Page 119 of The Puck Bunny

She gives me a playful swat and puts the car in gear for me.

* * *

I groan when I see that it’s almost three in the morning, but I can’t complain. Because I wouldn’t trade sleep for a single minute of our lovemaking. She’s laying with her back to me and I pull her closer, feeling my sleepy cock nestle in that perfect crevice of her backside.

“What could possibly cause you to groan here and now in heaven on earth,” she asks.

“Are you staying the night?” I ask again.

“I can’t.” She sits up and sees the bedside clock, then groans. “Oh crap. I have to go.”

“I could drive you to your parents’ in the morning before practice.” I repeat my earlier offer.

“Thank you, honey buns, but I don’t want you dropping me off in the morning at my parents’ house. Even if he knows better, Dad’s old-fashioned and I respect that.”

“What happened to that independent woman?”

“She promised to have breakfast with her dad.” She kisses me, then leaves my bed.

“Someday, you’ll have to have breakfast with me in the morning.” I’m not sure if I’m warning her or asking her to promise me.

“I know.” She caresses my jawline, running her hand over my morning beard. “That’s all the more reason I need to make the most of these breakfasts with him. We’ve grown close in the last month. It’s been one of the other beautiful things that have happened while I was falling in love with you.”

My chest tightens with her words because they still seem impossible. She seems like an impossible combination of everything I had no idea I wanted and needed. “Before you go, I have a question.”

“Another one?” She laughs and collapses back on the bed against me.

“This is serious.” I take a breath. “Now that the dust has settled, tell me if you loved my mid-ice proposal or if you’d rather I waited until we were alone, like now?”

“Honestly?”

“There’s no other way to answer,” I tell her.

“I didn’t need the theatrics or the over-the-top ring. I would have been yours no matter how you proposed.”

“Did you mind?”

“Of course not.” She laughs. “It’s who you are. I know that. You have—”

“Don’t say it.” I put a finger over her mouth.

She nibbles it so I snatch it away because this is important.

“I’m always going to have some Hollywood in me.” I shrug. “It’s who I am, but only on the surface. There’s a whole lot more underneath. You know that, right?”

“I think I like those under-the-surface parts best—but you know I love all of you just the way you are because you’re a good, kind, generous, knock-out of a man and I love you to the moon. Even the showy part of you, and I will always worship the ground you walk on because you cherish me the way I am, too.”

“You’re killing me, sweetheart.” It’s all I can do to keep the emotions from choking me up.

“I love you, too,” she says. “Always.” She lifts her hand with her new diamond ring and watches it sparkle in the light.

And I watch her sparkle in the light of my love, the kind of love that comes from the most real and true places in me, the kind that isn’t for show.

EPILOGUE

QUINN

Hockey fucking rocks. The Brawlers rock and I’m the luckiest fuck in the locker room. We’re in the playoffs and I’m still scoring goals while scoring in bed every night with my one-and-only puck bunny.