Chapter 5
Georgia
Routine was supposed to be boring. That was the Sterling family motto: if it’s predictable, it’s pedestrian. My life had been a series of erratic vacations, impulsive purchases, and sudden, tectonic shifts in my father’s mood. Chaos was the only constant I had ever known.
But five days into living with Toby Kincaid, I was discovering a terrifying truth: I liked boring.
Actually, "boring" was the wrong word. Toby wasn't boring. He was... rhythmic. He was a metronome in a world of static.
I sat at the granite island of the kitchen, ostensibly studying for my Art History midterm, but mostly I was studying the Captain of the North Haven Wolves as he moved around the kitchen.
It was 7:30 PM on a Thursday. Outside, the Minnesota winter was doing its best to bury the city in snow, howling against the panoramic windows like a rejected lover. Inside, the penthouse smelled like rosemary, searing steak, and safety.
Toby was cooking.
He did this every night. At 7:00 PM, he put away the playbook. He washed his hands. He took ingredients out of the fridge with the precision of a bomb defusal expert. And then he created magic.
Watching him was torture. It was the good kind of torture, the kind that made your stomach flutter and your thighs clench, but torture nonetheless.
He wore gray sweatpants—God, the gray sweatpants should be illegal—and a tight black t-shirt that strained across his back muscles every time he reached for the spice rack.
"You're staring again," he said.
He didn't turn around. He was flipping a steak in the cast-iron skillet. The sizzle was loud, but his voice cut through it, low and amused.
"I am not staring," I lied, flipping a page of my textbook without reading a single word.
"I am contemplating the duality of man. Specifically, how a man can be so terrifying on the ice and so domestic in the kitchen. It’s suspicious, Kincaid.
Are you poisoning me? Is this how you get rid of the evidence? "
He turned then, leaning his hip against the counter, spatula in hand. A smudge of flour was on his jawline. It took every ounce of my self-control not to walk over there and lick it off.
"If I wanted to get rid of you, Princess, I wouldn't poison you," he said calmly. "I'd just change the Wi-Fi password."
I gasped, clutching my chest. "You wouldn't."
"Try me."
His lips quirked up in that barely-there smirk that I was starting to realize was his version of a belly laugh.
"Dinner's in two," he said, turning back to the stove. "Clear the books. Set the table. And wash your hands. You smell like turpentine."
"It's Eau de Artiste," I corrected, sliding off the stool. "And for the record, I spent three hours in the Boathouse today freezing my ass off to paint something that might actually pay your rent one day."
"I pay the rent," he muttered. "You just consume the resources."
"I am a resource!" I argued, grabbing the plates from the cabinet. I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach them. "I am your personal medical staff. Speaking of which, you were favoring the right side during the stairs drill today. I saw the video on the team drive."
Toby stiffened. The spatula paused mid-air.
"You have access to the team drive?"
"I hacked Jager's password," I said breezily, setting the plates down. "It was 'Password123'. You really need to teach your winger about cybersecurity."
Toby let out a long sigh, shaking his head. "You are a menace."
"I'm thorough. And you're deflecting. Your hip is tight. We need to do a heavy release tonight."
"After dinner," he commanded. "Eat first. Fix later."
We sat down. The steak was perfect—medium rare, seared crust. The roasted vegetables were seasoned to perfection.
It was annoying how good he was at everything.
It made it very hard to maintain my "spoiled brat who is too good for this" persona when I mostly just wanted to crawl into his lap and stay there.
We ate in silence for a few minutes. It was a comfortable silence. The kind where you don't feel the need to fill the air with nervous chatter.
"How was the painting?" he asked suddenly.
I looked up, surprised. He usually treated my art like a strange, messy hobby I did to annoy him.
"It was... frustrating," I admitted, stabbing a potato. "I'm trying to capture the feeling of the ice. Not what it looks like, but what it feels like. The violence of it. The cold. But everything I put on the canvas just looks like... blue slush."
Toby chewed thoughtfully. He took a sip of water, his eyes analyzing me.
"The ice isn't violent," he said softly.
"Have you seen you play? You hit people into glass walls."
"That's the players," he corrected. "The ice is just the canvas. The ice is honest. If you're slow, it shows. If you're weak, it shows. It reflects exactly what you give it. It's not violent, Georgia. It's indifferent. That's why it's beautiful."
I stared at him. My fork hovered halfway to my mouth.
The ice is honest.
I felt a sudden, sharp pang in my chest. I had been trying to paint the aggression, the noise. But Toby didn't see the noise. He saw the silence underneath.
"That's..." I swallowed. "That's actually profound, Kincaid. Did you read that in a fortune cookie?"
"Eat your vegetables," he said, his ears turning slightly pink.
I smiled, hiding it behind my glass of water.
He wasn't just a robot. There was a soul in there, buried under layers of discipline and expectation. And God help me, I wanted to be the one to dig it out.
"Okay, on your back. Shirt off."
It was 9:30 PM. The living room lights were dimmed to a warm, golden glow. The snowstorm had intensified outside, turning the world beyond the glass into a swirling white void.
We were in "The Clinic," which was just the living room rug with a towel laid down over it.
Toby stood by the couch. He hesitated for a second, then reached down and pulled his black t-shirt over his head.
I had seen him shirtless a dozen times in the last week. It shouldn't have affected me anymore. I was a professional (in training). I had memorized every muscle group in the human body.
But when Toby Kincaid took his shirt off, anatomy went out the window and pure, biological thirst took over.
His torso was a masterpiece of function.
The rectus abdominis was carved deep, a rigid washboard of muscle.
The obliques framed his hips like arrows pointing directly to the main attraction.
His skin was tanned, marred here and there by the faint white lines of old scars and the fresh, blooming bruises of the season.
He tossed the shirt onto the chair and lay down on the towel. He was wearing grey compression shorts that clung to him like a second skin.
I knelt beside him, grabbing the bottle of massage oil. My hands were shaking slightly. I told myself it was caffeine.
"Right side again?" I asked, my voice sounding a little too breathy in the quiet room.
"Yeah. The adductor is pulling."
He closed his eyes, throwing an arm over his forehead. He looked exhausted. The mask he wore all day—the stoic Captain, the perfect student—was gone. He was just a man in pain.
I poured the oil into my hands, rubbing them together to warm it. The scent of eucalyptus and peppermint filled the air.
"Deep breath," I instructed.
I placed my hands on his thigh. His skin was hot. Fever-hot. He twitched slightly at the contact, a ripple of muscle firing under my palm.
"Cold hands?" he grumbled.
"Warm heart," I quipped. "Relax the leg, Toby. You're guarding."
"I can't help it."
"Yes, you can. You're a control freak. Control the muscle. Tell it to let go."
I began to work the oil into his quad, using the heel of my hand to strip the muscle fibers. It was intimate work. My face was inches from his hip. My knees were brushing against his side.
I worked my way up, kneading the tension out of the vastus medialis. I could feel his gaze on me now. He had moved his arm. His gray eyes were open, watching me with a heavy, lidded intensity that made the hair on the back of my arms stand up.
"You're getting better at this," he murmured.
"I told you," I said, focusing on his leg so I wouldn't have to meet his eyes. "I'm the top of my class."
"You're strong," he noted. "For someone so small."
"I'm not small," I argued. "I'm concentrated. Like espresso."
"You're bratty. Like a toddler."
I pressed my thumb hard into a knot.
He hissed, his hips bucking off the floor. "Fuck! Georgia!"
"Don't insult the person holding your pain receptors in her hand," I whispered, leaning over him.
I was looming over his hips now. My hair, which I had tied up in a messy bun, was falling loose. A strand brushed against his stomach.
He froze. His breathing stopped.
I looked down.
His compression shorts were... struggling.
The bulge was undeniable. It was thick, heavy, and straining against the gray fabric. It was right there. Inches from my hand.
My mouth went dry.
I should ignore it. That was the professional thing to do. That was the "roommate agreement" thing to do.
But I wasn't feeling professional. I was feeling reckless. I was feeling the high of the last few days—the banter, the shared meals, the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't noticing.
I wanted to know if the Ice King could melt.
"You seem... tense," I whispered, my eyes flicking to the bulge and then back to his face.
Toby didn't look away. He didn't apologize. He didn't hide.
"I am a twenty-two-year-old man, Georgia," he rasped, his voice dropping to that vibration that rattled my bones. "And you are rubbing oil on my inner thigh while smelling like vanilla and sin. What did you think was going to happen?"
"I thought you had discipline," I teased, my voice trembling.
"Discipline has a limit."
"Does it?"
I moved my hand.
I didn't touch him there. Not directly. But I slid my oil-slicked hand higher on his inner thigh, my thumb grazing the seam of his shorts, right next to the heat.
Toby’s head fell back. A guttural groan tore out of his throat. His hips jerked upward, chasing my hand.