Page 78 of Dirty Puck

“I am.”

He bent, slow and deliberate, lips brushing my neck. “Let me take care of you.”

I didn’t argue.

He undressed me like I was made of something expensive, something rare. Like I mattered. Every kiss, every touch, was a promise wrapped in heat. He laid me out across crisp sheets and lit me up like only he could.

We went soft and we went hard. He made good on his promise back in Charleston. He took me on every surface, in every hole. My orgasms shook the walls.

And somewhere between the second and the third time, when his mouth was pressed to my shoulder and my name was a prayer in his throat—I felt it.

The beginning of a shift.

A small, terrifying tremor inside me.

The kind that didn’t come from good sex. The kind that didn’t come from hotels or champagne or fantasy.

The kind that meant something real.

I didn’t know when it had started—no, that was a lie. I’d stupidly acknowledged my little crush when he first introduced me to Char, but if I told the truth, it had started well before that. Maybe the first time he showed up at my house. Maybe when he bought the car seat. Maybe the first time he’d made my son smile.

This was so bad. Exactly what he never wanted. And I’d promised him it never would. Ipromised.

But the feeling was there now, curling in my chest like a spark ready to catch.

I couldn’t afford to fall.

But I might already be in freefall.

And Reece? He had no idea.

The next day, game day, he took me to see the sights in the morning. We didn’t gamble.

Not even once.

Turns out, Reece wasn’t much for cards or slots, either—said he couldn’t bring himself to throw money away after watching his mom pinch pennies so tight, they squeaked. That made two of us.

Instead, he took me to a show with acrobats that left me breathless, then up to a rooftop bar, where the energy of the people on the Strip buzzed below us, a hive of activity that I wanted to be part of. We stuffed ourselves on my bodyweight’s worth of sushi and walked what felt like miles of hot pavement until my feet ached and my cheeks hurt from smiling—a theme here in Vegas—his hand warm on my back, his mouth low at my ear.

When he laughed, I leaned in.

When I leaned in, he kissed me.

And when he kissed me, I forgot for a second what this was supposed to be.

That night, the girls and I made our way through the arena in matching Copperhead jerseys that Jaycee had surprised me with, inaugurating me as ‘one of the girls’ as mine readREECEacross the back, a detail I hadn’t expected but somehow didn’t hate.

Jaycee’s readBISHOP, and the second we walked through the corridor to our seats, the whispers started. Not mean, just… curious. Pointed.

“That’s her, right? Bishop’s wife?” one spectator said.

“Wait, is that Reece’s girlfriend?” another said, a woman who sounded absolutely giddy at seeing me. At an away game. Why would Vegas fans care about me dating Reece? It was weird, having my life in the public sphere. Not in a bad way—just in a way I wasn’t used to. Not as a mom, or an employee, or someone trying to stretch a dollar. But as his. Iguess all our outings together worked. Good for Reece and his upcoming contract negotiations.

None of that mattered. Because the moment the puck dropped, there wasn’t a spare second to think.

The game was insane.

Fast, brutal, beautiful.

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