The Boyfriend Goal (Love and Hockey Book 1)

Wesley

I wake up to a note from my dad blinking at me on my phone.

Dad: What’s the verdict? Lunch today? We can go to a new bowl place by the Marina. And I’ve been thinking, if Frieda’s artwork isn’t your style, I can take you shopping for…something else for the walls. Before your session with Domingo this afternoon

.

As I drag a hand through my bedhead hair, I snort a laugh—the dude is relentless, but I guess I did say I’d connect with him today.

Josie rustles. Shit, I didn’t want to wake her. She turns to me, eyes fluttering open, question marks in them.

I waggle the phone. “It’s my dad. I think he acknowledged that Frieda’s art is horrifying. But of course it’s wrapped around reminders of what he wants me to do today.”

“Sounds like a new version of a sandwich compliment—a sandwich admission,” she says sleepily, then stretches.

Damn, she looks good in my bed, her hair fanning out on the pillow, her cheeks flush.

“That’s him for you,” I say, debating whether to reply to my dad right now or not.

“You and he have a complicated relationship,” she says, an observation rather than a question.

“We do. He’s intense. A little controlling,” I say in an obvious understatement. But she’s seen the fridge, she knows my schedule, and she’s aware I work out after games, too, and that Dad hired a personal coach for me as well. “He wants the best for me though. Always has.”

“That probably makes it even more complicated,” she says, with a sympathetic smile.

“Yeah. It really does. He’s a great agent though. The deals he’s landed for me have been top-notch. Both with the teams and endorsements.”

“Maybe because you’re a great player.”

I glance over at her, all soft and morning sexy. “Maybe,” I say absently, then what the fuck? Why the hell am I talking about my agent-slash-dad while I’m in bed with this woman? I toss the phone on the nightstand, far away, then slink a hand around her stomach. “Play hooky with me today.”

“What?” She asks it like she’s never heard of the concept.

I pinch her side. “Did you ever skip class?”

Her jaw drops. She swats my chest. “Wesley Bryant!”

I laugh. “Is that a no?”

She narrows her brow at me, all stern. Librarian stern, come to think of it. And I don’t mind. “Of course I never skipped a class. Why would I?”

“To have fun,” I counter with a smirk.

She lifts her chin primly. “Class is fun.”

This woman. She’s the total opposite of me, yet that doesn’t seem to matter. I drop a kiss to her nose. “You’re such a hot nerd.”

Narrowing her eyes, she growls at me. “And you’re such a sensitive jock. So there.”

“Then you should understand why I need to play hooky with you. It will help my sensitive side,” I say, laying it on thick.

She rolls her eyes. “Right. Sure.” She takes a beat. “Also, I don’t have work today, so there’s no hooky to play.”

“But I bet you were going to do errands, or read a book, or research something. So play hooky from that.” I refuse to give up.

She winces. “I signed up for a walking tour of the Marina this morning. With a local city guides group.”

Damn. That means she’s taking off soon, even though I’m intrigued. “That sounds like fun actually.”

“See? This is why I don’t play hooky. Because other things are fun.”

“When is it? The tour?”

She peers at the digital clock on my nightstand. “In an hour and a half.”

I could offer to tag along, but the thing is…I’d rather have her to myself. I go in for the kill. I nuzzle her neck, grazing my mouth along her skin up to her ear. “I bet I can convince you to skip it.”

With a hitch in her breath, she asks, “How would you convince me?”

Another kiss. Then, a flick of my tongue against her ear while my hand coasts down her stomach. “Let me fuck you again and then take you out for that second date instead.”

She stops squirming. Something I can’t quite read flickers in her blue eyes. A question perhaps? She parts her lips, like she’s going to ask me something after all. But she must think the better of it since she says, “Let me brush my teeth first.”

“I’ll do the same.”

A minute later, our minty-fresh mouths meet and I pull her on top of me, kissing her as the morning light streams through the windows, running my palms along her sun-kissed skin. As she melts into my touch, I slide a hand up her breasts, over her chest to her neck.

She loves when I touch her there. I don’t press too hard. But I do curl my palm around her throat gently and hold her close as I cover her mouth with mine.

It’s the kind of slow, sultry kiss that has her moaning, arching, asking. Then, I fuck my roommate, and I don’t think once about the things or the people I’m avoiding.

Why would I? I’ve convinced my roomie to go on that long-awaited second date with me.

This is winning.

An hour or so later, I do write back, telling my dad I’m hanging with a friend today, but I won’t miss my training session with Domingo this afternoon. It’s one thing to skip lunch with Dad; it’s another to blow off a trainer. That’s just rude.

But I do feel a little rebellious—in a good way, and in a necessary way too—as I send that note. Maybe that’s why I never confirmed lunch plans with him last night. Maybe I knew on some level I was going to have other plans for today. Plans with her.

I tuck the phone in my jeans pocket and head down the hall with Josie. When we reach the foyer, that inquisitive look from earlier returns to her face—the one that says she wants to ask something. Or maybe she’s working her way up to it.

“Wes,” she begins, as I grab the car keys from the table.

“Yes?”

But she shakes her head, walking toward the stairs to the garage. “It’s nothing.”

Nope. It’s not nothing. It’s never nothing. “Josie,” I say, my tone firm. I’m not worried, but I do want to know what’s on her mind. “What’s going on?”

She stops in her tracks before she goes down the stairs. She turns around, resolute now. “You said this was a date. Right?”

A knot of tension forms in my gut. I’d thought it was crystal clear I was asking her out. “Well, yeah.”

“But…” She lifts her hand, waves it toward the home. “What about the roomie rule?”

“We broke that, didn’t we?” I ask wryly, but it doesn’t quite land as a joke because she’s not only referring to sex. We both know this thing with us isn’t just about what happens between the sheets. I clear my throat, giving her the gravity she deserves. “Are you asking what it means that I’m taking my roommate on a date?”

She shrugs, smiling, looking uncomfortable. “What do we do in public? Like if someone sees? You’re not exactly nobody.”

Oh. I hadn’t thought about that. It barely occurs to me, though it probably should. I do get recognized from time to time. I am a public figure. And roomies or not, I’m still working with her brother, but I don’t think either one of us wants to deal with whatever that means now. Heaving a sigh, I think this through. “I’m not sure I know the right answer. For now, maybe it’s best if we”—I stop and gesture from her to me—“keep this between us?”

She freezes.

And I’ve said the exact wrong thing. I’d better fix it, stat. I step closer, reach for her hand. “I don’t mean a dirty secret like an affair. I just mean let’s keep it between us…as we figure it out.”

Only I don’t know what we’re figuring out. She’s leaving and I’m staying, and we live together. I don’t know if she’d even want more than a simple arrangement if we didn’t have those obstacles between us. Just because I’m developing feelings for her—liar, you already possess monster feelings—doesn’t mean she’s on the same page I am.

I don’t want to pressure her though. “What if we don’t rush defining this,” I suggest, even though I want to define it, I want to stake a claim on her, and I want to tell the whole damn city I’m dating the most incredible woman I’ve ever met.

Yeah, monster fucking feelings that I have to tamp down for now.

She tucks a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear, seemingly satisfied. “That works. Especially since I have no idea how he’ll react.” The fact that she doesn’t say her brother’s name tells me she’s a little worried. “Also, I don’t feel like a dirty secret,” she says, curling a fist around my shirt. “But you should keep fucking me dirty in secret.”

Her eyes twinkle with mischief, and I close the short distance between us, grab her ass, and give her a rough kiss. “It’s a deal.”

That settled, we head down the stairs to the garage, where I open the car door for her. She slides into the front seat, and I head to the driver’s side.

Finally, a month and a half later, I’m getting the second date I wanted. I pull out onto the street and slow to a stop at the red light. I steal a glance at her.

Fuck the rules.

I lean across the console, grab her jaw, and kiss her. Maybe to prove a point. That I’ll do this soon. Then, I take her for our second date at last.

Though it hardly feels like a second one.

Route 101 Diner is not a roadside diner like the name implies. More like a waterside one since it sits inside the Ferry Building on The Embarcadero, overlooking the glittering bay. A vintage neon sign beckons us, giving the place a mid-century feel. The walls inside are decorated with black-and-white photos from the 101, the highway that runs along the California coast, overlooking the ocean.

We settle into a booth that comes equipped with a mini jukebox. I nod to it. “You can pick show tunes. Or pop. Or Taylor,” I say.

“You’re assuming that’s what I like,” she counters.

I laugh. “Josie, I’ve heard you singing in the shower.”

“Touché,” she says, then opens the menu.

After we order—veggie burger and fries for her, chicken sandwich and salad for me, which isn’t entirely cheating on my meal plan; it’s just bending it—I say, “This is where I was going to take you if I’d given you that scarf and the letter.”

“But you wouldn’t have been able to use that you can pick show tunes line,” she teases. “You didn’t know that then.”

Scoffing, I eye her up and down. “I’d have guessed. You give off that vibe.”

She stares me down, but she’s smiling. “Why’s that?”

Is it weird if I say because she likes makeup? Because she’s got a girlie side to her? Because she wears fake lashes? At least I think they’re fake. Never seen anyone with lashes that long for real. But I like Josie with makeup and without makeup.

I find a different path to an answer. “Probably because of the way you were with your friend that night. You seemed close. Made me think you were a girl’s girl.”

“I am,” she says, her shoulders straightening. “Good guess.”

I tip my chin toward her. “So tell me more about you. What do you do for a living?”

“Are you recreating the second date we never had?” Her smile touches down straight in my chest, stirring my heart.

“Yes.”

“I’m in town working at a library. And it’s turned out to be an incredible job.”

“Yeah?” Even though we talk about her job often, I’m still dying to know all the details about it.

“My boss is smart, and sarcastic, and my colleagues are fun. We played trivia the other night and I destroyed them. It was very satisfying.”

“Winning can be like that,” I say. “Have you always wanted to be a librarian?”

She nods enthusiastically. “Pretty much. But especially once I learned what it entailed. Maintaining records, finding information, and helping people connect with books of all kinds. It’s been a dream job my whole life.”

I get that completely. “Same thing for me—with hockey.” But I don’t want to focus on me. “So this job you have now—is it a dream job?”

Her smile is somehow both excited and wistful. “Yes, except it’s temporary, but it’s amazing. My boss has given me a lot of autonomy. I started this new thing called Your Next Five Reads, and it’s going really well,” she says, then tells me more about an online recommendation service she’s started.

“That does sound pretty cool,” I say, but something doesn’t add up. “You’re doing all these great things. Why does it end? Why is it a temp gig?”

Is it too obvious I don’t want it to reach the finish line of us?

Sadness flashes briefly in her eyes, but then she seems to blink it off. “It’s fine,” she says, her tone cheery and bright. “It was never supposed to be more than temporary. The library landed a special grant for its digitization center from a non-profit that was founded a couple years ago. It’s pretty unusual, but the library was able to use that funding to hire a digital specialist for a few months. It’s just a contract post.”Property of Nô)(velDr(a)ma.Org.

What happens in January? Where do you go? Will you miss me?

Those questions form on my tongue, but I swallow them down. Now’s not the time to talk about the new year. There might never be a good time to talk about it. Her situation is different from mine. Hell, she lost her short-term rental mere days after moving to the city. And heck, I may own my own place but I know as well as anybody that the cost of living in this city isn’t exactly free. I can’t be a pushy dick about where she’ll live or go while she’s sorting out her life. She’s here for now, and that has to be good enough for me.

“They’re lucky to have you,” I say. “If you were my librarian growing up, maybe I’d have liked books more.”

She shoots me a challenging look. “So, let’s play this out. A young Wesley Bryant comes to my library and crushes on librarian me? That’s not weird at all.”

“Hey now. This is a college fantasy. In it, I’m eighteen, it’s my freshman year, and I find you in the stacks at school. Your hair’s up in a bun. You’re wearing a black skirt, a tight white blouse, and black heels. You’re shelving a book. But you can’t reach the tallest shelf, even though you’re stretching, and your skirt’s riding up.”

She leans back in the booth, crossing her arms and staring at me pointedly, her eyes dancing. “Tell me you watch librarian porn without telling me you watch librarian porn.”

“Don’t need to watch it,” I say, then tap my skull. “My brain makes it right here free of charge. Has for the last month and a half.”

She dips her face, hiding a smile at the clear compliment before she says, “Then what happens next in your librarian fantasy?”

I lean closer, parking my elbows on the Formica, locking eyes with her as I drop my voice to an even raspier tone. “I slide the book in for you. You lick your lips as you watch it go right in. It fits perfectly. You thank me, then I ask if you can help me find a good one…to open up.”

“And what do you say?”

“I say I’d like to find a good one on Ten Things a Man Can Do to Please the Woman He’s a Little Obsessed With.”

Her cheeks go pink. “Sounds like you’ve already read it.”

I shake my head. “No, I haven’t finished it. It’s something I want to read every night. It keeps me up late.”

She rolls her lips together like she’s holding in a gasp, then whispers, “You should keep reading.”

“I will,” I say, feeling like at least we’ve figured out that much. Whatever this thing between us is, it’s not ending.

The next morning, when I’m coming down the stairs early to drive Josie to work, she’s standing in the kitchen wearing a black skirt, a white shirt, and heels. Her hair’s twisted in a bun, with a few strands coming loose. Her lips are glossy and pink.

“I hate to be the one to tell you this…” I say when I reach the kitchen.

“Hate what?”

“That you’re going to be late for work.”

She glances at the clock on the microwave. “Wes, I can’t be late.” She sounds sad.

I look her up and down in her perfect outfit down to the heels and of course her glasses. She’s my librarian fantasy. “You’re right. You can’t be,” I say, then I loop an arm around her waist and tug her against me.

She bites the corner of her lips but then shakes her head. “I mean it.”

“I know you do, baby,” I say, dropping my face to the crook of her neck and pressing a soft, barely there kiss to her skin. “But…”

“But what?” she asks breathily.

“Did you know that clock on the microwave is five minutes fast?”

She gasps. “Wes!”

I pull back. “Got five minutes?”

“That’s not much time,” she says.

I slide a strand of hair behind her ear, running the pad of my finger along the shell. “I’ll have to be very, very focused.”

But before I can spin her around and lift her onto the counter, she grabs my hand and pulls me into the living room. Then she shoves my chest, pushing me down onto the couch.

Taunting her is officially my best idea ever as she hikes up her skirt to her thighs and drops to her knees.

Fuck me.

In no time, she’s tugged down my shorts and my briefs and is flicking her tongue against the head of my cock. She sucks the crown just past those gorgeous pink lips, and I shudder out a harsh breath. “Fuck, Josie,” I mutter.

With a goddess grin, she drops my dick, takes down her bun, and says, “You’ve got less than five minutes to make my lipstick messy. Better get to work, stud.”

It. Is. On.

I grab her head, rope my hands through her lush hair, and guide her back onto my hard dick. She slides her palms up my thighs while she takes me deep with barely a second thought.

Like she’s showing off, she sucks hard, voraciously, all while keeping her eyes on me.

I curl my hands tighter around her skull as her lips stretch wide, inviting me to fuck her throat. A few pumps and I’m shaking. Groaning. Hell, I’m lifting my hips off the couch and fucking her invitation of a mouth.

My balls tighten. My thighs shake. My chest is overheating. Pleasure crackles in my whole body as I thrust past those lush lips till she coughs.

“You okay?” I ask as I pull out.

She lifts a stern brow. “Two minutes, Wes. You want to talk or you want to come?”

I close my eyes, smiling like a lust-struck fool. This woman. I shut my mouth and fuck hers till an orgasm marches through my body, slamming into me as I warn, “Coming.”

And she sucks me dry.

My vision is still blurry when she rises, adjusts her skirt, and says, “Be right back.”

When I look down though, there’s a pair of panties on my lap. And they’re soaked. I’m going to need to make her come many, many times tonight to thank her for that five-minute drill.

A few minutes later, we get in the car with just enough time to take her to her little library. Time always seems to be running out with us, and the next six weeks will go by so much faster than I want them to. Once we’re on our way to the Upper Haight, I return to the thing that brought us together in the first place.

“We should figure out number six soon. Volunteer,” I say, reminding her of her aunt’s top ten list.

Along the way, we toss out ideas and maybe plans to pick one this weekend, and by the time we near the library we’ve narrowed it down to a few options. But when I pull up after passing the fire station, she gestures casually to the guys outside milling around the fire truck. “That reminds me. The Friends of the Library Association is having a pancake fundraiser at our library in partnership with the fire station this weekend. We’ll have to do our volunteering after.”

I glance back at the station. It’s teeming with guys who look like they belong on a fireman calendar. I grit my teeth, then breathe out hard. I breathe out fire. “With firemen?”

“Yes, that’s who usually works at a fire station,” she says dryly.

I stare back at the scene in front of the firehouse. Yeah, there’s easily a dozen firemen, the type that everyone crushes on. “I’ll pitch in at your fundraiser. That can be our number six.”

“But don’t you have morning skate? And a nap schedule to adhere to?” she asks, but she’s not being mean—just the woman who knows me so well.

“I do,” I reply, because she’s right. The fundraiser starts early though. “But I can serve pancakes, and still make it to the rink for morning skate, then hit the hay.”

“A regular superman,” Josie muses. “You’ll really help?”

One of the firemen seems to linger on my car—or more specifically, the woman inside it.

I growl. “Yeah. I’ll absolutely be there.”

Since no way am I letting the firemen snag a chance to hit on my sexy librarian.

She’s mine. Well, for another six weeks she damn well is, and fuck anyone who tries to take her.