Page 32 of Never Dance with the Devils

“Damn, you didn’t mention that you’re ambidextrous,” I groan, trying to joke, but it comes out more of a breathless pant.

“I’m whatever I need to be to get the job done,” she quips. I think she means it to sound like a joke too, but I’d bet that’s actually true for her in a larger way.

I want to give that the deeper thought it deserves, but it’ll have to be later because I collapse forward, my cum spurting over her hand and onto her beautiful face as I curse harshly. Beside me, I hear Riggs grunt and realize she’s got us both coming.

Fucking magical, beautiful, talented witch.

Kissing Kaylagoodbye Sunday afternoon is hard.

I want to follow her into the driveway, chase her back inside, and then gather her back into my arms again. But she has work tomorrow, and while it’s off-season for Riggs and me, meaning we have totally flexible schedules, it’s never off-season for Kayla. So I stand on the front steps, waving like a grinning idiot as her taillights pull away.

“What do you think?” Riggs asks, two fingers in the air in a goodbye of his own.

“She’s gonna pull a disappearing act on us again. One hundred percent chance of it.”

“Fuck,” he grunts, his arm falling to his side.

“It’s all good. We’ll just have to chase her again,” I say with a wink. “That’s half the fun, right?”

Riggs rolls his eyes hard and sighs heavily as he turns to go inside. I’m trying to keep it light and loose, but inside, I feel anything but. I can see the hurt in Kayla and it’s my nature to want to fix it, but she doesn’t need fixing. She’s perfect as she is. I just need to figure out how to outlast her hesitancy, get through her defenses, and land myself right in the middle of her heart so solidly that even she can’t deny that it’s where I belong. Where Riggs and I both belong.

But the same way it’d scare the shit out Kayla if I laid all that out at her feet, it’d terrify Riggs too. He’s gun-shy after Eliza, which was okay when we were casually fucking around. This isn’t casual, and he’s going to have to face his own demons and learn to trust again, no easy feat on the best of days and Riggs’s days haven’t been easy in a long time.

It’s going to be up to me to get us all where we need to be, and that’s if I don’t panic myself. I was telling the truth about not having any skeletons in my closet, but that doesn’t mean I’m some relationship guru. To the contrary, I don’t have stories precisely because I haven’t found anyone who made me want to split my singular focus on hockey. But now, I have—Kayla.

So, yeah, no biggie—just me, an inexperienced guy nobody ever takes seriously, trying to get a damaged guy and a hard-headed woman to admit that we can make an admittedly nontraditional relationship work. Oh, andwe all live very public lives. What could possibly go wrong?

“Did you text her?”I ask Riggs on Monday afternoon, wincing as the physical therapy assistant digs his little silver torture device into my hamstring. It needs a bit of extra attention after I strained it a couple of months ago during an overtime period, and that’s what the off-season is for—rest, recovery, rehabilitation beyond our usual season care. And Zeke’s the best, despite my currently wanting to stab him in the eye with that dull blade he’s pushing deeper into my hamstring to break up any knots.

Riggs cuts his eyes my way, his face showing no sign of pain even though another trainer is torturing his shoulder with the kind of deep tissue massage that hurts in order to heal. “Of course I did. Did you?”

“What’d you say?” He snorts out a laugh at my over-eager tone, and I can’t help but laugh at myself. “Yeah, I sound like a gossiping old granny wanting the tea. So spill it.”

“Good morning, beautiful,” he quotes, sounding like he thinks that’s Shakespearean-level poetry when it’s what any horny fourteen-year-old kid would text his first girlfriend.

“Seriously? That’s all the game you’ve got? That’s lame as fuck. Right, Zeke?” I get a quick nod of confirmation from him, though he’s probably not even really listening given he’s got one earbud in, listening to a podcast. And even if he were rapt at attention, he wouldn’t have an opinion on anythingpersonal. That’s their job—they hear nothing, see nothing, and know nothing other than our physical therapy plans and their implementation. Unless we’re doing something detrimental to the team. Then, they’d be reporting directly to Coach in Monopoly fashion, a.k.a. without passing go or collecting two hundred dollars.

Riggs shrugs his good shoulder. “What’d you send her?”

“A picture of my morning wood with ‘thinking of you’ as the caption,” I say with a shit-eating grin.

“You did not!” Riggs snaps.

“Mmm, maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” I drawl out, waggling my brows. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

I didn’t, but I’m not telling Riggs that. It’s good for him to get a little riled up sometimes, and I’ve decided that in this case, my mission is to get under his skin where Kayla is concerned so that he doesn’t try to play it aloof because, like Kayla, he’s at risk for a backslide too.

“Goddammit, Maddox. Don’t fuck this up for the both of us.”

Little does he know, I’m not fucking it up, I’m gonna fix it. The way I always do. It’s already working—he wants more with Kayla and me, the three of us as a unit.

Ha-ha… unit.

Hmm, maybe I really should send Kayla a picture of my dick?

“Pretty sure you’d be the one to do that. Trust me, I’ve got this all figured out.” I tap my temple reassuringly.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”