Cannon (Carolina Reapers 5)

Freshly showered and in nothing but athletic pants, a tight T-shirt, and a massive gear bag thrown over his shoulder, the man looked like a wet dream.

“Hey, Princess,” he said as he greeted me in the hallway.

Sounded like a wet dream too.

Damn him.

“You want to ride home with me?” He reached his free hand toward me but dropped it before he could touch my face. A motion I was getting unnervingly used to.

“I’d love to,” I said. “But I drove here.” My shoulders dropped, and without any really good reason. I lived with the man. I’d see him at home.

“We’ll get your car in the morning when I bring you back,” he said, and jerked his head toward the exit. I fell into step beside him, an easy quiet settling between us.

“How’d the pickup game go?” I asked after he’d ensured I was secured into the passenger seat of his massive car.

He pulled onto the street with a grunt. “I was a few seconds slower than Connell today.”

“Seconds,” I gasped. “That bad?” I teased.

He growled from the driver’s seat but kept his eyes on the road.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, eying the length of his body as if I could answer the question by merely looking.

“No,” he said. “Top shape.”

“Then what’s with the slowness?”

He spared me a glance of shock, but that rough laugh escaped his lips, causing all kinds of delicious chills to tickle my skin. “Slowness, she says.” He shook his head.

“Well, you are the faster skater in the NHL.”

“Says who?”

“Everyone.”

Another small laugh.

The car filled with a familiar quiet, the sweet weight of comfort draping around my shoulders. We’d settled into a rhythm I rather enjoyed, and it didn’t occur to me until today how beautiful our normal could be…if we’d let it. If he’d allow it.

And it wasn’t until he’d pulled into home that he finally admitted, “I was distracted.”

“By what?” I asked as I followed him into the house. I headed to the kitchen island as he dropped off his bag in the mudroom.

“Things,” he grumbled.

I pulled out the grilled chicken and veggie plates I’d prepped this morning and stuck them in the oven to heat them up.

“Care to share?” I asked, eying him as he took a seat at the island.

A debate raged in his eyes, one I knew could take hours, even days. That was Cannon…calculative, thoughtful—unless someone lit his fuse, then all bets were off. Except for me, I suppose. Because despite our ability to crash against each other in verbal waves of sass, he never once snapped on me.

We shared a quiet dinner, something we’d settled into the past weeks together, and he cleaned up while I got ready for bed. I didn’t push the subject, not when I knew Cannon had to come to me—like some wild feral jungle cat. If I pushed, he’d retreat so far I’d never see him again. Luckily for him, I had the patience of a saint.

I slipped into another one of Cannon’s shirts—this one a freshly washed Reaper shirt with his number on the back—and delighted in my newest nightly satisfaction, watching Cannon struggle with the sight.

“Damn you, Princess,” he growled from his spot in bed.

“What?” I asked innocently and spun around to show him the name scrawled across my back.

Another low growl.

I practically pranced to my side of the bed, alight with the game we’d been playing.

He grabbed the book off his nightstand, opening it to the page where we’d left off last night.

“You didn’t even want to take a gander at the book I brought home?” I teased.

He refused to look at me as I settled in next to him, close, but not close enough to touch.

“I saw it.”

“Did you find anything interesting in it?” My heart raced.

He gave me a good side-eye before returning focus to the book. “I didn’t find it funny if that’s what you mean.”

I gaped at him in faux shock. “Well, I would hope not. The Kama Sutra is no laughing matter.”

He laid the book against his chest, glaring at me.

I raised my hands. “I wouldn’t need a book if I had a teacher.”

A muscle in his jaw flexed before his tongue darted out to wet his lips. God, that little tick. It made heat pulse between my thighs.

“You don’t need a book, Princess.”

“Then you’ll do it?” I asked, breathless. “You’ll teach me?”

He swallowed hard and shook his head.

I pretended not to deflate, and instead nodded toward the book on his chest. “Where did we leave off?”

He scooped up the book, the breath rushing from his lungs like he was equally glad and disappointed I’d given up the fight.

Tomorrow I might push a little harder, but for now?

For now, I reveled in this.

The sound of his voice as he read from the pages of the book he’d decided to share with me. The feel of his warm body next to mine, the scent of him drenching the sheets and my skin despite not touching. I fell into this sweet, deep sense of happiness with Cannon beside me—something beyond lust, beyond forced proximity.