Chapter 20 Collin
COLLIN
Ican’t stop kissing her. Not in front of the tree on Main Street, not between all the buildings and every private space we’ve found on the island, and certainly not here with her pressed up against the house, tucked into an alcove where the porch light doesn’t reach.
Here, in the shadows beside my childhood home, with Iris pressed between me and the worn Victorian siding, I’m discovering that stopping is simply not an option I’m willing to consider.
Not when she makes these soft sounds against my mouth.
Not when her fingers keep curling into my sweater like she needs an anchor.
Nothing else matters except the way she feels against me.
I’ve been wanting this for so long. I’m consumed by it.
Every other thought burning away. The consequences, my reputation, none of it matters because nothing in my life has ever felt as right as kissing her.
Nothing feels as good as her body pressed between mine and the house.
Snowflakes catch in her dark curls, melting against her flushed skin, and there are infinitely too many layers between us.
I want to feel her. Need to feel her. All of her, soft and warm underneath me.
Who invented winter coats anyway? Satan.
Satan invented winter coats specifically to torture me in this moment.
My body curves around hers instinctively, trying to shield her from the biting cold.
I can’t get enough. Every touch, every taste makes me want more.
I’m a man starved, and she’s everything I’ve been craving.
“This is crazy,” she mumbles against my lips, but she’s smiling.
I can feel it, taste it in our kiss. “I’m never this reckless.
” I pull back just enough to look at her, taking in the way her eyes shine in the darkness, how her breath comes quick and uneven.
She’s spent so long being careful. So many years of measured steps and practical choices, of putting everyone else’s needs before her own desires.
I’ve seen it in the way she hesitates before allowing herself even the smallest pleasures, how she questions everything that doesn’t fit into her careful plans.
Watching the light come back into her eyes over the past three months has been the single most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. I want to see more of it.
“Then it’s about time you were.” I press closer, drinking in the small gasp that escapes her.
Even through our winter layers, I can feel the warmth of her seeping into me.
The space between us feels like too much and not enough all at once.
She laughs, bright and breathless, the sound cutting through the quiet night air.
I silence it with another kiss, deeper this time, trying to pour everything I’m feeling into it.
“I’ll be your do-over,” I breathe against her mouth, the words emerging from some deep, honest place I didn’t even know I had.
Not that I want to stop them. Not that I want to stop anything about this moment.
“My what?” She pulls back just enough to look at me, and I nearly groan at the sight of her.
Lips parted, eyes heavy-lidded and dark with want.
Those eyes that have been burning through my dreams for weeks, making me wake up aching and alone.
My mouth finds her neck, open and hungry, savoring the quiet moan that slips out from her when I find the sensitive spot below her ear.
My knee slides between her thighs, pressing her more firmly against the wall, and she gasps—a breathy, desperate sound that shoots straight through me.
When she rolls her hips in response, grinding against my thigh, I brace my hands against the house on either side of her head.
“Your do-over,” I breathe against her throat, tasting the rapid flutter of her pulse.
“I want to know every reckless thought inside that pretty little head of yours.” My teeth graze her skin, and she gasps again, hands fisting in my sweater.
“Everything you’ve ever wanted to do, but stopped yourself from doing, to please someone else.
” I trail kisses down the column of her throat, relishing how she arches into me.
My fingers tangle in her hair, tugging gently to tilt her head back, exposing more of her neck to my mouth.
When I pull back to look at her, the sight nearly stops my heart.
Her cheeks are flushed, snowflakes melting on her eyelashes.
“Do it with me,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend.
We’re pressed chest to chest, breathing the same air, and I can feel her heart racing to match mine.
I’m tired of watching her live so carefully, like she’s trying not to take up too much space in her own life.
I want to give her the whole world to spread out in.
“Collin,” she breathes my name like a prayer, like a curse, her head falling back against the siding, legs squeezing around my thigh as she rocks back and forth.
I take advantage, once again trailing open-mouthed kisses down her throat, tasting snow and skin.
My hands slide down her sides to grip her hips, not guiding, just holding on as she moves against me with growing urgency.
She’s going to kill me. This is how I die.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders, and I can feel her pulse racing under my tongue.
When I suck at the skin beneath her jaw, she rocks harder against my thigh with a whine that has me cursing under my breath.
“I want to,” she whispers, her voice catching.
“God, I want to.” Her eyes squeeze shut as she pulls me back to her mouth, and this kiss is different.
Deeper, hungrier, edged with a need that threatens to consume us both.
She kisses me like she’s trying to crawl inside my skin, like she wants to devour me whole.
Her hands are everywhere, skating up my chest, tangling in my hair, dragging down my back with a desperation that makes me groan against her mouth.
I pull her closer, and she makes this sound, this soft, broken little whimper that sets my blood on fire.
I capture her lips again, as my hands slide under her coat and sweater to find bare skin.
She’s burning up, fever-hot against my cold fingers, and the contrast pulls another moan from her throat. But then she stiffens against me.
“Wait,” she gasps, pulling back. “Stop, I’m sorry, I—” I’m already moving away before she finishes speaking, my hands falling to my sides, creating space between us.
My heart plummets. You big idiot. Three months of careful progress and you let your dick do the thinking.
Fuck. I’ve pushed too far, too fast, let myself get carried away by want and need and the intoxicating warmth of her.
Running a hand through my hair, I try to steady my racing thoughts, to calm the surge of panic rising in my throat.
“God, I’m so sorry,” the words rush out of me.
“I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t have—” The night air feels colder now, and I can’t quite look at her.
Terrified of seeing fear or regret in those bright green eyes.
All this time spent trying to get her to let me past her walls, and I might have ruined it all because I couldn’t control myself.
Because I got greedy. But then she grabs my sweater, yanking me back toward her with surprising strength.
“No, no, you didn’t do anything wrong,” she rushes to say, shaking her head. “I just... I...” Her words trail off, and the conflict in her eyes makes my chest ache.
“Hey,” I say, voice soft as my hands find her hips again, gentle this time. “What is it?” She takes a shaky breath, and I can see her trying to gather her thoughts. See them going a mile a minute behind her eyes.
“This is... it’s a lot, and I haven’t—” She pauses, chewing on her bottom lip.
“I haven’t been with anyone since Owen.” Her words come faster now, tumbling over each other.
“I’m so nervous, which is stupid because I’m a grown woman, but everything with you feels so.
.. intense, and I don’t want to mess this up, and—”
“Iris.” I cup her face in my hands, my thumbs stroking her cheekbones.
“We can stop. It’s okay to stop. Of course it’s okay.
” The reality of our situation crashes over me like a wave.
We’re outside my mother’s house, tangled up like two teenagers, moving too fast because we can’t help ourselves.
But this isn’t some meaningless hookup. This is Iris.
This is everything. “I want you,” I tell her honestly, because she deserves nothing less.
“God, I want you so much it hurts. But not like this. Not if you’re not ready.
Not if you’re not completely sure.” I brush my thumb over her kiss-swollen lips, memorizing how they feel.
“I’m not some impatient boy or a selfish man.
This goes as slow or as fast as you want it to.
” She leans into my touch, her eyes closing briefly.
“I don’t want you to think I’m leading you on.” I chuckle. I can’t help it. She’s so impossibly sweet and good and kind.
“I’ve waited three months just to kiss you,” I interrupt gently.
“I’d wait three more to do it again. As long as you need.
” I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in.
Tension slowly melting from her frame. When she looks up at me, the vulnerability in her expression steals my breath.
There’s trust there, fragile and precious, and I want to gather it close, protect it with everything I have.
Instead, I brush a snowflake from her cheek, letting my fingers linger against her skin.
“Thank you,” she whispers, and the words carry such weight.
I hear everything else behind them. Gratitude for understanding, for patience, for seeing her exactly as she is and wanting her anyway.
I press my lips to her temple, breathing in the familiar scent of her shampoo.
This quiet moment between us feels more intimate than any heated kiss, any desperate touch.
This is Iris learning to trust me with her heart.
This is me learning how to hold it without dropping it.
It takes a matter of minutes to get inside the house.
To follow her up the stairs. To tell her goodnight, standing outside her bedroom door, pressing a chaste kiss to her cheek.
It’s agony pulling away. Agony watching her devastating smile as she shuts the door.
Agony crawling into my bed alone. Every muscle still humming with the need to go back to her.
To press her against another wall, to taste the snowflakes melted on her skin, to lose myself in the way she says my name.
But for the first time in my life, I want to do this right.
Every detail plays on repeat behind my closed eyes.
It’s strange. Unsettling. I’ve spent years perfecting this careful dance of desire without attachment, of passion without promises.
Women have always been beautiful distractions, their names and faces blurring together in a highlight reel of fleeting moments I never wanted to hold onto.
But Iris... She breaks every rule I’ve written for myself.
She haunts me, like she’s carved out a space in my chest that I can’t close up again.
There’s a word for this feeling building between my ribs, but it’s too soon to name it.
Too new to contain in four little letters.
I wasn’t supposed to want anyone. That was the whole point of me being on this show.
Marcus and the PR team’s carefully crafted rehabilitation plan.
No more women, no more scandals, no more headlines about the NHL’s most notorious rookie leaving a trail of broken hearts, and compromising photos, across every city with a decent nightlife.
But they didn’t account for Iris. How could they?
Marcus would tell me to get my head on straight.
To remember the contracts, the sponsorships, the carefully orchestrated redemption arc we’ve been building.
But lying here, still tasting her on my lips, I can’t bring myself to care about any of it.
Let the PR team have their collective aneurysm.
Let the gossip sites run wild with their headlines.
“NHL’s Bad Boy Breaks Good Boy Promise,” hell, I might frame that one.
Because they don’t know her. They don’t know how she makes me want to be better just by existing in my world.
I press my face into my pillow and groan.
Jesus. I’m so fucked. As I lie here, listening to the quiet rhythm of her moving through the room on the other side of this wall, feeling closer to her through plaster and paint than I’ve ever felt to anyone skin to skin, I realize something that should probably terrify me: I don’t think I want to be unfucked.