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Reid shakes his head in disbelief as he takes another shot after Twlyer lands her tenth quarter in a row, directly in the red party cup across the table.

“It’s a gift.” She grins, and the action lights up her face. Other than a little smear of mascara under her eyes, there’s no evidence of her earlier upset.

At first, she didn’t want to play, but the guys egged her on, pushing at her buttons until she relented. Me? I just sat back and watched my girl go on a winning streak.

“Rematch?” she asks Reid, holding up her lucky quarter.

“Nope. I’m out,” he says, eyeing a puck bunny across the room. Guess whatever happened between him and Nadia was mutual.

“Anyone?” Twyler asks, looking around the room.

It’s getting late, and the adrenaline the guys came into the party with has started to fade. They’re either drunk or horny—or both—and ready to settle down.

Reaching out, I grab Twyler by the waist, dragging her in my lap. “Looks like you’re the reigning champion, Sunshine,” I tell her, pressing a kiss to her cheek. It’s been hard to keep my hands off her tonight. She turns to face me, and her eyes are clear enough to tell me that the beer she drank over the last two hours hasn't given her more than a slight buzz. She shifts again, dragging her ass over my dick in the process. The innocent look in her eye tells me she has no fucking clue what she’s doing to me. It’s sweet.

And frustratingly hot.

I desperately want to taste her again. Full mouth, lots of tongue.

But we made an agreement and I’m not seeing a loophole here.

“You spending the night, Twy?” Jefferson asks, grabbing two bottles of water out of the cooler on the porch. I shoot him a dirty look and he winks back. I know what he’s doing. He knows Twyler hasn’t spent the night yet and he’s trying to get me laid.

“Nah,” I say, resting a hand on her thigh. “I’m going to walk her back soon.”

“You know,” she says, brushing her fingers over my knuckles, “maybe I should just stay.”

“If you want.” I don’t know who she’s saying it for. Jefferson, to continue the ruse, or herself, because she doesn’t want to go home. If I had to guess, this is about Nadia. “I’m happy for you to stay.”

“Aww, have fun, you two,” Jeff says, gesturing for the girl waiting for him by the doorway to follow him up the stairs. “See you two in the morning.”

Slowly everyone takes off. Some for home, some for couches or beds inside. It’s not unusual to wake up to five guys sprawled out in the living room after a party. I nudge Twyler. “You sure you want to spend the night here?”

“Is that okay?”

“Of course it’s okay.” I ease her off my painfully throbbing dick and rise off the chair. “I just don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Leading her up the stairs, I take her to my room. It’s tidy-ish, although I didn’t expect to have a girl up here tonight. The bed is made, a habit from childhood, and most of my clothes, clean and dirty, are in separate baskets. My desk is a mess, but that’s how I keep it, relying on some kind of internal organization system.

“So this is where the magic happens,” she says, walking over to my dresser. She lifts the MVP award I got last season, despite the shit show at the Frozen Four. I kick off my shoes and when I look up again, she’s studying a poster hanging on the wall. She juts her thumb at it. “You go to bed every night looking at your face?”

“I mean, you could bring me a photo of you—preferably in a bikini—and I’d happily go to sleep looking at you every night.”

It’s not a bad idea.

She rolls her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

“The team PR department gave me that after I was named captain. I left it rolled up in the tube it came in. Jefferson and Axel thought it would be hilarious to hang it up.” I shrug. “I just didn’t move it.”

While Twyler snoops around my room, I grab a pillow off the bed and an extra blanket from the closet. I toss both on the chair in the corner of the room. She turns and says, “What are you doing?”

“Sleeping in the chair. You can take the bed.”

“What? No.” She shakes her head. “You take the bed; I’ll sleep on the chair.”

We stare at one another for a long beat, a standoff brewing between us. I break it off first, dropping my hands to the hem of my shirt and pulling it over my head.

“Did you just use your chest as a way to distract me and get your way?”