Puck Pact: A Marriage of Convenience Hockey Romance (East Coast Series)

“Great game tonight.”

I grin, clapping Trenton on the back. “I still can’t believe you stopped that biscuit at the end of the second period.”

He arches a brow. “You doubting me now?”

“Never.”

Tonight’s home game was great, and I can’t deny it’s because I’m still on a high from my date with Aarya this past weekend. The only time I’ve been able to stop thinking about kissing her was when I was on the ice tonight.

The way her mouth moved against mine, her tongue inviting me in, with her legs locked around my waist while I kissed her against the building?

Absolute heaven.

It’s been forever since I’ve kissed a woman, but no kiss has ever compared to the fire I felt with Aarya.

Should I have kissed her? No.

Do I regret it? Also no.

But now it’s going to be nearly impossible to keep myself from doing it again, and I need to be smart about the way we interact moving forward.

“Look at you, man.” McKinley spins his towel and whips me with it. “You can’t keep that goofy-ass smile off your face for more than two seconds.”

I shake my head as I head into the shower, unable to deny it but not wanting to admit it out loud. I have to keep myself in check. This is nothing more than a fake arrangement to Aarya. Sure, she’s been trying to coax me into something physical, but that’s where it stops for her. I can’t get attached. I can’t delude myself into thinking she’ll want more from me at any point.

It doesn’t help that our pictures are plastered everywhere I look this week. The headlines read, “Krum Cake’s Secret Girlfriend Revealed.” I haven’t bothered to scroll through the comments or read any of the articles, but it’s out there in the world now.

But as I head out of the stadium after my shower, all the excitement drains from my body.

“Funny how your girlfriend is magically revealed after you find out about losing the villa.”

My shoulders jump at the sound of my grandfather’s voice lurking in the parking lot.

“Thought you were on your deathbed,” I reply, schooling my expression to look bored despite the fact that he caught me off guard.

Lorenzo snickers. “I just wanted to drop by for a quick chat.”

I unlock my SUV and toss my duffle bag into the back seat. “You could’ve called me for a chat.”

“True, but then I wouldn’t be able to see the look on your face when I give you this.” He holds out a manilla envelope. “I have a feeling it’ll be worth the trip.”

Nerves clench my stomach as I take the envelope from him, but it’s nothing compared to the way the muscles in my entire body seize when I pull out a picture of Giuliana.

She’s holding Annie’s hand as they walk out of her preschool together.

My blood runs cold. “What. The fuck. Is this?”

Lorenzo slips his hands into his pockets, a smug smirk on his wrinkled face. “This is your reminder of what’s at stake if I find out you’re fabricating a marriage to this new girlfriend of yours.”

My jaw clenches. “Sounds an awful lot like a threat to me.”

He hikes a shoulder. “Call it what you will. I just thought you could use some incentive.”

“My daughter has nothing to do with this.” My voice echoes off the low ceiling of the parking garage. “You’re threatening to hurt children now? I always knew you were a piece of shit, but I didn’t realize you were psychotic.”

He laughs. “I’m not threatening your child. I’m simply letting you know that if I find a shred of evidence that you’re planning on an arranged marriage to get around my will, I’ll let the world know their favorite hockey captain has been hiding a lot more than a secret girlfriend.”

I lunge toward him, but he side-steps me and wags his index finger in my face. “Uh-uh. Remember, there’s always someone watching. Wouldn’t want to tarnish your good boy reputation, would you? Crazed hockey player assaults his elderly grandfather post-game. How would Child Protective Services feel about that headline?”

This motherfucker.

My lungs constrict as I ball my hands into fists, crumpling the picture of Giuliana. “Get out of here. Now.”

“I’ll be seeing you, Alexander.” He walks backward into the parking lot. “Oh, and by the way… your daughter is adorable. Looks just like you. Shame her mother didn’t stick around.”

My face heats and I can feel my pulse thumping in my neck.

Breathe. Deep breaths. Don’t do anything stupid.

I watch Lorenzo until he disappears in a black car, and then I get into my SUV.

My chest heaves as I try to breathe, but I can only suck in short puffs of air. Then it happens.

Blurred vision.

Heart racing.

Sweaty palms.

No, no, no.

I haven’t had a panic attack in years. I grip the steering wheel and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to gain control of my body. I rack my brain, retrieving the exercises from my memory.

I purse my lips and breathe in like I’m sucking air through a straw.

One, two, three, four.

Out through my lips.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Again.

And again.

And again.

The longer out-breaths slow my heart rate, and a calm crawls over my body. I blink to clear my vision, continuing my steady breathing.

“I’m in control,” I say. “I’m in control.”

Then I pull out my phone and make a series of calls. First, Annie, to make sure she and Giuliana are safe at home. Then, to Celeste to inquire about hiring a security team. Last, I call Aarya. She doesn’t pick up, but there’s a chance she might still be at work.

When I pull out of the parking garage, giant raindrops splat against my windshield. Instead of heading home, I make my way to the gallery. I’d bet money that Aarya doesn’t have an umbrella with her.

Sure enough, I find her already walking home with her hood up and no umbrella. I pull over to the curb and roll down my window. “Get in!”

She squints through the rain, and jogs over to the passenger side door when she realizes it’s me. She slides inside, and I crank up the heat to stop her teeth from chattering.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it sooner.”

“That’s okay.” She brushes a few wet strands of hair off her forehead. “I forgot to check the forecast before I left for work today. How was your game?”

“Fine.” I pull back out onto the street, my eyes darting to the rearview mirror. “How was work?”

“Fine.” She turns to face me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I glance at each of the cars around me as we pull up to a red light. “How was work?”

“You just asked me that.”

I flick my blinker on and check the rearview mirror again as I turn down the next street. “Oh, right.”

Her head whips around. “What are you looking at?”

“What? Nothing.”

“You’re acting weird right now.”

I run my fingers through my hair. “I’m sorry. I just⁠—”

She grips my wrist and holds up my hand. “Your hands are shaking, Alex. What the fuck is going on?”

A long breath escapes me. “I’ll explain when we get to your place.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and watches me in silence until we pull up to her apartment building. I get lucky with a spot not too far down the block, so I use my jacket to shield Aarya as we make a run for it through the rain from the truck to her building.

Once she closes her apartment door behind us, she grabs a towel for each of us and tosses me one. “Start talking.”

I run the towel over my hair as I pace the length of her living room. “My grandfather showed up to the stadium today. He had… he had a fucking picture of Giuliana.”

Aarya’s eyes widen as her hands drop to her sides. “What? How?”

“I don’t know. He thinks we’re faking this relationship, so he threatened to leak information about Giuliana.”

“Why does he think we’re faking it?”

“Because we are!” I scrub my hands over my face. “I haven’t had a girlfriend since before Giuliana was born. Now, I suddenly have one after reading my grandfather’s will? This was a terrible idea. Why did I think we could pull this off?”

“Hey.” Aarya steps into my path, stopping me from pacing. “Where is Giuliana right now?”

“She’s home. I called Annie before I came to pick you up.”

“Okay, so she’s safe. Right now, everything is okay.”

I pull the crumpled picture out of my pocket and hold it out in front of her. “He found my daughter. He knows where she goes to school.”

She takes the photograph from me, her eyes roaming over Giuliana’s precious face. “He’s just trying to scare you, and it obviously worked.”

“Of course it worked. No one knows about her, yet this scumbag found her. He even knows that her mother isn’t around.” I shake my head, thoughts whizzing through my brain at warp speed. “He has someone watching us. Someone following us. If he knows where she goes to school, then he knows where I live. He probably knows where you live too. I know we said we’d wait, but I think you should move in with me now. I can’t protect you from all the way out here. And I’m going to hire a security team. And⁠—”

Aarya shoves at my chest. “All right, Big Man. Sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit. We⁠—”

She tugs my arm, yanking me toward the couch. “I didn’t ask.”

I plop onto the couch, staring up at her. “Why are you so calm right now?”

She plants her hands on her hips, standing over me. “Your grandfather, he’s just trying to get a reaction out of you. He wants you to fuck up so he doesn’t have to give you the villa. But that’s too damn bad, because he can’t prove that we aren’t dating. He can’t prove any of this is fake. And he knows this, so he’s grasping at straws and making idle threats about Giuliana because he knows she’s the only thing that’ll make you go crazy.”

I blink. “But what if he⁠—”

“What if he what? How can you prove someone is faking a relationship, unless there’s explicit evidence? People fake marriages for citizenship and get away with it all the time. We’ve got this in the bag.”

She’s right. My best friend married her best friend, so it’s only natural that we’d hang out and possibly hit it off. Our story makes sense.

Now Aarya’s the one pacing the room. “The only physical evidence is our contract, and we can just shred it. You can delete it from your computer, and make sure it didn’t get uploaded to the Cloud. Get rid of any emails with your lawyer. I’ll have to erase my texts with the girls. I don’t think he’d be able to get my phone records without a court ordered warrant, and he’d need just cause for that.”

My chin jerks back. “Why do you know all of this?”

“I watch a lot of documentaries.”

“What the hell kind of documentaries are you watching?”

“The murdery ones.”

I shake my head as a small smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. I reach up and catch her hand to stop her from wearing out the carpet. “Come here, spitfire.” She slumps down next to me, eyes wide, and I can see her brain moving a mile a second. “Thank you for calming me down.”

She frowns. “You were shaking before. You looked… I didn’t like it.”

I cover her hands with mine. “I have anxiety. I used to get panic attacks a lot, but I went to therapy and learned some exercises to help me cope. I had a panic attack tonight, after my grandfather paid me a visit.”

“You have those often?”

“No. Not since Giuliana was born. I was a single parent running on no sleep with a colicky baby, and not a single clue what I was doing. Sometimes, I’d have a panic attack while she screamed her head off as I was holding her in my arms.”

Aarya chews her bottom lip as she listens.

“That’s when I reached out to my mom’s friend, Annie, and she literally saved me. I learned so much from her, as well as from therapy. I guess my grandfather’s will brought some of those old nerves back up again, and when I thought about him hurting her, I started to panic.”

She nods. “Look, I know it’s scary to think that someone’s been watching us—especially Giuliana. But I think I have an idea that can help you tell your grandfather to fuck right off.”

“I’m listening.”

“Tell the world about Giuliana yourself.”

“No. No way.”

“Hear me out,” she pleads. “You feel good when you’re in control, right? And Lorenzo made you think that he’s in control, but he’s not. If you get ahead of him and be the one to announce that you have a daughter, then he can’t hold anything over your head. He loses the power. And what does he have to use against you after that? Nothing.”

I hear what she’s saying, but that’s a bigger ask than she realizes. “She’s only four. She’s not ready for this.”

“Kids are resilient. Isn’t that what everyone says about them? Fuck if I know, but maybe you’re making this a bigger deal than it will turn out to be. Maybe you’ll get to stop living under the stress of getting caught, and you can live freely with her.”

For four years, I’ve stopped myself from doing the things I’ve wanted to do with my daughter. I couldn’t chance being spotted at the park, so I built a park in our backyard; I couldn’t take her to the beach, or to Disney World, or even give her a tour of my stadium before a game. If it weren’t for Annie, she’d be like Rapunzel locked in a tower.

I let my head fall back against the couch and stare up at the ceiling.

Maybe Aarya is right.

Maybe I’ve been doing this all wrong.

I’ve been so worried about the media messing up Giuliana’s life, but maybe I’m the one fucking up her life.

“Hey, look at me.” Aarya grasps my face between her hands and jerks my head until I’m looking in her eyes. “Stop thinking whatever you’re thinking. You did what you thought was best for her, and she has had a wonderful life. But now it’s time to take control and do things your way. You are not a bad dad.”

I lean into her touch, letting my eyes close for a brief moment. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

“Because you’re the only person I know who will have something bad happen, and think it’s your fault.”

I want to tell her how thankful I am that she’s doing this with me. How good it feels to know I’m not alone in this. How much I appreciate her help.

My gaze falls to her lips. I want to kiss her.

God, do I want to kiss her.

And having her in my house is going to make fighting this ten times harder.

“I want you to move in with me. And no more walking around alone. You’ll have your own bodyguard, and a driver to take you wherever you need to go.”

Her eyebrows waggle. “A bodyguard, huh? Sounds fun.”

I shoot her a glare. “My wife will not be having an affair with her bodyguard.”

“Then I guess my husband better figure out how he’s going to keep me from straying.”

Without thinking, I grip her hips and pull her onto my lap. Her thick thighs straddle my waist, surrounding me in her scent as her hair falls around me. She braces her hands on the couch behind my head, unsure eyes bouncing between mine yet laced with desire.

I run my fingers through her soft hair, gripping onto the back of her neck as I pull her mouth down to mine. “My wife will not touch another man. She will not look at another man, flirt with another man, think about another man. She will not fantasize about any other man besides her husband. She belongs to me, and I belong to her. Is that clear?”

Aarya rolls her hips against me as her fingers toy with the hair on the back of my head. “I’m still a little unclear on all that. It doesn’t seem very fair to me.”

“Why not? The same rules apply to me. You’re the only woman who consumes my thoughts. The only woman I long to touch. The only woman I fantasize about every night when I wrap my hand around my cock.” I tip my chin and bite her plump lip. “The only woman whose name I whisper as I make myself come.”

A small moan slips out of Aarya’s mouth as she shudders against me, and that sound is my undoing. I push off the couch with her in my arms and flip her onto her back, coming down on top of her and kissing her hard.

My tongue surges inside her mouth, wrapping around hers. Aarya’s legs come up around my waist, her ankles locking behind my back and letting me know that she’s not letting me go anywhere. I thrust my hips against hers so she knows just how hard I am for her—only her.

I slip my hands between her body and the couch, gripping two handfuls of her ass while I grind against her. She meets my kiss with the same intensity, licking and sucking and biting, gasping for air as we consume each other. Her nails scrape down my scalp, down over my shoulders, and down the length of my back until her fingers slip underneath my shirt, searing my skin with her touch. All the while, her moans spur me on.

I could easily lose myself in her, lose my control. It would feel fucking incredible to let go and give in to this insatiable need to sink inside of her, to feel her pussy clenching around me while she screams my name.

Fuck, what am I doing?

I have to think about the bigger picture here.

I have to.

As much as my dick hates me for it.

I slow our kiss, my tongue licking inside Aarya’s mouth in one final languid motion before I pull back.

Her thighs squeeze me, locking me in place. “Get out of your head, Big Man.”

My forehead drops to hers as I steady my breaths. “I wish I could.”

“I can help you with that.” She lifts her hips off the couch and rubs her most sensitive spot against me. “Sex is a great way to clear your mind, you know. Maybe that’s why you have so much anxiety. All that pent-up frustration is no good.”

I chuckle and press a chaste kiss to her forehead before unclasping her ankles from around my body. “You’re probably right.”

“I have to ask.” She pulls herself up to sitting, and brushes her hair away from her face. “Is it…is it because you don’t trust me?”

My head tilts. “What?”

“Giuliana’s mother took advantage of you just to get something out of you. You know that’s not what I’m trying to do, right? Because the last thing I want is trick you into having a kid. No offense. I’m just saying, I want to make babies—minus the babies. Plus, I’m taking your money in exchange for helping you keep your villa. So, technically, I’m not using you. We’re helping each other. Like partners.”

“You are nothing like Giuliana’s mother.” My expression softens as I reach out and stroke her cheek. “And no, I don’t think you’re trying to take advantage of me.”

“Then why won’t you have sex with me?” she blurts out as her eyebrows pull together. “I’ve never had a problem getting laid before, and you seem like you’re attracted to me. So, what’s stopping you? Be honest. Because a year of us living together seems like a really long time to not act on what we’re feeling here.”

I let out a long stream of air through my nostrils. “You want to know the truth?”

She nods, squaring her shoulders. “I can take it.”

This woman. She thinks it’s her. Something she’s lacking.

I clasp her hand and bring it to my chest, flattening her palm over my heart. “Because when I’m around you, I can’t control this erratic beating, and it terrifies me. I like you, Aarya. I’ve been interested in you since the moment I laid eyes on you, and if you let me, I’d show you what it feels like to be with someone who truly cares for you. But you’ve made it clear that you don’t want a relationship, and I have to protect my heart. I can’t have you the way you want me to have you, and not have you the way I want to have you.” I swallow past the emotion in my throat. “I can’t fall in love with you and watch you leave after this contract ends.”

Her lips part and her eyes widen. “But you’re not going to fall in love with me.”

“If you think I couldn’t, then you don’t see yourself at all.”

She chews her bottom lip, her eyes searching mine like she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. Like she can’t fathom the idea of a man falling for her.

“I have to look out for Giuliana too. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to explain you living with us, but I know she’s going to become attached to you. I can’t have her expecting us to be a family, expecting you to be in her life as anything more than what you are. I can control myself, but I can’t control how she feels. So, we have to keep the lines clear when you move in.”

“Which means keeping our hands off each other.”

I nod. “Keeping our hands off each other.”

Which may be the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do in my life.