Page 35 of Sinful Mafia Santa

“I didn’t want to lose a single minute with you,” I say. “I didn’t want anyone stealing your attention. I wanted to be the only man in the world who saw you, first thing every morning and last thing every night.”

“It was all so new,” she says with a soft, tiny smile. “So exciting. You made me feel things I’d never felt before—physical things, yeah, butheartthings, too. You changed me, Gage Rider. You made me fall in love.”

She’s a million times braver than I am.

“No, babygirl,” I finally say. “Youchangedme. I didn’t even know what was happening at first. I thought you were just another girl. Just Logan’s kid sister. Fun. Funny. But not…”

I know precisely how much I can bench press and how much I can dead lift and how fast I can run on a fucking treadmill. But I don’t have a clue how to do the one thing I need to do right now. How to say the one word she most needs to hear.

But she said it. So I can too.

“I love you,” I say. And when she doesn’t pull back, I say it again. “I love you, and I always have. Despite all the things we did wrong. Maybe because of them. Because of all the time we’ve spent apart. All the ways we miss him. Logan.”

“We would have explained it all to him,” she says, her Irish lilt turning her words into a poem. “Made him understand who we really are. What we want. What we need. I love you becauseyou were there that last day. I love you because you fought for me. I love you because he would have forgiven the pair of us, if he’d had half a chance, if he’d just had time to get over his surprise.”

She’s a million times smarter than I am too.

I could never put the words together the way she just has. I couldn’t make them flow right. Couldn’t make them sing.

But the rightness of every syllable she’s said settles into my bones. I love her. She loves me. And all the choices we make together, all the things we do, make us stronger, as individuals and as a pair.That’sthe bond that holds us together—man and woman, Dom and sub.

Love.

Trust.

Truth.

“Come here,” I say, rising to my feet and taking her by the hand. She moves willingly, following me out of the locker room.

But when she sees the mess I’ve made of all the team’s equipment, she gasps. “Gage!”

I manage a rueful grin. “What good is owning a team, if you can’t tear things apart every once in a while?” I glance at the destruction. “My equipment managers just earned triple holiday bonuses.”

“You can’t buy your way out of everything,” she chides.

I look directly in her eyes. “I know. I promise. I know.”

I wait for her to nod before I make my way to the shelves of jet-black skates. They’re made for men, for warriors who need protection from flying pucks and slashing sticks. But a few of those men have smaller feet than average. A seven in these boots will match her women’s nine. I snag a pair of heavy socks, for good measure.

I hold the skates like a bouquet, as if I can buy her back with steel and leather. The laces spill from my hands like trailing ivy. “Please,” I say. “Sit.” I nod toward a bench I didn’t manage to move.

She swallows hard. But she sits.

I kneel before her for the second time tonight. I tug at the skate, loosening the tongue and shoving the laces out of the way. I take her left ankle in my hand like I’m collecting a crystal goblet, and when I slip off her stiletto, I can’t help myself. I bend down to kiss the arch of her foot.

Her toes curl, and we both laugh as I help her into a sock before planting her heel inside the skate. My fingers tug the laces, automatically cinching them tight to give her the support she’ll need. The cords are long; I wrap them around the top of the boot twice before double-knotting a bow.

“You’re good at this,” she says, eyeing me through her lashes.

“Lots and lots of practice,” I say, making short work of the second sock and skate.

She watches as I move down the shelf, finding a pair of size thirteens for myself. I’m walloped by a flash of memory as I toe off my shoes. I can’t count the number of times I’ve pulled on hockey skates—playing for the Aces, for Dartmouth, for Brighton Academy. All the pick-up games, all the special coaching sessions, all the lessons, just hitting the ice for fun.

Ten years I’ve gone without. Ten years I’ve forbidden myself the essential, basic pleasure of my first boyish love—hockey. Ten years I’ve stayed away.

Maybe I thought lightning would strike me. My feet would burst into flames. Logan’s ghost would rise up to choke me, dragging me off to hell.

They’re just skates. I’m simply going to glide across a sheet of ice, with a fearless, beautiful woman by my side.