Chapter 4
Killian POV
The air in the varsity locker room was a foul soup of chlorine steam, hot liniment, and drying wool.
Bass rattled the thin sheet metal of the equipment stalls, thumping from the subwoofer Hayes had hooked to the ceiling rafters. Across the wet concrete floor, the hydrotherapy tubs hummed, their surface water sloshing against stainless steel as defensemen climbed in to freeze out their micro-tears.
I sat on the wooden bench in front of stall eighty-eight, hunched over, dragging air through teeth that felt glued together.
My ribs on the right side burned—a sharp, dull ache where Lindqvist’s shoulder had caught me during the neutral-zone drill twenty minutes ago.
Sweat dripped off the tip of my nose, spattering the rubber floor mat between my bare feet.
Two stalls down, Hayes Bennett unlaced his left skate, his blond hair standing on end like he’d shoved a fork into an outlet. He let out a low whistle, kicking the skate off so it banged against the bottom riser.
"Saw Gregory coming out of the sub-basement stairwell before morning skate," Hayes said, reaching for his water bottle.
He took a long swig, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.
"Didn't realize our disciplinary babysitter was built like that under those oversized lab coats.
Legs for days, and she looks at you like she wants to carve your heart out with a butter knife. Kind of hot."
A red-hot spike of adrenaline slammed into my sternum.
Before my brain could process the reaction, my boots hit the deck. I closed the four feet of concrete between our stalls in a single stride, grabbed the steel frame of Hayes’s locker, and leaned down until my shadow swallowed him whole. The metal grooved under my fingers with a sharp screech.
"Say another word about her," I said, my voice dropping so low the subwoofer almost drowned it out. "Try it."
Hayes froze, bottle halfway to his mouth. The lazy smirk on his face dissolved into total confusion, his blue eyes widening as he took in the locked line of my jaw and the knot of muscle twitching beside my eye.
"Jesus, Killian," Hayes muttered, raising his free hand, palm out. "Easy. It was a joke. I'm just saying the athletic department usually sends us eighty-year-old men with clipboards."
"She’s not on the roster, and she’s not campus entertainment," I grated, each word scraping like rust across my vocal cords. "Keep your eyes on your own lane. You look at her again, you’re centering the fourth line on Friday. I'll make sure of it."
I released the metal, the steel snapping back into place with a hollow clang. Hayes watched me with a cautious, calculating stare, rubbing the back of his neck.
"You're wound tighter than a cheap watch, man," he said quietly, the humor gone from his voice. "Fifty-four hours left down there with her, right? You look like you're ready to put your fist through the drywall."
I didn't answer him. I turned my back, yanked my clean gray team shorts out of the stall, and dragged a dry long-sleeve shirt over my bruised ribs.
My knuckles were white. The blood roared in my ears, hot and demanding.
It wasn't annoyance. It wasn't frustration with Palmer’s idiotic sixty-hour mandate. It was something primal, sour, and ugly twisting in my gut. The thought of Hayes—or any other bastard in this room—standing in the hallway watching Nadia Gregory’s hips move made my teeth grind until the ache reached my skull.
She was mine to deal with. She was my cross to bear.
And in ten minutes, the deadbolt on Sub-Basement Lab 04 was going to click shut behind us for Session Three.
* * *
The heavy fire door swung open with a dull scrape, and the smell of the lab hit me dead in the face.
Isopropyl alcohol. Chilled concrete. And beneath it all, cutting through the sterile chemicals, that subtle scent of winter-cold skin and plain soap.
Nadia was sitting at the high stainless-steel diagnostic table, her laptop open, fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard with rapid, aggressive clicks.
Her chestnut curls were twisted up with those thin silver clips again, but a few rebellious strands had escaped, clinging to the curve of her neck just above the stiff collar of her navy scrub top.
The door slammed shut behind me. The deadbolt engaged with its heavy, familiar thud.
Her typing didn't stop. Her spine stayed rigid as an iron rod.
"Two minutes late, Castaneda," she said without turning around. "The baseline pelvic torque arrays have been warming for fifteen minutes. You're wasting my electricity."
"The ice ran over," I said, my voice thick with gravel.
I dropped my duffel in the corner with a dull thud, kicked my sneakers off, and stepped onto the rubber mats in my bare feet. The room was cold, the concrete drawing the heat straight out of the soles of my feet, but my skin was already flushing hot.
I walked over to the table and stopped right beside her chair.
The space was too small. At six-foot-four and two hundred and twenty-eight pounds, I consumed the room, but she dominated the air with sheer obstinance. I leaned over the table, planting both palms flat on the stainless steel on either side of her keyboard, effectively trapping her between my arms.
The click of the keys ceased.
Her breath hitched—a tiny, sharp hitch of air high in her chest.
"Move," she said, her voice dropping into that tight, defensive cadence she used whenever I got within three feet of her.
"Session Three, Gregory," I rasped, leaning down until my mouth was level with the top of her ear.
I could feel the heat radiating off her skin, could see the tiny pulse point fluttering frantically at the base of her throat, right where the scrub top dipped.
"Fifty-four hours left on your paycheck.
You want to lecture me about punctuality, or do you want to tell me where to stick the sensors? "
She swiveled the metal stool around with a sharp screech, forcing me to shift my weight back half an inch or take her knees directly into my shins.
She looked up at me. Her dark honey eyes were wide, the amber flecks flashing with cold defiance. She didn't blink. She didn't shrink into the chair. She held my stare with a stubborn ferocity that made something deep in my chest tighten like a cinched cinch strap.
"Today is dynamic deceleration tracking," she said, her words deliberate, clipped, professional. "We're measuring the lateral load on your right adductor when you brake from an open sprint. Which means you need the telemetry harness."
She reached for the heavy webbed harness resting on the counter. The strap caught on the edge of the metal tray, pulling it taut between us.
I didn't take it from her. I stayed leaned in, my forearms braced on the metal table, crowding her personal perimeter until she had to breathe the air I was exhaling.
"Put it on me, then," I said, watching her lips.
A flush rose from the neckline of her scrubs, creeping up the column of her neck to settle in high, burning spots on her cheekbones. Her jaw set hard, a tiny muscle knotting near the hinge.
"You're a grown man," she countered, her voice dropping an octave, razor-sharp. "You know how to buckle a belt."
"You're the scientist," I shot back, taking half a step closer until the heavy fabric of my gray shorts brushed the denim of her jeans. "You told Palmer this was a medical procedure. If I buckle it wrong, you'll complain my data is dirty. Do your job, Gregory."
* * *
Her nostrils flared. A sharp, angry breath pushed through her lips.
She stood up abruptly.
Because of the cramped space between the high table and the stool, rising brought her directly into my chest. The front of her scrub top brushed the cotton of my long-sleeve shirt, a fleeting, heavy point of friction that sent a shockwave straight down my spine to the heels of my feet.
Neither of us moved.
My lungs seized. The scent of her soap was overwhelming, filling my mouth, suffocating the last remnants of liniment and ice.
She grabbed the thick black nylon strap of the harness, her fingers brushing the bare skin of my waist where my shirt had ridden up. Her touch was cold—freezing compared to the fever burning under my ribs—and the contrast made my abdominal wall contract into a ridged plate of muscle.
Her fingers trembled. Just a fraction. A micro-spasm of nerve endings she couldn't hide.
"Hold still," she whispered, her voice tight, strained, the clinical detachment cracking right down the center.
"I'm not moving," I rumbled.
My voice was too dark, too rough, vibrating in the narrow gap between our chests. I looked down at the top of her head, tracking the way her fingers worked the steel buckle at my hip. Her knuckles pressed against my pelvic bone, heavy and firm, working the nylon through the teeth.
Under the table, my knee shifted, nudging the inside of her thigh.
She didn't jump back. She froze, her breath catching in her throat with a soft, audible gasp.
The pulse in the hollow of her throat was beating like a trapped bird, hammering at a hundred and twenty beats a minute against the delicate skin. I could see the tiny blue vein straining against the pale surface, could see the rapid rise and fall of her sternum just inches from my ribs.
She wasn't indifferent. She wasn't unaffected.
She was drowning in the exact same suffocating, suffocating heat that was clawing at my throat.
Slowly, deliberately, I raised my right hand. I didn't touch her skin, but I rested my fingers against the edge of the metal table behind her lower back, boxing her in completely against my frame.
"Look at me, Gregory," I murmured, the command slipping out before I could bite it back.
Her hands stopped moving on the belt.
She swallowed, a hard, dry click in her throat. Then, slowly, painfully, she lifted her chin.
Her dark eyes locked onto mine. Her pupils were blown wide, dark rings consuming the amber, reflecting the harsh fluorescent glare overhead. Her lips were parted slightly, pale and trembling with shallow breaths.
There was anger in her face, yes. But beneath the anger, stripped raw by the four inches of space between our mouths, was a dark, dizzying hunger that mirrored the violence in my own blood.
She didn't look away. She stared right into the scar over my eyebrow, right into the ugly, ruined parts of me, and she didn't flinch.
"I'm looking, Castaneda," she whispered, her voice shaking with an edge that was pure defiance. "Are you going to do the drill, or are you going to stand here wasting my time?"
A slow, feral pull tightened the muscles in my gut.
The intimidation was gone. The idea of scaring her off, of forcing her to quit the assignment and walk away with her stipend, was completely dead. I didn't want her to leave this basement.
I wanted to take that clipboard and shatter it against the wall. I wanted to drag her up onto the cold steel of that diagnostic table, wrap her legs around my waist, and see how much of that razor-sharp pride would survive when I made her scream my name into the concrete.
"Run the test, Gregory," I rasped, my thumb twitching against the metal table behind her hip. "Let's see what breaks first."