PUCKED Up (18 page)

***

I wake up to terrible, humid breath in my face. I crack a lid to find Andy’s nose an inch away from mine. “Hey, buddy. You need a mint.” I roll over, but Sunny’s side of the bed is already empty. It’s only seven in the morning, still early, but she’s leaving in a couple of hours, so I drag myself out of bed, throwing off the heavy hands of sleep. I don’t bother with boxers. My plan is to find her and use my morning wood to my advantage.

When I reach the stairs, I’m hit with the sweet smell of cinnamon. Sunny can bake, as evidenced by the treats in the freezer. Her cookies are the best. I snicker as I take the stairs down to the kitchen. Now that I’ve eaten her cookie, I have all kinds of dirty baked-goods jokes. Unfortunately, it’s another one of those things I can’t share with the guys.

I find her in the kitchen. Her hair is still in the same braid from last night, except it’s a mess. The sun streams in the window over the sink where she’s rinsing fresh fruit, the light catching the fine blond flyaways, creating a halo. She’s wearing shorts and a tank top, and she’s braless.

She doesn’t notice me right away, so I lean against the doorjamb to watch her. She hums along to the radio as she peels peaches. I wish she wasn’t leaving this morning.

I circle around behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist. It would be so easy to get her naked and get inside her right on the counter. She gasps, and at first I think it’s out of surprise, but then I notice the fine line of blood welling across the pad of her index finger.

“
Ah, shit, Sunny. I’m sorry.” I shimmy us over to the sink, turn on the tap, and adjust the water temperature. When it’s cold I put her hand under the stream. So much for a good-morning surprise.

Sunny turns her head away, pressing her cheek into my chest. “Is it still bleeding?”

I put pressure below the gash, checking to see how bad it is. It’s a clean cut, and it’s not too deep, just a surface wound. Blood wells again so I move her hand back under the water. “It’s not bad. It doesn’t need stitches or anything.” I kiss the top of her head.

She does this shuddery thing.

“
You got bandages down here?”

“
I think there might be some in the drawer.” She flops her hand in the general direction of the cupboards to our right.

“
I’ll get one, then?” I can’t move until she stops leaning on me.

“
I think I need to sit down.” The words come out all drunken sounding. Then Sunny slides down my body. I catch her under the arms before she hits the floor.

“
Sweets?” I crouch, using my shoulder to stop her head from lolling around. Her eyes are rolled up, and she’s total dead weight. She fainted. I prop her against the cabinets, adjusting her limp body so she won’t fall over. This isn’t going the way I planned.

The paper towels are a couple inches out of reach. To prevent her from falling over, I stand in front of her, bracing my thigh against her shoulder to hold her up. It isn’t the best position, well, not for the situation, anyway. My dick is two inches from her face, and I’m naked.

She starts to come to as I snatch up the paper towels. Ripping off a couple of sheets, I reposition to crouch again, but she wraps her arms around my legs and face-butts me in the junk. I grunt, pain shooting up my spine and nailing me right in the back of the throat. Bile comes with it, as does the sensation that my balls are going to forever reside below my Adam’s apple.

I drop to the floor in front of her, gritting my teeth. My vision blurs and then clears.

“
Miller?” She’s all breathy and confused.

I feel her palm on my cheek. Her piercing scream makes my ears hurt as much as my balls. Then she faints again.

I wipe at the damp spot on my cheek and check my fingers. There’s a faint streak of red, almost dried already. I wet the paper towel and wipe my cheek until it comes clean. Then I wrap a clean paper towel around her bloody finger and wait for her to come around a second time. My balls still really fucking hurt, but they’ll be fine in a couple hours. A face-butt to the groin is nothing like a puck or a stick to the cup.

Her eyes flutter open.

“
Hey.”

She glances around, taking in her position on the floor. “Did I faint?”

“
Twice.”

“
I don’t handle the sight of blood well.”

“
I figured that out.”

“
Sorry.”

“
Aside from the face-butt to the balls, it’s cool.” Chicks don’t understand how much it hurts to get bagged. I’ve heard Vi talk about how chicks give birth, and I’m sure that hurts like a motherpucker, but at least there’s the option for drugs to take away the pain. When a guy gets a shot to the nuts, there’s nothing we can do but put a bag of frozen peas on it and wait for our balls to come back down from our throats.

“
The face-butt to what?”

“
Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’m going to get you a bandage now, ’kay?”

At her nod, I stand and turn toward the cabinets she pointed to in the first place.

“
You’re naked.”

“
Yup.” I open the drawer and rummage around, looking for a bandage. I move aside a ball of elastic bands and a million pens and pieces of scrap paper.

“
Why?”

I glance over my shoulder. “I’m giving being a nudist a shot. What do you think?”

“
Naked looks good on you.”

She gives me a weak smile and sits cross-legged on the floor, showing me her lack of panties under her shorts.

“
Not as good as it looks on you.”

I find the bandages at the very back of the drawer, along with some antibiotic cream that’s two months out of date. It’ll do.

Getting back down to her level, I sit on the tile floor. My balls clench up, and my dick shrinks, trying to get away from the cold. Sunny closes her eyes as I unwrap the paper towel and check the cut again. It’s stopped bleeding for the most part, and it’s already clean, so all I need to do is cover it up. I use two bandages instead of one, in case there’s some bleed-through.

I toss the bloody paper towels in the trash and kiss the back of her hand. “All done.”

She peeks up, her expression wary until she sees the bandage.

“
How’d you ever manage to make it through a hockey game?”

It’s kind of a joke, but kind of not. Hockey players get roughed up all the time. Everyone who plays professional sports should expect a few stitches along the way, especially with skates in the mix. I’ve had at least five occasions I can think of where I’ve needed stitches, whether from skates, a fast-moving puck, or a stick to a place without much padding. Most of the time, if it isn’t too bad, I get sewn up on the bench and get back in the game.

“
I try not to look when people get into fights. I can handle it on TV, but in real life . . .” She shudders and pales.

The oven beeps, and she uses my shoulders to pull herself up. I stand along with her, gripping her at the waist when she falters.

“
Why don’t you let me get it?”

“
I’m fine. I can do it myself.” She’s almost snippy.

I let go, and she face-plants into my chest. Wrapping an arm around her waist, I lift her easily on to the counter. She grunts and makes an attempt at resisting, but she’s too unsteady, so she ends up gripping my arms instead.

“
I can take a pan out of the oven, Sunny. Heating frozen food until it’s edible is one of my specialties.”

She makes a sound somewhere between a stifled laugh and an aggravated sigh.

“
I’m not joking. I’m the best cook of frozen food in all of Chicago. I’d go as far as to say all of Illinois, but I don’t want to seem like I have a big ego or anything.”

“
Miller.”

“
Sunny.”

The oven beeps again. This time she lets go of my shoulders and motions toward it. I grab an apron off the counter and tie it around my waist to protect my dick before I open the oven. Inside is a huge pan of cinnamon buns, covered in pecans and bubbling around the edges. I put the mitts on and take them out, setting them on the granite counter.

“
Where did you get these?”

“
I made them.”

“
When?”

“
This morning, while you were sleeping.”

“
Like, from scratch?”

“
Yup.”

“
Dough and all?”

“
I’m pretty sure that’s what
scratch
means.”

I stop ogling the buns and look over my shoulder. I’m almost a hundred-percent sure that was sarcasm. She’s still sitting on the counter, her feet and head dangling.

“
I’m impressed.” I search the cupboards for a couple of plates and rifle through the drawers until I find something to help remove them from the pan.

“
They still need to be iced.”

“
I don’t need icing.”

I’m about to dig in when I hear the soft thud of her feet hitting the ground.

“
You’re impatient.” She hip-checks me out of the way and grabs a serving tray.

I step aside and lean against the counter while she places the tray over the buns and then flips the whole thing upside down. Jiggling it around, she lifts the baking pan to reveal glistening, pecan-and-syrupy rolls. Fragrant steam wafts into the air. My mouth is watering, and I’m starving. My post-sex wings last night have already been burned off. I need to feed the beast.

I go to grab one, and Sunny smacks my hand. “They’re too hot.”

“
I’ll be fine.”

“
Let me put the icing on first so you don’t burn off your tongue.”

“
I’m hungry.”

“
As hungry as you were last night?” She’s looking at the bowl, not me.

“
Is that an invitation or a request for a repeat?” I move in behind her, pressing my sort-of hard-on against the small of her back. “Because I’m definitely interested in more of last night, and more of this morning.”

“
This morning?”

“
Well, maybe not the fainting part, or you trying to dice off your fingertip, but this—” I gesture to the kitchen and kiss her shoulder. “What we’re doing here, I like this. I’ve never done it before.”

“
Had someone faint on you?” She stirs the icing, but her breath hitches and a flush creeps up her neck.

“
Woken up to someone I like making me breakfast.”

“
No one’s ever made you breakfast?”

“
Nope. Except for Skye, but that doesn’t count since she’s my stepmom, and everything she makes comes from a package.”

Sunny turns around in my arms, her expression pensive. “What about when you were a kid? Didn’t anyone make you breakfast before school and stuff?”

“
Mostly I ate cereal in the morning, since it was just me and my dad and he’s a sucky cook.” I stare at the cupboards, taking in the details. Memories of my mom are vague. Also, most of them aren’t nice, and it’s not something I talk about much. Up until now I’ve avoided it with Sunny.

Sunny runs a finger up my arm and over my shoulder until she reaches my jaw. She curls it around my chin and angles my head so I’m looking at her, not into space. “What happened to your mom?”

I twirl a lock of her hair between my fingers, considering how much I want to share. Fanning out the end, I brush it back and forth across my lips before I speak. “She had an inoperable brain tumor. She died when I was three.”

Sunny strokes my cheek. Her affection doesn’t feel like it’s made of pity. “I’m so sorry.”

I shrug. “I don’t remember her much. She got headaches a lot. They thought they were migraines. Mostly I remember her being in the hospital. Then it was me and my dad for the most part. Even before she was gone it was my dad taking care of things.”

“
That must’ve been so hard.”

“
It was hardest on my dad. I was too young to get what was going on. I wasn’t an easy kid. I had lots of energy. School was hard for me. I needed a lot of attention, and my dad worked long hours.”

I leave out the hardest part to talk about: that none of Dad’s attempted relationships worked out because of me. Single dads are only cool in movies. It was clear early on that school wasn’t going to be my thing. I didn’t pick things up as fast as I should have, so I lagged behind the other kids. One chick told my dad she didn’t sign up for a special-needs kid. She dropped the “R” bomb. I never saw her again after that.

There weren’t any other girlfriends until my junior year of high school—none that I ever met until my dad started dating Skye, Vi’s mom, anyway. She was nice and fun to be around.