Chapter 13
Nylah POV
My lungs pulled in air that felt like broken glass.
When Ryan’s mouth finally tore away from mine, the sudden absence of his heat left my swollen lips freezing in the damp basement draft. My head dropped back against the stainless-steel examination table, my skull knocking the cold metal with a dull, hollow click.
The room refused to steady itself. The fluorescent light tubes overhead flickered in blurred, yellow streaks.
My hands flew to the edge of the examination table, my fingernails digging into the rolled lip of the steel to keep from sliding onto the concrete. A violent, uncontrollable tremor was running through my quadriceps, shaking my knees so hard the fabric of my dark jeans rustled in the quiet room.
What did you just do?
The thought didn't arrive with words; it hit like an icy wave straight to the center of my diaphragm.
My chest rose and fell in rapid, ragged bursts that hitched every time I tried to draw a full breath.
The flush was everywhere—crawling up the sides of my neck, staining the skin along my collarbones a deep, feverish crimson, burning behind my ears.
My lips felt twice their normal size, stinging from the scrape of his jaw stubble and the bruising pressure of his mouth.
On the concrete between our feet, three black steel hairpins lay scattered where he had ripped them from my head. My dark hair hung down around my shoulders in a tangled, disheveled curtain, clinging to the damp skin of my neck.
I had to get up. I had to grab my Pelican case, push through that heavy blast door, and pretend my nervous system wasn't currently collapsing under acute sensory shock.
"That..." My voice broke on the first syllable, a dry, reedy scrape that sounded nothing like the composed woman who ran kinematic algorithms.
I swallowed hard, forcing my jaw to stop trembling.
"That was an unacceptable breach of conduct, Owen."
The words were supposed to sound clinical. They were supposed to sound like an administrative warning from someone who held the authority to pull an athlete’s playing card.
Instead, they came out as a breathless, fractured whisper that hung between us like a pathetic white flag.
I pushed my palms against the cold metal table, attempting to slide my weight forward and plant my boots on the floor.
My left knee gave out the instant my boot touched the concrete.
* * *
I didn't hit the ground.
Ryan moved before my balance could fully fail. His right arm lashed out, hooking around my waist, his thick forearm locking against my lower ribs with enough crushing strength to haul my weight straight back into the air.
His left hand shot forward, his calloused fingers wrapping around my right wrist.
He didn't release me. He dragged me forward until my chest collided with the front of his black training shirt, lodging me firmly in the space between his heavy, parted thighs.
"Let go of me," I rasped, my fingers twitching against his bicep as I tried to shove at his shoulder.
He didn't budge an inch.
His slate-grey eyes were dilated wide, tracking the violent flutter of my throat where my carotid artery was hammering against the skin like a trapped bird.
He didn't have his captain's mask on. The mocking, arrogant smirk he had worn across the lobby was gone, replaced by a dark, intense focus that pinned me to the spot.
His thumb shifted, pressing firmly into the soft depression of my inner wrist.
The frantic, racing rhythm of my blood thrummed directly against his calloused skin.
"Your pulse is running at a hundred and forty," he murmured. His gravelly baritone was low, stripped of hostility, vibrating straight through the bones of my arm.
"It’s an adrenaline spike from an unexpected physical collision," I stammered, my chin tilting up on pure reflex, desperate to hide behind the jargon that had protected me my entire life. "Step back, Ryan. Let me reach my bag."
Ryan didn't step back. He took half a step forward, crowding me until the heat of his torso soaked through the knit wool of my sweater, searing the skin of my chest.
He raised his right hand.
His bare knuckles brushed the sensitive curve beneath my jawline. The moment his rough, scarred skin made contact with my flushed flesh, an involuntary shudder racked my entire frame, my shoulders flinching inward as my breath hitched on a sharp, defensive gasp.
I couldn't help it. The sensitivity was blinding. Every nerve ending along my neck felt raw, exposed, screaming from the memory of his mouth against my skin.
Ryan froze.
His hand stilled against my jaw. His brow furrowed, his eyes narrowing as he scanned my face—clocking the wide, terrified pupil dilation, the trembling in my lower lip, the frantic way my chest hitched as if I had never learned how to breathe around another human being.
The truth hit him. I saw the exact second the realization settled into the hard angles of his face.
The tension in his shoulders shifted, dropping from predatory aggression into something deep, dangerous, and quiet.
"You've never done this," he said.
The words weren't mocking. They were a flat, gravelly statement of fact that made the blood freeze in my veins.
"Don't be ridiculous," I said, trying to pull my wrist from his iron grip, my face burning with a humiliation so hot it made my eyes sting. "I am twenty-two years old, Owen. I have a life outside this basement."
"Nobody has ever put their hands on you like that," he rasped, his voice dropping an octave into a dark, velvet register that made my toes curl inside my boots.
He leaned down until his mouth was inches from mine, his pale eyes tracking the tremor in my lips.
"Nobody has ever kissed you until you couldn't stand on your own feet. "
"Ryan, stop—"
"Look at you," he murmured, his thumb stroking slowly across the soft skin beneath my ear, a heavy, hypnotic cadence that dismantled the last remaining thread of my defenses. "You're shaking from the roots of your hair to your boots. For me. Good girl. Look at what you're doing to me, Nylah."
* * *
The praise hit my bloodstream like pure poison.
My eyes fluttered shut, a broken whimper catching in the back of my throat as his thumb continued that slow, possessive drag against my neck. I couldn't fight it. The sheer physical gravity of his body, the absolute confidence in the set of his hands, was pulling the marrow right out of my bones.
Before I could collapse against the table again, Ryan shifted his weight.
His hands slid from my jaw and waist, wrapping entirely around my upper body. He hauled me off the edge of the steel slab, pulling my frame flush against his massive chest, and tucked my face firmly into the warm curve where his neck met his shoulder.
His arms locked around my back like iron bands.
The cold air of the basement vanished. I was swallowed by him—by the smell of crushed winter pine, cedar, clean sweat, and the suffocating wall of his body heat.
"Breathe, Nylah," he commanded softly, his rough cheek resting against the crown of my head, his gravelly voice rumbling directly through my ear into the center of my chest. "In through your nose. Match me. Come on."
He took a slow, deep breath, his broad ribcage expanding against mine with heavy, steady power.
My hands, curled into defensive fists against his sternum, slowly uncoiled. My fingers spread wide, clutching the thick black fabric of his shirt over his bruised ribs, holding on as if he were the only solid object left in an unraveling universe.
I forced my lungs to draw air, matching the slow, rhythmic cadence of his breathing. With every shared inhalation, the frantic, rabbit-fast panic hammering in my chest began to quiet, soothed by the unyielding weight of his arms around me.
His calloused hand came up, his thumb gently tracing the swollen contour of my bottom lip.
The touch was impossibly soft, completely at odds with the violent enforcer who leveled men on the ice, carefully smoothing away the stinging heat his earlier roughness had left behind.
"That's it," he whispered into my hair, his lips brushing the sensitive skin near my temple. "Just like that."
I stayed there, my forehead pressed into the warm hollow of his throat, feeling the heavy, steady thud of his own heart beating against my palms. I knew what this meant. I knew the danger of letting an athlete like Ryan Owen into the quiet, protected spaces of my life.
I should have pulled away. I should have remembered my fellowship, my father’s cold warnings, the compliance audit that was still hanging over our heads.
Instead, my fingers tightened their grip on his shirt.
Ryan’s mouth drifted down to the shell of my ear, his rough stubble grazing my burning jawline.
"You're in my perimeter now, Collins," he growled, the gravelly rasp in his voice coated in a dark, lethal promise that settled into the bone. "I don't care who was here before. Nobody else gets to touch you. Nobody else gets to see you come apart. You belong to me now."
A shudder ran through me, deep and irrevocable.
I didn't argue. I didn't deny it. I stood in the dark of Sub-Level Two, locked in his arms, terrified by the absolute certainty that I was never going to be the same again.