Page 47

Brett wouldn't have noticed the hesitation. Brett wouldn't have looked.

Miles curls behind me under the blankets, and his enormous body wraps around mine like the world's most muscular duvet.

His chest presses warm against my back and one gorgeously strong arm settles beneath my breasts. His mouth brushes the back of my neck, kissing me softly as the fire pops softly across the room.

This is the part that terrifies me.

Not the orgasm. Not his mouth or his hands or the fact that I screamed loud enough to require an apology card for the whole sixth floor.

This. The holding. The warmth.

The way my body reacts to his like we've known each other our entire lives.

"Christmas only," I say into the dark.

His arm doesn't move. "You mentioned that."

"No promises. No future decisions. When the tournament ends, this ends."

He doesn't argue. He doesn't sigh or go stiff or make me manage his feelings, the way I've managed everyone's feelings my entire life.

He just presses one kiss to my shoulder and pulls me in tighter, and his breathing slows as I lie awake in the arms of a man who ate me alive, refused my hands, and asked for nothing in return.

I wake up alone, and for approximately four seconds I experience genuine outrage.

Then I smell coffee.

I sit up, my hair doing something wild in the mirror, and discover my suite has been invaded by breakfast.

"Miles?"

A room-service trolley waits beside the windows, dressed in white linen with a sprig of holly in a tiny vase, and it is loaded.

Cinnamon French toast is stacked three high and glistening with syrup that pools at the edges of the plate. There are warm berries steaming in a little copper pot and a basket of pastries so flaky they're shedding all over enough bacon to feed the entire Wildcards roster.

There's coffee in a silver pot beside a cup already prepared with a splash of cream, and no sugar. Exactly how I take it.

Beyond the glass, snow blankets the resort while the rink staff clear the ice under the early lights.

"Ah! Good morning!"

Miles steps out of the bathroom and moves to stand by the fireplace, fully dressed, hair damp, looking so unreasonably good in a dark shirt that I briefly consider canceling breakfast in favor of dragging him back into bed.

"Well, well," I say, pulling the blanket around my bare chest. "If it isn't the world's most muscular walk of shame."

"There's no shame in this walk." He grabs my coffee and carries it over like it's the most natural thing in the world. "But I've got a team meeting in forty minutes, and if the captain gets caught leaving the liaison's suite at seven a.m., Nate will absolutely have it printed on t-shirts by lunch."

"He does move fast."

"He's already made shirts about Baxter. Nobody knows what they say though because Eden confiscated the box."

I take the coffee and taste it, and it's perfect, and that's the problem.

He's found my robe and draped it over the foot of the bed, ordered the French toast I stared at on the menu yesterday, and even remembered not to add the cream without asking.

Domestic warmth has broken into my temporary arrangement and started rearranging the furniture.

"Hope you don't mind, but I should probably get out of here." Miles pulls out his phone. "Give me your number. I want to see you later without alerting the entire roster. Those idiots watch me like hawks."