Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Carter broke away just enough to murmur, “We could.”
“We could what?” I breathed, already smiling.
“Get a room,” he said, eyes wicked, and there it was — that boyish grin, the one that made my knees feel like they’d been replaced with spaghetti. “Think they’d miss us for ten minutes?”
“Ten?” I repeated, arching a brow.
“Five?”
I barked out a laugh, but before I could tell him how ridiculous he was being, he was toting me through the crowd, greeting his teammates and staff members as he did like we were completely innocent.
We slipped inside through the sliding door like teenagers at a house party, and it was ridiculous how quickly the two of us could go from sweet to stupid. The hallway was dim, a runner soft under my bare feet. Carter checked doors with the exaggerated caution of a cartoon burglar until he found a quiet guest room with a lamp left on low and a pile of beach towels tossed on the loveseat. The window was cracked to the water and smelled like salt and laundry detergent.
“Romantic,” I said.
“The romance is me,” he said, and then his mouth was on mine again, eager and greedy, reverent and ridiculous. His hands learned my body all over again like they did every day — this new curve here, this stretch of skin that had gone extra sensitive. He knelt when he kissed my belly, and I carded my fingers through his hair and cursed softly because the sight of him would never not undo me.
He was gentle because I was his, and he was hungry because I was his, and I pulled him down with a hand knotted in his shirt because he was mine. My world narrowed to the feel of his mouth on my throat, his palm cradling my belly, the little hitch in his breath when I whispered something filthy in his ear because I could, because we were us.
And there were a million things we still needed to figure out — what we would name our daughter, what color we’d paint the nursery walls, whether we’d buy an old house on the water or build a new one of our own.
But one thing was certain.
I was a better woman for having that man’s love, for letting him in when it felt impossible to do.
And I’d always be thankful that, even at his most insecure, he was never too afraid to shoot his shot when it came to me.
Bound
Shane
(AKA Coach McCabe)
If a heart was tied to a person, mine was bound to her — and it stopped beating the day I left her behind.
Ariana Ridley had tried desperately not to be noticed when we were in college, but one look at her and it was clear how impossible that mission was. She was like a diamond buried deep, and her beauty was the volcano that unearthed her. It wasn’t only her piercing blue eyes or snow-white complexion. It wasn’t just her heart shaped lips or her goddess-like curves.
It was the untold stories in her gaze, the way she wore her trauma like a cloak.
She called to me in a way I couldn’t fight, because I saw what everyone else overlooked.
Ariana was a survivor.
She was just like me.
We fell in love too easily, too quickly, at a rate that should have foretold how bad it would be once we finally hit the ground.
I was young and stupid when I let her go, when I chose my dream of hockey over her because hockey was the only thing I’d ever been able to depend on and staying meant total life destruction for her. I told myself I was doing the right thing, that I was saving her from the problem of me, that I was making everything easier.
But I hated myself for the choice I made.
And I regretted it every day.
I only saw her once after that, six years later, when I got injured and watched my dream go up in smoke. Our paths crossed by chance. I begged for her forgiveness. She rightfully denied it.
I never thought I’d see her again.
Which was why I was grinding my teeth together to keep my jaw from dropping now, my heart kicking back to life in my chest with a force strong enough to take me to my knees.
Because here she was, in front of me again.
My Ari.
Standing next to my new General Manager.
As his wife.
What happens when the youngest, most successful coach in the NHL comes face-to-face with the woman he never got over — only to find out she’s married to his new General Manager?