Blazed (EBOOK)

Ebooks are delivered instantly by link in your confirmation email (and as a backup, also by email from our delivery partner, Bookfunnel).

You can read the ebooks on any ereader (Amazon, Kobo, Nook), your tablet, phone, computer, and/or in the free Bookfunnel app.

I gently squeeze the piping bag as I spin the turntable on which the perfectly frosted cake sits.
It sends a thin thread of icing out of the metal decorating tip, and I lean in, draping it carefully along the top edge of the confection.
Putting the finishing touches on the wedding cake that is the biggest I’ve ever made.
Six tiers.
Each coated in fluffy white buttercream smoothed to perfection.
And then further decorated, each tier with a different elegant white-on-white royal icing pattern that has my hands aching.
And my neck.
And my shoulders.
And my legs and ankles and feet.
Because—one more squeeze and I carefully pull away, set the piping bag on the metal table—I’ve been at this since three in the morning.
It’s noon now.
And though I’ve been taking care of the rest of my duties that come with opening the bakery—namely baking the items that fill the cases so people can buy them and eat them and the business makes enough money so that I have a job (and, recently, a financial stake in the profits)—the rest of the time has been spent decorating the cake.
Busy.
Always.
The job. The bakery itself. My life.
Always busy.
Now I have less than an hour to box up the cake, stow it safely in the walk-in, and get my butt over to class.
I love decorating cakes.
It’s a steady job that pays decently for a college student. It’s a future, stable career—or that’s what I tell myself, anyway.
But it isn’t my dream.
It isn’t—
“Did you leave any icing on the cake?”
I’ve just finished boxing said cake—or the top tier of said giant ass wedding cake, rather. Which is lucky. Because the man’s voice has me jerking, my hand bumping into the cardboard.
And if the man—who, unfortunately, I recognize just from that single silken question, whose voice I know (and maybe still hear in my dreams)—had made me ruin this cake—or even just one layer of it—I might very well commit hockeycide.
As in, murder of the sexy, annoying hockey player currently leaning against the doorway that leads out into the front part of the bakery.
Walker Laine.
Who is standing there looking sexy with a big, strong body, tattoos, and a beard. He’s wearing his typical uniform of a T-shirt and jeans that are encasing his thick thighs in a way that should be illegal.
Cupping them lovingly.
Reminding me how strong they are.
Pinning me onto the mattress. Holding me up as he fucks me against the wall.
Skating like wind on the ice.
My thighs tremble and I clench my teeth together sharply enough to send pain pulsing through my jaw. But, luckily, that jolt recenters me, and I manage to push down the hurt.
To settle on anger.
Something that’s made easier when I notice that his annoying, kissable lips are turned up at the edges into a smirk.
And he has his arms crossed.
And his freaking ankles too as he reclines back against the open door.
Looking totally comfortable in my space. Invading my space.
Again.
For a man who supposedly doesn’t like making connections with women, he seems to be doing that a lot. Crowding me in the waiting room of the hospital when my mom had a health scare and I was too upset to know what I was doing, too worried and anxious to keep him at arm’s length. Driving me home after my mom turned the corner. Appearing at my mom’s house to provide backup for the vitriol she likes to lob my way. Showing up at my place to check on me when those sharp, barbed words stung deeper than they should, considering that she’s a bitter old woman and I’ve come to terms with the fact that she’s never going to be the person I need. Coming to Christmas Eve dinner, invading my family time, sitting next to me, his thigh brushing mine, his arm pressing close, his scent in my nose. And now at…
My place of work.
A-fucking-gain.
So, yeah, rage makes the hurt disappear, and I narrow my eyes at him, pick up the boxed cake, and carry it to the walk-in refrigerator, stowing it on the shelf with the rest of the tiers. Tomorrow I’ll stay late to finish everything up before going with Roy, our delivery guy, to the venue to set up the cake.
After which, I’ll live with my hands in buckets of ice for twenty-four hours.
Sighing, I stand inside the walk-in and wipe my aching hands on my apron, which—as a certain annoying hockey player had pointed out—is covered in a small amount of icing.
Okay, a lot of icing.
Probably it’s a comment on me that I work so messily. God knows, my mom says so. Messy life, messy mind. Which is fucking hilarious. Because my mom is a fucking disaster and just…
Not a good person.
That’s why I ignore her shit and embrace my messiness—or try to, anyway.
Because it’s not always that simple.
Parents—mothers—have the ability to wound deeply without even trying.
So, my apartment is clean. My car is immaculate. My aprons are…trashed. That’s me.
And, more importantly, my cakes are perfect, even if I wear a piping bag’s worth of icing each and every time I finish decorating—
“Ack!”
I ran into a brick wall.
No. Okay, fine. I ran into a brick-headed hockey player.
“What the fuck, Walker?” I snap, brushing off his hands, which come up to steady me—ugh, why does he have to be nice?—and start to move by him.
Even though he’s smaller than a lot of the guys on the Breakers, Walker still takes up a lot of space. Or maybe that’s only in my head. It’s just…he seems big, too big, and he sucks all the air out of the room, and…he made me feel—
It doesn’t matter.
What I felt that night doesn’t matter.
Not when it comes to one Walker Laine.
“I need to talk to you,” he says, snagging my arm, halting my escape.
“I think we’ve done all the talking we need to do,” I snap, yanking free.
Regret careens across his face, marring the beautiful features.
Because once I thought that his invading my life meant something, that he might want something special with me.
Not just a place to stick his dick or free cookies or a woman to clean up his shit.
I thought he might want…me.
Just Dommie.
Just a girl who’s no one special being wanted by a man who—
Made it abundantly clear a future that included wanting me wasn’t in the cards for him.
“Sunlight—”
Yeah, no.
Calling me that, now, after what he said and how he pushed me away and…all he made me feel?
I can deal with the invading of my life, the annoying presence when I’m capable of handling my own shit. I can even deal with him showing up at my place. He wants to fix my sink? Sure, knock himself out.
But calling me Sunlight?
That can’t happen.
And certainly not in that gentle voice paired with his hand lifting, fingers trailing down my throat.
That was what had given me the stupid hope, the thoughts of a future that might be.
That was what had hurt so fucking much when reality had smacked me back into my place.
“Don’t,” I snap.
His eyes flare with annoyance. “Dommie—”
I don’t focus on that. I can’t. Not when my gaze slides over his shoulder and I see the door to the walk-in slowly swinging shut.
Shit.
I lurch for it, but I’m too late.
It closes with a soft click.
One that can’t even begin to demonstrate how fucked I am.
Because the door to the walk-in is broken. Because the freaking handle that’s supposed to function to let someone out if the door shut on them doesn’t actually work.
Because now I’m trapped in this goddamned giant refrigerator with Walker Laine.
“Shit!” I hiss, moving over to the handle and jabbing at it anyway.
No surprise, the door doesn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
I glare over my shoulder at him, hoping he can see my fury in the dim overhead lights. “We’re trapped,” I growl. “The handle is broken, so we can’t get out.”
He’s standing beneath one of those bulbs and I watch his brows drag together. “That seems dangerous. What if you’re stuck in here and nobody is working?”
I let my glare intensify. “Well, I’m not normally confronted by annoying hockey players in the walk-in.”
A beat as he appears unfazed by my laser eyes. “That didn’t really answer my question, baby.”
Baby. Ugh. Why does that send a flutter through my insides?
I turn back, wrestle with the handle again. “I’m always just in and out,” but I’m unable to keep my gaze from his.
And those brows flick up, seeming to say, “That didn’t really answer my question either.”
I huff out a sigh. “Normally, I just call one of the other employees for help and they would come and let me out.”
“So why don’t you do that?”
Silence.
Annoying, long silence before I have to admit, “I don’t have my phone.”
His mouth quirks.
I hate him.
Detest him.
And I still think his little smirk is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
“I have my phone,” he says, pulling it out of his pocket and holding it up.
Thank God because—if I’m being truthful—I’m not sure I can yell loudly enough for them to hear me out front.
“But…” He tucks it away again, his voice transforming into velvet.
“What?” I ask, dread gathering in my belly.
That smirk widens.
“I’ll only let you use it if you agree to go on a date with me.”