Page 41 of Never Dance with the Devils (Never Say Never #6)

I feel Kayla’s eyes turn to me, see her smile in my peripheral vision.

“I wish.” A moment later, she sighs, turning her attention back to the fire.

Her voice is matter-of-fact as she says, “Cole has probably already tracked me down and knows I’m out here.

The two of you too. Chances are fair to good that he’ll leave us alone for the weekend, but if Cameron reports me missing at work on Monday morning, Cole will absolutely swarm the cabin like SEAL Team 6.

No doubt.” She shrugs like that’s totally normal behavior, but it sounds weird as hell to me, like her brother is Liam Neeson with a special set of skills I should be worried about.

“Or, there’s always the chance he’ll go for an ambush attack and strike sooner rather than later, so if you see a flashbang, don’t panic.

It’s just my brother.” She chuckles, but it sounds forced.

She’s missing them, I’d bet my signed Bobby Hull puck on it. And her worries about how dinner went are catching up to her. She might be fighting her brothers right now, but Kayla is a family girl through and through, so being at odds with them must feel strange.

“Have they called or texted since you no-showed?” Riggs asks, his voice low and tight. He hasn’t let it go that they invaded her apartment with hurtful judgments and ugly accusations and is mad at them on Kayla’s behalf. He’s looking for another reason to stew in his righteous anger.

“I have no idea.” She suddenly bursts into hysterical laughter that has me and Riggs glancing at each other in concern for her mental well-being. “I turned. My phone. Off,” she manages to huff out between giggles. “I’ve never done that. Ever.”

“Shit, girl. Your brother’s definitely gonna SWAT us and take us down for kidnapping.” I look at the dark woods around us dramatically. “What was that?” I jerk my head the other way. “Did you hear that?”

“Don’t panic, but there’s a red light on your forehead.” She taps her own forehead, right in the middle. “It’s probably fine, though, right?” She laughs harder, louder… lighter.

Kayla Harrington is like an entirely different woman out here in the woods, where the rules and restrictions of the city and her life fall away.

She’s always beautiful, especially when she’s expertly cutting someone who’s gotten too big for their britches down to their appropriate size, but this bare-faced, laughing, dare I say, giddy woman at my side? Stunning.

Still, I worry that her pendulum is swinging too far the other way… too far away from her comfort zone, where she cares what her family thinks first and what she feels second. And when a pendulum swings one wa y, it inevitably goes back before finding a point of balance.

“Totally fine. But maybe I’m gonna go inside for a few minutes, just to, you know, let them target Riggs first. I don’t have to be the fastest. Just gotta be faster than him.

” I give my larger, but slower, friend a sly smirk.

I could outrun him with both arms tied behind my back.

Hell, I could outrun him with one leg tied behind my back.

As she starts to get herself back under control, Kayla waves her hands. “I don’t want to talk about them anymore. I want to talk about… you two. Or hockey. It’s off-season now, but tell me what life’s like when the season starts.”

The question is casual as can be, but it puts ideas into my head.

Ideas like what it’ll be like to leave her for a stretch of away games, and I already don’t like it.

Sure, according to the guys on the team, the best part of away games is the coming home reunions, but you know what’s better than haven’t-seen-you-in-days sex? Sex every damn day.

“Well, in addition to our daily workouts, I usually spend the off-season studying. I watch last season’s games on a loop, dissecting my play, the Devils’ play, and other teams’ plays.

After the draft, I’ll do the same with the college kids who got drafted so I know what they’re bringing to the ice.

I learn and improve, find weak spots and fix them if they’re my own, or make plans to exploit them if they’re someone else’s.

That way, I’m ready to hit the ice, fresh physically and prepared mentally. ”

“Usually?” she asks, catching that little nugget.

“I seem to be a bit distracted this time.” She’s wearing a soft-looking sweater set to ward off the night’s chill, but even covered, I let my eyes trace over her body slowly, enjoying every inch.

Even the ones I have to imagine beneath the knit fabric.

“Not that I’m complaining. It’s been my best off-season yet.

” I flash her a cocky smirk, imagining I can see a blush on her cheeks, but it’s probably the glow of the fire since Kayla wouldn’t blush about a damn thing, especially a compliment she deserves.

“I spend my off-season healing up any injuries, then focus on strengthening and flexibility so I don’t reinjure myself during the season.

Lather, rinse, repeat.” Riggs rolls his shoulder, probably not even aware he’s unconsciously checking it.

He’s been religiously doing his physical therapy and Zeke says it’s good, but I watch his face for any sign of pain. Thankfully, I don’t see any.

“We’ll report for training camp in September, have a few weeks of practice with the rookies and special teams and do a few exhibition games.

Then, the real fun starts. We’ll play eighty-two games from October to April, then, assuming we make the playoffs…

” I pause to send a glance skyward and cross my fingers. “That goes until June.”

Kayla listens silently, but I can see calendar pages virtually flying around in her head.

“About half those are on our ice, so we play, shower, and drive home,” Riggs says, trying to minimize how insane our schedule sounds.

“The other half… the team has a rule about sleeping in our own beds whenever possible, so we fly out after the games. We get home, but it’s not the same as if we had a nine-to-five.

” His jaw is stone, and I know he’s remembering how Eliza would bitch about him waking her up when he got in late, to th e point he often resorted to sneaking in as quietly as possible and sleeping in the guest room of his own house.

I wonder if he’s also imagining how it’ll be to not see Kayla for days on end once we’re as busy as she is.

I don’t mind a busy woman. Hell, I think it’s awesome that Kayla runs a billion-dollar company, but right now, we’re wide open and flexible, able to pop into the city at a moment’s notice or hang out with her on an unexpected day off. Soon, that won’t be the case.

“So you’re not always hang-around-the-house-ers,” she summarizes, as if that’s all we’ve been doing.

Admittedly, we work out when she’s at the office, so to her, it probably does seem like our days are a little light comparatively when she talks million-dollar contracts and we talk weight room personal records.

I chuckle, shaking my head. “Definitely not. We’re in-and-out-ers,” I tease, pointing here and there and everywhere, but letting sex coat the double entendre to soften the truth of the matter, which is that we’ll miss important events, grumble hello before falling into bed to sleep for hours, and then be gone again.

It’s the reality of our lives as professional athletes.

“Thank God,” she mutters.

I jerk my eyes to her, finding a big smile stretching across her face. “What?” I ask, my brows furrowed in confusion.

She tries to stop smiling but can’t and resorts to covering her mouth with a hand for a moment as she shakes her head.

“Don’t get me wrong. Please, don’t. But aren’t you two going stir crazy?

I mean, I know you work out, but that’s like two or three hours of your day?

What do you do with the rest of the time? ”

This woman surprises me at every turn. I’m all puppy-dog, sad-eyed about leaving her, while on her side, she’s like ‘get a damn life, man’ because her days are full to the brim and overflowing with Very Important Shit.

“Other than workout? Jerk off. Swim. Eat. Watch trash TV. Wait for you to call or come over. Eat some more. Fuck. Sleep.” I list off the sum total of my usual day, then finish with a dreamy, “It’s a tough life, but somebody’s gotta do it.

Might as well be me.” I hold my arms out to my sides, as if I’m a saint making a sacrifice for the greater good of humanity.

“If not you, then who?” she says, echoing my sentiment, though she sounds a bit sarcastic about it.

“You’re not worried about us being gone so much?” Riggs asks, still anxious enough to turn our jokey approach serious.

Kayla turns a softer look to him. “No. I get it. I travel for work too. Not as much as what you’re describing, but if you have to, you have to.” She shrugs, accepting that it’s a simple fact of life. “I appreciate that your team tries to get you home as much as possible. That’s important.”

“We can make it work,” he vows earnestly. “Coordinate schedules and plan around your trips too. Lots of the guys do it.” His eyes drift back to the fire. “Though a lot of the WAGs don’t work, which sometimes makes it easier.”

Not for Riggs, it didn’t. It made it infinitely more difficult that he was Eliza’s be-all-end-all and when he was gone, she searched high and low for anything to comfort or entertain herself.

Thankfully, it was mostly shiny things, not other guys, or Riggs wouldn’t be playing hockey.

He’d be in prison for killing whatever unlucky bastard Eliza fucked.

“Or it makes it harder,” I counter pointedly.

“Do you want someone who doesn’t work?” Kayla’s voice is different, clipped and cold, like she’s hiding her thoughts behind a veil of non-reaction until she hears his answer.

I don’t think I’m breathing because the only sound I can hear is the crackle of the fire.

The moment stretches, and I almost answer for him to make sure he doesn’t say or do something stupid.

But I have to let him find his way out of the briar patch Eliza left him in.

This is his healing, his journey back to trusting himself, and I can’t do that for him.

Or at least not all of it for him. Horse to water and all, though he’s more of a stubborn mule than a horse.

Riggs lifts his eyes to hers and reaches over to take her hand. “I just want you.”

Simple. Perfect. Sometimes, he’s a genius in his simple statements. We won’t discuss the other times.

Kayla gives him a soft smile, her eyes looking a little glittery, and I let my breath out in a whoosh.

“Damn, man. I thought you were gonna fuck that up. Good job.” I hold a hand up for an air high-five.

He doesn’t do it back, even though he has another hand, but he takes a deep breath, nodding to himself.

Knowing he needs a minute to settle the tornado in his head, I high-five myself and then turn to Kayla.

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy. I’m saying that if we have to hire a personal assistant whose sole job is coordinating our calendars and travel plans so that I can be buried balls-deep in your pussy as often as possible and for as many hours as possible, I will happily find someone to fill that role. ”

Kayla’s bark of laughter echoes through the trees. “You get called in to HR regularly, don’t you?”

It could be an insult, but there’s no heat to the accusation. In fact, she sounds amused by my potential job posting.

“Mmm, I can neither confirm nor deny that,” I reply. “And actually, it’d be the PR team.”

“He buys them big Christmas gifts. Huge, please don’t kill me for being me gifts, every Christmas and at the end of every season,” Riggs offers, a smile trying to steal across his face.

He’s come a long way, doing a lot of the work over the years, but making leaps and bounds I never expected in just the last few weeks.

I’m a fixer. I always have been, but Kayla has fixed something in my friend I don’t think I ever would’ve been able to, and I appreciate that more than she’ll ever know.

“You shut your lying face hole,” I say, pointing a finger at him, but I can’t hide my grin. He’s right, I paid about a thousand dollars per PR staffer this past June. More importantly, Kayla and Riggs’s answering smiles are eerily similar to mine.

We’re talking about making our schedules work when the season starts, and that’s months away. We’re doing this, whatever this is.

The idea of splitting my focus should be freaking me out. What will I be if hockey isn’t my whole, entire life the way it always has been? Will my game suffer if I don’t give my entire mind and soul to it? I don’t know. But it sounds fun to figure out.

But first, I have plans for the fluffy rug in the living room. “What do you say we move this party to the floor in front of the fireplace? That rug looks mighty inviting and you look stunning by firelight.”

“It’s too warm to have the fireplace going inside,” Kayla argues.

“Woman, I will turn the air conditioner down to igloo-cold if it means seeing you come for us by firelight.”

Kayla holds a finger up. “Don’t call me woman like that.” She adds another finger, narrowing her eyes to pin me with a look before grinning. “Let’s go.”

“Hell yeah,” I say, gathering my beer and her wine glass as quickly as I can. Riggs can carry his own shit.

She stands, laughing as she turns toward the cabin, and I reach out to swat her ass. “Good girl.”

Her brow is sharply arched, her glare glacial when she looks over her shoulder at me. “You’re going to pay for that.”

“Fuck, I hope so. Again… let’s go. We have to be out by noon tomorrow and I don’t think there’s enough time to fuck you in all the places I want to…

” I pause and her eyes flare, considering where I might be impl ying.

“In the cabin, I mean.” I wink dramatically, letting her decide whether that’s really what I meant.

Riggs groans, cupping his clearly already swelling dick. “The floor. Then the dining room. That table is begging for you to spread out on it.”

I point a finger at him, this time not in accusation but in full and total agreement. “Yes.”

Kayla must be on board with that plan because she’s hurrying toward the cabin as fast as we are.

Check-out time will come too soon. There’s no arguing that, but I intend to make the most of this weekend away so that when Kayla goes back to her family on Monday, her body will remember why she’s fighting them so hard and why she’s changing up all her precisely-laid plans for undeserving fuckers like us.