I started to pull away, but his grip tightened. He didn’t squeeze hard, only enough to stop me.
“Stay.”
One word.
Quiet but certain.
“Sky, you need to sleep, and I have a—”
“Stay.” He said it again, softer this time, his thumbs running across my knuckles. “Not for . . . I don’t want you to leave yet. Please.”
The please undid me.
It always would.
How could I refuse this man when he looked so earnest and adorable and completely pitiful?
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay? Really?”
I nodded, and he kissed me again, a simple, pure joy flowing through his lips.
His bedroom was simple and clean—a king bed with navy sheets, a nightstand stacked with hockey biographies, and blackout curtains drawn against the city lights. It smelled like him, that mix of manly athletic soap and something warm underneath that I’d started associating with a feeling of home.
He pulled back the covers and climbed into bed, then looked at me with an expression that was halfinvitation, half uncertainty.
“Do you want to . . . I mean, are you comfortable sleeping in your clothes, or—”
“I sleep naked, but if—”
“Naked’s good,” he said faster than I could finish. Before I could slip my shirt over my head, his silk and cotton flew past me in a blur.
“Can’t let you go naked without me. That’d be rude.”
I shook my head and chuckled. This man was going to kill me.
“Can’t have you being rude, Mr. Gentleman Hockey Star.”
I stripped down to my boxers and tossed my button-down on a chair by the window. When I turned back, Skyler was watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite name.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just . . .” He shook his head. “Those need to go, too.”
I looked down at my simple boxers and shrugged. I’d never been shy about getting naked. In one smooth motion, cotton hit the floor.
Skyler smiled as his eyes sparkled with mischief.
But before he could say a word, I slid under the covers.
For a moment, we lay on our backs, side by side,staring at the ceiling like two kids at a sleepover who didn’t know the rules, then Skyler shifted onto his side and reached for me.
“Come over here.”
He pulled me toward him, my back against his chest, his arm wrapping around my waist. His legs tangled with mine, his chin resting on the top of my head, and suddenly I was enveloped in two hundred and ten pounds of warm, solid Skyler Shaw.
I was the small spoon.
