Chapter 1
CILLIAN
Christmas Eve
Do you know long it takes for a man to slowly go insane?
Eight months.
Eight months of pretending I’m unaffected.
Eight months of pretending I don’t watch my Ellie girl more than I breathe.
Eight months of being the guardian I promised I’d be… while every part of me wants to be something else entirely.
I want her under me crying out my name while I bring her the only pleasure she’s ever known.
It’s the day before Christmas, and I’m watching the fuckery that’s currently inhabiting the ice at Castlebrook University. I’ve got a clipboard in hand, pretending I give a damn about hockey formations when all I can think about is how I’m going to spend Christmas with Ellie.
Ellie turned out to be nineteen. Sweet. A brilliant pianist. Soft in all the places that undo me. The girl I dragged my entire life sideways for without blinking.
The morning after she showed up on my porch, soaked to the bone, shaking, and terrified, I called Beckham Kingston. An old college teammate of Riley and me. He’s now head coach at St. Charles University, and I knew he’d have a connection I could use to my advantage.
The coach at Castlebrook University supposedly quit unexpectedly, and Beckham hooked me up with no questions asked.
I took the coaching job with a fraud of a resume.
Found housing. Set everything up so Ellie could have a safe, normal college life for the first time in her existence.
Piano lessons. Tutors. Whatever she wants, I make it happen, and I can honestly say that making her happy is the only real, true joy I’ve ever felt in my life.
Ellie lives with me because I insisted. For her safety, I told her.
Until I figure out what’s going on with her father and can guarantee she isn’t on anyone’s radar.
She doesn’t know that I monitor her every move, that I inserted a tracker in the sweet spot of her neck so I’d always be able to find her no matter where she is.
I have hidden cameras throughout our home.
Some of that is truly because I worry about her safety, but I won’t lie and say I haven’t watched her sleep, watched her sit at her vanity while she carefully pulls her long blonde hair into a ponytail and then meticulously braids it.
I’ve taken the liberty of running my palm over that braid while she sleeps and pulling her covers up over her.
I haven’t taken it too far. I haven’t touched her smooth stomach or her full breasts.
I haven’t dipped my fingers into those lace panties I paid for, but should never be allowed to touch.
And now she wants to spend Christmas at the cabin where we met.
Just the two of us with a blizzard due to hit the area just in time for Christmas.
We’ll be snowed in.
No distractions. No witnesses. No chance in hell I’m keeping my sanity or my hands to myself.
A helmet cracks against another on the ice, pulling me out of my thoughts. I hear a laugh that haunts me in my nightmares.
“LOCKWOOD, KNOCK IT OFF!” My voice echoes through the rink.
Hayden Lockwood is my personal headache, and unfortunately my star player.
I want to beat him with his own hockey stick.
I can’t, but I want to. He whips his head toward me with a wicked grin spread across his stupid face.
He gives less of a fuck about this whole hockey thing than I do, and that’s a problem.
He plays like he was born in skates, but he only cares about one thing: Madison Caldwell who happens to be standing with some other girls and beaming at him like he’s the only guy she’s ever seen in her life.
He blows her a kiss like the fucking menace he is and then looks at me pointedly before he whacks the poor bastard next to him in the back of the leg, causing him to go down on the ice.
I throw my clipboard onto the bench. “For fuck’s sake.
” I don’t even need to ask what happened because it all boils down to one thing.
Hayden will attack his own teammates, the ref, hell, probably even me for making eye contact with his girlfriend too long.
He refers to her as his wife, and no one corrects him because they don’t want to deal with him throwing shit around the locker room, which I’m grateful for.
Maybe he’ll get run over by the Zamboni while I’m at the cabin for Christmas.
I can’t deal with this shit right now. Not when every nerve in my body is wired tight with Ellie.
I can’t focus. Not on drills. Not on the team. Not when I’m hours away from being alone with her in my cabin until New Year’s.
She never once asked to move into a dorm. Never pushed for independence. Never complained that living with a man twice her age might ruin any chance she has at a normal college experience.
She’s grateful. Always so grateful for anything I do for her.
She always thanks me for things she shouldn’t have to thank me for.
She insisted on getting a job as soon as I told her we’d be moving to Castlebrook, but that’s something I shut down instantly.
She’s been through enough. More than enough, actually.
Her father disappearing. Her mother vanishing years before that. A childhood of running and hiding and learning to take care of herself because no one else did.
I’ve looked into Riley’s last movements, and everything I’ve found points to Onyx Dominion.
They’re a secret society, trafficking, murder, the kind of nightmare no nineteen-year-old should ever have to fear.
Ellie, of course doesn’t know everything, just that I’ve got people trying to help her father.
I really am trying to find Riley, and not to hand Ellie back to him, but to give her closure.
To tell her she wasn’t abandoned. To tell her someone fought for her.
He might be her father, and I might have thought highly of him at one time, but this precious girl didn’t deserve the life he gave her.
I don’t care what the fuck he had to do, he should have kept her safe.
Dumping her on my porch to fend for herself isn’t good enough in my book.
What if I hadn’t been home? What if one of those fucking college boys had gotten to her before I did?
Rage surges through me, but it’s dampened by a soft movement that catches my eye.
Ellie.
She’s walking down the tunnel, heading toward my office in one of those skirts that make me hate every man who even thinks about looking at her. She’s pure fucking sunshine straight to my veins. Sometimes I think she’s completely innocent and oblivious to the way she ruins me.
Other times she looks at me like she wonders how my cock would feel inside of her.
My whistle is in my mouth before I think. I blow it sharply, toss it toward the bench, and walk off toward the tunnel without bothering to explain myself.
She comes first. Always. Before hockey. Before this team. Before the entire damn world. Before myself. Because if I had it my way…If I ever let myself stop being the good fucking man Riley trusted with his girl…
Ellie Montrose would be bent over my knee right now for daring to wear a skirt that short.
There’ve been nights these past eight months where I’ve almost snapped, almost given in and taken her the way my body begs me to, but I force myself to hold the line.
I won’t take anything from her. I won’t ruin her the way I know I will if I ever let myself touch what isn’t mine.
When I reach my office, I stand in the doorway and admire the view of her bent over my desk inspecting the present I have waiting there for her.
It was an impulsive purchase I made when she asked me if we could take my new motorcycle up to the cabin instead of my Bronco.
By the time I got home from picking it out, I’d already convinced myself that I shouldn’t give it to her.
I’ve purposely held off on buying her a helmet because I know I’m not strong enough to feel her hands on my chest and stomach and her breasts pressed against my back and not do anything about it.
Fuck it, she’s already seen it, and if I don’t do something to distract myself from the way her skirt is creeping up, I’m going to show her just how perfectly the globe of her ass fits in my palm.
“You’ll need a helmet for the ride up to the cabin,” I say, startling Ellie.
Her body jerks when she turns to look at me, clearly thinking she had a while before I ended practice.
“I thought you’d like the pink,” I say dumbly, and suddenly I feel like a bumbling high schooler trying to tell a girl that I like her.
I’m a professional killer…or I was until I took this job babysitting rich brats on ice.
“You bought this for me?” Ellie’s eyes widen, and the surprise in her voice shouldn’t bring me sadness, but it does.
I realize that even though I’ve tried to make sure she has everything and anything she could ever want the last few months, she’s still so shocked.
She deserves more than I could ever offer her, but I’ll give her everything I have.
I can’t think of one instance that my girl has asked for anything that I wouldn’t deem a necessity.
I finally move into the room, leaving the door open behind me because I can’t trust myself.
I can feel my fingers tingling because all I want is to reach out and caress her cheek, pull her into me and kiss her until she realizes that she belongs to me.
I reach over and grab the light pink helmet off of my desk and hold it up for her to admire.
“We can get another color if you don’t like it.
It just reminded me of you…” I start, but she’s already waving me off, a sweet smile stretching her lips.
“Of course I love it. It’s my favorite color,” she says, rubbing her fingers across the helmet. Her tone is breathy, like she’s having a physical reaction to our proximity. I want to hear more of that sound. I want my hand around her throat while she gasps my name.
“You haven’t even tried it on.” I hold the helmet up just high enough that she has to push up on her tiptoes to reach it.
“I don’t need to have it on my head to know that I freaking love it,” she tells me sincerely, her big doe eyes looking up at me like she feels whatever has been brewing between us.
I want to dip my head and kiss her until that little gasping noise is the only thing I can hear, but instead, I lower the helmet for her to inspect, and suddenly her eyes flash up to mine.
“Wait, you said we probably had to take the Bronco because it’s going to snow,” Ellie says, and I can’t help myself, I reach out and brush my thumb across her flushed cheek.
“Do you remember everything I say to you?” I ask, leaning down just a bit because I like the way it feels to look down into her eyes. She blinks up at me slowly, biting her lip the way she only does when she’s not sure if she should answer me.
“I do remember everything you say to me, Cillian,” she says softly, and it feels like my heart is going to beat out of my chest with the way my name rolls off of her pink tongue.
No one else calls me Cillian. It’s either Kav, Coach Kav, or whatever expletive Hayden adds in there when I kick him off the ice for beating up his own teammates during an actual game.
“When have I ever not given you exactly what you’ve asked for, Ellie girl?
The cabin is stocked. Worst case is we have to stay a few extra days before we can bring the bike back to campus,” I tell her, and she practically squeals as she throws her arms around my neck.
Without thinking about who could walk by my open office door or the implications of how this is wildly inappropriate for the guardian and ward situation we’re in right now, I scoop her up and hold her to me.
I can’t help myself and bury my face in her hair, breathing in deeply.
She smells like fucking sweet rose water, and I desperately need to know what my girl tastes like.
Ellie melts into me for half a second before we hear my players storming down the hallway toward the locker room.
I make no move to let her go. I’ve never held her this way, and I’m not ready for it to be over.
She’s so fucking soft, and I want to know what her thighs feel like wrapped around my hips.
Someone kicks what sounds like an empty trashcan in the hallway, and that’s what makes Ellie pull away from me.
I’m not ready for it when she wiggles out of my arms and says, “I need to go pick something up before we leave. I’m so excited.
Thank you!” Ellie pushes up on her tiptoes and rests her hands on my chest for half of a second before she pecks me on the lips so quickly I’m not sure if I’ve imagined it.
“I’ll meet you by your bike in like twenty minutes so we can get going!
” she calls over her shoulder as she heads to my door.
My lips are buzzing where her soft, pink lips brushed so gently against mine.
She kissed me. It wasn’t a passionate, romantic kiss, but it’s something she doesn’t do to anyone else.
In fact, Ellie is almost painfully shy around most people.
Around me, though? She’s a chatterbox and I fucking love it.
I never want her to stop talking, telling me every thought that bounces through her mind.
I think she’s gone, probably halfway down the tunnel until I realize she’s back at my door, holding onto the frame and leaning in to smile at me.
“Thanks again, Cillian. It’s the best present I’ve ever gotten,” she says sincerely, and then she is gone again, leaving me to stand in my office with what I’m sure is a stunned look on my face.
I don’t know what any of this means, or what I should do about it considering the forbidden state of our relationship. So I do the only thing I can do right now.
I head to the locker room to yell at Lockwood for the next twenty minutes.