Maxim (Carolina Reapers 10)

“I can hear you,” I said.

Evie giggled, and it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.

“Hey, Max!” Mila responded with a laugh.

I popped my head over Evie’s shoulder. “I don’t want to hear about scrumptious men.”

“Well, I wasn’t telling you. I was telling Evie.” She stuck her tongue out at me. “And these Italian men would love them some Evie.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

“Yeah, right.” Evie rolled her eyes.

My gaze narrowed.

“Anyway, I have to haul your brother to the basement to reshoot this project, so you’d better get back to those scrumptious guys!” Evie blew Mila a kiss.

“Tell me more about this project!” Mila shouted.

“Bye, Mila,” I said over Evie’s shoulder, giving my sister a wave.

“Tell me more! I need details!”

Evie just laughed and said goodbye before hanging up.

“Shall we?” I asked Evie.

“I promise it shouldn’t take long. The critiques were more about my choices on positioning than anything else,” she said with a grimace.

“Whatever you need.”

The only thing I ever really needed was you. Her drunken words from last week punched me in the stomach as I looked down into those captivating eyes.

My gaze dropped to her mouth.

Her lips parted.

Fuck, I wanted to kiss her, and not just because I was headed off to a game and it had become our little good luck ritual. I wanted her tongue in my mouth and her hair twisted between my fingers. Heat blasted through my body, singeing my nerve-endings.

Ice. Ice would be good.

“Let’s get this done.” Shit, my voice sounded like it had been hauled across a field of broken bottles.

“Right. Yeah.” She nodded quickly and pivoted, grabbing her camera bag off the counter.

Five minutes later, I was skating toward her, following her every direction, and doing everything in my power to keep my mind on my footwork and off the curves I knew were under that sweater.

Curves for fucking days.

Curves I desperately wanted to see, to touch, to explore with my mouth.

At some point in the last two months, Evie had gone from being the girl I only thought about as my little sister’s best friend to the only girl I thought about, period.

“Maxim?” she asked, her head cocked to the side.

Shit, she’d asked me a question and I hadn’t been listening. “Yeah?”

“I asked how good you are at stopping?” She lowered her camera slightly and raised her brows.

“Meaning?” I stood on the blue line as she skated over to the net.

“Meaning, if I put myself right here, can you skate your fastest toward me and then not hit me? You know, stop right before you get to me? Or is that too much to—”

I took off toward her, eating up the ice with my strides and keeping my eyes locked on her widening ones. Then I shifted my weight, throwing myself into the stop, and came to a halt inches away from her before bracing my hands on the top rail of the goal, pinning her in. “I’d say I’m pretty good at stopping.”

She blew out her breath in a little pant that hit my chin as she tilted her head up toward mine.

My heart pounded, and it wasn’t the exercise. It was a direct result of being this close to her and that bright, clean, floral scent she always wore. I loved that she always smelled like spring, fresh and light. It was a scent that I couldn’t get out of my head, a scent that never hung around in the air for long, a scent I was only privileged enough to catch because she allowed me to be this close to her.

“Is there anything you aren’t good at?” she asked, staring at my mouth.

“Words,” I whispered, lowering my head and brushing my mouth over hers. “I do better with actions.” I pushed off the goal before I could do something incredibly stupid, like sink my tongue past her teeth and test out the acoustics in here with the sounds of her moans.

My dick pulsed.

That whisper of a kiss had been a bad idea, but that was par for the course around here, lately.

“Shall we?” I asked, skating backward.

“Umm. Yeah.” She nodded and crouched down, just inside the net. “Just don’t hit me with the puck.”

“Never.” I scoffed, the corners of my mouth turning up at the corners. Did she have to be so…earnest? So funny? I’d never met a woman that I lusted after and laughed with, and the combination was pure kryptonite.

She gave me the signal, and I took off, focusing purely on her instead of the lens or the net. She was my goal, my purpose, my endgame. The stick, the skates, the puck were all just tools taking me toward her. The sound of her camera clicking filled the rink, and I fired the puck, sending it into the net above her right shoulder, missing her by at least a foot. Then I threw on the brakes, my weight shifting as snow sprayed up at her, the camera clicking the whole time.