Chapter 26
Chosen POV
The freezing drizzle ticked against the high panoramic glass of the carriage house, a steady, rhythmic tapping that measured out the silence of the woods.
Through the narrow slit in the charcoal curtains, the pale winter sun cut across the wide-plank floorboards, casting a dull amber wash over the crumpled linen at the foot of the bed.
Week nine of the master calendar. Twenty hours of clinical observation left on the compliance sheet in my locker. Six weeks until the Frozen Four in Lake Placid. Sixteen weeks until the draft.
I lay awake on my back, my left arm thrown wide across the pillows, my chest rising and falling in slow, forty-eight-beat drags of air. The dull ache in my right knee had faded into a quiet, settled stiffness, the joint holding stable beneath my skin.
Beside me, Marie was curled on her side, her cheek pressed flat against the bare muscle over my ribs, her forehead resting just beneath my collarbone.
One of her bare legs was hooked over my hip, pinning me to the mattress with a soft, heavy warmth that soaked straight through my flank.
Her dark hair was a tangled, silken spill across my chest, pooling over the black ink of my compass rose tattoo, smelling of sweet vanilla, cold rain, and the clean heat of her skin.
I looked down at my right hand resting on the charcoal sheet beside her hip.
My knuckles were thick, scarred white across the joints from ten years of bare-knuckle hockey fights and high-speed checks into the dasher boards.
My wrists were bruised yellow-green from Friday's scrimmage; the three-inch surgical scar along my left collarbone stood out like a jagged white wire in the gray light.
I was two hundred and twenty-eight pounds of scar tissue, bone density, and violent, calculated momentum.
Next to my hand, the pale curve of her bare shoulder looked impossibly delicate, smooth as polished bone.
The contrast between our worlds was vast enough to swallow a man whole.
Outside the heavy timber walls of this carriage house, my reality was defined by brutal collisions, the barking whistle of Garrison Vance, eight thousand screaming students in Sloan Arena, and the poisonous sneer of Tate Halloway waiting in the shadows of the parking tunnel with an extortion note.
In the public world, I was an enforcer on borrowed time, a violent instrument being evaluated by twenty NHL franchises for my ability to absorb impact and bleed for three periods.
In this room, behind a locked oak deadbolt, Marie Freeman had laid down her own lifelong wounds at midnight, looking into my eyes without her clipboards or her academic armor, trusting me with the rawest, most vulnerable pieces of her soul.
She had given me a home in the dark.
My chest expanded on a deep, unsteady inhale, my jaw softening until the tension in my temples dissolved.
I made a silent, unshakeable vow to the cedar ceiling: the external world could bring its lawsuits, its draft boards, and its threats, but nothing would ever defile the sanctuary inside these walls.
* * *
Marie stirred.
Her eyelashes fluttered against my ribs, a soft, drowsy sigh breaking from her parted lips. She shifted her weight, her bare hip pressing firmly against my thigh, her fingers curling into the short hair across my chest as she slowly blinked against the morning light.
Her dark eyes were heavy with sleep, the golden flecks in her irises glowing soft in the amber wash from the curtains.
She looked up at me, no defenses in the line of her mouth, no hesitation in her gaze.
"Morning," she whispered, her voice rough, husky, and warm.
The sound scraped straight across my raw nerve endings, pulling the blood hot and heavy to my groin.
"Morning, Marie," I rumbled, my voice thick with gravel.
I didn't give her room to retreat. I shifted my weight, sliding my right arm around the small of her back, lifting her slightly as I rolled onto my side, pulling her body flush beneath mine.
The linen fell away to our hips, exposing the long, pale line of her torso to the winter air, but the heat radiating off my bare chest trapped her against the mattress in a private, suffocating perimeter.
I settled my heavy hips between her parted thighs, bracing my forearms on either side of her shoulders, letting my weight settle over her frame with slow, unhurried gravity.
Her breath hitched in a sharp, shallow gasp, her pupils dilating until the black swallowed the brown. Her hands rose, her palms resting flat against the thick muscles of my chest, her fingers curling over my sternum, holding on.
"Chosen," she breathed, her lips parting on my name.
"Quiet," I murmured, my face dipping down until my mouth was a fraction of an inch from hers. "You gave me your truth last night, Marie. Now let me take care of you."
I lowered my head and claimed her mouth.
The kiss was an agonizing, slow-burn descent into pure heat.
My lips moved over hers with deep, reverent demand, unhurried and thorough, tasting the morning sleep on her tongue, the sweet mint of her breath, drinking the soft whimpers that broke from her throat as my stubble scraped the sensitive skin of her chin.
Her hands tangled in the short hair at the back of my head, pulling me closer, her body arching upward into the unyielding press of my hips.
I slid my right hand down her side, my calloused fingers mapping the delicate curve of her waist, the flare of her hip, the soft swell of her inner thigh. My touch was firm, possessive, learning every inch of her skin with deliberate, sacred patience.
"Look at me, Marie," I commanded against her lips, my baritone vibrating through her jaw.
She opened her eyes, dark and dazed with raw surrender, her chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow bursts against mine.
"Good girl," I rasped, my thumb dragging across her swollen bottom lip as I shifted my weight forward, the slow, scorching friction of our bodies driving the air from her lungs. "Keep your eyes on mine. You're everything to me, Marie. All mine."
A fractured, breathless cry tore from her throat as she yielded to the heavy momentum of my body, her fingers digging deep into the muscles of my upper back, her thighs tightening around my waist as we moved together in the quiet room.
The world outside ceased to exist.
There was only the heavy, rhythmic creak of the platform bed, the slick, fevered heat of our skin sliding together, and the broken, gravelly words of praise I breathed into her neck as I worshipped her with every ounce of reverence in my soul.
When the release finally tore through her, pulling her back off the sheets in long, shuddering waves, I gathered her into my arms, burying my face in her dark hair, and followed her over the edge with a low, guttural groan that emptied my entire chest into hers.
* * *
The quiet returned slowly, settling over the bedroom like fresh snow.
Marie lay curled against my left side, her head resting on my shoulder, one small hand splayed flat over my heart, her thumb tracing the inked lines of the compass rose. Her skin was flushed a deep, healthy pink, radiating an unusual, heavy warmth that soaked through my chest.
Her breathing was deep, slow, and heavy with exhaustion.
"I feel like I could sleep for forty-eight hours," she murmured into my skin, her eyelids heavy, a faint, sleepy smile touching the corner of her swollen mouth.
"Then sleep," I said softly, my large hand smoothing over the curve of her hip, resting against the small of her back. "Nobody is looking for us until noon."
I leaned down, pressing a lingering, warm kiss to the crown of her head, the scent of lavender and cedar filling my lungs.
"Six weeks, Marie," I whispered into her hair, letting the words carry the full, unshakeable weight of my conviction. "Six weeks until Lake Placid. Twenty hours left in that basement. When this season is over and the draft is done, I'm putting you in front of the entire world."
She shifted slightly, her cheek nuzzling deeper into my neck, her fingers tightening in the hair on my chest.
"We go to Denver, Boston, wherever your fellowship takes you," I murmured, my thumb stroking the side of her jaw. "You don't have to carry anything alone ever again. I’m going to give you everything you've ever had to fight for."
Marie let out a soft, contented sigh against my collarbone, her breath warming my skin. "I believe you, Chosen."
She closed her eyes, anchoring herself to my chest with complete, unreserved trust, her breathing leveling out into the rhythmic cadence of sleep.
I held her tight, my chin resting against her dark hair, but my gaze drifted to the frosted windowpanes.
Outside, the leaden gray sky was heavy with an impending squall, the hemlocks bowing beneath the rising wind.
My pulse sat slow in my neck, but a cold, predatory premonition tightened the muscles along my spine. Tate Halloway’s forty-eight-hour clock was ticking down. Reginald Sterling was monitoring the security logs at Sloan Arena.
The peace in this room was sacred, but the external storm was gathering on the horizon—and when it struck, it would take everything I had to keep this woman standing.