Jesus fucking Christ.

  “Uh, what are you all doing here?”

  My mom shrugs, tossing me two mini bags of M&M’s from the table, and I catch one with each hand. Cam chuckles softly, tipping his head to me as if to say Good catch. “It’s Halloween dinner.”

  Halloween dinner is something my family has been doing since the first Halloween I lived here. That night, I got to stay up past my bedtime and have late-night tacos with my mom and her friends, and a taco dinner on Halloween night became a kind of family tradition after that. But it’s the one thing in my life that has, historically, been limited to my immediate family only.

  “I know it’s Halloween dinner.” I let my gaze sweep around the room, aggressively avoiding looking at Cam, which is hard when he’s just so…there. “It’s our thing. We’ve never had guests before.”

  “Your mom was sulking since Gracie couldn’t make it,” my dad says, referring to my youngest sister who is spending her junior year of college abroad in London. When my mom elbows him—because we all know it’s for sure my dad who was the one sulking that one of his children is currently almost four thousand miles away—he just grins and wraps an arm around her. “She invited Brian and Liv since they’re kidless tonight. They brought Cam, whose kids have apparently also abandoned him to do Halloween things with friends.” He pauses, giving me a wicked grin like he absolutely knows how much this is throwing me. A quick glance at my mom shows me green eyes dancing with amusement, which means my dad told her about Cam and me.

  Excellent.

  Love that for me.

  “And I have no clue what Rachel’s doing here, but there’s nothing new about that,” my dad finishes.

  “Felt like crashing,” my grandma says with a grin. “Besides, I had to see my girl. You got a fancy new job and forgot your grandparents exist.”

  I snort out a laugh at her melodrama, which cuts my angst by at least half, even though I can still feel the weight of Cam’s eyes on me. “I just saw you last week when you accosted me at work and forced me to postpone a session with a tight end coming back from an injury because you told me you had an emergency.”

  She shrugs casually. “I did.”

  “New shoes are not an emergency, Grandma,” Oliver says, tossing me a wink.

  “She got you too?” I ask with a laugh.

  He grins. “Strolled right into the locker room with a bag full of shoeboxes. Five minutes earlier and the room would have been filled with half-naked men.”

  My grandma shrugs. “I’ve always had good timing. Besides, your teammates were really helpful when I couldn’t decide between all the boots I bought. That goalie of yours has really good taste.”

  “Do you want to sit down, Maddy?” The low rumble of Cam’s voice has my head jerking towards him, my toes curling in my shoes to keep myself from flying over there and launching myself into his lap. He smirks at me, as if he knows exactly what’s going on in my head.

  Smug, gorgeous asshole.

  “Definitely sit, Mads,” Liv says. “There’s a seat next to Cam.” Her eyes bounce between me and Cam, and I know she knows what Cam and I have been getting up to but Jesus, would it kill her to be like fifty percent less obvious? I give her a dirty look, but she just smiles wickedly, her eyes full of mischief. Damn the gods that placed me directly in this family full of mischief-making women. A glance over at Brian tells me that he’s either oblivious or a really good actor, so I take a slow breath to settle my nerves.

  “Why don’t we go to the table?” my mom says, pushing up from her chair. “Dinner is ready—we were just waiting for you, Mads.”

  “Thank god. I’m starving.” Oliver stands and walks over to me, slinging an arm around my shoulder and kissing the side of my head. “Happy Halloween, Mads.”

  My dad wraps his arm around my waist on my other side and tugs my mom in so for a second, the four of us are linked. “Happy you’re both here.” He kisses my cheek and then Oliver’s, before pressing a kiss to my mom’s lips. “Love you, Ems,” he murmurs against her mouth.

  His voice is infused with a layer of emotion that, to anyone outside this family, would seem misplaced for a simple family dinner. But my dad grew up like I did, in and out of foster care with no family and no real home, and he never takes a single second of our family time for granted.

  “Jer,” she says quietly, smiling and laying a hand on his cheek. “Love you, too. And both of you,” she says, turning to me and then to Oliver.

  “Yeah, yeah, you love each other and you love us; what else is new. Can we eat now? I’m seriously starving. You have no idea how hungry a guy gets after a whole entire hockey practice.”

  “I definitely wouldn’t know anything about that,” my dad says, rolling humor-filled eyes at Oliver. “Little shit.”

  He’s grinning and everyone laughs, and I don’t know if it’s the moment between my parents who are still so wildly in love after decades together or the fact that I can feel Cam’s presence like a tangible thing or the way I’m drawn to him so strongly despite knowing being with him risks entirely imploding my professional life, but my heart gallops, emotion tightening my throat and making it a little hard to breathe.

  We break apart, and everyone heads towards the dining room, but I lag behind, trying to pull myself together. When a big, warm hand brushes against my lower back, I jump, sucking in a sharp breath.

  “You okay, Wildcat?” Cam asks with a smirk, his hand still lingering on my back, and I swear I can feel the heat of his palm through my sweatshirt. “You seem a little jumpy tonight.”

  “You’re in my parents’ living room,” I hiss.

  His smirk turns into a full-blown grin. “I was invited.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Don’t you have kids? It’s Halloween.”

  “Riley is at a friend’s house, and Ethan is trick-or-treating with some kids from school. Liv asked me if I wanted to come here with her, and if you think I was about to pass up a chance to see you outside of work, you don’t know me nearly well enough.” He moves his hand from my back and runs his fingers over mine. The touch is light, but I get goosebumps anyway. “I really want you to know me, Maddy,” he says in a low voice. “And I want to know everything about you.”

  “Oh my god,” I mumble. Cam’s eyes are locked on mine, the blue so clear it feels like I can see right to the heart of him, and what I see has my own heart stuttering in my chest. And when he links his pinkie with mine and gives me a soft smile, that heart leaps out of my chest and falls right at his feet.

  My body leans towards him as if it has a mind of its own, drawn in by that look in his eyes and the way his finger feels tangled with mine, and the dark curl falling over his forehead that makes me weak in the knees.

  “Wildcat,” Cam says, his voice a little hoarse, and when he rests his other hand lightly on my hip, I turn to face him fully, my entire body humming with anticipation at his proximity. For one wild second, I don’t care that we’re in my parents’ living room with my family only twenty feet and one wall away.

  “Yeah?”

  He leans in until his mouth is by my ear, and I shiver at the feel of his warm breath on my skin. “Will you come eat tacos with me?”

  “What?” My voice comes out a little breathy with confusion as his words yank me out of my lust haze.

  He grins at me. “Liv said your dad made tacos. It’s time for dinner.”

  “It’s time for…” I trail off, narrowing my eyes at him because from the way his eyes are dancing with humor…yeah, he knows exactly what he’s doing.

  Jerk.

  I want to kiss his face off.

  “Dinner,” he finishes for me, swinging an arm around my shoulders. “Come on, Wildcat. I want you to sit by me.”

  I do sit next to him. And it’s a colossal mistake.

  “That okay with you, Little Red?”

  “What?” I respond sharply. My dad’s voice yanks me out of a fantasy where Cam’s finger, the one that is currently drawing circles on my knee under the table, was somewhere else entirely. I surreptitiously slide my hand under the table and try to shove him away, but all he does is let out a low chuckle only I can hear and moves his leg over to hook a foot around my ankle, his thigh pressed tightly to mine.

  “The game on Sunday,” Dad says, raising an eyebrow at me. “Brian got us tickets so we can see you in action.”

  I shrug, picking up my orange soda and taking what I hope is a casual sip in an attempt to cool the heat currently blazing through me at Cam’s proximity and all the hidden, secret touches that are driving me out of my fucking mind. “Not much to see.”

  “Of course there is,” Cam says, taking a bite of a taco and focusing on my dad. “Seeing Maddy on the sidelines is incredible. Her eyes are everywhere at once. She watches the whole field, every single play, focusing on things no one else sees. It’s amazing to watch.”

  Well, shit.

  I knew Cam watched me during games. I can feel it every time I’m standing on the field. But I didn’t realize he watched me. That knowledge sends my lust-filled brain spiraling, and never in my life have I tried so hard to keep the thoughts in my head off my face.

  Those dirty, dirty thoughts are not for public consumption.

  “You seem to know a lot about what Maddy does.” My mom gives me a devious grin and props her elbow on the table, chin in her hand. When she raises an eyebrow at me, I hear the words she doesn’t say.

  So…him, huh?

  I tilt my head slightly. I hope not.

  She smirks. Liar. I like him.

  I sigh. So do I.

  “Uh, what’s happening right now?” Cam asks. He slides his hand around to grip the inside of my thigh, trailing his index finger along the inner seam of my leggings, and I almost jump out of my skin.

  I hear my mom laugh, and I don’t have to look at her to know she knows exactly what’s going on under this table and how it’s affecting me.

  “They can talk without words,” Brian says with a laugh. “It’s the weirdest fucking thing in the world.”

  “They’re empaths.” Oliver shoves his tenth taco in his mouth. “They can read minds. Dad can kind of do it too since they’re old and they’ve been married for, like, a hundred years, but not the same way. Mom and Mads are creepy with it. They can have a whole conversation in their heads.”

  “No shit,” Cam muses.

  Mom shrugs. “I hate the word empath. We just pay attention.” She gives Oliver a pointed look. “You’re on cleanup duty for the old comment.”

  Dad wraps an arm around her shoulders and tugs her closer. “I’ll be old with you any day, pretty girl. Just means I’ve gotten to spend more time with you.”

  Oliver groans. “Be, like, eighty percent less gross.”

  Olivia chuckles. “Do you even know your parents? They’re the most in love couple on the planet.”

  “Hey now.” Brian tugs Olivia out of her chair and settles her on his lap, pressing a kiss to her temple. “We could give them a run for their money.”

  I glance down at my plate because watching Liv and Brian and my parents being all in love has me feeling some kind of way.

  “Empath, huh?” Cam murmurs, his hand sliding an inch up my thigh, so close to where I’m wet and aching for him that a bead of sweat slides down my back. I glance over at Brian, but he’s preoccupied with Olivia, and this whole thing feels deliciously forbidden enough to have lust and need tangling together in my belly.

  “I just see what I see,” I manage, grabbing my glass and taking a long sip of my drink.

  When I put it down, Cam glances at it and then at me with a considering expression. Without taking his eyes off mine, he reaches over and wraps his hand around my glass, giving it a half spin. Then he lifts it to his mouth, his lips landing right on the spot where my own just were. After a single sip, he puts the glass down and, with his eyes still on mine, runs his tongue along his bottom lip, like he’s trying to capture the taste of me.

  His eyes flash, his hand inching higher on my thigh. Heat sears through me, and I shoot up from my chair like my ass is on fire.

  “Bathroom,” I squeak, not waiting for anyone’s reaction before I bolt out of the room.

  “This is fine,” I mutter, staring at my reflection in the mirror of the upstairs bathroom where I fled after my not-so-subtle escape from the dining room. “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

  My bright eyes and flushed, slightly sweaty face are definitely giving everything is fine.

  It’s fine that Cam practically had his finger on my clit at my parents’ dining room table.

  It’s fine that Brian was sitting right there when it happened.

  It’s especially fine that I’ve stopped caring about all the reasons why Cam and I absolutely, positively can’t happen.

  See? One hundred percent, completely fine.

  Having told myself enough lies to get through the rest of the night, I open the bathroom door and stop cold because Cam stands right there, leaning up against the wall opposite the bathroom with his long legs crossed in front of him and a wide smirk covering his stupidly handsome face.

  A face I want to kiss every damn inch of.

  “Everything okay, Wildcat?”

  Gorgeous, gorgeous asshole.

  This is so not fine.

  I take a step forward until we’re practically chest to chest. “You know perfectly well that everything is not okay,” I hiss. “All night you’ve just been…there.” I wave my hands at nothing in particular. “Sitting next to me and touching me and what the fuck was that thing with the drink?” I narrow my eyes at him. “You had your own drink, but you had to take mine and turn the damn glass around so you could put your lips where mine were, and don’t you dare even tell me that’s not what you were doing because it so wa⁠—”

  Whatever else I was about to say dies on my lips when Cam grabs my hips and spins us so my back is against the wall. One hand grips my hip, and he presses the other into the wall above my head, his big body leaning into mine, crowding my space. He dips his head so his mouth hovers next to my ear again, but this time I know it’s not to tease, causing my entire body to quake. “That’s exactly what I was doing,” he says quietly, his voice raspy and his lips grazing my skin with every word he speaks. “Because it’s been almost seven weeks since I had your lips on mine. That’s seven weeks too long, and if the only way I could have them was to share your drink, I figured that would be enough. But it turns out, that wasn’t enough for me.”

  Cam lifts his head and looks at me, lips just inches from mine. The darkness and hunger in his gaze has butterflies exploding in my stomach. “Was it enough for you?”

  No.

  The answer comes at me, swift and certain, and suddenly, none of it matters. Not my job or the team or the fact that we’re standing in a hallway in my parents’ house where literally anyone, including Brian, could find us. Because Cam smells like cedar and spice and everything I’ve ever wanted, and he’s looking at me like I’m his reason for being, and I think if I don’t kiss him in the next ten seconds, I will actually cease to exist on this earth.

  “Fuck it,” I mutter, reaching up to tangle my hands in his hair, yanking his mouth to mine.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CAM

  The second our lips touch, my brain shorts out, my only thought this this this fucking this. The sound that rumbles out of my chest is filled with relief as I slide the hand on Maddy’s hip around her back, yanking her against my body and bringing my free hand from the wall to cup her cheek.

  With a groan and a thumb under her jaw, I tilt her head back and tease her lips open, pushing my tongue into her mouth to dance with hers. My entire body lights up with the memories of the last time we did this, with the way she tastes and the sounds she makes and the way her body feels pressed up against mine. Like we fit together. Like we were made exactly for this moment. The kiss is slow then fast, deep then light. All. Everything. The kind of kiss I feel from the top of my head all the way to my toes.

  It’s a battle for dominance. Hands roving, lips moving, bodies straining to get closer, closer, and closer still, until I wonder whether I can just crawl directly inside her skin and live there forever.

  Maddy lets out a sexy little whimper, winding her fingers tighter in my hair, tugging the short strands and pressing her hips against mine, her whimper turning to a moan when she feels exactly how this kiss is affecting me. My cock is rock hard, and I cant my hips forward, pressing her more firmly against the wall. I reach down to grip her thigh, pulling her leg up and securing it around my hip, grinding my cock over her core.

  “Oh my god,” she mutters, tightening her leg around me and rolling her hips with another moan that goes directly to my dick. “That feels so good.”

  And fuck, it’s better than good. So, so much better. I feel the heat of her even through the barrier of the clothes between us, and every single nerve ending in my body is screaming, the need to feel her with nothing in between us, to get inside her again, overwhelming.

  Somewhere in the recesses of my brain is the thought that we should slow down. That we should talk about what this means. That against a wall in her parents’ house is maybe not the best place to be picking up where we left off seven weeks ago. But Maddy tastes like orange soda and the bad decisions I’ve never been able to resist, and there is no force on earth strong enough to make me pull away from her.

  “Fuck yes, baby,” I mumble, grabbing her other thigh and picking her up so she’s pressed between me and the wall, my cock sliding against her. “I can feel you, desperate for me, just like I’m desperate for you. I’m so fucking desperate for you, Maddy. Use me. Rub that hot pussy all over me.”

  “Cameron, fuck.” Maddy moans, her hips twisting as she rubs against me exactly where she needs it. “More. Please,” she begs urgently, the way she’s tugging my hair a shot straight to the balls.