When his mouth crashes into mine—I forget how to breathe.
This isn’t sweet.
This isn’t patient.
This is him unmaking me—ripping through every shield I’ve put up since the night I let a stranger pull me apart with his mouth and call me greedy.
But he isn’t a stranger.
He never was...and I’ve been pretending otherwise for too long.
He pulls back, breath ragged, his cheek brushing mine.
“I don’t want a woman who fits into a picture, Kat,” he says. “I want you.”
I flinch.
Not because I don’t want him to say it.
But because I do.
Too much.
“But this isn’t real,” I whisper. “You don’t have to pretend anymore. There’s no one watching.”
“No?” he asks.
I should tell him.
Right now.
Before this goes any further.
Before I forget my name again and let him touch me like I’m his to keep.
Before this turns into something I can’t claw back from.
That I’m not some mystery.
Not a maybe.
That I’m the girl from the masked play party—the one he dragged off the edge on shaking knees with nothing but filthy promises and a hand on my throat.
But I don’t.
Because I didn’t know his name then.
And I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds out now.
What happens if this blows up in my face?
If it gets out—if word slips to the wrong locker room, or a teammate overhears something they shouldn’t?
I stop being the team nutritionist.
I become Griffin Novak’s little sister.
The puck bunny who blew a rookie in a black-tie sex den—then showed up on payroll.
