“Say it again.”
“I feel it too, Easton!”
Her confession, roared into the space between us, shattered the last of my control. I buried my face against her neck, my rhythm turning frantic, brutal, and perfect.
“Aura,” I chanted against her skin, every thrust punctuating her name. “Aura. Aura. Aura.”
Her second orgasm hit silently at first, her body locking around mine like a vise after one sharp intake of breath, before she screamed, a raw, broken sound of pure release as she clenched around me and dragged my climax from my body.
I came with a guttural shout, my hips slamming against hers one final, deep time as I emptied myself inside her, pleasure so intense it bordered on pain, white-hot and all-consuming.
For a long moment, only our ragged breathing and hammering hearts filled the room.
I slowly collapsed beside her and pulled her with me until she was half on top of me, her head against my chest, while I wrapped both arms around her and held her as close as physically possible.
The lamp remained on, casting our tangled limbs in warm light and leaving no darkness for either of us to hide inside, no pretense and no rules.
Her fingers traced idle patterns against my sweat-slicked chest while her breathing gradually evened into something slow and deep.
I pressed a kiss against the top of her head. “Stay.”
The word was quiet, but it hung in the air heavier than any declaration of love.
She didn’t answer with words. She shifted closer instead, nuzzling against me as her leg slid over mine, claiming me in sleep as thoroughly as I had claimed her awake.
In the amber glow of the lamp, with her weight solid and real against me, I knew it.
I loved her.
I didn’t say it. I only held her tighter, committing the feel of her, the scent of her, and the sound of her quiet breathing to a memory I knew would have to last a lifetime because I only ever had all of her that one week.
In Cade’s Rover, with Ryan in the passenger seat and Hockey House far behind us, that was all it was now—a memory of the night her rules broke and my heart followed.
10
Easton
Ryan’s apartment was exactly what I expected from him. It wasn’t cozy or warm in the way people meant when they talked about home, but it was clean with purpose. Everything had a place because men who grew up without control either learned how to build it or drowned trying.
Bookshelves lined nearly every wall, packed with every genre of literature imaginable. Classics sat beside horror, poetry, biographies, literary fiction, and battered paperbacks with broken spines. Other shelves held books on interpreting literature, criticism, writing craft, and enough annotated novels to prove Ryan’s English degree wasn’t decorative. Some books were stacked two rows deep, others sideways across the tops, the only abundance he allowed in an apartment built around restraint.
His boots were lined up near the door, Flint Frost gear hung over the back of a chair, and a half-zipped duffel sat near the couch because he had only just returned from Ontario. A roll of hockey tape held down a stack of mail on the counter like a paperweight with unresolved issues. Two mugs waited in the sink, protein powder stood beside the coffee maker, and one framed photo sat among the books, showing Ryan in his Fury jersey with the guys after a game sophomore year.
There were no family pictures or sentimental clutter. Nothing soft except the couch he pointed toward like it had personally offended him.
“Sit down before you put your fist through my drywall,” Ryan said.
“I’m not your charity case.”
“You’re bleeding on my floor.”
I looked at my hand. My knuckles were split again, which meant my body had decided to keep physical evidence of every terrible decision I made that night. “Your floor’s ugly anyway.”
“It matches my personality. Sit.”
I sat because fighting him over the couch felt pathetic, and I had reached my quota for public humiliation forty minutes ago when I lost my shit at Hockey House and put half the room on alert like I was a natural disaster with blond hair.
Ryan moved around the apartment without fussing, which was one of the only reasons I tolerated him right then. He didn’t hover or use the careful voice people adopted when they wanted to make sure you knew they were being kind. He grabbed a clean towel from a kitchen drawer, tossed it against my chest, then pulled a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and dropped it onto the coffee table.
