“Goddammit.” He headed toward the woman he’d been doing his best to avoid for days and found her in the middle of an off-color joke that was actually pretty funny.

He waited until she turned and looked at him. “Hey, you,” she said, a warm smile curving her mouth.

“Hey.” He shifted on his feet, trying to figure out a way to ease into this. “Uh, can I see you a minute?”

“Sure,” she said easily, because she had no idea how not easy this was going to be.

“In there?” He gestured to the shower room, following her there, until Gage caught his arm and whispered, “Kiss only.”

Pace looked at him. “What?”

“Yeah, no sleeping with her or we’ll lose.”

“Okay,” Pace said on a long exhale. “What the hell have you been smoking? What have you all been smoking?”

Gage hesitated. “Listen, certain people think it’s the sexual tension between the two of you that gave us that win.”

Certain people. Pace craned his neck and slid Red a look of disbelief.

Red pulled out his inhaler.

Dammit. Low blow.

“So kiss her,” Gage said quietly. “But don’t f—”

“Whoa.” Pace shook his head and pulled free. “You’re all a bunch of fucking nuts.”

Holly was waiting for him at the door to the shower room, which he opened for her. She was carefully put together today, surprise, wearing a white shirt opened over a red tee and snug, hip-hugging jean capris. Her hair had been contained in a ponytail, with long sweeping bangs outlining the face that continued to tease him in his dreams all damn night, every night, where he’d done a whole hell of a lot more than kiss her.

The shower room was humid from the team’s recent showers, and as she turned to face him, her careful hair began to frizz adorably. “I didn’t think women were allowed back here,” she said.

“They’re not, usually. This is a . . . special circumstance, approved by management.”

“Really? What’re the special circumstances?”

Stepping forward, he put his hands on her hips and pulled her up against him.

“Oh.” Her hands went to his chest as she tilted her face up, her lips parting in a little breath of surprise that he leaned in and swallowed whole with his mouth, and God, just like that he died and went to heaven.

With her own soft little murmur of pleasure, she sank her fingers into his hair, pressing her soft, warm body up against his, completely surrendering to him and completely snagging his heart in the process.

Pulling back with reluctance, he stared down into her glazed-over eyes and nearly drowned.

She licked her lips, just a little dart of her tongue as if she needed that one last taste of him and gave a sweet, pleasure-filled sigh that went straight through him. “Not that I’m complaining, but what was that for?”

“Luck.”

“Really?”