Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 316(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
What if I was the only person on the bus with the guys? I already knew that they would surround me just to fluster me, their hands brushing over various places on my body to make me shiver. Maybe Mikael would brush my hair behind my ear to whisper something teasing in my ear.
Hugo would sit in the seat beside me on the right, his fingertips trailing their way up my thigh. Anthony would wedge himself between the window and me on my left, his hand teasing at the bottom of my shirt. Stephen seemed like he would place his hand on the underside of my chin from behind, craning my head back so that our lips could meet. Jed and Colm would lean over the seat in front of me, murmuring praises or demands that worked me up even more.
“Leah,” Colm’s voice sounded in my head.
No, it sounded to my right. I snapped out of my fantasy and turned my head to see Colm and Jed sitting across the aisle from me, my heart rate spiking at the sight of them. I was just imagining them telling me so many dirty things. How good I was. How beautiful I looked. How badly they wanted me.
“Oh, hey,” I said. “Ready to be stuck on this bus for hours?”
“We should’ve flown,” Colm chuckled, coaxing Jed to immediately shake his head. Colm nudged Jed, their eyes meeting. “But Jed is scared of flying.”
I watched them for a moment, noting how Jed subtly smiled at Colm. It almost felt like I was intruding on a private moment, and an unexpected blush warmed up my face. Maybe I was just making things up in my head, but I wondered if there was some sort of spark between them. They were always together whenever I saw them, and how they looked at each other was particularly… intimate.
“You’re actually more likely to die on the road rather than in the sky,” I replied.
Jed gave me a pointed look.
“That makes me feel way better,” he said before chuckling a little and shaking his head. “I think I’m just going to try to sleep for the rest of the ride.”
Colm seemed to lean closer to Jed like he was offering his shoulder.
“Good. I won’t have to console you every ten seconds,” he replied before flashing me a teasing grin. “Have you ever seen the Rocky Mountains?”
I shook my head.
“I haven’t, but I’m looking forward to it,” I said, excited to see something so huge and magnificent. It would be nice having a brief change of scenery too.
“I doubt we’ll have time to do much sightseeing,” Hugo spoke up from behind Jed and Colm as he sat next to Mikael, who was more interested in reading with his earbuds in than jumping into the conversation. There was just something about a man that read.
“We’re here to play,” Anthony stated in an equally firm tone. His eyes met mine. “To win.”
He was so insistent on making it clear that this was his team’s territory. They were all so damn confident, letting whatever words were in their mind fly without giving them a second thought. They thought that they dominated this circuit, that they had the upperhand because they were regulars of this tournament and we weren’t.
“Keep dreaming,” Saroya muttered from behind him, coaxing smirks from the other girls.
“I don’t think someone with more assists than goals should be talking,” Stephen laughed.
“You do know that you can help your team out more if you spend more time out on the ice than in the penalty box, right?” Lily spoke up from behind Hugo and Mikael.
“And assists lead to goals,” Annie said. “You’re not exactly ranking high in your team roster for those.”
I looked over at Colm and Jed, who rolled their eyes and didn’t seem all that interested in getting swept up in the fight. The bickering was fairly amusing to me, but what I found most interesting was the fact that we knew this much about each other’s stats. Of course, I did my own research on the men’s team to see how good they were, and they were good.
However, we were damn good too. We just had to prove it to them.
“All of this will be settled during the tournament,” Hugo told everyone, his eyes sweeping around the bus until they landed on mine. His voice seemed to fill the entire space, demanding to be heard. He was the type of guy who was hard to ignore. “Old stats don’t matter. What matters are the games we have coming up.”
I nodded. He was right. Only this season and the teams we were a part of now mattered. They could try to pry their way under our skin and make us nervous, but we were just as determined to win as they were. Hell, we were probably even more driven because we had more to prove.