“Fuck yeah,” he groans, and slams into me one more time as he starts coming.

I hold him tight while both of our bodies shudder with relief. I revel in the euphoria of my orgasm, but with every heartbeat that I start to come down, my worry starts to increase. While that was amazing—absolutely fucking amazing—sex, there was purpose and need within it. I’ll never withhold that from Ryker, but I have to know the drive behind it.

Ryker rolls to the slide, slipping out of me before collapsing onto his back. This is also different, because he normally takes me right along with him. He’s a cuddler…a man who likes to touch and stroke long after he’s gotten off. I turn my head to the side and see him just staring at the ceiling.

His shorts are still pushed down his hips a bit, his sated cock still wet and lying along his left hipbone.

My skirt is bunched up around my own hips with my panties pulled to the side.

That was the extent of our undressing, and while I’m all for some hurried, urgent, can’t-wait-to-get-inside-you sex, this isn’t sitting right with me.

This seems detached.

I push up on my elbows so I can see him better. “What’s wrong?”

He looks at me distractedly, tries to focus, and says, “Nothing.”

I repeat in a firmer tone, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Ryker reaches down and pulls his shorts up. Doesn’t look me in the eye when he lies to me. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“You’re full of shit,” I tell him as I roll away, right off the bed, and pull my skirt down. I start marching for the door, realizing that my shoes never even came off.

“Where are you going?” he calls out.

“Back to my room.”

I’m not sure how he accomplishes it—quick goalie reflexes I’m thinking—but he’s on me in a flash. He grabs my elbow and turns me toward him. “Wait a minute. What’s wrong?”

Brows furrowed, lips drawn. I find it ironic he’s worried about me at this moment.

“What’s wrong with me?” I ask with a laugh. “What’s wrong with you? There’s obviously something bothering you and you lie to my face point blank when I ask you to share it.”

Ryker lets out a huge sigh and he nods his head in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry.”

I step into him, put my hands on his shoulders, and gaze into his face. “Is it me? Us?”

“No,” he says quickly, and brings his arms around my waist. “Not at all.”

“Then talk to me,” I urge him.

He smiles at me then, with just his eyes alone. “Okay. But first let’s get naked and get back in bed. I want to hold you.”

I hadn’t realized how fearful I was over Ryker’s seeming detachment until he said those words. My body almost sags with relief to hear that demand, and I don’t argue with him. Within moments, we’re both stripped and under the covers. We lie on our sides, facing each other.

For a moment, he just stares at my lips, and one might think he was contemplating a kiss, but I know he’s collecting his thoughts.

Finally, he talks. “It’s been a rough week.”

“Let me see if I can sum it up,” I say, because I want him to know that I think about him. That I worry about him. “Ruby breaks her arm, you had probably the biggest scare of your life. You watched your daughter suffer. Frank Lessier, in his role as Cold Fury management, wasn’t supportive of you at all. You had to miss a game and you love hockey—not as much as your daughters, granted, but it’s damn close. You had to watch while another goalie that many fans and some of the management want to see back in the game play amazingly well coming off an injury, so your starting goalie status is in question. You had a loss tonight, which is only going to fuel the debate about you and Max. And finally…finally, I can’t be there for you fully, so you don’t even know how to go about sharing this stuff with me because the boundary lines of our relationship are muddied.”

Ryker drops his gaze back down to my lips for a moment, then looks back up to me with such seriousness in his eyes that I know I didn’t even come close to hitting on what was really bothering him.

“Hensley wants to reconcile and try to make our marriage work,” he says quietly.

That feeling when you’re on a roller coaster just before you plunge down that first big drop…that’s how my stomach feels at this moment. It drops so hard and fast that I become light-headed. My heart squeezes painfully, because I fear his next words. My tongue is dry, stuck to the top of my mouth so I can’t even beg him not to consider it.

That explains the detachment. His refusal to talk to me. It must be weighing so heavy on his mind.

He must be considering it.

I give a little cough to clear my throat. “Why the change of heart?”

Ryker’s eyes narrow and flare with anger. “Because Patric dumped her and she’s all alone. She’s floundering and seeking the comfort of her family she left behind.”

I’ll hate myself later for doing it, because this may go down as one of the dumbest things to ever come out of my mouth, but I go ahead and do it anyway. “Maybe you should consider. You have the girls to think of.”

If I thought Ryker was angry just a second ago, I would be mistaken. The way his eyes fire daggers at me…I have the sudden urge to shrink away from him.

“Are you fucking nuts?” he asks me with a growling edge to his voice. “Doesn’t any of this that you and I have going on mean anything to you? You want me to just dump all that, forget you, and take back a woman who abused my trust, abandoned her girls, and now comes crawling back? You say I have the girls to think of, well, I am thinking of the girls. I’m thinking they’ll never respect the sanctity of marriage if they see their mom and dad being in a loveless one.”