Chapter 12
Chosen POV
Her breath hitched, a sharp, ragged sound that caught in the humid air between our mouths.
For two seconds, Marie stood frozen against the examination table, her pupils wide and black, her high cheekbones flooded with sudden, burning crimson. I could see the frantic, uneven hammering of the artery in her throat, visible against the pale skin just above the top button of her lab coat.
Then her clinical armor cracked into pieces.
She didn't offer a comeback. She didn't quote an NCAA regulation or cite an orthopedic study. Her hands dropped from the aluminum clipboard, her jaw tightening as she shoved past my shoulder, ducking under my arm with quick, frantic agility.
She retreated straight into the supply annex at the back of The Vault—a narrow, windowless storeroom carved into the raw limestone foundation, lined with heavy industrial shelving.
I didn't hesitate. I turned, my boots eating the distance across the wet concrete floor, and followed her into the dark.
The annex smelled of dense neoprene, rubber resistance bands, and rubbing alcohol. The only light came from the small amber square of an emergency exit battery pack mounted above the doorframe, casting long, dull copper shadows across the floor.
I caught the heavy oak-and-iron door with the flat of my hand and shoved it shut behind me.
The brass latch dropped home with a solid, definitive click.
The sound cut off the distant rumble of Sloan Arena’s refrigeration compressors, sealing the two of us inside a stone closet barely seven feet wide.
Marie spun around at the back of the room, her spine hitting the upright steel support of a shelving unit loaded with rolls of white athletic tape. She had dropped her clipboard on a lower shelf; her hands were raised, palms out, her breath sawing through her parted lips in shallow, rapid bursts.
"Get out of here, Chosen," she whispered. Her voice was shaking, but the sharp, defensive fire was back in her eyes, daring me to take another step. "The door latches from the outside. If Thorne comes down—"
"Thorne is on the fourth floor signing budget authorizations," I said.
My voice was a low, gravelly rasp that sounded foreign in my own ears, rough as unpolished granite. I closed the four feet between us in two deliberate strides, ignoring the dull, familiar pull of scar tissue behind my right patella.
I didn't stop until my chest was two inches from the front of her white coat.
* * *
The heat radiating off her small frame was an open furnace, cutting through the damp chill of the subterranean storeroom. Her scent—rainwater, wintermint, and the sweet, clean warmth of her skin—filled my lungs, drowning out the sour tang of the rubber tubing.
I planted my hands on the steel shelf on either side of her shoulders, trapping her against the metal uprights.
My massive frame blocked the faint amber light from the door, swallowing her in my shadow. She had nowhere to run, but she didn't shrink away. Her shoulders snapped back, her chin tilting up, her dark eyes burning into mine with an intensity that made the blood roar through my temples.
"You're thirty seconds away from having your captaincy revoked," she whispered, her ribs rising and falling against the tight cotton of her scrubs. "You think you can bully me into forgetting what's on that compliance sheet?"
"I don't give a damn about the compliance sheet, Marie," I growled, leaning down until my mouth was inches from her temple. The stubble along my jaw grazed the soft, loose hair that had escaped her bun. "And I'm not bullying you."
"Then what are you doing?" she asked, her voice cracking on the syllables.
"Taking what you've been daring me to take since the night I slammed Calhoun into the jukebox," I rasped.
Her breath shuddered. Her hands came up, her small, bare palms planting firmly against the center of my black compression shirt.
She didn't shove me backward; her fingers curled into the damp fabric right over my bruised ribs, her knuckles pressing into my sternum as if she were anchoring herself to the heavy, violent thudding of my heart.
"You're out of your mind," she whispered, her gaze dropping to my split lower lip, then rising back to my eyes.
The hostility between us was gone, burned away by the raw, suffocating friction of two bodies pushed past the threshold of endurance.
"You're reckless, you're arrogant, and you're going to ruin both of us. "
A low, dry sound scraped past my throat—halfway between a laugh and a groan.
"You're right," I murmured, my right hand leaving the shelf, my fingers reaching up to trace the sharp, perfect line of her jaw.
Her skin was fever-hot beneath my calloused fingertips. She didn't pull away; she tilted her head a fraction of an inch into my palm, her eyelids fluttering as a sharp, ragged exhale escaped her lips.
"I'm going to ruin both of us, Marie," I whispered against her cheek, my thumb brushing across the swollen contour of her bottom lip, feeling the delicate warmth of her breath. "Tell me to stop. Tell me right now, and I walk out that door."
She stared at me through the amber gloom, her dark eyes wide, dilated until the irises were swallowed in black. Her fingers tightened in the fabric of my shirt, pulling me down half an inch, deliberately closing the last scrap of air between our chests.
"Don't you dare walk out," she breathed.
* * *
The last shred of my restraint snapped like brittle pine under an avalanche.
I lowered my head and took her mouth.
The collision was rough-edged, desperate, and starved. A low, guttural groan tore from deep in my chest as my lips crushed hers, slanting hard across her mouth, demanding everything she had held back behind her clipboards and clinical charts.
She tasted of sweet mint, sharp coffee, and pure, unfiltered heat.
Marie didn't hesitate. She didn't yield passively; she met the hunger with a fierce, breathless demand of her own.
A soft, fractured whimper broke in the back of her throat as her arms wrapped around my neck, her small hands sinking into the short, damp hair at the nape of my skull, dragging me closer until there wasn't a millimeter of space left between our bodies.
I drove my weight forward, pressing her back against the industrial shelving.
The metal groaned under the impact, rolls of tape shifting on the rack above us, but neither of us cared.
My left arm slid around her waist, my thick forearm locking around the small of her back, lifting her slightly until her toes were barely brushing the concrete floor, pulling her flush against the hard, trembling line of my thighs.
My right hand tangled in the dark hair at the base of her head.
With a sharp, deliberate tug, my fingers found the steel pins holding her bun together, ripping them free. The hair tumbled down in a thick, dark cascade, spilling over my knuckles, over her shoulders, smelling of almond oil and rain.
I deepened the kiss, my tongue sweeping past the seam of her parted lips, claiming the hot, slick interior of her mouth with a possessive, unyielding rhythm.
She gasped into my mouth, her body shuddering against mine, her nails digging into the muscles of my shoulders through the thin compression shirt.
Every nerve ending in my frame was firing at redline; the blood rushed through my ears with the deafening roar of a stadium crowd, drowning out reason, caution, and fear.
"Good girl," I rasped against her lips, the words torn from my lungs in a harsh, broken rhythm as I shifted my mouth to the sensitive hollow beneath her ear. "Take it. That's it."
She arched her neck, a soft, breathless cry escaping her as my mouth dragged down the slender column of her throat, my teeth grazing the rapid, frantic pulse hammering above her collarbone.
Her hands clutched at my back, pulling me tighter, her breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps that scorched my skin. She was shivering, a fine, full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the subterranean cold and everything to do with the fire consuming the small room.
I brought my mouth back to hers, capturing her lips again in a bruising, breathless claiming that seemed to steal the very oxygen from our lungs.
When I finally pulled back a fraction of an inch, my chest was heaving as if I had just skated three consecutive penalty kills.
We stood locked together in the dim amber gloom of the annex, our foreheads pressed together, our breath mingling in hot, ragged clouds. Her lips were swollen, dark crimson and glistening in the faint light; her chest rose and fell against mine in violent, stuttering bursts.
My hands were buried in her hair, holding her face steady, my thumbs stroking the burning skin of her cheekbones.
I looked into her dark, dazed eyes, seeing the ruined pieces of her professional fortress scattered across the floor, and felt the iron reality settle into my marrow:
The line was dead. The pretense was buried. And there was no power on earth that could make me let her go.