Page 20 of Price of Victory (The Saints of Westmont U #5)

The words made something swell in me, sending heat shooting through my entire body.

My ears filled with the sound of my own heartbeat, so loud I was sure everyone could hear it echoing off the arena walls.

The image his words conjured was so vivid, so impossibly appealing, that I had to grip my stick harder to keep from dropping it.

But despite the rush of want that his suggestion triggered, despite the way my body was already responding to the idea, I managed to laugh.

“You’re not trying it with me, sunshine.”

“We’ll see about that,” he replied with that confidence that should have been annoying but somehow wasn’t.

The rest of practice cleanup passed in a blur of equipment checks and casual conversation, but I was barely present for any of it. All I could think about was Aiden’s suggestion, about the way he’d looked when he’d said it, about the heat in his eyes that suggested he wasn’t entirely joking.

By the time I made it back to my dorm room, I was wound so tight I felt like I might vibrate out of my skin. Lennox was at Oliver’s again, which meant I had the room to myself to process whatever the hell was happening to me.

The space still smelled like Aiden. His cologne lingered on my pillow and on my sheets, subtle but unmistakable. I sat on the edge of my bed and buried my face in the fabric, inhaling deeply and trying to figure out if I’d made a terrible mistake.

Because that’s what this felt like. A mistake. A massive, life-altering error in judgment that was going to have consequences I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

I thought about the history between our families, the warfare that had defined so much of my adolescence.

The attempted takeover that had nearly destroyed everything my family had built, that had aged my father years in the span of months.

The stress that had kept my mother awake at night, the lawyers and accountants who had swarmed through our house like locusts.

I remembered the last time our families had been in the same room together, some charity function that both sets of parents had been obligated to attend.

The way Richard Whitmore had addressed my father with cold politeness that barely concealed years of professional animosity.

The tension that had been thick enough to cut with a knife, the way other guests had seemed to sense the undercurrent of hostility and avoided both families all night.

My father had spent the entire evening looking like he was attending his own funeral, and my mother had gripped his arm so tightly I’d been afraid she might leave bruises.

They’d left early, making polite excuses about prior commitments, but I’d seen the relief in both their faces as we’d walked toward the exit.

“Stay away from the Whitmore boy,” my father had said in the car afterward, the first and only time he’d ever directly addressed the family rivalry in front of me. “Nothing good can come from getting involved with that family.”

And here I was, not just involved but completely entangled, still able to taste Aiden on my lips and feel the ghost of his hands on my skin. Was I betraying everything my family had worked for? Was I putting them at risk somehow by letting myself get swept up in this attraction?

But even as the guilt twisted in my chest, even as I tried to summon the righteous anger that had sustained me through years of hating everything the Whitmore name represented, I couldn’t bring myself to regret what had happened between us.

Last night had been a revelation. Not just the physical pleasure, though that had been beyond anything I’d ever experienced, but the connection.

The way Aiden had looked at me, touched me, made me feel like I was the only person in the world who mattered.

The vulnerability he’d shown me, the gentleness mixed with that commanding confidence that had made me feel safe and desired and completely understood.

I flopped back on my bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to make sense of the war happening inside my head.

Logic said this was dangerous, that I was playing with fire and likely to get burned.

Family loyalty said I owed it to my parents to stay away from anyone connected to Richard Whitmore’s empire.

But my heart, traitorous thing that it was, kept pulling me back to the memory of Aiden’s smile when he’d seen me in the locker room this morning.

To the way he’d immediately asked if I was okay after that hard check.

To the heat in his voice when he’d whispered those filthy suggestions during practice.

I wanted to see him again. I wanted to touch him again, to taste him, to lose myself in that electric connection that made everything else fade away. I wanted to find out if what had happened between us was just physical release or something deeper, something that might actually be worth the risk.

The realization scared me more than anything else that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

Because wanting Aiden was one thing. But wanting something real with him, something that went beyond just taking the edge off our mutual antagonism, was a complication I wasn’t sure I was ready to face.

My phone buzzed with a text, and my heart leaped before I even looked at the screen. But it wasn’t Aiden. It was my mother, asking if I wanted to come home for dinner this weekend, mentioning that my father had been asking about me.

I stared at the message for a long time, thumb hovering over the keyboard.

A weekend at home meant family dinners and questions about school and subtle pressure about my future plans.

It meant sitting in rooms where the Whitmore name was still spoken like a curse, where my father’s jaw would tighten if the business rivalry came up in conversation.

It meant pretending that nothing had changed, that I was still the same dutiful son who would never dream of getting involved with the enemy.

But everything had changed. I had changed. And I wasn’t sure I could go back to pretending otherwise, even for the sake of family peace.

I set the phone aside without responding and rolled onto my side, burying my face in the pillow that still smelled like Aiden’s cologne. Tomorrow, there would be another practice, another opportunity to see him, to figure out what this thing between us was becoming.

Today, I was just going to lie here and try to reconcile the two halves of my life that seemed increasingly impossible to balance.

And try not to think about how much I was looking forward to seeing him again.