Meet Your Match (Kings of the Ice, #1)(93)

“What’s got you smiling like that?” he asked, kissing behind my ear.

I turned in his arms, framing his face as he wrangled my hair in his hands.

“You know how much I hate to say this, but I think you were right.”

He bit his lip on a moan. “God, that is such a turn on. Say it again.”

I poked his ribs, and he laughed, kissing my nose before he pulled back to watch me. The blue of the water played with the green in his hazel eyes, bringing it to life more than I’d ever seen before. Those eyes were mine to stare at now for as long as I wanted.

“What was I right about?” he asked.

I leaned into him, planting a kiss to his chin. “I really did meet my match.”

The laugh that barreled out of him was my favorite sound in the world.

And he was my favorite person.




The End





We Ride At Dusk



Jaxson



She blew back into my life not like a storm, but like the sun — hidden behind a dark cloud but still shining all the same.

There wasn’t a day that had passed where I hadn’t thought about Grace Tanev, about the night I spent with her. It was just a party bus and a rowdy night out with the team celebrating Vince winning the Calder Trophy, and yet, it had been like an awakening.

My whole life, I’d been waking in a fog, in a dense and heavy cloud that I thought would stay with me forever.

But one night with her had brought in the sun.

Of course, I’d spent the better half of the last two weeks doing my level best to erase her and that night from my mind. Because it didn’t matter how easily the conversation came, how heartily she’d made me laugh, or how my body had hummed to life with her hips in my hands as we danced in a crowded club.

Grace was off limits.

Not only was she already in a relationship, but she was also eight years younger than me.

She was also my teammate’s little sister.

That was a hurdle not even I could jump.

I’d done a somewhat decent job of letting the idea of her go. I had resisted the urge to look her up on social media, had ignored the fact that she’d given me her number, that she’d put it in my phone before we said our goodbye.

Because that was exactly what it was — a goodbye.

Until it wasn’t.

“You really want to lose your money that badly?” Vince asked Carter with a whistle, shaking his head. We were at his new place on the beach, half of it still littered with boxes, waiting for Will to show up so we could hit our tee time. “You know my game puts yours to shame.”

“I’ve been practicing. Besides, you’ve been so busy crawling up Maven’s ass, my bet is you’ll be too distracted to play.”

“Hey, leave my ass out of this,” Maven called from the kitchen where she was organizing glassware in the cabinets.

“But it’s the best one I’ve ever seen,” Carter said with a pout, which earned him a slug on the arm from Vince.

“Gotta say I agree on that one,” I piped in, ducking before Vince had the chance to pull me into a chokehold. “I still dream about that yellow dress…”

Vince shoved Carter out of the way and started chasing me, and I dodged the coffee table and hopped over the couch, staying just out of reach. Carter started humming the Benny Hill theme song, clapping his thighs in time with the bazooka sounds he was making with his mouth like we were Tom & Jerry.

I was sliding on my socks around the kitchen island, half-hiding behind a laughing, red-faced Maven, when a figure appeared in the foyer. I thought it was Daddy P at first, so I kept up the charade. But when a suitcase was dropped to the marble floor and a soft cry followed behind it, we all stopped, our heads snapping in that direction.

And there she was.

Staring right at me.

Those green eyes I’d fallen so easily into that night in Austin were glossy and red, her button-nose the same rosy shade. The bags under her eyes were a terrible shade of purple and gray, her shoulders slumped, bottom lip trembling the longer she stood there without anyone saying a word. She was petite, even in heels, but standing there in flip flops, she was so slight, so small, like a little mouse.

Her long, straight blonde hair that had blurred my vision the night I twirled her around on the dance floor in Austin was a tangled mess, dirty and greasy and dull. She’d covered it with a ripped-up ball cap that said Asshole on it.

But even with her lips in a flat line, I could remember her smile.

I could remember her laugh, her ridiculous dance moves, her even more ridiculous questions.

I remembered everything.

As put out as she looked, her bronze skin still blazed against the white t-shirt she wore, against the tiny jean shorts she paired it with, like she had been at the beach for weeks. Her shirt had a cartoon of an opossum wielding a gun like a cowboy, and the text under it said we ride at dusk.

I would have laughed, if the sight of her didn’t make my chest spark with something possessive and feral.

She looked like hell, like she’d been through hell, and yet she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Before I could think better of it, I started toward her — at the very same time Vince did. He gave me a strange look before I stopped in my tracks and he continued on, rushing to his sister and wrapping her in a fierce hug.