Chapter 2
The hotel room smells like bleach and regret.
Not our hotel room—this room. The one the league doctors commandeer every time there’s an away series. It’s been converted into some Frankenstein exam room—white walls, wheeled cot, metal shelves of gauze and painkillers, and a little trash bin already overflowing with tape and wrappers.
I’m on the cot with my jacket unzipped and compression shorts clinging to my thighs, my left knee elevated and wrapped in cold, damp cloth, scowling at the doctor like I might be able to set him on fire with my eyes.
He’s middle-aged and balding, smells like cinnamon gum and clinical disapproval, and his name tag says Dr. Keene, though all I’ve heard so far is “rest,” “ice,” “caution,” and “maybe sit this one out.”
Bitch, I’m not sitting shit out. “I’m fine,” I mutter, eyeing him. “It’s just sore.”
He presses two fingers to the back of my knee and I hiss, grip tightening on the edge of the cot. The pain lights up my thigh, hot and sharp.
I pant, trying to play it off. “Got another game tomorrow.”
The doc gives me that look, the one adults give when they think they’re talking to a dumbass teenager who doesn’t understand consequences. “You could make it worse,” he says flat. “Risk a tear. Possible inflammation of the meniscus.”
I snort, cocky as hell even through the pain. “Yeah? Or I could win Game 4 and sweep the Wranglers into next year.”
He sighs. “Mercer—”
“You said it wasn’t torn,” I cut in. “Just bruised. I’ll tape it. I’ll stretch. I’ll chew the fucking ice if I have to. I’m playing.”
His mouth twitches like he wants to argue. But then Damian speaks, low and steady, right behind me. “How bad is it, doc?”
My whole world narrows. That voice. It doesn’t matter that the light is too bright, or that my knee’s screaming, or that the cot feels like it was assembled by IKEA sadists—because he’s here.
Standing behind me, arms crossed, hoodie stretched across those shoulders.
One foot hooked back like he’s lounging but his stare’s locked in, lethal.
Light, pain, nerves—gone. My whole chest tightens as if he’s already touching me.
The doctor clears his throat, glancing between us like he definitely knows what’s going on and definitely regrets being in the room.
“He can play,” he says slowly. “But if he takes another hit to the same spot, there’s a risk.
Not career-ending. But you’ll miss games. Maybe the rest of the playoffs.”
Damian doesn’t blink. “How much risk?”
The doc shrugs. “Fifty-fifty.”
I shoot him a look. Whose side are you on, Benedict fucking Keene?
Damian steps close enough that I can feel him as his hand lands heavy on my shoulder, steady and hot through the thin layer of my undershirt.
His thumb strokes once, slow along the curve of my trap—grounding and possessive—and he leans down until his mouth brushes close to my ear. “Can you handle it, pup?”
Jesus. My thighs twitch and my body reacts before my brain can catch up, and when I whisper back, “I can handle it,” it comes out a little too fast and a little too breathless.
The doctor mutters something about inflammation and rest, already grabbing a new ice pack, but I don’t hear a word of it. All I hear is sir in my head. All I feel is that grip on my shoulder, that thumb still stroking like a metronome against my racing pulse.
And when Damian murmurs “Good boy,” so low only I can hear it?
I would skate Game 4 on a broken leg.
The doctor sighs. That long-suffering, I-regret-my-career-choices kind of sigh. He grabs a tube from the shelf, smacks it into my hand. “For the pain,” he mutters. “Apply twice a day. Helps with inflammation.”
I turn it over. Read the label. It’s got some unholy combination of menthol, camphor, and don’t-ask-just-suffer.
I stare at the tube. Then stare at him. Then I almost say it.
The words is it lube? are at the edge of my tongue, begging to make a scene.
Because I’m me and because Cole’s chirping lives in my brain like a goddamn parasite.
But then Damian’s hand tightens on my shoulder. Like he can hear my thoughts before I even open my mouth. I barely stop myself.
The doctor stares between us. “No partying tonight, Mercer,” he says flatly.
I grin wide enough to crack my face. “Define partying.”
The doc’s eyes narrow. “Anything that includes sweat, friction, vertical movement, or activities that cause groaning.”
I blink, because that could mean literally anything, and he knows it just as well as I do—Damian definitely knows it, judging by the way his fingers dig deeper into my shoulder like don’t. I grin wider anyway. “So no cardio?”
“No you,” the doctor mutters. “Just… don’t be you for twelve hours. Please.”
Damian’s mouth twitches—not a smile, not even close—but I feel the amusement anyway in the way his hand grips me, steady and hot through my shirt. “Understood,” he says, voice low and final.
I pout, but only a little, and the doctor tosses a few more ice packs onto the cot like he’s salting a wound before walking out, clearly deciding not to give me another opening to mouth off. The door clicks shut behind him and silence buzzes against the white walls.
I turn my head to look up at Damian, and he looks down at me, and that’s it—that’s all it takes. My whole body lights up, because that’s the look, the one that says I’m getting wrecked tonight, even if we don’t party.
“Get your ass to bed, pup.” Damian’s voice slices straight through my chest.
I hop off the cot like an obedient little menace, landing on one leg with all the grace of a wounded gazelle. My hands are full—ice packs, a sad little roll of wrap, and the now suspicious tube of pain gel. I tuck them all to my chest.
“Yessir,” I purr, and start hopping toward the door. Literally hopping. One foot. Bounce. Bounce. The tube almost slips from under my arm, and I fumble it back into place, snorting to myself. Because if I drop it, he’ll definitely see the label, and I’ll definitely say something unholy.
I reach the door, balance on one leg, hand stretching for the handle—and then I’m airborne.
“FUCK—” I yelp as Damian swoops in out of nowhere, arms hooking under my knees and back in one brutal, effortless motion.
One second I’m standing, the next I’m bridal style in his arms. The world tilts sideways.
The tube of "lube" nearly hits the floor. I flail, grabbing it before it escapes.
He starts walking toward the elevator like this is normal
“Could’ve walked,” I mutter into his chest.
“You were hopping like a cracked-out bunny,” he says, calm as death.
I sigh dramatically, head thunking against his shoulder. “You’re such a caveman,” I mumble, clutching my pain gel. He adjusts his grip under my thighs, cradles me closer, and keeps walking.
And maybe it’s the meds talking. Maybe it’s the adrenaline crash. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m still wearing his hoodie and he’s carrying me like I’m the most precious thing on the planet. But when I bury my face into his neck, I don’t say another word.
The door clicks shut behind us and Damian doesn’t bother flipping the lights on, leaving the room dim with spillover from the hallway, gold and low through the blackout curtains, enough to carve sharp edges into the sheets and outline his silhouette—broad shoulders, lethal calm, the soft thunk of his boots as he crosses the carpet.
He doesn’t say a word as he carries me straight to the bed, his breathing even and measured while mine turns into a mess the second he sets me down.
I land soft on the mattress, spring-loaded and waiting, expecting instructions, but he doesn’t speak or order me around; he grips the hem of the hoodie and peels it slow, up and over my head. I shiver.
His hands follow, sliding up my chest and under the cotton as they drag the shirt with them, moving like he’s unwrapping something delicate—something breakable, something his. The shirt clears my face and cool air hits my skin as I blink up at him.
And then—click. My hands jerk as fabric tightens around my wrists, and it’s already too late when I gasp, “What the—Cap—?”
He’s already tying the ends of the hoodie sleeves to the headboard, fingers moving with the kind of knot he could tie in a blizzard with blood on his gloves—the kind you don’t get out of. My arms stretch overhead, pinned, and he looms over me with his face in shadow and his eyes burning.
“You’re injured,” he murmurs, low and unyielding. “You’re not moving tonight.”
My cock twitches like oh, we’re so fucked, and my mouth—because it’s never learned—grins. “Not even a little?” I ask, breathless. Sweet. Sugary venom on my tongue.
“Pup,” he warns.
I stretch against the binds. Slowly. Seductively. Ankles kicking the sheets, back arching just enough to show off every line he’s branded into me. “Maybe I like moving when I’m not supposed to,” I purr. “What’re you gonna do about it, Cap? Spank me into next week? Tie my legs too?”
His eyes flash. I know that look. That’s not anger; that’s promise. I barely get the last word out before he moves—one step back, one hand to my waistband. My eyes snap wide. “Wait—”
Too late.
He yanks my pants down in one practiced motion. Underwear comes with them. My gasp punches straight to the ceiling, bare and caught in the dark, cock twitching against my thigh, breath gone. My legs kick weakly in the sheets. “Cap—”
He ignores me. Just bends, slow and deliberate, and picks up the balled-up underwear from where they hit the floor.
The second I see it, that look in his eye, I realize what he’s doing. “Wait, wait—hold on—sir—”
His hand fists in my curls. My head yanks back, neck stretched. His other hand presses the fabric to my lips—damp and humiliating.
“Open,” he growls.