Chapter 1 #2
I froze, my hand hovering over the escape key. "I—I’m so sorry. Technical glitch. It’s—it’s not mine. I mean, it is mine, but it’s just... research. For... literature class."
Peter stared at me. His gaze dropped to my mouth, then back to my eyes. He looked bored. No, not bored. Disappointed.
"Paragraph two," he said, his voice flat.
"What?" I breathed.
He pointed a long, scarred finger at the screen. "The anatomy described in paragraph two. 'Twitching like a divining rod.'"
I felt my soul leave my body. "Please don’t."
"It is physically impossible," Peter said, his tone clinical, as if he were discussing a torn ligament.
"Unless the Earl is suffering from a severe neurological spasm, a penis does not act like a stick finding water.
And the spatial reasoning in the first sentence is flawed.
If he is pressing against her womb, he has bypassed several crucial anatomical barriers.
She would not be whimpering; she would be in the emergency room. "
The laughter in the room changed tone. It went from raucous to hysterical.
"Professor Volkov!" Jax yelled. "Teach us!"
Peter didn’t look at his teammates. He kept his eyes pinned on me. He wasn’t mocking me to make them laugh. He was dismantling me because I was an error in his system. I was chaos, and he was order.
"Do you have the shot suppression stats?" he asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing his massive arms over his chest. The biceps strained against the black fabric of his tracksuit.
"Yes," I whispered. "Yes, I do."
"Then I suggest you find them," Peter said, "before I have to calculate the probability of you keeping this job past lunch."
He held my gaze for one second longer—just long enough for me to see a flicker of something dark in those storm-grey eyes.
Not attraction. Not quite. But recognition.
Like he had looked past the cardigan and the frizz and seen the desperate, throbbing embarrassment underneath, and found it... interesting.
Then he looked away, dismissing me entirely.
"Next slide," he commanded to the room at large.
I finally managed to close the window. The spreadsheet popped up. A grid of numbers. Safe, cold, unfeeling numbers.
I started my presentation. I talked about Corsi ratings. I talked about Fenwick scores. I talked about high-danger zones. My voice was steady, because I was a professional, but inside, I was ashes.
Every time I looked at the front row, Peter Volkov was watching me. He wasn't taking notes. He was just watching. And every time our eyes met, I didn’t think about hockey.
I thought about the Earl.
I thought about the word twitching.
And God help me, I wondered if Peter Volkov ever lost control long enough to be physically impossible.
Peter
She was a mess.
A walking, talking, breathing entropy calculation.
I watched Belinda O’Shea pace back and forth across the stage, pointing at the graphs with a laser pointer that shook every time she inhaled.
She was small. Soft. Not fat, but... yielding.
Curves where there should be angles. Her hair was a brown, curly nebula that seemed to defy the laws of physics, expanding with the humidity of the room.
And she smelled like vanilla.
Even from the front row, amidst the stench of thirty sweaty hockey players, I could smell it. Sweet. Artificial. Cloying. It was giving me a headache.
Focus, Volkov.
I forced my eyes to the screen. The data was good. Surprisingly good. Her analysis of our defensive breakdown in the neutral zone was accurate. She had identified that our left-side defenseman, Miller, was pinching too early, leaving the slot exposed.
She was smart.
That was a problem.
If she were stupid, I could ignore her. If she were incompetent, I could have her fired by noon. But she was smart, which meant she was going to be around. And if she was around, she was a variable I hadn’t accounted for.
My life was a series of controlled environments.
I ate the same meal at 8:00 AM (four eggs, oatmeal, black coffee).
I stretched at 9:00 AM.
I watched tape at 10:00 AM.
I allowed zero deviations. Deviations led to mistakes. Mistakes led to goals. Goals led to losing.
Losing made you my father.
A washed-up, drunk ex-legend sobbing on a talk show about how he blew his millions on blackjack and vodka.
I tightened my hand around my coffee cup, the ceramic groaning under the pressure.
Divining rod.
The words from the screen flashed in my mind again. I felt a muscle in my jaw jump.
It wasn't just that she read smut. Half the girls on campus read that garbage. It was the contrast. The oversized, shapeless grey sweater. The thick-rimmed glasses that kept sliding down her nose. The frantic, terrified energy of a rabbit cornered by wolves.
She projected an image of innocence so aggressive it felt fake. But the book... the book suggested a mind that was rolling around in the gutter.
I watched her turn to point at the screen. The sweater rode up slightly. Just an inch. I saw a sliver of skin at her hip. Pale. Smooth.
A sudden, sharp heat flared in my gut. Low. heavy.
I frowned, irritated. No.
I didn’t do distraction. I didn’t do "attraction" to staff members. And I certainly didn’t do neurotics who blushed the color of a fire engine because of a technical glitch.
She finished the presentation, her chest heaving slightly as if she’d just run a marathon.
"So," she said, her voice breathy. "Based on this, if we adjust the forecheck strategy, we should see a 5% reduction in shots against."
The room was silent. The guys were still smirking, still recovering from the smut show, but they respected the numbers.
"Any questions?" she asked. She looked terrified that someone might actually ask one.
Jax raised his hand. "Yeah. Does the Earl ever get the girl?"
The room erupted again.
Belinda froze. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. I saw her knuckles turn white. She looked like she was about to cry, or vomit, or both.
Something in my chest tightened. A protective instinct? No. Just annoyance. The noise was inefficient. We were wasting time.
I stood up.
The sound of my chair scraping back silenced the room instantly. Pavlovian response. I was the Captain. When I moved, the pack waited.
I didn’t look at Jax. I looked at her.
She looked up at me, eyes wide behind the lenses. They were hazel. Green and brown and gold. Chaotic.
"The analysis on Miller is correct," I said. My voice sounded rougher than usual. "Send the files to my tablet. I want the raw data, not the summary."
She blinked. "Oh. Okay. I can—I can do that right now."
"Good."
I should have walked away. The meeting was over. Practice started in twenty minutes. I had a routine.
But I didn’t move. I stepped closer to the edge of the stage. She was standing above me, but I still felt like I was towering over her.
"And O’Shea?" I said, lowering my voice so only the front row—and her—could hear.
She leaned down slightly, compelled by the gravity of the moment. "Yes?"
I could smell the vanilla stronger now. And something else beneath it. Fear. And... heat.