Chapter 26
Ryan POV
The winter sun cut through the slit in the charcoal curtains, painting a narrow band of cold gold across the dark linen sheets.
Outside the factory windows, a fine, freezing sleet was ticking against the glass in a soft, steady rhythm. The radiator beneath the sill hissed its dry, continuous song into the stillness of the room, keeping the damp coastal chill locked outside the brick walls.
Nylah was curled flush against my left side.
Her head was pillowed on my shoulder, her face turned into the warm hollow of my neck, her soft breaths brushing the skin over my collarbone in slow, measured intervals.
One of her bare thighs was draped over my leg, her skin smooth, radiating a sweet, feverish warmth that soaked straight through my hip.
My right hand rested on the delicate curve of her bare shoulder.
The contrast between her body and mine was a physical fact that took the air from my chest. My knuckles were thick, scarred across the middle joints from hundreds of checks along the boards, bruised from the impact of my father’s jacket in the arena tunnel two days ago.
Her shoulder was small, graceful, unblemished save for the faint pink shadow near the base of her throat where my mouth had lingered hours before.
My entire life had been measured in collisions.
I had been trained to believe that my size, my reach, and the violence in my hands were the only things that gave me value.
I was the meat-shield who cleared the crease.
I was the enforcer who absorbed the hits so the skilled wingers could score goals, the son who had to sign an eight-figure contract to buy back his brother’s mobility.
For four years, my body had been an instrument of survival, hardened into iron, stripped of warmth.
With her, the violence had burned to ash.
She had laid her soul bare in this dark room last night. She had looked at me with tears on her face and confessed that she felt disposable—that she had spent her life believing she had to be brilliant just to deserve space in the world.
My jaw was loose and slack. The pulse in my throat beat with a slow, heavy, permanent rhythm.
I looked at the silver ring on her thumb resting over my ribs, and an unshakeable, territorial peace settled into the marrow of my chest.
Nothing would ever hurt her again. I would burn my own future to the ground before I let anyone make her feel small.
* * *
At eight-thirty, she began to wake.
Her long, dark eyelashes fluttered against her cheek. A soft, sleepy sigh left her parted lips as her spine arched in a slow stretch, her bare toes sliding down the rough linen until they hooked behind my ankle.
Her eyes opened.
Her amber-flecked irises were swimming with the hazy, dazed warmth of deep sleep. She looked up through the shadows, her lips curving into a drowsy, unguarded smile that hit my sternum with the force of an open-ice hit.
"Ryan..." Her voice was a raspy, reedy whisper that scraped against my jaw.
I didn't let her speak another word.
I slid my right hand beneath her waist, gathering her hips, and shifted my massive frame over hers with slow, unhurried authority.
The charcoal sheets rustled. I settled my weight between her parted knees, propping myself on my forearms, trapping her small body beneath two hundred and twenty pounds of athlete.
My bare chest pressed flat against hers, the rough hair over my pectorals meeting the soft, sensitized curves of her breasts with a concussive jolt of friction.
Nylah gasped, her breath catching in her throat, her hands instantly flying to the back of my neck. Her fingers curled into my hair, holding me down instead of pushing away.
"Morning, sweetheart," I rumbled, my gravelly voice thick with sleep and dark with an unvarnished hunger.
I dipped my head, taking her mouth in a slow, devastatingly patient kiss.
She tasted of sleep, warm skin, and yesterday’s surrender.
Her lips parted beneath mine with an instinctual trust that made my blood run hot as asphalt.
When my tongue swept deep, claiming the corners of her mouth, a broken moan vibrated against my teeth, her hips arching off the mattress to meet mine.
I didn't rush. The world outside could wait.
My hands slid down her ribs, mapping the delicate flare of her hips, lifting her pelvis to meet the slow, steady rhythm of my body. The friction was agonizingly slow, a deep, rhythmic claiming that turned the cool bedroom into an open furnace.
Every time her breath hitched, every time her nails dug into the dense muscle of my shoulders, I murmured ruined, gravelly praise into the sensitive skin below her ear:
"Good girl... look at me, Nylah. Open your eyes."
Her eyelids fluttered open, dark and glazed with an ecstasy so pure it made my chest ache.
"You're mine," I rasped, my hips pressing forward with deliberate, heavy authority, claiming every inch of her. "Every single piece of you. You hear me? All mine."
"Yours," she sobbed softly against my jaw, her heels locking around the backs of my thighs, her head falling back into the pillow as the pressure coiled to a blinding peak. "Ryan... please."
"I've got you," I growled, burying my face in the crook of her neck, my breath scorching her skin as the final, devastating wave tore through her body.
Her internal muscles clamped around me in long, rhythmic spasms of release.
My control snapped. With a low, guttural roar that vibrated straight through her bones, I drove deep into her warmth, my own release ripping through my frame in shuddering, concussive waves that left us gasping for air in the dim light.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the room was quiet save for our joined breathing.
Nylah lay pillowed on my chest, her cheek resting over my thudding heart, the charcoal down duvet pulled up to her shoulders. Her small, warm fingers were tracing the jagged white line of my old surgery scar on my lower ribs, her touch feather-light and reverent.
I wrapped my heavy arm around her back, resting my chin against the crown of her head, breathing in the scent of her hair.
"Forty-eight hours, Collins," I murmured into the silence, my voice low, gravelly, and steady as bedrock.
Her fingers stilled against my rib. She tilted her chin up, her amber eyes looking into mine. "Until the regional final against BU?"
"Until the BU game, and then the Frozen Four," I said, my thumb smoothing over the soft, flushed crest of her cheekbone. "Until the draft in June."
She held my gaze, a flicker of that old, guarded vulnerability surfacing in her irises. "And then what happens, Ryan?"
"Then we tell the world," I rumbled, every word dropping with the weight of an iron contract.
"No more sneaking through the arena tunnels.
No more pretending you're just my compliance director in the lobby. I’m signing with Colorado, or I'm signing with Boston and buying a house twenty minutes from your lab in the Springs. We step into the light together."
Nylah stared at me, her throat moving on a soft swallow.
A radiant, beautiful smile broke across her face, softening the sharp, defensive lines she had worn since the day we met. Her hand moved up, her fingers sliding into the dark stubble along my jawline, pulling my face down to press a soft, lingering kiss to the center of my lips.
"I believe you, Ryan," she whispered against my mouth.
I closed my eyes, pulling her tighter against my chest, holding her as if she were the only solid object left in an unraveling universe.
Her heartbeat knocked against my ribs, steady and safe.
Through the heavy curtains, the sleet continued to tap against the glass, a cold, persistent warning from the outside world.
My jaw tightened by a fraction.
Arthur Vance had a vendetta. My father held an extortion threat. And the NCAA compliance board was watching our every move.
The sanctuary of this bed was impenetrable, but the storm was gathering outside our door, and I knew with sickening certainty that our peace was about to be tested by fire.