Boldly by Elise Faber

Chapter Eleven

Oliver

This was wild.

This was out there.

This was amazing.

He didn’t know where Hazel had found this place, but it was a fucking blast. And by blast, he meant that he got to blast shit apart. With a baseball bat. Or a golf club. Or—something he hadn’t touched because it felt too raw—a hockey stick.

“It’s a rage room,” she said, taking a breather, her chest heaving, her eyes glimmering with happiness. There was a flush on her cheeks, and her skin shone with sweat.

Because breaking shit was hard work.

He paused next to her, absently rubbing his thigh, and didn’t miss her eyes going there.

She didn’t comment, though, and that she trusted him to tell her if it was too much—a promise he’d given with the intention of keeping because she’d done the same—meant a lot.

“But I think,” she went on, still panting, the bat hanging at her side, tendrils of her hair sticking to her temples, her neck. He tuned out for a moment, thinking about how else he might be able to get her sweaty, how else he might be able to see that flush on her cheeks. Albeit with her naked and beneath him and studying every inch of her body for more blushes. Would it spread across her chest? Tease the tops of her breasts?

He hoped so because he wanted to kiss and touch every inch of rosy skin.

“Oliver?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s not helpful when you keep looking at me like you want to jump me.”

He started, focused. “Sorry.”

“Why do I feel like I hear an unspoken not sorry there?”

A grin curved the edges of his mouth. “Because you do?”

Snorting, she moved to the far wall, to the rack of “weapons” that were available to them to destroy the contents of this room. Furniture. Plates. Appliances. Glasses. Even a lamp in the far corner.

“As I was saying,” she went on as she perused, “I think this will be good for Marcel because he banks all of his fury and frustration until it explodes.” It did explode—oftentimes on the ice when he picked a fight and ended up bloody. The kid wasn’t an enforcer, though he was built and could handle himself. But the team needed his hands steady and bruise-free. They needed his stability, especially without Oliver captaining.

Not to brag, but once he’d figured out his path, Oliver thought he’d been a good captain.

He cared about the guys, tried to lead by example.

Tried to do right by them and leave it all on the ice.

He supposed he had.

Literally.

“If I can find a way for him to release the steam before he gets to that point, I think it’ll help.” She picked up the hockey stick, tested it in her hands. “What do you think?”

He swallowed, eyes on that stick, longing in him. “I think it’ll help him.”

His voice was wrong.

He knew it. She knew it.

Without a word, she turned back to the rack and set the stick down, picking up the golf club instead. “Good,” she murmured. “Because I think it’s going to help me too. Especially when I imagine this as my shit-bag ex’s face.” Then she started wailing on an old school computer, one that looked like it was heavy as shit and took up half the table on the far side of the room. “Fuck you, Trevor!”

Oliver grinned as he adjusted his safety goggles, glad she could start working through some of the emotions that made her so sad, glad that aching pain was burning hot, transforming into anger, scorching through her so she could put it out, eventually put it behind her.

He swung around, took a breath, and hit his way through a toaster, a blender, and a fridge that was apparently supposed to plug into the cigarette charger in a car.

Ridiculous contraption.

But it felt fucking great to see it explode into pieces.

He glanced around the room, started to head toward a stack of porcelain teacups, concentrating as he moved, because although he’d gotten good on the prosthesis, it didn’t quite feel like an extension of him under these circumstances. That being, the floor littered with debris, meaning the chances of slipping and eating it were substantial, even for those humans with two normal legs. Oliver had worked hard to get comfortable with his prosthesis and had gone through a couple of different iterations and fittings before everything felt right. He also had a couple of different attachments for running and exercising versus day to day. Kneeling was still shit and didn’t feel super stable, nor did stairs, but he was getting better at both.

Mostly because he was a stubborn bastard.

But that wasn’t what had him stopping before hitting those teacups, nor was it the floor covered with debris.

It was the hockey stick sitting in the rack.

Slightly askew, since Hazel had set it down without really paying attention to lining it up with the other stick. And that was the reason he was telling himself that he crossed over to it, why his fingers hit the wood—not the normal composite material that he’d used in the league, and that was probably a good call since that could get expensive. But he wasn’t even sure they made wooden sticks any longer, let alone where they’d gotten one.

Probably where they’d gotten the Stone Age computer.

Smiling, he straightened the stick, lining it up like was proper—shaft to shaft (which sounded like a bad title for a porn film), blade to blade. But they just looked better that way. Neatly placed in a row.

But when he started to turn away, something stopped him, and he turned back, his fingers going to the wood again, circling the shaft (more bad porn film titles), and he found himself lifting it from the rack.

His hands instinctively went to where they should—right hand halfway down palm out, left hand at the top—and it felt…

Like coming home.

And also a little wrong because he couldn’t go home, not in the same way anymore.

He started to put the stick back, but then he glanced over his shoulder, saw that Hazel was going to town on a bookcase, and hesitated.

And…he picked up the stick again.

For a while he just held it, soaked in what he was feeling, right and wrong all tangled together, foreign and familiar, but ultimately just…natural.

Instinct to hold it correctly, to place the blade on the floor and press down, checking the flex.

“Would you…” He glanced up, not having processed Hazel stopping her work on the bookcase. “It doesn’t have to be today, but maybe would you teach me how to use it?”

No.

That was his first instinct.

Well, that and tossing it back on the rack and running from the room.

Except…he wanted to teach her, he wanted her to know the pleasure that came from shooting a puck, from the first time lifting it off the ice and the crack of the blade as it made contact. He wanted her to feel the surge of pleasure when she scored a goal, the breeze on her cheeks, the fist bumps from teammates, the roar of the crowd, the—

“Another time,” she whispered, stepping back and leaving him to it.

But he didn’t want her to leave.

He didn’t want her to step back.

He wanted her, and he wanted to give her the experiences he’d had, wanted to take back some for himself.

But mostly, he didn’t want her to leave.

“Wait.” Lungs tight, he caught her arm.

She stopped instantly, turning to face him. But she didn’t give him pressure or sass that he’d changed his mind. She just gave him time and patience and…he found that he could take a breath, could focus on her and not what he’d lost.

He inhaled and got flowers on his nose.

An exhale. Another breath.

And then…it just got easier.

He brought his arms around her, holding the stick in front of her body and placing her hands on it. “Like this,” he said, positioning her bottom hand so it was facing the right direction, the top so that its grip was better. The stick was too tall for her, but that didn’t matter, not right then with his arms around her and her body pressed to his. “Bend your knees a little,” he murmured, and yeah, his voice went a little gruff.

Mostly because her body against his made him hard.

But also, because when she moved to bend those knees, her ass brushed against his cock and then she glanced up over her shoulder and he was rethinking countertop sex, even with that huge ass window revealing them to anyone who might walk into the lobby.

“Like this?”

Her voice wasn’t gruff. It was liquid heat that told him she was feeling everything he was, that she was feeling every inch of him.

He nodded, coaxed her forward slightly, just enough so that her weight was on the balls of her feet.

And fuck, if that wasn’t better.

Her ass to his crotch. Her body close. His arms wrapped tight.

“Yeah, baby,” he rasped.

A moment passed, and for his part, he was soaking in the way she felt against him, trying to concentrate when every bit of blood in his body seemed to be in his dick. For hers, well, he couldn’t read her mind, but he knew she was enjoying it as much as he was.

This was because her hips were working, just slightly, as though the motion was out of her control, but they were moving, and by moving, he meant rocking back against him, making his cock go from half-mast to full, taking the rest of his body and diverting it solely to his pelvis, and basically driving him insane in the best possible way.

And when she spoke again, he knew she was there, too. “What’s”—another shift of that sexy ass against him—“next?”

“Bend over.”

That wasn’t exactly next, bending over was a rookie mistake borne of weak legs and poor discipline, but he couldn’t resist.

Totally worth it too when she did it, when she again glanced at him over her shoulder, and his mind filled with possibilities.

But she must have gotten a glimpse of his semi-nefarious intentions because she glared, straightened, and he thought she would step out of the circle of his arms and move away from him. Instead, she shifted closer and her hips—her ass—moved with intention this time, rubbing in a slow rhythm he was desperate to find again when they were both naked.

“Thinking about me doing that while we’re both naked and partaking in countertop sex is your punishment.”

Thenshe stepped away from him, moving to the rack, and snagging the other stick.

She tossed it.

He caught it without thinking.

“Next you’ll teach me to shoot,” she said. “But we only have ten minutes left. Let’s get down to fucking up the rest of this room.”

She moved to a china cabinet.

Grinning, he returned to the teacups.

A swipe had them flying off the shelves, shattering into a million pieces. Another had the row above cleared. But when one remained unscathed, piled on the broken remains of its brethren, Oliver did something else instinctual—scooping and lifting the cup onto the blade of his stick, balancing it as he gently tossed it up and down, and then just because he could still do it, he launched it into the corner of the room.

It exploded into tiny pieces.

“Whoa.”

He turned, saw that Hazel was gaping at him.

“Do that again,” she demanded.

Not about to deny her anything, he shot the stick out toward another shelf, scooping up another cup, bouncing it a couple of times before he repeated the shot against the wall.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, dropping her stick onto the rack. “I knew you guys were good with your sticks, but…how…I—” She shook her head while he was grinning about her saying he was good with his stick (also a bad name for a porno) and picked up a vase. “Can you do it with this?”

“Probably.”

She held it out.

He scooped it up.

“Aim for the red splotch on the wall,” she demanded.

Now he was grinning because he was showing off, because it felt good that she was impressed by him.

This one was a bit harder to balance, both because it was bigger and because its shape made it wobble against the curve of the stick’s blade. But after a few movements, he got the feel for it, and then he launched it at the wall.

It hit the red spot she’d pointed out with a thunk and shattered.

She squealed. “That is so cool.” Her gaze moved around the mostly decimated space. “What else, what else?” She kicked debris out of her way and snagged a ceramic bowl filled with plastic and Styrofoam fruit. Then began tossing one at a time, calling out targets.

Fake apple. Exploded in the corner.

Foam pear. Colliding with the shelving.

Bunch of plastic bananas. Right for that old-ass computer.

The ceramic bowl. That went right at a truly disgusting painting of a swamp. Pink porcelain mixed with puke green in a way that brought absolutely nothing good aesthetically but felt incredible when the shards embedded themselves into the canvas.

Hazel whooped and clapped her hands.

And then their time was up.

He was sweating and breathing hard. She had a piece of plastic tangled in her curls. They both had impressions on their foreheads and cheeks from the safety goggles.

But he was flying anyway.

“That was fun!” she exclaimed after they pushed out onto the sidewalk and started heading for her car.

It had been fun. Really fucking fun.

But it had also been big.

Because Hazel might not have realized it, but for all his talk of giving her the experiences he’d had—showing her the feel of the puck, a goal, the cool air—she’d been the one to give him something.

She’d given him hockey back.

The joy of the sport, not the pain of missing it.

And he made a promise right then and there, the cold air swirling around them, the sun barely poking out from beneath the clouds but still making her curls shine as they bounced around her head, her excitement given form in words that kept pouring out of her mouth.

He would give this woman everything.

Even if everything ended up being every single piece of himself.