Page 45 of Playing it Safe

I'm serious. You look incredible. This is a big deal. You know that, right?

I do know that. I know it more right now, sitting in this rink with ice melt on my skirt, my teammates around me, and a photo on my phone that shows me how he sees me — strong and beautiful and worth something — than I have known anything in a long time.

Me

Yeah. I think I do.

Cameron

Good. Send me the rest when you get them.

I pocket the phone. Ducky holds up her hand for a high five, and I smack it. She pulls me into a hug that smells like hair cream and ice.

"Endorsement-deals,” she says into my shoulder. "About damn time."

I laugh into her hair, thinking of Cameron alone in a Chicago hotel room, staring at a photo of my legs on his phone. I hope he can't sleep tonight. I hope he lies there thinking about my thighs the way I lie awake thinking about his hands.

Fair is fair.

Chapter 19

Cameron

Briar sent me six photos while I was at dinner with the team. I opened them at the table like an idiot, and Riggs asked why I was choking on my water.

I'm on the plane now. The cabin is dark. Half the guys are asleep. I have my phone tilted toward the window so no one can see the screen, and I'm scrolling through the images for the fourth time, like a man who has lost all restraint.

The first three are hockey shots — Briar on the ice, carving a stop, spray fanning behind her. She looks fast, vicious, and exactly like what she is, one of the best defensive forwards on the planet. Those photos are impressive. Professional. Easy to admire from a normal distance.

The last three are the problem.

She's on the bench in a black skirt and a tank top, one sneaker propped on the seat, her quad catching the light. The definition of her muscles is visible. Her shoulders are bare and broad, and her expression in the final shot — the one she texted me first, the one that almost killed me— is pure heat. Confident. A little defiant. Like she knows exactly what she looks like and she's daring someone to say something about it.

Was she thinking about me when they took it? The thought plagues me.

I stare at her thighs and feel my pulse in places that have no business being active on a commercial flight.

An endorsement deal. She's getting paid — real money, her money, for her image, her name, and her sport. I'm proud of her in a way that sits deep in my chest, beneath the more urgent problem, which is that I want to put my mouth on every inch of skin visible in these photographs.

I close the photos and stare at the seatback in front of me. I open them again.

The skirt. The tank top. The way she leans against the boards, one hip cocked, looking over her shoulder. The quad. The way the hem rides up just enough to show where the muscle curves inward toward —

I lock my phone and shove it into the seat pocket.

This is the problem. This right here. The wanting. Not gentle or appropriate — not the polite interest Lisa Marie trained me to perform. I feel savage need. The kind where I look at a photograph of a woman's legs, my hands grip the armrest, my jaw locks, and every cell in my body fires with a single, unambiguous instruction: touch her.

Lisa Marie saw this in me. Just once, really. We'd been out with her friends. Back at her apartment, both of us tipsy, I picked her up. Bridal style — one arm under her knees, the way you do. She went rigid. Not playful. Not surprised. Horrified. I set her down immediately, and she straightened her clothes, saying, "You can't just do that."

That was when I noticed how often I apologized to her. Sorry for being too big, too strong. Sorry for wanting her the way I want — with my whole body, with power and focus, with the same intensity I bring to everything.

Lisa didn't want intensity. She wanted predictable, controlled coupling. It felt so foreign to me, so hard to hold back. But I thought it was the way things were supposed to be, and I built a cage for myself, tucking the animal inside except when I let him out on the ice. I became a man who kept his hands in his pockets, who kissed foreheads, and who waited for permission to want anything.

And now I'm on a plane, looking at photos of Briar Beckett's thighs, and the cage is shaking.

I've been so restrained at her house. Apart from that one day, I had to release the pressure; she walked in, my mouth opened, and words came out that I hadn't planned or censored. And she didn't flinch. She knelt beside me, and she was into it. On the couch the other day, my arm went around her before I realized what I was doing, pressing into her solid strength. She didn't shrink away.

She sent me these photos. She chose to. She wanted me to see her like this — powerful, gorgeous, and getting what she deserves. She wanted me to look.