Page 199 of Power Play

When I finally softened and slipped from her, I didn’t go far. I pulled her back against me and tucked her into the curve of my body, my hand splayed low across her stomach.

Neither of us needed words. She was mine, and I was hers. For the first time in my life, I believed all the way down to my bones that I might be someone worth staying for.

13

Charm

Ryan’s alarm went off somewhere in the darkness beside us, loud enough to rip through the warmth of his bedroom and remind me that the tiny reprieve we’d been given was already ending.

I groaned before opening my eyes and tightened my arm around his waist as if I could physically convince time to cooperate.

Ryan laughed softly against the top of my head. “That’s not going to make it stop, mi hada.”

“It could if you believed in me a little more.”

“I believe in you plenty. I don’t believe you have the power to cancel morning skate from my bed.”

I cracked one eye open and immediately regretted it. Pale morning light had started pushing through the blinds, revealing the clothes scattered across his floor and the empty beer bottle sitting on the nightstand beside the alarm he still hadn’t bothered silencing.

“Ryan, make it die.”

His chest moved beneath my cheek when he laughed again. One long arm reached across me to smack the screen of his phone, and silence dropped over the room so abruptly that I sank deeper into him with a satisfied sigh.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, princesa.”

I was naked beneath his sheets and tangled around a naked Ryan like I had every intention of physically preventing him from leaving the mattress again. After everything he had told me last night and everything he had finally allowed me to see, waking up wrapped around him felt almost unbearably intimate.

The sex had changed something between us, but seeing his body had changed something too. I had spent months catching pieces of his tattoos. Now I understood what they meant. I knew his mother’s name, the truth of his history, and the neighborhood he still carried across his back. He had hidden everything in plain sight while the rest of the world saw ink, muscles, and an arrogant hockey player who could walk into any room knowing exactly how much attention followed him.

I knew what I was looking at now.

Ryan’s hand traveled lazily along my bare back beneath the sheet. “You’re thinking too loud.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“You don’t have to.”

“That’s incredibly annoying.”

“I know.”

I tilted my head to look at him. His hair was a disaster, and his face was softer with sleep than I was used to seeing. The sight did something uncomfortable to my chest because I knew what was coming next.

“You’re leaving again.”

The teasing faded from his expression. “Tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“You said that like I’m walking out the door in five minutes.”

“It feels like you just got here.”

“I did just get here.”

“Exactly.”