, shitty bench in a dilapidated arena that had served as my mental health refuge for years.

I can't stop thinking about how unbelievably good her lips felt moving against mine. Everything about it was natural, effortless, smooth—I'd felt myself melting into her so readily, that looking back at it now, it was a miracle that I was able to stop myself once I'd felt her under my touch. It would've been ridiculously easy to lay her back onto the bench, let my hands explore her curves, let my fingers find her bare skin—

To curb the thoughts relentlessly steamrolling over every rational thought in my head, I have to bite the inside of my cheek as hard as I possibly can. I can taste iron in my mouth as I fight the heat and tightness growing between my legs. Images of her and I wrapped up together in positions that would let me give her every ounce of desire she deserved were relentlessly flooding my mind, and I'm pretty sure I've nearly bitten off a chunk of my cheek at this point.

Shifting subtly in my seat in a way that I hope is conspicuous as hell, I'm both grateful and cursing the street in front of her apartment as it comes into view. In a pathetic attempt to ground myself in reality, far, far away from the red-hot lust I'm radiating for her from the inside out, I give her hand a little squeeze as I pull into the empty spot near her building.

Swallowing hard, I'm desperate to find a way to get myself and my shit together. I'd had a plan when I set out to find her at her apartment this morning. A plan that did, in fact, bring me all the way to this moment. Had things gone a bit off the rails with a wildly unexpected kiss at the rink? Yep, they sure had.

And between trying to fight my own dick and brain, both of which are currently trying to convince me that it's a swell idea to take her upstairs to her bed and show her how thoroughly I'd love to worship her until sunrise, my heart is telling me that's not a super fucking good idea for any kind of long-haul type scenario that I'd really love to keep in the cards.

Putting my car into park feels far more dramatic than it should. It's like adding final punctuation to our day, a permanent gesture that signals we're past what's happened, and are now forced to figure out what the hell we do from this point forward. Fortunately for me, past Jake had half a fucking brain to think ahead.