Chapter 13 Phoenix #2
It’s not fear or concern, for once. It’s darker, hungrier. My rookie, my golden boy, snapping like an animal. His face, calm no more, twisted with pure rage as he drives Grant down.
Grant tries to wrestle him down, but Leander is relentless—one, two, three punches, each landing with a crunch that echoes through my ribs. The refs swarm, whistles blaring, but Leander doesn’t stop. He wants blood.
And Christ, I want him.
Every punch, every snarl, every burst of violence—it’s everything I’ve been waiting to see crack through his pretty-boy composure. He’s not just playing tonight. He’s devouring.
The refs finally peel him off, arms wrapped tight around his chest, dragging him toward the box. His chest heaves, hair plastered to his forehead, blood—his or Grant’s, I can’t tell—streaked across his cheek. And he looks at me.
Just for a second.
The fire in his eyes damn near buckles me. He doesn’t look guilty. Doesn’t look scared. He looks alive.
The penalty box door slams shut. The Hornets’ bench bangs their sticks in fury, their player crumpled on the ice with trainers rushing him. Our fans roar, half in outrage, half in awe.
My pulse is a drumbeat. My body, already electric from the game, is thrumming with something else entirely. Leander sits there in the box, caged and feral, chest rising and falling, blood still dripping from his knuckles. And all I can think is… mine.
Mine, like no one else gets to see him like this.
I’m supposed to be angry—he’s left us a man down, five minutes of hell we’ll have to claw through—but I can’t.
My voice cracks as I shout orders, as I try to rally the bench, but inside, I’m replaying every second of his fists pounding flesh.
When the whistle blows for intermission, we trail to the locker room, rattled and ragged.
I can barely hold the team together. Eric mutters something about hot-headed rookies, but I snap a glare at him sharp enough to shut him up.
In the corner, Leander slumps onto the bench, still buzzing with fight. His knuckles are raw, split open. Trainers swarm him, but he shrugs them off. He’s vibrating, teeth gritted, legs bouncing.
And I can’t look away.
I crouch next to him, my voice low so no one else hears. “You good?”
His eyes flick to mine. He’s still high off the violence, pupils blown, lips parted. “Yeah.”
I swallow hard. Jesus. The rest of the locker room fades. All I see is him, the rawness, the sharp edges, the unshaken defiance.
I want to drag him into the showers, slam him against the tile, tell him what he just did to me.
Instead, I force myself back, shaking, pretending to focus on the game plan.
But every shift after that, I’m not thinking about the Hornets. I’m thinking about my rookie, bloodied and beautiful, and the dangerous truth sinking into my bones—I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want him right now.
The game doesn’t slow down after Leander’s fight. If anything, it ignites something ugly in the arena. The Hornets keep chirping, testing us, trying to draw blood. My team is rattled, some of them shaken by how far Leander went, but not me.
Me? I’m fucking alive.
Every shift I skate, I feel the hunger radiating off him from the penalty box. He’s caged, tapping his stick, jaw tight. His eyes follow the play like he’s starving. When he finally comes out, the roar of the crowd echoes as he tears back onto the ice, and I swear I’ve never seen him move faster.
He hunts.
Not just the puck—he hunts bodies. His checks are vicious, his stick work sharp, every stride fueled by the fight still burning through his blood. And Christ, watching him play like that makes me want to drag him off the ice and fuck him right there in front of everyone.
I bark plays, force myself to stay captain, but every time he’s near me, every time he shoves an opponent off the puck, I feel my pulse spike. The Hornets don’t know what they’ve unleashed.
Third period. Tie game. Both benches frothing, desperate.
I line up for the faceoff, heart jackhammering.
The puck drops, chaos erupts, and somehow, it’s Leander who digs it out.
He explodes up the ice, Hornets swarming him.
He should pass, but he doesn’t. He shoulders through them, cuts hard, rips a shot so clean it stuns their goalie.
Goal.
The arena detonates.
Leander throws his arms up, helmet tipping back, mouth open in a roar. My legs are moving before I think—I slam into him, crushing him against the glass with the rest of the boys piling on. His grin is wild, his chest heaving against mine.
I’ve never wanted someone more than I do right now.
We hold the lead. The final minutes are brutal, but we hold. The buzzer screams, and the Wolves fucking win.
The locker room is madness—helmets flying, towels snapping, victory howls echoing off the walls. The media’s outside waiting, fans chanting in the halls. The team deserves this. We’ve been under fire for weeks, and tonight, we shoved it down the Hornets’ throats.
But I can’t celebrate. Not with this need crawling under my skin.
Leander’s across the room, stripped to his waist, sweat gleaming, bruises blooming fresh on his ribs. He doesn’t look at me, not directly, but his smirk is sharp enough to cut. He knows what he did. Knows what he stirred in me.
The guys start funneling out, hungry for bars, beer, women, whatever. I throw out some line about me and Leander staying back for recovery work, that we’ll meet them later. They don’t question it—half of them are already too drunk on adrenaline to care.
The door shuts. Silence falls. And then it’s just us.
Leander stands by his locker, towel slung low, water bottle in hand. He doesn’t move when I cross the room, doesn’t flinch when I back him into the row of stalls. His chest rises slow, deliberate, eyes locked on mine.
“You were a fucking animal out there,” I growl, voice ragged.
“You liked it.” His tone is soft, taunting, and it pushes me over the edge.
Leander’s back hits the tile with a dull thud when I shove him into the shower.
His water bottle clatters to the ground, forgotten.
I twist the knob hard, and the pipes scream before the water bursts cold over us, needles shocking against my overheated skin.
It warms quickly, easing Lee’s shoulders.
Leander flinches, hissing through his teeth, but doesn’t move away. His lips curl into that cocky smirk, the one that wrecks me worse than a body check.
“You gonna fight me, too?” he says, voice low, challenging.
I slam my mouth onto his before the words even finish leaving him. His taste floods me—salt, sweat, metallic from the fist he took earlier. He doesn’t melt into it, doesn’t give me what I want. He pushes back, teeth colliding, lips bruising. He’s not yielding. Good.
I grab his wrists, pin them above his head against the slick tile. The spray beats down, plastering his hair to his forehead, streaming over his shoulders. He strains against my grip, muscles flexing, and I swear I could come just from the fight in his body alone.
“Mine,” I snarl against his jaw, biting down until he grunts.
“You don’t own me,” he spits back, but his hips roll forward, betraying him.
I slam my thigh between his, forcing his legs wider, grinding into the heat already hard against me. He gasps, curses, then arches into it, water cascading down the perfect line of his throat.
“Say it,” I growl, dragging my mouth down to mark him, sucking hard where the world can see. “Say you’re mine, or I’ll make you scream it.”
His laugh is broken, breathless, the sound of someone dancing on the edge of losing control. “Do your worst, captain.”
Something inside me snaps.
I let go of one wrist, but only so I can tear at the towel knotted around his hips.
It drops, heavy and soaked, to the floor.
His skin is hot beneath my hands despite the water, flushed with victory, with rage, with need.
I palm him hard, dragging a guttural moan from his chest that I swallow with another kiss.
He bucks into my hand, but I don’t give him what he wants, not yet. I grip tight, holding him still, grinding our bodies together until he’s swearing, until his teeth sink into my shoulder so hard I hiss.
“Fuck, Lee—”
His free hand claws down my back, nails leaving red trails that sting under the water. He shoves back, managing to flip me, my spine slamming into the wet wall. The shock of it pulls a laugh out of me, ragged and wild, and before I can stop him, his mouth is on my throat, biting, claiming.
“You think you’re in control?” he growls against my skin.
“Always.” My voice breaks, half-moan, half-snarl.
He fists my hair, yanking my head back, forcing me to bare my throat. The sight in his eyes is pure hunger, feral and dark. For a moment, I let him pull at me. My cock twitching from the feral look in his eyes.
Then I twist us again, slam him chest-first into the wall this time. His palms slap against the tile, water pounding down his back as I grind against him, caging him in with my body. My teeth find the nape of his neck, biting so hard he shudders.
“Mine,” I whisper, low and guttural, grinding my dick into his ass cheeks.
His answer is a groan, muffled as his forehead hits the tile. His muscles tremble under my hands, tension thrumming through him like a live wire.
I let him squirm, let the frustration build. My hand slides down his stomach, hovering just above where he’s straining, and he practically snarls.
“Phoenix—”
“Say it,” I rasp, teeth dragging along his ear.
His pride keeps him silent. He shakes his head, panting, chest heaving. I squeeze him tight, denying him the friction he wants, grinding my thigh higher instead. He lets out a broken sound, half-growl, half-plea.
That’s when he snaps.
“Yours,” he spits, harsh and defiant, as if the word costs him. “I’m yours, all right? Now, please, fucking touch me.”
The sound that rips from my chest is animal. I drive into him, snapping his hips against mine.
I grab him, stroking hard and fast, no more teasing, no more games.
His knees buckle, his head snapping back, water and sweat streaming down his face.
His cries echo off the tile, swallowed by the hiss of the shower.
My own body is strung tight, desperate, on the edge of unraveling just from the sight of him coming apart like this—because of me. Only me.
When he finally breaks, it’s violent, his whole body bowing, mouth open in a strangled cry as release wracks him.
He comes all over my hand, making me pulse with desire.
I press my mouth to his shoulder, biting down to muffle my own groan as I follow, the world exploding in white-hot fragments behind my eyes.
For a long moment, the only sounds are our ragged breaths and the water hammering down. My hands are still on him, stroking through the aftershocks, grounding myself in the tremors of his body.
I press a kiss between his shoulder blades, softer now, reverent in the aftermath of violence. “Good boy,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
He stiffens, but he doesn’t pull away. “Fuck you.”
“When we get home, baby.” I pull away, grabbing some soap from beside us.
He doesn’t move at all, really. Just leans into the wall, chest heaving, while the water washes everything else away.
And I know I’m fucked.
Because this wasn’t just about hunger, or anger, or adrenaline. This was possession. Obsession.
And I’ll burn for it again and again.