AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I understoodexactlywhat was happening here.
The call cut off, then immediately started up again. “You really should get that.”
He ignored me, stepped even closer, having to stoop a great deal to meet my eyes. I wished he hadn’t bent, hadn’t met my gaze. I could live another ten lifetimes without having to see that. “This shouldn’t have happened,” he said, the words soft, but no less eviscerating.
My armor rattled, threatened to fall to the floor under the force of that blow.
I held tight to it, anyway.
“What shouldn’t have happened?” I asked dryly, watching his brows slam down, his eyes close off. “You fucking me? Or me fucking you?” A careless shrug. “Can’t go back and erase it.” I flashed a grin. “But it was decent and got my mind off the stress of the fire for a little while, so that’s a thing. Now, I’ve got shit to do—” I turned to the door, reached for the knob.
His hand came to my forearm, squeezing just tightly enough that I remembered him holding me in bed, fiercely powerful, his strength barely banked as he’d fucked me hard and deep, seemingly a hairsbreadth away from losing the last vestiges of his control.
It had been exhilarating, all that intensity.
But…it wasn’t for me.
I’d just thought that, for a minute, it could be.
His cell began ringing a third time.
“That sounds important,” I said, nodding toward the hall, toward the ringing phone and doing it by leaning into a tactic that was sure to get him to back off, “but then again, you’ll probably keep ignoring it.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Because you’re good at hockey”—I shrugged again—“but we both know you’re better at ignoring your responsibilities.”
Fury in those eyes.
“God,” he muttered, dropping his hand. “I can’t believe I was insidethat.”
Another blow to my armor, but as I’d prepared for it, my armor stayed in place.
“Buh-bye now,” I said snarkily, giving him a finger wave.
Then I wrenched the knob.
And got the fuck out.
Three
Joel
“I’m sorry,” Bailey whispered, not moving, probably because Axel, one of my best friends and former teammates, was sleeping next to her.
He looked like he’d had all of five minutes of rest in the last two months.
Dark circles beneath dark circles, pale ass skin—pallid even for a hockey player. Stubble on his face, hair a mess, clothes wrinkled. But he was asleep next to the woman he loved, the one who’d he’d thought was lost and spent the last days searching for.
They’dallspent the last days looking for Bailey.
Lost as the fire had come for the town, her warning enough that most of the River’s Bend had been evacuated safely.
Except for the ranches on the far side of town.
Where Bailey had lived.
And now, where none of her neighbors did.
