Page 98 of Heartless As Puck

“Say something, Jane. Please. Because the truth is that I love you. I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere along the way, you became indispensable. Please be with me. If you want me to hang my skates up at the end of the season because the media attention is too much, we can discuss that. If you’re concerned because we don’t know where I’m going to end up next year, we can talk through it and make a plan. Just give me a chance.”

Wow. My eyes widened. I hadn’t expected that.

I cupped his face in my hands. “I don’t want you to choose me over your career. I…”

Did I love him?

The thought of leaving him made my heart hurt. The idea of one day looking at the front of a magazine and seeing him with another woman made me murderous.

Everything had changed so quickly that my emotions had been all jumbled up, but looking down at him, hearing how he felt about me, everything became clear.

“I love you too,” I told him, bending to press my lips to his. “I can’t promise to ever like public attention, but I’m willing to deal with it if it means getting to be with you. As for the rest, we’ll work it out.”

“You mean it?” He searched my gaze. “I know I can be difficult. Arrogant sometimes. Not the best at communicating, and I’m overly focused on hockey. But I promise to do everything I can to make sure you don’t regret choosing me.”

“I mean it.” I laughed. “You are everything I want, exactly as you are. You have my heart, Austin Harris.”

His smile was breathtaking. “I’ll protect it with everything I have.”

I shuffled back on the chair. “Get up. Kneeling there can’t be doing your knees any favors.”

“Only if you come over here and sit on my lap.”

I rolled my eyes, secretly pleased as I rose and made myself comfortable on his muscular thighs. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close, peppering kisses along the side of my neck and jaw. I turned my head to meet his lips.

The kiss tasted of joy. If you’d asked me a few days ago how joy tasted, I would’ve had no idea, but now I could confidently say that it was the perfect combination of chocolate and man, with a faint hint of peanut, as if he’d stolen one of the peanut protein cookies he loved so much from the pantry earlier in the day.

I melted into him and reveled in the delicious slide of his tongue against mine. His hand curved around the side of my neck and a frisson of awareness ran through me. For some reason, I really liked having his big hand around one of my most vulnerable places. It wasn’t cutting off my air, just existing and grounding me in the moment.

I moaned and felt around, blindly pulling up the hem of his shirt and edging my hand beneath the waistband of his pants to cup his cock. He rocked his hips into my palm and I stroked his erection, loving how much he wanted me.

“Wait,” he breathed against my lips. “Your family is in the house.”

I grinned. “So?”

“So we just got caught doing something we shouldn’t, and we probably ought to behave ourselves with other people around.”

I snuggled closer to him. “None of them are going to sell us out to the media. We’re in your bedroom. Where else is safer for us to be doing this?”

He chuckled, and the rumble of it excited me. “You’re supposed to be responsible, not the devil on my shoulder.”

I sighed. He was right. “We can go back out there right now.”

He grabbed my hips and held me in place. “Wait… Are you really game for this?”

TWENTY-EIGHT

AUSTIN

“I’m game.” Jane kissed me. “But if anyone interrupts us, I’m saying that you corrupted me.”

I laughed. “Because you were just such a sweet little princess before I came along.”

Somehow, it made it even funnier that so many people would believe that. To be fair, she was sweet. But beneath her reserved exterior, she was far from a delicate princess in need of rescuing.

Jane stripped her shirt off and I found myself thinking once again of how good she’d look cheering for me in the stands with my number on her back.

“We’re getting you one of my jerseys,” I told her as my greedy eyes scanned her bare belly and slender shoulders.