Page 76 of Unrivaled

Max laughed again. “What?”

“You’re not a lobster. Lobsters have tough shells, and they snap.” He made a little pincer motion with his hand. “You’re, like, a fake lobster. Maybe you’re only a lobster on the ice. Off the ice, you’re soft.” To demonstrate, he used his pincer to nip the flesh at Max’s waist.

“How much did you have to drink?” Max sounded amused.

Grady ignored him. “I’m the lobster. I’m prickly.”

“Oh yeah,” Max said. “Look at you. You’ve got half a palm tree in your hair.” He carefully carded his fingers over Grady’s scalp. “Terrifying.”

But now he was leaning over Grady, too close to ignore that softness any longer. It called to Grady’s, a reassuring whisper that he could take off his armor. “I should be the lobster,” Grady repeated quietly when Max’s fingers traced down the side of his face. “You crack me open.”

For a long moment Max held his gaze. Then he kissed him softly, slowly, his body braced over Grady’s like a shield. Grady anchored himself with a hand on Max’s shoulder and let the earth spin around them.

Eventually Max pulled away and stood. He held a hand down to Grady. “Come on. We should go inside. Santa can’t come if you’re not sleeping.”

Grady let Max pull him up and lead him inside. He left the weight of his shell by the pool with his wineglass.

MAX WOKEup to his pillow rumbling quietly.

The room was still dark except for a faint glow that had to be Grady’s cell phone. Max stretched slightly and got Grady’s fingers threaded through his hair for his trouble.

He never wanted to get out of bed.

You crack me open.Max couldn’t know exactly what Grady meant by that, and he wasn’t going to ask tonight. But he couldn’t ignore the way Grady’d looked at him when he said it.

And he definitely couldn’t ignore the pounding in his own heart when he pulled slick fingers out of Grady’s body and reached for a condom and Grady put his hand on his wrist and said, “Do we need…?”

They didn’t. Max let the condom fall from nerveless fingers and slid in bare, hopelessly overwhelmed.

Max had spent his whole life around hockey players. Hewasone. It had never surprised him that Grady played things close to the chest.

But tonight a dam had broken, and now Grady was talking quietly on the phone in the middle of the night, still wet with Max’s come, basically petting Max’s head while Max used him as a body pillow.

“You could ask them about it,” Grady said lowly.

If Max strained his ears, he could make out the female voice on the other end of the call—almost certainly Grady’s sister Jess. Something about two women named Amanda and Polly and a ski chalet bedroom? He tilted his chin up to let Grady know he was awake, in case he wanted privacy.

Apparently he didn’t. “Jess. I have no idea. It’s weird, I’ll give you that, but….”

Max inhaled and rested his head against Grady’s chest again. He was glad his parents kept the air conditioner cranked, or this could be uncomfortable.

“What am I going to do? I can’t send them back to their room to freeze—”

Max’s brain did a record scratch, and he blinked a few times and started listening more closely. But the longer he listened, the funnier it got. There was no way it was a coincidence that Jess’s ex-girlfriend and her new girlfriend had planned a vacation where everyone else had canceled, insisted Jess take the room with the bigger bed, and thencoincidentallydiscovered that the heat in their bedroom didn’t work.

He lifted his head again and reached up for the phone. “Gimme.” Grady obviously had no clue what was happening here.

“What?” Grady said. “No, don’t. Max—”

But Max already had the phone in his hand. “Jess. Hi. Did I hear you right?” He listed off the details he’d overheard.

He half expected her to ask who he was or why he’d been eavesdropping, but instead she said, “How is this my life?”

“No, I have a better question. Why are you askingGradywhat to do?”

“Hey,” Grady grumbled without pausing in his scalp massage.

Jess groaned. “Oh God, you’re right. The man has the emotional intelligence of a garden snail.”

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