Page 176 of The Lies We Play

“Okay.”

“And let me.”

“Okay.”

His mouth returns to mine, softer this time. Cruel in its patience. He kisses me until my fingers loosen on his neck. Until my shoulders sink into the mattress. Until I stop trying to prove I can still control the pace.

Only then does he move down.

Halston kisses the bruise above my sternum with a care that almost hurts more than pressure would. The bruise is yellowing at the edges, greenish where the blood is fading, but the center is still purple from last week’s hit. The same one they replayed on the jumbotron while I pretended I didn’t need a second to breathe.

His lips press there.

My stomach locks.

He lays his tongue against the bone, warm and slow, and I almost laugh because he is being so fucking serious about a bruise. If I do laugh, he’ll ask me to explain the joke, and then I’ll have to explain that everything hurts and everything is hilarious and last night I held the Cup over my head while wanting to crawl into his lap and cry.

So I don’t laugh.

I let him.

His mouth moves lower, to the spread of my ribs, first the right, then the left, then the spot on my side he once said reminded him of those brown-sugar caramel bars people buy at airports. I called him a walking air-travel catalog. He told me that was not a recognized cause of action. Liv told us both we were banned from flirting in legal-adjacent insults until she’d had coffee.

Now his thumb finds that same place like it belongs to him.

Maybe it does.

He nips the flesh between his teeth, almost shy with it, and the tenderness gets under my skin. Halston is more confident with the law than with softness. More fluent in risk than in asking for what he wants. Yet here he is, mouth on my body, taking his time like I’m not a man who got paid to get hit for a living. Like I’m allowed to be something breakable in his hands.

He speaks against my skin, voice muffled. “You know, if you quit hockey tomorrow, you could model for medical diagrams. The muscular system, probably.”

I stare at the ceiling. “That might be the least romantic compliment I’ve ever received.”

“It was accurate.”

“You always know how to make a man feel objectified and clinically assessed.”

His hands pause at my ribs, then slide up, thumbs brushing the seams of my pecs. He studies me with that forensic focus that used to unsettle me. Now it makes my dick twitch, because there is nothing cold about the way he looks. He catalogs every bruise, sweat bead, and breath like evidence in a case he refuses to lose.

I could ask him what he’s thinking.

I don’t.

I know.

He is wondering if I’ll let him stay here. Not in the bed. In the moment. If I let him care for me without turning it into a joke or a competition or sex so fast it outruns the ache.

For now, he gives me action instead of theory.

He kisses down my stomach. His tongue draws a line that makes my abs jump. His hair falls forward, grazing my skin, and I thread my fingers into it because I want to feel him react. He glances up at me, one eyebrow raised.

“Problem?”

“No.”

“Then stop supervising.”

“I’m not.”