Surprise for the Sniper (Connecticut Comets Hockey, #2)

by Siena Trap

For all the fat-bottomed girls who spent far too long worried that they would never live up to the unrealistic body expectations portrayed in movies and magazines. Have faith that the right guy is gonna take one look at you and say, “Gimme that ass.”

“No. I won’t take it back, not even if you’re leaving. It’s how I feel, and I wanted you to know. If I never see you again, please know that I loved you once. That what we had was real, for whatever short a time. Remember that, no matter what, everything I’ve ever done was out of love. For you.”

“Sue me. When it comes to that boy and protecting him from small-minded people, I tend to forget everything Dad preaches about turning the other cheek. And I’m not sorry about it.”

“Do you know how embarrassing it is when you find out the kid you’re about to offer a full-ride hockey scholarship is your own fucking son?”

It broke my heart to let you go, but I took comfort in the knowledge that you were going to have the life you always dreamed of. And you got it. I’m proud of you. Knox will be proud of you.”

She was right. I wouldn’t have gone. Liv gave me two gifts that night—my son and my career—and I’d been blind to it all. I owed this woman my life.

I’d always been an ass man, but no other woman I had been with over the years came close to having the type of junk in the trunk that Liv possessed.

it was her voice in my head, reminding me that if she’d told me about Knox before I left, I would be stuck living like this right alongside her. We’d be alternating shifts, working our lives away, struggling to make ends meet, and living paycheck to paycheck. She’d saved me from this fate. Who was going to save her?

“Right where Mama hides the cookies!” The grin on Knox’s face slipped through the cage on his helmet. “Huh?” Rubbing his helmeted head with my gloved hand, I replied, “Top shelf, buddy! You’ve got a lot to learn.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been jealous of an eight-year-old before. How do I work out a shower with Mom?”

Something inside me snapped at her admission that I was the only man she’d ever been with. A sense of primal possession had taken over my body, and I knew in an instant that I didn’t want there to be another in her future. She was mine. Only mine.

If I decided to pursue Liv, I had to be ready to commit. She wouldn’t accept anything less, and why should she? She deserved the world. They both did.

I was a fool for walking away from her once. I couldn’t afford to make that mistake again.

“What if I lost her?” Liv’s voice wavered. Pulling back enough to grip her chin and turn her to face me, I shook my head firmly. “No. You just shoved her in a corner. If you can’t remember which one, I’ll help you search.”

“Because thoughts of you are keeping me awake, pretty girl. And I’ll be kicking myself for the rest of my life for not coming back to get you sooner.”

“Nothing about this will be like it was before. That fumbling virgin is long gone, sweet Liv. It’s time you forget about him because I’m about to fuck you like a grown-ass man.”

I could die a happy man knowing I finally got the chance to worship at the altar of her body after all this time. She had been my first. More than anything, I wanted her to be my last.

Liv had supported me silently all these years, and I would spend the rest of my life showing her how grateful I was that she believed in me. She was the only person to ever love me when I wasn’t sure I was worthy of such an emotion.

“That’s how guys wake up, Liv. You think it’s easy to have an argument with you when all the blood in my body has rushed south?” “Seems like a design flaw,” she teased.

“Liv, you stole my heart at seventeen, and I don’t think you ever gave it back. That’s why everything has been meaningless since I left you behind. You kept my heart safe, patiently waiting for me to return and retrieve it. To remember where I belong, by your side.”

“Because you’re mine. I will give you everything you’ve ever wanted, take you to heaven and back, so long as you obey. Inside this room, I make the rules.”

“Never. If I decide I’m going to make you squirt so hard you ruin this shirt and I have to change, then you’ll fucking do it.”

“Knox brought us back together, sure, but my stumbling upon him allowed me a second chance with you. I’m with you because I can’t help loving you.”