Chapter 18 Nazar
The pre-game warm-up is a circus—especially during this late-season push when every team is desperately selling “fan experience” packages to justify ticket prices.
The lights are down. Strobes flash in patterns that probably violate some epilepsy warning.
Music thumps loud enough that Nazar can feel the bass vibrating through the ice into his skate blades.
Players move in lazy circles, their movements broadcast on the Jumbotron overhead in that slightly delayed way that makes everything feel surreal.
Every camera is on them. Phone cameras in the stands. Broadcast cameras along the boards. The FHL’s obsessive documentation of every moment, cataloging it all for content that’ll be sliced up into fifteen-second clips for social media.
Nazar focuses on the mechanical aspects of warm-up.
He will not look at Kai. It’s a pointless impulse. Self-destructive.
He lasts approximately twenty seconds.
His eyes find Kai across the ice like they’re magnetized. And Kai is already looking back—of course he is, because apparently they’re both equally pathetic.
There’s no smirk on Kai’s face. No questioning tilt of his head. No performative indifference. His expression is stripped bare. Just quiet, intense focus that still hits Nazar like a physical blow to the sternum.
The cameras, the crowd, the music that’s probably that Imagine Dragons song they play at every sporting event—it all dissolves into static. There’s only two hundred feet of ice between them and this heavy, charged silence that Nazar can feel in his bones.
He breaks the contact first, forcing himself to join a passing drill with Miller and Vyachovsky. Takes a pass, fires a shot on net. The satisfying thud of puck against blocker barely registers through the noise in his head.
When he turns back, Kai is still watching him. His gaze is a physical weight that settles deep in Nazar’s chest and refuses to move.
This is going to be a long game.
* * *
He slips into Kai’s hotel room two hours after the final buzzer.
They won 3-2 in overtime—Nazar got the game-winner, a snapshot from the slot that went bar-down. The crowd went insane. His teammates mobbed him. It should feel good.
Instead, he’s standing in a hotel hallway at eleven PM, his knuckles hovering over Kai’s door, his heart hammering like he’s about to commit a felony.
The door opens before he can knock. Kai doesn’t say a word, just pushes it wider and steps back, letting him in.
Then they’re on each other.
It’s not gentle. Not careful. Just desperate and hungry, all teeth and hands..
“I have to be at the airport in three hours,” Kai murmurs against his lips, but there’s no actual protest in the words. His hands are already under Nazar’s shirt—those cool, long fingers that know exactly where to touch to make Nazar’s brain short-circuit.
“Yeah, and I have to be there in two hours. That’s a long time,” Nazar says, his own hands mapping the sharp planes of Kai’s hips, fingers digging into the denim.
“Enough time for you to ruin my pre-flight nap and possibly my career,” Kai breathes, his teeth grazing Nazar’s lower lip.
“Your career was a train wreck long before I got here.” He shoves him back against the door.
“At least my train wreck is interesting to watch,” Kai shoots back, shoving him in return.
He can feel Kai’s cock hard against his thigh, can feel his own responding, thick and aching.
This is how it always goes. Frantic rubbing through clothes. Desperate grinding. Never actually fucking. Never crossing that line even though they both want to so badly Nazar can taste it.
It’s his own personal hell.
And tonight, it isn’t enough.
The argument dies on his lips. The raw, desperate need inside him eclipses the anger. His hands find the hem of Kai’s shirt, and he yanks it over his head in one violent motion, tossing it aside. The fight seems to drain out of Kai, replaced by a dark, knowing look in his blue eyes.
He sinks to his knees.
The sight of it—Kai Callahan on his knees, looking up at Nazar like he’s the only thing that matters—always makes something primal surge in Nazar’s chest.
These are power dynamics that probably reveal concerning things about both of them.
Nazar doesn’t care. Can’t care. Not when Kai’s mouth is on him.
Kai’s all eager heat and practiced skill, taking his cock in with a desperation that sends a lightning bolt of possessive pleasure straight to Nazar’s brain. His fingers thread through soft blond hair.
“That’s it,” he says, his voice a low, guttural rasp he barely recognizes. “Just like that. Don’t stop.”
Kai makes a soft, pleading sound around him.
“You like taking it right in the throat, don’t you?” Nazar pants, his hips starting to move, a deep thrust into the heat of Kai’s mouth. He watches the long column of Kai’s throat work as he swallows. “Look at you. Hard just from kneeling there for me, like every fucking time.”
He pulls back for a torturous second. Kai makes a wounded sound of protest, eyes fluttering open—dazed and wanting and completely unguarded.
Nazar traces his swollen lips with his thumb, mesmerized by the sight. “So fucking beautiful.”
When he comes, it’s with a guttural sound he doesn’t recognize as his own. Kai takes it, swallows, looks up at him with an expression that makes Nazar’s chest tight.
Kai gets to his feet with that fluid grace he has—the one that makes him so dangerous on the ice. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, already turning away. Already rebuilding the walls.
Not today.
Nazar wraps his arms around him from behind, trapping him. His mouth finds that sensitive spot on Kai’s neck. The one that makes him melt despite himself.
He bites down. Not hard enough to really hurt, just hard enough to mark. To claim territory he has no right to but claims anyway.
Kai lets out a surprised laugh—breathless and real, not his usual sardonic deflection. “Rykov, you’re going to be late.”
“Worth it.” Nazar grinds against him, already half-hard again. His hand moves to cup Kai through his jeans, feeling him strain against the denim.
Kai leans back into him, and for a moment they just stand there—Kai’s back against Nazar’s chest, both of them breathing hard, the hotel room silent except for the hum of the AC and the distant sound of traffic outside.
Nazar rubs against him, a desperate, frantic imitation of the real thing, grinding until he comes again, a dry, friction-burn orgasm that leaves him panting and dizzy.
“I don’t care about being late,” he mutters into Kai’s hair.
* * *
This is his hell. A closed-loop system of rage and want, and it seems that Kai is trapped in it with him.
The rest of the season blurs into a series of stolen, violent encounters in the hidden corners of the FHL.
It happens in a utility closet in Philadelphia, smelling of bleach and old mops, after a bruising overtime win.
The energy of the game is still humming in their veins, and they crash together, Kai’s back pressed against a shelf of cleaning supplies.
Kai comes hard against the denim of Nazar’s jeans.
It happens in a concrete stairwell in Detroit after a brutal loss, the anger between them so thick it’s a physical presence.
The fight in the locker room bleeds into their actions, hisses of “fucking asshole” and “pretty show-off” muffled by punishing kisses and rough hands.
Nazar leaves marks on Kai’s throat that he has to hide with a scarf the next day.
It happens in a dark hallway backstage during a mandatory team meeting. They’re both in suits, looking like civilized human beings, while Kai is on his knees in the shadows of a catering cart, his mouth on Nazar’s cock.
The risk is the fuel, a reckless, suicidal high they’re both chasing.
Each time, the pattern is the same. Confrontation. Explosion. Frantic physicality. Then Kai pulls away, rebuilds his armor, and leaves first.
Always leaves first.
* * *
“No Helen today, Rykov?” the journalist asks, offering a friendly smile.
He’s younger than most, clearly aiming for a relaxed, conversational vibe.
Nazar doesn’t like it. Helen, the shared publicist for four of his teammates, is a stern woman who runs interviews with the ruthless efficiency of a military drill.
“She thinks I’m a big boy now. Can handle myself,” Nazar says, his voice flat.
The journalist grins. “Well, you’re having a career year. Twenty-eight goals, forty assists through sixty games. What’s changed?”
“Work ethic. Discipline.” The standard answers roll off his tongue automatically. “Good linemates.”
“Speaking of linemates—the chemistry between you and Kaisyn Callahan has been interesting to watch. Lot of intensity there. Some have suggested it’s not always… positive intensity.”
Here it is. The trap disguised as a softball question.
Nazar feels the familiar surge of protective rage. Thinks about Kai at his apartment, surrounded by teammates who’ve learned to see past the headlines. Thinks about him at that charity event with the kids, patient and generous with his knowledge.
“Kaisyn’s okay,” Nazar says, and his voice is low and steady. He looks the journalist dead in the eye. “His cat is the problem,” Nazar interrupts. “Bonifazio. Huge diva. Demands specific bottled water. Expensive treats. Takes up half the training table. Coach is considering waiving him.”
The journalist blinks, processing. Then he laughs. “Wait, are you serious?”
“Completely serious. Cat’s a locker room cancer. We’re all terrified of him.”
The tension breaks. The interview pivots to safer topics—playoff positioning, upcoming schedule, whether Nazar’s planning to attend All-Star weekend.
“Yeah,” Nazar says when asked. “I’ll be there.”
So will Kai. Both their names are on the roster. There will be no escaping each other. Cameras everywhere. Having to pretend they’re just teammates, just two players who happen to occupy the same space without any of the complicated history burning between them.