CHAPTER 14
Lactic acid burned a slow, agonizing trench through the deep muscle fibers of his thighs.
Sixty minutes of absolute structural combat had left a brutal, physical receipt.
Dorian stood dead center in the master suite of the Toronto Fairmont, the ambient amber glow of the city skyline bleeding through the sheer curtains.
He didn't turn on the lamps. He simply stood in the shadows, his chest rising and falling in shallow, exhausted increments.
He stared down at his own bare torso. He had just stripped off his damp dress shirt, letting the expensive cotton drop to the carpeted floor.
The pale expanse of his skin was a roadmap of blunt-force trauma.
A massive, mottled purple contusion spread across his left oblique, the result of a violent collision with a Toronto winger in the second frame.
A jagged, raw red line marred his collarbone where his chest protector had dug into the flesh during a hyper-extended split block.
His left hand throbbed with a heavy, sickening pulse. The athletic trainer had wrapped the knuckles in thick white medical tape after the game, binding the joint tight to compress the swelling from the vicious slash he had taken in the crease.
He was physically wrecked. Every joint ached.
But the worst toll wasn't the physical beating.
It was the suffocating, inescapable psychological pressure of the federal net drawn tight around the hotel.
Officer Hawkins was somewhere in this building.
The Canadian authorities were logging their movements.
The world was waiting for him to fracture.
The heavy brass latch of the suite door clicked.
Dorian’s head snapped up. His defensive instincts flared, a localized spike of adrenaline flooding his exhausted veins.
Everett stepped over the threshold.
The captain didn't speak. He reached behind his back, his massive hand closing over the heavy steel deadbolt.
He turned it with a sharp, metallic clack.
He flipped the secondary security bar into place.
He engaged the privacy chain. Three distinct, heavy sounds that systematically sealed the suite off from the rest of the planet.
Everett turned around.
He was still wearing his dark navy travel suit, but the professional executive mask was entirely gone.
His tie was already loosened, hanging in a chaotic, crooked strip down his chest. The top three buttons of his shirt were torn open.
The knuckles of his right hand were split and coated in a thin layer of dried blood from the fight he had initiated to defend the crease.
Everett’s dark eyes locked onto Dorian.
The look was a physical impact. It lacked any trace of the calculated, tactical restraint the captain had employed in the lobby downstairs.
It was a heavy, unblinking carnal focus, entirely saturated with a raw, predatory necessity.
Everett didn't look at the bruises. He didn't look at the taped hand. He looked at Dorian’s entire frame with a dark, consuming heat that instantly evaporated the freezing anxiety lingering in the goalie’s chest.
Silence stretched between them, thick and incredibly loud. The low, mechanical hum of the hotel’s climate control system was the only sound in the room.
Everett dropped his leather gear bag to the floor. It hit the carpet with a dull thud.
He started walking.
He crossed the dark expanse of the suite with the slow, deliberate stride of a man who possessed absolute ownership of the ground beneath his boots.
Dorian couldn't move. He stood frozen by the foot of the massive king-sized bed, his breathing hitching as the sheer physical scale of the captain closed in on him.
Everett stopped inches away. The heat radiating off his massive chest soaked directly into Dorian’s cold, bare skin.
Everett didn't ask. He didn't negotiate.
He reached down, his thick, calloused hands sliding brutally fast around the back of Dorian’s heavy, charcoal travel trousers.
Everett gripped the dense muscle of Dorian’s upper thighs.
He bent his knees just a fraction, utilizing the massive, explosive power of his own core, and hoisted Dorian entirely off the floor.
Dorian let out a sharp, fractured gasp, his hands flying out to brace himself.
His taped knuckles hit the heavy wool of Everett’s shoulders.
The sudden loss of gravity, the complete surrender of his physical autonomy, should have triggered a massive panic response.
He was a man who survived by controlling his perimeter. He survived by staying grounded.
Instead, a wild, violently hot rush of submission tore straight through his gut.
He let Everett carry him.
Everett took two long steps toward the sprawling mattress. He didn't throw Dorian down. He lowered him with a controlled, heavy strength, depositing the goalie directly into the center of the dark sheets.
Before Dorian could even process the soft impact of the mattress against his bruised back, Everett was following him down.
The captain shoved his own suit jacket off his shoulders, the expensive wool sliding down his arms to land in a heap on the floor. He ripped the remaining buttons of his dress shirt apart, entirely uncaring of the fabric tearing, and threw the garment away.
Everett’s chest was a terrifying landscape of dense, heavily scarred muscle. A fresh, dark bruise bloomed across his sternum from a blocked slap shot, and a red welt marked his jawline from the scrum. He was battered. He was exhausted. And he was completely obsessed.
Everett crawled over the edge of the mattress, positioning his massive frame directly over Dorian. He trapped Dorian’s long legs between his own heavily denim-clad knees.
Everett lowered his weight. He didn't crush Dorian, but he pressed down hard enough that the goalie felt the unyielding, solid reality of the captain’s chest flush against his own.
It was a heavy, suffocating blanket of absolute protection.
A physical shield deliberately placed between Dorian and the ugly, hostile reality of the world outside the hotel walls.
"Everett," Dorian breathed, the name scraping out of his throat, raw and desperate.
Everett crashed his mouth down.
The kiss was devastating. It was slow, deep, and impossibly heavy.
Everett forced Dorian’s lips apart, his tongue sweeping into the hot, wet cavern of the goalie’s mouth with a claiming, territorial rhythm.
He tasted of sweat, sharp adrenaline, and the dark, metallic tang of the blood drying on his knuckles.
Dorian’s rigid discipline shattered. The icy mask he had worn for the cameras, the cold detachment he had forced himself to maintain in the lobby—all of it incinerated under the crushing pressure of Everett’s mouth.
Dorian groaned, a loud, entirely unfiltered sound that vibrated directly into Everett’s jaw.
Dorian’s hands moved. He ignored the throbbing pain in his taped knuckles. He slid his long fingers up into the thick, dark hair at the base of Everett’s skull, gripping hard, pulling the captain down even tighter against his face.
Everett’s rough palms swept down the sides of Dorian’s torso.
He mapped the bruised, battered skin with a frantic, trembling heat.
He reached the waistband of Dorian’s trousers.
His fingers worked the metal buckle with ruthless efficiency, stripping the heavy fabric and the compression shorts underneath entirely down Dorian’s legs, kicking them off the edge of the mattress.
Everett broke the kiss, gasping for a sharp, jagged hit of oxygen. He dragged his face down the line of Dorian’s jaw, his heavy, dark stubble scraping a harsh, agonizing friction against the pale skin of Dorian’s neck.
"You held the crease," Everett snarled, his voice a low, vibrating rumble pressed directly against the frantic pulse point below Dorian’s ear. "You held the line. Now let me hold you."
Dorian squeezed his eyes shut, a single, hot tear breaking past his lashes and rolling down his temple into the dark sheets. The sheer, overwhelming emotional weight of the demand crushed the remaining air out of his lungs.
Everett shoved himself up just enough to rid himself of his own trousers. He moved with a violent urgency, kicking the heavy denim away until there was absolutely zero physical barrier remaining between them.
He settled back down, the slick, burning heat of his heavy arousal dragging flush against Dorian’s stomach.
Everett reached blindly toward the nightstand. He knocked a glass water bottle over in his haste, the heavy thud ignored as his fingers closed around a small, dark travel bottle from his own kit. He flipped the cap with his thumb, pouring a heavy pool of thick, cold lubricant into his palm.
Dorian arched his spine off the mattress as the cold gel hit the hypersensitive, burning skin between his thighs.
Everett didn't rush the preparation, despite the violent tremor shaking his massive arms. He used his thick, calloused fingers to press deep inside, working the tight, unyielding muscle with a slow, deliberate pressure. The contrast was mind-altering. Everett was a man capable of shattering composite glass with his shoulder, yet his hands moved with a calculated, desperate patience, entirely focused on dismantling Dorian’s physical defenses without causing pain.
Dorian’s chest heaved. He dragged oxygen through his teeth in sharp, frantic hisses. The heavy, stretching fullness was agonizingly good. He felt entirely exposed, splayed open under the ambient light of the city, utterly defenseless against the captain’s intent.
"Please," Dorian begged, his thick accent entirely warping the syllable. His hands slid down Everett’s massive back, his fingernails digging into the dense lats. "Everett. Now."
Everett withdrew his fingers. He shifted his hips, aligning the blunt, heavy head of his erection directly against Dorian’s slick entrance.