Page 27 of Cross Check Hearts

I feel like my body is at war with my brain. I’ve never been so attracted to anyone the way I am with Declan. It’s like there’s this switch in me that only he knows how to flip, and he doesn’t even have to do anything to make it happen. Every time I’m around him, my entire body feels electrified, almost like there’s some sort of magnetic current between us pulling us inexorably together.

Even now, as he stares at me with unmistakable hunger while he waits for an answer that he probably knows isn’t going to come, every hair on the back of my neck is standing straight up and lurching toward him like he has a gravitational pull.

But as loud as that feeling is in my brain, and as much as he makes me feel like my body’s catching fire from the inside, neither sensation is loud enough to drown out the voice that’s shrieking at me to keep my distance.

I did everything I could to keep these worlds separate for a good reason. But now that they’ve collided, it’s like I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

Because honestly? If it weren’t for the fact my dad is his coach, I wouldn’t have a problem with any of this. And I probably would’ve let Declan repeat all the things he’s done to me already and more by now.

But my dadishis coach, and he’s made it abundantly clear that all hockey players—but especially ones on his team—are off limits.

It’s an impossible situation. Declan’s doing too well on the team to get traded, and my father isn’t anywhere near retirement age. So where the hell do Declan and I go from here?

Even if I wanted to give him a chance—and god help me, I do, as much as I’m trying not to let it show—I can’t.

We can keep doing this sexy, fun, back-and-forth dance on the edge of a knife all we want, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re going to keep coming back to square one.

“Aaron’s not right for you,” Declan says, shaking his head softly. My heart pounds even harder as if fighting to break free of my chest.

“Why not?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I should. But I need to hear his answer. I need to hear him say what I already know.

My breath comes in ragged fits through my nose while I wait, and he smirks as he rests his hand on my collarbone. His thumb traces the outline of it, making me shiver. My skin burns from his touch like it’s red-hot, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear it’s searing me. But Declan finally breaks the silence.

“Because no one is right for you but me,” he says, his voice low and full of the same heat that’s been radiating off him since I stopped him. “And I think you know it as much as I do, you just can’t admit it—yet.”

Every inch of my body is alive with awareness, from the places where his skin touches mine to the spaces between us that ache to be closed. And my heart is hammering in time to the word that’s on repeat in my mind.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

But almost as quickly, my rational brain takes over, and I shake my head at him like I’m about to make a case in a courtroom. “You don’t know that. We spent one night together, and it was amazing, but that doesn’t mean we know each other. For all we know, we’d be terrible together.”

Declan flashes me a devastatingly confident smile. “You don’t believe that.”

His hand moves down my arm to my wrist, which he takes in one hand and lifts to his mouth to kiss the tender underside. His lips barely touch my skin, but it’s still enough to ignite a fire inside me and catapult me right back to that night six months ago.

All at once, I feel his hot lips and breath all over my body, peppering it with kisses while he makes his way down my torso…

His mouth hovers above my skin, and when his hot breath breezes against it again, goosebumps ripple away from the source and drag me back into my body. It feels incredible, and at some level it scares me that something so small can have such a huge effect. But this is what he does to me. Ever since I crashed into him that night at Opal and Oak, ever since he kissed me the first time, I haven’t been the same, and I’m starting to wonder if I ever will be.

Maybe I don’twantto be.

Declan lightly kisses my wrist again, creating a fresh wave of goosebumps, and when I shiver, he smirks and raises his eyebrows at me.

“See?” He drops my arm and takes my chin lightly between his thumb and forefinger, gazing right into my eyes. “You can lie all you want, hummingbird, but your body can’t.”

My heart stutters in my chest. How the fuck does he see through me so easily? Somehow, this man knows me—canreadme—in a way that goes far beyond our one night together.

The world seems to slow to a halt around me as the tension and truth explode between us like a supernova. And before I have any conscious awareness of what I’m doing, my body takes control.

I surge onto my tiptoes and crush my lips against his.

Chapter14

Declan

The kiss catches me completely off-guard, but my body reacts instinctively, my arms wrapping around her.

It’s like I’ve been starving for months without knowing it and finally have a taste of sustenance for the first time in as long as I can remember. It’s like the first desperate breath of air after coming up from underwater. It’s like coming home after years away.

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