CHAPTER 8
The brutal, synthetic cold of the medical gel pack hit inflamed muscle tissue, sending a dull, throbbing ache straight down the heavy bone of Everett’s scapula.
He sat completely rigid on the edge of the sprawling king-sized mattress, staring at the floorboards.
The midnight silence of the penthouse was absolute, broken only by the low, mechanical hum of the central climate control.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling glass, the Chicago skyline burned in a grid of amber and muted gold, casting long, bruised shadows across the dark bedroom.
Everett shifted his weight. The cross-check he had taken during the afternoon scrimmage had been illegal, high, and entirely deliberate.
A message from a rookie defenseman trying to make a name for himself.
Everett had absorbed the kinetic shock without missing a stride, neutralizing the play and burying the rookie into the plexiglass ten seconds later.
On the ice, he was a machine. Impervious.
But sitting here in the dark, the adrenaline entirely drained from his bloodstream, the physical reality of his twenty-nine-year-old body was catching up to him.
He tightened his calloused fingers around the blue plastic of the ice pack, pressing it harder against his back.
The sharp pain was a necessary grounding mechanism.
It kept his brain from spiraling into the catastrophic logistical nightmare of the federal audit, the playoffs, and the man currently occupying his master bathroom.
The heavy brass handle of the bathroom door clicked.
Everett didn't turn his head, but his peripheral vision tracked the sudden bleed of warm, yellow light spilling across the hardwood floor. Plumes of damp steam rolled out into the cool, conditioned air of the bedroom.
Dorian walked out.
The goalie’s footsteps were entirely soundless.
He wore nothing but a white facility towel, slung dangerously low on his narrow hips.
The brutal physical toll of his position was mapped across his pale skin—fading purple contusions along his ribs, sharp stick-burns near his obliques, and the lean, densely packed muscle structure of an athlete built entirely for fast-twitch explosive movement.
His dark hair was wet, sticking to his forehead in messy, chaotic spikes.
Everett’s jaw locked. The thick cords of muscle in his neck tightened into steel cables.
He watched Dorian stop in the center of the room.
The goalie’s gray eyes immediately locked onto the awkward, strained angle of Everett’s right arm holding the ice pack over his shoulder.
Dorian didn't look away. He didn't drop his gaze to the floor or retreat to the far side of the massive bed like he had the past three nights.
The air in the room completely stalled.
Everett’s respiratory rate altered, his chest expanding in a slow, heavy drag of oxygen.
He was acutely aware of his own physical state—bare-chested, wearing nothing but dark cotton sweatpants, his skin hot and flushed from the post-scrimmage shower.
For three days, they had navigated this master suite like two hostile combatants forced into a demilitarized zone.
They had slept on opposite edges of the black silk sheets, maintaining a brutal, suffocating perimeter of dead space between them.
Dorian moved.
He didn't walk around to the empty side of the mattress. He walked directly toward Everett.
The mattress dipped heavily. The black silk sheets rustled, a sharp, abrasive sound in the quiet room.
Dorian kneeled on the bed directly behind him.
Everett froze. The sheer proximity of the goalie triggered a massive, localized spike of heat at the base of his spine.
The scent of Dorian—the damp, clean smell of hotel soap mixed with the unique, underlying warmth of his skin—bypassed Everett’s executive control and sank straight into his primitive brain.
A long, cool hand reached over Everett’s shoulder.
Smooth, incredibly precise fingers closed over the thick, battered knuckles of Everett’s right hand. The physical contact was a shock to the system. Dorian didn't ask. He simply wrapped his fingers around Everett’s grip and gently, but firmly, pried the heavy hand away from the ice pack.
Everett let him. The complete surrender of his physical autonomy was terrifying, yet he couldn't force his muscles to resist.
Dorian pulled the ice pack away. He tossed it blindly. It landed on the nightstand with a dull, wet slap.
"You are freezing the tissue, not the joint," Dorian murmured. The thick, heavily accented English vibrated softly against the back of Everett’s neck. "It will only make the muscle seize tomorrow."
Before Everett could formulate a response, Dorian’s hands descended on his bare back.
The impact was devastating.
Dorian’s thumbs pressed directly into the dense, inflamed knot of muscle at the center of Everett’s trapezius. The goalie applied a slow, crushing pressure, using the leverage of his kneeling position to drive his thumbs deep into the fascia.
A low, rough groan tore out of Everett’s throat. It was an ugly, unfiltered sound of pure physical relief mixed with an agonizing surge of arousal.
He dropped his head forward, his chin resting near his collarbone, entirely unable to maintain his stoic posture.
Dorian’s hands were methodical, ruthless, and absolutely absolute in their precision.
The goalie dragged his thumbs down the deep groove of Everett’s spine, pushing the lactic acid and the brutal tension out of the heavy muscle fibers.
The physical contrast between them was a violent visual collision.
Everett’s skin was dark, heavily scarred from a decade of professional collisions, his back a massive, terrifying landscape of raw power.
Dorian’s hands were pale, smooth, moving over Everett’s heavily muscled terrain with a calculated, surgical grace.
Every time Dorian shifted his weight, his bare knee brushed against Everett’s lower back.
Every tiny, accidental point of friction sent a catastrophic surge of heat straight to Everett’s groin.
"Breathe," Dorian instructed quietly, his fingers digging into the bruised flesh near the shoulder blade.
Everett’s hands gripped the edge of the mattress.
His knuckles turned a stark, bloodless white.
He was losing his mind. He was the captain.
He dictated the physical boundaries of his life.
He was the protector, the shield, the impenetrable wall.
Having the man he was legally bound to—the man he was lying to the federal government to protect—kneeling behind him, dismantling his tension stroke by stroke, was entirely shattering his psychological armor.
Dorian’s palms slid over Everett’s heavy lats, the smooth friction of skin on skin creating a localized fire in the cold room.
The fake contract was dead. The rules they had established in the law office were entirely incinerated.
Everett couldn't take it anymore.
He didn't give a warning. He moved with a sudden, terrifying, explosive speed.
Everett pivoted hard on the edge of the mattress. The sudden shift in gravity caught Dorian entirely off guard. Before the goalie could pull his hands back, Everett’s massive hands shot out. He grabbed both of Dorian’s wrists in a vise-like grip.
Dorian let out a sharp gasp, his eyes blowing wide in shock as his balance was completely ripped out from under him.
Everett drove him backward. He used his towering, six-foot-four frame to physically bowl the goalie over, slamming Dorian’s back flat against the dark silk sheets. The impact bounced the heavy mattress.
Everett followed him down instantly. He straddled Dorian’s hips, his heavy knees sinking deep into the mattress on either side of the goalie’s thighs, effectively caging him.
Everett pinned Dorian’s wrists to the sheets just above his head, the captain’s thick fingers completely swallowing the joint.
Dorian was trapped. Breathless. Pinned beneath two hundred and thirty pounds of violently aroused muscle.
The silence in the room returned, heavy and suffocating.
Everett stared down at him. His chest heaved in deep, jagged spikes.
His dark eyes were entirely dilated, black and completely consumed by a raw, unbridled hunger.
He looked at Dorian’s flushed face, the parted lips, the rapid, frantic pulse hammering visibly against the pale skin of the goalie’s throat.
"Everett," Dorian whispered. It wasn't a protest. It was a question. A yielding.
Everett completely snapped.
He let go of Dorian’s wrists and crashed his mouth down onto Dorian’s.
There was no hesitation. No procedural caution.
Everett kissed him with a desperate, starving aggression that obliterated the final inches of professional distance between them.
He forced Dorian’s lips apart, driving his tongue deep into the goalie’s mouth.
The taste of him was intoxicating—hot, wet, and entirely genuine.
Dorian let out a fractured, high-pitched moan into Everett’s mouth.
The sound was a massive accelerant. The icy, fiercely guarded athlete completely melted under the sheer, heavy territorial dominance of the captain.
Dorian’s hands, suddenly freed, didn't push Everett away. They flew upward, his long fingers clawing desperately into the thick hair at the back of Everett’s skull, pulling the massive defenseman closer, deeper.
Everett’s rough palms slid down Dorian’s bare chest. He mapped the sharp lines of the goalie’s ribs, his hands moving with a frantic, possessive heat.
He reached the knot of the white towel at Dorian’s waist. He didn't untie it.
He gripped the terrycloth and ripped it away, tearing the fabric entirely out of the equation and tossing it blindly off the side of the bed.
Skin met skin.