Page 20 of Unleashed

Instinct kicked in. The same instinct that had me jumping in front of pucks for a living. I lunged forward, caught her before she hit the floor. One arm under her knees, one supporting her back.

Soft curves. Bare skin. Heat.

Shit. I’d picked her up.

Why the hell had I picked her up?

A jolt snapped through my arms, ricocheted into my chest, set my pulse hammering. She fit too well, like she belonged there, like my arms had been waiting for her exact weight, her exact warmth. The scent of her hair curled around me, intoxicating, inescapable. Orange chased with cinnamon, my new favorite scents. My fingers flexed. Skin like silk under my hands.

Fuck.

Let her go, idiot.

Gritting my teeth, I set her down, slow, steady, like that might stop the ground from tilting beneath me. She tipped her head back, her gaze locking onto mine. A storm churned in her eyes—blues and greens clashing, pupils blown wide.

A warning.

A dare.

Recognition slammed into my ribs like a body check, stole the breath from my lungs.

Say something, Vignier. Break this tension before you do something stupid.

But my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth even as rainwater trickled down my neck, traced along the over sensitized skin of my collarbone. Each drop left a cold, biting path on my skin. Water dripped onto her carpet, and still she clutched that damn towel like a lifeline.

Then, she pushed a smile to her lips—weak, stiff around the edges. Not the one that turned heads, lit up rooms, left a path of wreckage in its wake. No, this smile didn’t even reach her eyes.

A knot pulled tight in my gut, deep, gnawing away at my insides. Because Lily Sutton’s smile was neverjusta smile—it was a weapon, a spotlight, a challenge. It could level a room, flip a script, throw a guy so far off his game he forgot he was even playing.

But this one? Lily was barely holding it together.

Christ. The knot pulled tighter. I didn’t like the storm in her gorgeous eyes.

She got under my skin with her smile—the real one. The one that didn’t ask for attention but commanded it anyway, that made people want to be near her without knowing why. And her mind. She never missed a damn thing—every flicker of hesitation, every tell, every crack in my armor.

She’d proven that out at the lake, following me behind the food trucks, calling me on my moment of weakness.

And here she was, standing in front of me, when my defenses had gone to shit.

Heat still lingered in my palms, seared into my skin like an afterimage. I stepped back, but the imprint of her weight stayed locked in my muscles, phantom and real all at once. The air in her apartment felt too still, too charged, the walls pressing in on all sides.

I could already see how this played out. At the lake, she’d asked to do the episode about me—I shut that down fast. So now she said she was covering Coach Mack instead. But that didn’t change her end goal.

Aces Unleashedchased ratings.

It wasn’t my ego talking to say an episode about me would get more attention than one about the coach. And it felt like she’d given up a little too easily.

Lily Sutton had spent the season chasing one story after another, about the guys, about the team. She dug, pushed, uncovered every angle until she got exactly what she was after. And that made her dangerous. Because I still wasn’t sure what she wanted from me.

The need to protect her scraped against logic. What a fucking joke. Lily Sutton didn’t needprotection. Her ferocity made her dangerous—and brilliant, relentless—and absolutely lethalto every ounce of my self-control.

I dragged a hand through my damp hair, flexed my fingers like the action might shake off the lingering sensation of her touch.

Useless.

She hit all my senses at once. The scent of her skin. The soft curves I shouldn’t notice. That sharp mind that kept me on my toes. Temptation wrapped in five-foot-eight inches of trouble, singing to instincts I had no business indulging.

My clothes stuck to me, cold and uncomfortable, but the discomfort meant little against the temptation of her—right there, at once too close and unreachable.

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