Page 155 of Pucking Sweet

I take the coffee and his warm hand instantly cups my face.

“Look at me.”

I glance up, eyes watery.

His caramel eyes lock on me. His touch is like a lifeline. “You deserve the world,” he says. “Poppy, you deserveeverything. I won’t sit back and watch you struggle. Fight for yourself, or I’m gonna fight for you, and I fight dirty. Do you understand?”

I swallow, giving him a nod.

He steps in closer, pressing a kiss to my forehead.

I smile, my free hand brushing down the colorful tattoos of his arm. “I like possessive Lukas. He makes me feel so safe…so loved.”

He stiffens and leans away, glaring down at me. “You think my violence is a virtue? You really think you understand what I’m capable of?”

Holding his darkening gaze, my heart drops. His walls are lowering. He was just a little too vulnerable and it scared him, so now he’s going to deflect. My hand circles his wrist, ready to hold him to me. “I knowyou, Lukas—”

He twists away from my grip, stepping back, his shoulders tense. “No you don’t. Not really. How could you?”

“Lukas—”

“I mean, look at you,” he says, gesturing to me up and down. “You’re so polished and poised. So fucking perfect.”

It’s my turn to stiffen and lean away. Last night he said those exact words like a prayer.Poppy, you’re perfect.Now he’s lobbing them at me like a curse. “Lukas, please don’t—”

“Don’t what? Warn you away from me? Someone has to, before I ruin this. I was raised on the fucking streets, Poppy. I’ve been on my own since I was twelve years old, fighting for the right to fucking exist in a world that didn’t see me, didn’t fucking care.”

“I care—”

“Sure, you took me in and gave me a warm bed to sleep in at night. But I am the same fucking monster who was always too aggressive, too angry, and too out of control to do anything but put on a pair of skates and slam grown men into the boards. I am good at what I do, and what I do ishurtpeople. I hit them over and over, until they can’t get back up.That’swhat I am.”

“You’re not,” I say, grabbing his shirt. “Lukas, honey, it’s just a game. You play it so well, but your ability to be a good defenseman on the ice is just one piece of you. You are so beautiful and complicated—”

“Stop.”

“No,” I cry. “I won’t stop complimenting you and telling you that you matter. I won’t stop coming home to you at night. Lukas, I will always come home to you because Iloveyou.”

He goes still, his expression a riot of emotions—anger, fear, frustration, longing. So much deep, aching longing. I want to hold him to my chest, his ear against my heart, so he can hear and feel how it beats for him. “What did you just say?”

“I said, I love you. Lukas, I am so in love with you—”

He drops his hand away as if I burned him. “Take it back.”

I hold my position, unwavering. “No.”

“Poppy, take it back.”

I shrug. “I can’t. It’s done.”

He steps in, grabbing me by the back of the neck. “You still don’t getit. I wanna march up those stairs andkillMark for upsetting you. I’m violent, Poppy. My thoughts are so fucking dark. I wanna set your sister’s hair on fire. I wanna hit her shitty friends with my fucking car.No onehurts you and gets away with it. That’s who you wanna love? That’s who you want in your bed? That’s a man offuckingvirtue?”

I hold his gaze. “You won’t do it.”

He growls, lowering his face to mine. “You think I fucking won’t?”

“You won’t,” I repeat, my voice trembling. “You won’t because I’m asking you not to. You are mine, Lukas, and I love you, and if you doanythingto jeopardize my ability to be with you, I will hound you to the ends of the earth. Do you understand me?”

He drops his hand away. “This is a mistake. I should’ve let you go.”