Brogan (Carolina Reapers 9)

“Shush,” I cut him off, looking up at him from where I kneeled before him. “Just let me…touch you.” I’d almost said love again.

He leaned back against the couch, a purely confident grin on his face as he watched me wrap my hand around his already hard cock. And everything inside me shifted when I lowered my head, keeping my eyes on him while I took his massive length into my mouth.

The panic evaporated, replaced by the passion between us neither one of us could deny. And when he growled as I swirled my tongue down the length of his shaft only to draw back and suck on the head of his cock? Something else flooded me right alongside desire—love. I couldn’t deny it, and I didn’t want to. But I certainly couldn’t help being terrified of something so big, so life-altering.

I bobbed up and down, taking him in as much as I possibly could before pulling out and teasing him with my tongue again. Over and over, I sucked him, teased him, stroked him until we were both wound up so tight I didn’t know who would break first.

He tangled his fingers in my hair, drawing me back enough that he slipped from my mouth with a popping sound.

“Come here,” he said, his voice so damn tender it made my heart skip. I stood up as he urged, and he slid my yoga pants down to my ankles. I stepped out of them, and he tugged on my hips until I straddled him on the couch.

I cupped his face in my hands, slowly inching my lips down to his as I settled on top of him. A moan escaped my lips as I took him into the hilt in one slow, sweet motion.

He captured my mouth, sliding his tongue between my lips, grazing along the edges of my teeth as I rocked over him.

I trembled when he wrapped his arms around me, holding me to him tighter. And then we broke our kiss, our eyes locking as I continued to move on him. Chest to chest, nose to nose, there was barely an inch of space between us. And I couldn’t tear my eyes off his as I made love to him.

Love, not lust.

That’s what this felt like. Where he held me tight and took his time, where he watched me and drank in my moans, where he kissed me like I was priceless to him, where he looked at me like I was the answer to every question he’d ever had.

We connected on every level, not just physical and I felt that combine with the relentless pleasure that ripped through my body as we came together.

This was more than convenience, more than a passing infatuation.

This was love.

And now there was no going back.

15

Brogan

The winning streak broke, but it was bound to.

When you played eighty games a year, it’s not like going undefeated was ever an option. But we were still winning more than we were losing, and still ranked number one in the conference.

I ignored every whisper from every reporter suggesting that this might be our year, and refused to even turn on the television to hear what ESPN had to say. The only game tape I’d been reviewing was the stuff coach assigned us. The pressure was on, that was for sure, but the second I walked in my front door‚ I belonged to my girls, period.

Hell, the second I got off the ice. I’d even somehow gotten used to Fiona driving us home after home games. It gave me time to think out anything that was bothering me before we pulled into the garage. My temper might get the best of me on the ice, and fine—off it, too, when it came to reporters, but I never brought that shit home.

Maxim, however, was the shade of a ghost as I drove us home from the airport.

“You are going to have to find a way to relax,” I told him as I pulled onto the interstate, the engine purring as I accelerated into traffic.

“We lost.” He shook his head. “I should have been faster on that breakaway in the third, or known he was going glove-side in the first—”

“If masochism was an Olympic sport you would be the gold medalist, you know that?” I shook my head, glad that Sterling wasn’t in the car. The brothers were still awkward at times, but this game…well, Sergei had been there.

If I could blame Maxim’s less-than-perfect performance on anything—and the guy had played at ninety-five percent—it would be his asshole of a father watching from the stands. Nothing fucked Maxim up like Sergei. Sterling, on the other hand, had the opposite reaction. That guy lived for showing up his old man, and his glove had been on fire tonight in Nashville.