From the lawn chair, Brakkor called out without looking up from where he continued to nuzzle his Mate’s neck. “I have excellent tongue technique.”
“I know,” I shot back. “I taught you.”
Jocelyn was blushing, and now she managed to extricate herself from Brakkor’s grip and push herself to her feet. “Your tongue is only forty percent of the reason I love you,dkaar.”
Hearing her use the orcish word made me like her even more, and the way my brother grinned—pride and excitement andjoy? That made it even better. He cupped her rear end in what was probably intended to be a smack before he got distracted, and murmured, “Love you too, Kitten.”
I still wasn’t sure how an asshole like Brakkor had softened enough to convince Jocelyn to give him a chance, but as I understood it, it had something to do with the two of them hooking up more or less anonymously, then running into each other again at Korrad’s wedding—Jocelyn was Kesha’s best friend.
I guess shelikedmales who chose bluntness over politeness, but there’s no accounting for taste.
Or maybe the tongue thingwasthe secret to a male’s success.
I made a mental note to ask Lila.
Speaking of whom…my attention shifted, and I was already turned toward the back door whenmyMate breezed out, looking like she belonged here on this beach island, in that pink sundress.
She was smiling when she met my gaze, and how could I not smile in return?
“Speaking of happiness,” Korrad announced, pretending to keep his attention on the ribs. “You made two goals in that last game, and one in each of the games before it.”
“Yeah.” I slid my free hand around Lila, tucking her up against my side. “Apparently, someone convinced me that the team needs my particular brand of berserking.”
“I think I called itenergetic drive,” Lila announced primly, her cheeks already turning pink. “Notberserking. That’s not even a word.”
“I think you called it somethingelse,” I murmured against her hair, and she inhaled sharply and smacked my chest with the back of her hand.
“Don’t talk about that in front of your family!”
“What?” I kissed her temple, then pulled back, knowing she was becoming embarrassed. “I just meanttalent. You said I had talent. On the ice.”
“Right,” Brakkor called out as he struggled out of the chair. “We’ve all seen clips of that ice dancing shit you pulled off. How come you never did that whenwelived in Colorado?”
“Because I wanted to make it through a practice?”
Lila hushed me and raised a challenging brow at Brakkor. “One of those goals he scored this week wasbecauseof thatice dancing shit. He managed a cross-roll, which completely baffled the Silver Slayers’ goalie, and?—”
Brakkor interrupted her with his laughter, holding his palm out for peace. “I know, Lila, I just have to give mylittle brother crap. He knows we’re proud of him. Teaching an old dog new tricks and whatever.”
Before I could respond—and since Brakkor rarely talked about his feelings, I wasn’t surehowto respond—his Mate poked him. “An old dog? Kardok isyoungerthan you.”
As he captured her hand and pulled her in for a kiss, I realized I was grinning. Like…reallygrinning, hard enough my cheeks hurt. I squeezed Lila and felt her sigh happily.
“Thanks for bringing me here, Kardok,” she murmured.
“Thanks for coming with me.”
Korrad was focused on moving the ribs to a large platter. “It’s about time you came out to visit. We expected you over the summer, but you were too busy pouting about your loss in the playoffs?—”
“I wasbusylearning how to do a cross-roll,” I corrected him, smirking down at Lila. “But yeah, I should’ve made time.”
“You’re right where you need to be,T’mak,” he said firmly, turning to me with the platter in his hands. “But you don’t need to wait until the next time you have a game on the East Coast to visit, you know. Eastshore’s orc community is growing, and our harvestKap’paralis epic.”
He was right; the only reason I’d finally gotten around to visiting the island was because we’d played the Atlanta team over the weekend, and I’d talked Coach Ellis into giving me a few extra days before I had to be back for practice.
Now that Lila was splitting her time between the ice complex and her old job, she seemed happier…like she cared less what other people thought of her. Or maybe that was my influence? All I knew was that seeing her working with the youth pairs skaters—her coaching style was more hands-on than Joshua’s—really made me happy.
My Mate was at home at the Bramblebluff Ice Complex, and so was I.
