Page 6 of Hot Ice, Tennessee

“Do good boys chug cocktails while doing handstands?” he asked. “Hell yeah,” he said, echoing what I’d told the crowd to chant on the patio.

“Sometimes.”

He watched me. “I still think you would have let me fuck you.”

I held his gaze for a moment.Ugh. Are you a mind-reader?

“You’re not wrong.”

He hummed, his eyes dancing from my lips and then back up again. “Good boy.”

My cock throbbed. “That is unfair.”

“Why?” he said, a feigned innocence in his eyes.

“Telling me you’re off the market, then calling me that?” I protested.

“You like the praise?”

“Not from hockey players who just say it to torture me.”

“Seems like you enjoy being tortured, though,” he said, casually looking down at the bar.

Christ, he was infuriating.

And hot.

But stillinfuriating.

A low rumble of thunder suddenly filled the air. Heads all around the bar turned toward the propped-open doors that led out to the back patio.

I swallowed. “Off the market, my ass,” I said quietly. “You want to fuck someone, too, don’t you?”

He bit his lower lip for a moment. I felt like I was being sized up all over again, like he’d finally decided I might be worthy ofhis praise or his attention. His pupils flared, just a little, when he met my eyes again.

“Only if you beg.”

I suppressed a groan. My cock ached now, and the back of my neck was getting hot.

So apparently this guy was a good talker, a good listener,andhe wouldn’t hesitate to talk a big fucking game until I was hard as a rock under my pants.

Damn, maybe I don’t hate him.

I felt a little tug inside me, and I failed miserably to reel it back in.

This was the real reason I’d sworn off sex—crushes landed on me like flies landed on my horses.

I was always searching for love in all the wrong places. Falling for people too quickly. I felt like I had a neon sign over my head: “vulnerable, lonely cowboy, open to being utterly fucking ruined.”

That little tug? That was the last thing I needed to feel for a college hockey player who had justexpressly told me he wasn’t interested unless Ibegged.

“First of all, fuck you,” I said, trying to compose myself. “Secondly, nice to meet you. I’m Mason.”

I held out a hand.

“Jesse,” he said, shaking mine.

Another, louder thunder crack came through the bar a moment later. Already, I could smell the beginnings of summer rain in the night air, blowing in with the breeze from the open patio doors.

---