SOMEHOW, I’D GONE from the lowest of low points in my life to the highest of highs, all within the span of a few days. Or…as close as I could get to the high point, since I wasn’t playing pro hockey anywhere. Still, despite my failure in that department, things were looking pretty damn good.

Anne Golston and the Eye of the Storm team were a hell of a lot of fun to work with, and doing this sort of documentary work was turning out to be not only challenging but stimulating. Even though I’d only gotten my degree in journalism because I’d needed to be working toward a degree to play hockey in college, I’d been smart enough to choose a field I liked. Finding ways to use what I’d learned in school and to combine it with what I’d spent my life doing on the ice was both rewarding and motivating.

Plus, it meant I got to spend more time hanging out with Colesy and the rest of the guys. Yeah, I had to keep a bit of distance from him when I was behind the lens, metaphorically if not physically, but when I was off duty, things were different.

Trading blow jobs with Colesy just about every night certainly didn’t hurt my disposition any, either. And since I was working as part of the Eye of the Storm crew, that meant I got to travel with the team when they went on the road. We were on the plane with the guys. We were at the various arenas with them. We were in the same hotel as them… It was a hell of a lot easier on me to sneak into his room on the road than it was to wonder if my mother or sisters would be spying on me in Portland.

Mom probably wouldn’t do that, to be honest. And Katie had much more important things on her mind these days than worrying about who her little brother might or might not be screwing. But Dani? Dani was meddlesome like nobody’s business—even more so now that she was pregnant. She was constantly sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, and I wasn’t ready to involve my family in whatever this might become.

Dad, at least, had the decency to stay out of my private life. I mean, I knew if there was something I needed to talk to him about, he’d be open to it—even something he had no experience with. But he wasn’t interfering in things, as far as I was aware.

Colesy was old enough and had been in the league for long enough that he didn’t have a road roommate. He got a room to himself, which meant we had plenty of privacy to do whatever the hell we wanted.

We were in St. Louis tonight.

The Storm beat the Blues in a shootout, and after a brief team breakfast tomorrow morning, we’d all be getting on a plane and flying to Minnesota.

Colesy’d had an average night—no goals or assists himself, but the Blues hadn’t scored while he and Hammer had been on the ice, either. For a couple of older, third-pairing, stay-at-home defensemen in this league, that was exactly what he wanted to see on his stat sheet after a game—a big slew of zeroes. That meant he and Hammer had done their jobs well.

But now the game was over, we were all back at the hotel, and the Eye of the Storm crew was calling it a night.

Anne caught me sneaking down the halls of the hotel to join Colesy, but since she was on her way to Ghost’s room herself, she didn’t say anything. She just gave me a grin and a wink and then let me slip wordlessly past her.

I turned the corner and almost bumped straight into my father, who was on his way back toward the elevators.

He gave me a funny look, raising an eyebrow in question. “Thought your room was on the sixth floor.”

We were currently on the eleventh floor of the hotel.

“I was just…” Scrambling to come up with something to say to my old man. How do you tell your father you’re on your way to a booty call with one of his players?

Just then, Colesy, Hammer, Nicky, and Leif Sorenson came around the corner, talking and laughing. They each had a to-go bag from a nearby restaurant in their hands.

Dad turned toward them and said, “Hmm,” under his breath when Colesy looked over at us and smiled so wide it made my heart stop.

Hmm? What did that mean?

Colesy separated himself from the other guys. Those three headed into a room in the corner after a brief wave hello, and he made his way toward us.

“Hungry?” he asked me, totally at ease, as if my father wasn’t glaring straight through him. “I’ve got plenty.”

I felt hungry, all right, but not for food. But I nodded and said, “Yeah, I could eat.”

Dad scowled at me, and I shrugged. Then he glared at Colesy one more time and stalked off down the hall.

“What was that about?” I asked once my father had gone around the corner.

“He’s your father,” he said, laughing.

“Yeah, but still.” I didn’t know what to make of it. Didn’t know what Colesy made of it, either. He tended to keep his thoughts to himself about a lot of things, whereas I was an open book.

He fished his key card out of his pocket and shrugged. “Just his way of telling me not to be an asswipe or something. Only he’s already told me that before, and it was for a completely different reason.”

Wait, what? “My dad’s told you not to be an asswipe?” Something fluttered in the pit of my stomach.

“Yeah. Sort of.” Colesy’s expression was sheepish. “A few times, even,” he added dryly.

Maybe my father wasn’t keeping his nose out of my private life as well as I’d thought, after all. “Meaning what?”

“It’s kind of what he does when someone’s pursuing one of his kids. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

A tingle of awareness shot straight up my spine at the idea that Cole Paxton was admitting he was pursuing me—at least in a roundabout way. “I’ve noticed,” I said, swallowing the lump in my throat. Dad had been awful with both Babs and Harry back in the day. “But still. I’m not one of his daughters. It’s different for me.”

“You think?”

“Isn’t it?” I’d never been one of Dad’s little girls. Thank goodness for that.

Cole winked. “It just means he loves his kids—all of you—and he wants the best for you. That’s all.”

Something told me he wasn’t telling me the full story. “Does that mean he doesn’t think you’re what’s best for me?”

“Give your father some credit, Luke. He trusts you to know your own mind. Besides, it’s nice that you have parents who give a shit who you want to be with.” He headed into the room and set the to-go bag down on the desk, then started taking out all the food he’d brought back with him from the restaurant, effectively putting an end to that line of discussion.

The bag wasn’t just filled with leftovers from his dinner, either. He’d ordered an entire meal for me, apparently, since the to-go container he set in front of me was completely untouched: half a roast chicken, steamed Brussels sprouts with some sort of garlicky balsamic glaze, and decadent mashed potatoes with truffle oil.

He took out another, smaller container and started eating his dessert—German chocolate cake with traditional coconut pecan frosting.

I raised a brow. “Should you be eating that?” Most hockey players tended to eat a relatively strict diet during the season. Sugary desserts weren’t high on the list of acceptable foods.

“Nope.” He cocked a sexy-as-hell grin at me. “But I’m a sucker for German chocolate. It’s my biggest weakness.”

Dessert was good, but I’d never go so far as to say anything of the sort was my biggest weakness. He was my biggest weakness.

“There’s dessert in the bag for you, too. Lemon cheesecake.”

Oh my god. My mouth started watering at the thought. “I might die and go to heaven.” Okay, so maybe I should put a qualifier on that earlier thought. Lemon cheesecake and Colesy were my biggest weaknesses. Not necessarily in that order.

But now I was thinking about putting my lemon cheesecake on him and then licking every bit of that tart, creamy goodness off his body.

“Don’t do that or you’ll miss out on a lot more lemon cheesecake,” he said, which made me do a double take. But he didn’t know what I was thinking about doing to him. I needed to slow my roll. He laughed and winked. “Babs told me lemon cheesecake was your favorite.”

I intended to eat my meal like a civilized person and not someone imagining licking my dessert off Cole’s hard body. “Jamie was with you guys tonight?” I asked, trying to keep it casual. But what I really wanted to ask him was why he’d bothered to ask my brother-in-law about my favorite dessert. And when he’d done it.

Instead, I stuffed my face with mashed potatoes.

“Nah,” he said. “He and 501 were trying to keep Koz in line.”

Good luck with that… But I was still baffled. “You bought a whole meal for me?” And he must have asked Jamie what I liked at some other point in time, then. One more thing to show how thoughtful Colesy was, just like him knowing my coffee order.

Damn, I needed to get better at this shit.

“You’ve been forgetting to eat lately,” he murmured. “You’re too much like Anne for your own good, at least in that way. Both of you get caught up in your work and forget about everything else.”

There was some truth to that, but I hadn’t forgotten about everything else. The number one thing on my mind lately had been him—when I could see him next, how much I wanted his hands on me, when I should make a move to take things to the next level between us, whether he was as preoccupied with me as I was with him…

If he was making the effort to find out my favorite dessert and bring it to me, though, I supposed that could serve as a reasonable answer to the last bit.

Still… “But you aren’t worried that any of those guys might—” I shrugged, cutting myself off and letting him fill in the blanks. Besides, the chicken smelled too good, and he was right. I was starving. My stomach had started making some embarrassing sounds as soon as the scents wafted toward me, and it didn’t seem like it would stop until I’d fed the beast. I filled my plastic spork with mashed potato and greedily dug in.

“None of the guys care about that kind of shit, Luke. Not like that. Or if they do, they’re smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves, because the rest of the team wouldn’t put up with ignorance like that.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. Because even if some of them didn’t care, there were also guys like Koz, who made a point of being an asshole at every possible moment.

We both fell silent, me so I could eat, and Colesy because…well, I wasn’t sure why he clammed up, exactly. He stared at me, quietly eating his dessert, his gaze full of heat.

The intensity of his attention on me made me hard enough to pound nails. I wanted to forget all about my meal and get straight to what I wanted for dessert—him—but I didn’t think he’d let me off so easily. So I ate.

After he finished his dessert and cleared away the trash, he slipped into the bathroom for a few minutes. I finished my meal, but I was too full for dessert right now, so I put the cheesecake into the mini-fridge in his room. It’d be a great midnight snack, or maybe even breakfast.

When I turned around again, Cole was coming out of the bathroom in nothing but his boxer-briefs. Hard, rippling muscle covered every inch of him, but my eye was drawn as always to the smattering of light-brown hair disappearing below the waistband of his shorts.

My mouth watered at the sight of his hard bulge. He stroked himself over the fabric, and I nearly came in my pants.

And then I saw what was in his other hand—a foil condom wrapper and a bottle of lube.

Yeah, all that watering from a moment ago? Gone. My mouth was as dry as the Sahara Desert.

“Is this really happening?” I croaked. And then I started to panic, because I hadn’t prepared myself at all. Anal wasn’t something I could just jump into. It wasn’t something anyone should just jump into without adequate preparation. That was a bad, bad, bad idea.

Cool as a cucumber, Colesy held out a hand for me and said, “I want you to fuck me, Luke.”

Holy. Fucking. Shit.