“What’re you doing?”

“Helping you?” I’m fully pressed up against his back. His incredibly defined, very warm, very hard, muscly back.

“By humping me from behind?” he grunts.

I step away, because screw him. He stumbles and loses his hold on one of his crutches, forcing him to use the counter to brace his weight again. I hope his hand is in his own pee.

“Will you sit down before you break something?” I snap.

“I’m trying. You’re all up in my personal freaking space.”

“I’m not even touching you anymore! And I was helping. God, why are you such an asshole?”

“Because I’m in pain! Why are you such a morally defunct home-wrecker?”

“What?”

He spins around, and again it’s more graceful than I’d expect for someone his size, in his condition. I temporarily forget the home-wrecker comment when he bashes me in the shin with the end of his crutch. It might be covered in rubber, but it hurts like hell.

I drop to the floor and clutch my shin as he sits on the closed toilet seat. “Ow! Seriously?” This is what I get for being nice to someone with a pretty face and the personality of a praying mantis.

My current position puts me right between Jerkwad’s spread thighs. I’m also almost at eye level with his CAUTION crotch. As distracting as his underwear is, I finally understand why this guy is in so much pain. “Holy shit! What the hell happened to you?”

The inside of his left thigh is a mottled mass of mostly black, purple, and a lot of blue spanning all the way down to his knee.

“I hurt myself.”

“How the hell do you get a groin injury like that? What were you doing?” I’ve never seen one this bad—not even in my textbooks from college, or the videos I’ve watched online.

“Fucking around, obviously.”

“Sex caused this?” Jesus. What kind of shape was the woman in if he’s this messed up?

He rolls his eyes. “Not sex. I was playing hockey.”

“You play hockey?”

“Yeah.” He looks at me like I’m an idiot.

“What kind of hockey?”

His lip twitches. “The professional kind.”

I can feel my eyebrows pop. “Like NHL? For Seattle?”

“Yeah.” He seems as though he’s waiting for some kind of reaction.

It would’ve been nice if my brother had told me my neighbor was also his teammate. Although maybe I should’ve put two and two together. Then I remember the hit we saw yesterday. “Are you Winslow? Number fifty-two?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, by the look of things you’re going to be watching the action from the bench for a while. You need to ice this.”

I move in closer, the physiotherapist in me taking over as I brace my hands on his knees and inspect the bruising. I smooth my hand up his hard thigh. The muscles tense under his warm skin as I palpate around the edge of the discoloration with my thumb. This is a really bad injury. The kind I’d love to have a hand in rehabilitating.

“Ow! What the hell are you doing?” Jerkwad growls.

“Don’t worry. I’m a professional.”

CHAPTER 9

MAYBE I WAS A LITTLE WRONG

Bishop

I’m in a lot of pain, the kind that makes bile rise in your throat, gives you the sweats, and puts black-and-white dots in your vision. Partly because I haven’t taken any pain meds since last night, and also because Rook’s sidepiece is on her knees between my legs.

She’s dressed in one of those tanks with straps I can shred with my fingertips and a pair of sleep shorts that rival those running ones she parades around in when she’s getting her paper in the morning. Her nipples are peaked against the thin fabric. And there’s cleavage. So much cleavage.

My body is trying to react to her state of semiundress and how close her face is to my dick. It’s fucking agony. And also a serious moral dilemma. I’m pissed that my body is responding when clearly it should not.

“Puck bunny isn’t a profession, sweetheart,” I grind out.

Her head snaps up, eyes meeting mine. They’re clear and blue like the ocean. I can see the allure. My dick agrees that she’s hot, since I’m still halfway hard even though it’s viciously painful.

“Excuse me?” Her grip on my thighs tightens, which means she’s digging her fingers into my bruises.

It makes me woozy. I grab her wrist, because I need her to stop touching me for a number of reasons, ethical issues and pain being at the forefront.

“You think you can jump from one player to the next, and no one is going to give a fuck? Christ. You might as well be sucking on my balls with how up in my space you are. Where the hell is your moral compass?” Okay, that was extra graphic, but seriously, her nose is almost pressed up against my junk, she’s so close.

She uses my thighs to push to a stand, which feels pretty damn awful. She’s not particularly tall, so her nipples are pointing right at my face. “What the hell are you talking about? Who are you to call me a puck bunny?”

“You’re banging the team captain, who has a fucking wife and kid, and now you’re all over my jock.” I motion to my crotch.

“Banging the . . .” Her brows furrow and her nose scrunches up. She makes a gagging sound and then throws her head back and laughs. It’s a nice laugh, even if it’s full of sarcasm. “Oh my God. Rook is my brother, you asshole!”

“Yeah, right.”

She rolls her eyes and grins widely, pointing to the dimple high on her cheek. “See the resemblance?”

“Not really. No,” I say truthfully, because I haven’t paid enough attention to Rook’s face in the time I’ve been on the team, which hasn’t been long. Also, on the infrequent occasions I do make eye contact with Rook, both of us are usually scowling.

Her hair smacks me in the face as she spins on her heel and stalks out of the bathroom. I loathe admitting I stare at her ass. She returns less than a minute later with a framed photo and a few pieces of paper. She tosses the papers at me—they turn out to be envelopes that read STEVIE BOWMAN.

“Is this supposed to mean something to me?”

“Stevie is my name.” She points at her chest, which draws attention to her cleavage and her pert nipples. Her tank is white, and even though it has one of those built-in bra things so there’s an extra layer of fabric between her nipples and my eyeballs, I can still see the outline of her areolae. They’re small and delicate, and the whole thing would easily fit in my mouth. Why the hell can’t I stop thinking about sex?

I roll my eyes. “Nice try. Stevie is a guy’s name.”

“I’m named after my dad.” She holds the framed picture an inch from my nose.

It’s too close for me to make out the actual faces, so I take it from her, somewhat forcefully. It’s an older photo, based on how young Rook is, but beside him is the woman standing in front of me, hair light blonde instead of pale pink. They’re both smiling, and I see now the resemblance she was talking about.

I look up at her and then back down at the picture. “Shit. You’re Bowman’s baby sister?”

“I’m hardly a baby.” She crosses her arms, pushing her tits up and highlighting her cleavage.