Chapter 6
Killian POV
The pale, sub-zero sun slanted through the two-story glass facade of the athletic atrium, washing across the zinc tabletop in a blinding, cold glare.
On the screen of my tablet, the digital white lines of Northland State’s power-play formation looped in an endless, mechanical cycle. Left-wing lock. High-to-low puck rotation. A weak-side backdoor cut designed to exploit a defenseman who cheated off the post.
I was supposed to be memorizing the timing. In seven days, Roman Lindqvist was bringing his first line into The Pit for our first conference rematch.
Instead, the screen was a blur of meaningless blue pixels.
My back molars ground together until the pressure sent a dull, throbbing ache radiating through my temple. Every muscle along the shelf of my shoulders was pulled tight as steel wire, locked in a state of useless, twitching vigilance.
I couldn't get the taste of her out of my mouth.
For three days, ever since Tuesday night in Lab 04, my brain had been trapped in an endless, suffocating loop.
Her back pressed against the diagnostic table.
Her lips parted, pink and trembling. The frantic, wild hammering of her pulse against the white skin of her throat, right where my mouth would have landed if I’d leaned down another two inches.
She had looked at the scar over my eye and seen straight through the blood and the penalty minutes to the rot beneath. And then she had breathed my name like she wanted to pull the teeth right out of my jaw.
Nadia.
A muscle in my cheek jumped violently. I dragged a hand over my face, the rough callouses on my palm scraping against my stubble.
"Castaneda, are you even looking at this?"
Across the table, Hayes Bennett tapped a blunt finger against the glass of the tablet. He had a styrofoam cup of black coffee wedged between his knees, his Barrow hockey windbreaker unzipped over a gray hoodie.
"Lindqvist is cheating toward the half-wall on the breakout," Hayes said, his blue eyes narrowing as he studied my face. "If we pinch the strong-side defenseman, we take away his lane. But you have to track the trailing center, or we give up a three-on-two."
"I see it," I grated, my voice rough and flat.
"You don't see shit," Hayes countered, leaning back in his chair. The plastic creaked under his weight. "You've been staring at that same ten-second clip for twenty minutes. You look like you're about to rip a sink out of the wall. What's going on with you?"
"Nothing."
"Right. Which is why your knuckles are white and you've broken two pens since we sat down." Hayes shook his head, taking a sip of his coffee. "Briggs said your kinetic hours are on track. Forty-six left, right? Gregory giving you hell?"
The mention of her name sent a sharp, hot jolt straight down the center of my spine. My fingers tightened around the heavy aluminum stylus until the casing groaned.
"Drop it, Hayes," I rumbled, the warning low and final.
Before Hayes could open his mouth to chirp again, my peripheral vision snagged on motion across the crowded concourse.
My head turned on instinct.
Sixty feet away, pushing through the heavy glass revolving doors of the atrium, was Nadia.
She wore a thick charcoal-wool sweater that swallowed her frame, dark denim that hugged the curve of her hips, and heavy winter boots caked with road salt.
Her unruly chestnut curls were pinned back with those same thin silver clips, and her leather satchel hung diagonally across her chest, the strap pulling tight across the soft swell beneath the wool.
She looked small against the towering concrete pillars of the concourse, fragile in a way that made a protective, vicious knot tighten in my lower gut.
She was carrying a stack of printouts, her head down, chewing on the inside of her lower lip with that focused, clinical intensity that made her look like she was calculating the structural integrity of the floorboards.
I couldn't look away. My lungs seized, refusing to draw a full breath, my gaze locked onto the sway of her hips as she navigated the flow of students heading toward the library annex.
* * *
Then, a body stepped into her path.
Wyatt Caldwell.
Senior midfielder for the varsity lacrosse club, campus legacy, and the kind of smiling, well-dressed parasite who spent his weekends running his father's black card at the downtown bars.
He wore a navy-and-gold Barrow letterman jacket, his blond hair pushed back in that practiced, effortless wave that reeked of unearned confidence.
Caldwell planted himself directly in front of Nadia, blocking her lane to the library stairs.
I went utterly still.
Across the table, Hayes was still talking about neutral-zone regroups, but his voice was suddenly white noise, completely drowned out by the deafening, rhythmic roar of blood pounding against my eardrums.
Through the glass panes of the atrium, the weak sunlight hit Caldwell’s face as he smiled down at her, leaning in close. Too close. His posture was relaxed, invasive, crowding her space with the casual arrogance of a guy who had never been put through the boards at thirty miles an hour.
Nadia stopped. Her chin tilted up at that sharp, defensive angle I knew down to the millimeter. She said something—short, clipped, professional—and tried to sidestep him to the left.
Caldwell didn't let her pass.
He shifted his weight, matching her step, laughing at whatever brush-off she had just thrown at him. Then, with an easy, sickening familiarity, he reached out his right hand.
His fingers wrapped around her upper arm, right above the elbow, stopping her forward momentum.
A red haze detonated behind my eyes.
Every drop of blood in my body turned to boiling acid. The breath in my throat backed up, thick and sulfurous, a hot metallic tang coating the back of my tongue.
He's touching her.
Caldwell leaned in further, his mouth dipping toward her ear, his hand sliding casually down the wool of her sweater toward the curve of her hip.
Nadia jerked her arm back, her posture turning rigid with clear irritation, but Caldwell just laughed again, closing the distance, his fingers reaching out to touch the side of her waist.
The stylus in my hand snapped.
The sharp plastic cracked with a sound like a small-caliber pistol shot. The jagged pieces clattered across the zinc table, rolling into Hayes's coffee cup.
"Killian?" Hayes said, his head jerking up.
I didn't hear him. The chair beneath me went flying backward, the steel legs shrieking across the polished slate tile as I shoved myself to my feet.
The world narrowed to a tunnel—a cold, violent vacuum with Wyatt Caldwell’s hand at the dead center.
* * *
I didn't run. Running was for people who gave warnings.
I crossed the forty feet of slate concourse with heavy, measured strides, moving with the unyielding momentum of a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound object that refused to alter its trajectory.
Students scattered out of my path on instinct, catching sight of my face and backing into the brick walls to clear the lane.
Caldwell had his mouth opened, laughing, his fingers inches from her ribs.
I reached them in three seconds flat.
I didn't tap him on the shoulder. I stepped directly between them, dropping my left shoulder like a lead wall, my chest slamming into Caldwell’s arm with enough blunt force to knock the lacrosse player two stumbling steps sideways onto the tile.
Caldwell gasped, his boots sliding, catching his balance against a stainless-steel trash receptacle.
"What the hell—" Caldwell started, his face twisting in outrage.
The words died in his throat the second he looked up.
I stood over him, towering five inches above his head, my shadow completely blotting out the atrium light. My hands hung loose at my sides, my fingers curled into heavy, white-knuckled fists, the tendons in my forearms standing out like braided wire.
The air pouring from my nostrils was hot, ragged, and violent.
"Castaneda?" Caldwell stammered, the color draining out of his cheeks until he looked like chalk. The varsity swagger vanished, replaced by the sheer, animal terror of a man who realized he was standing in the kill zone of an apex predator.
"Take your hands off her," I said.
My voice wasn't loud. It was a low, guttural vibration that rumbled deep in my chest, scraping along the floorboards like heavy iron chains.
"We were just talking," Caldwell sputtered, raising his palms, taking another involuntary step backward. "She's in my biomechanics seminar. I was just asking about the—"
"Walk away," I cut him off, stepping into his space until the toe of my boot touched his sneaker. My jaw was clamped so tight my teeth felt ready to shatter. "Right now. Before I take your arm off at the shoulder and beat you to death with it."
Caldwell didn't argue. He didn't even look at Nadia. He turned on his heel and half-jogged toward the quad doors, practically tripping over his own feet to get out of the building.
A heavy, suffocating silence hung over the concourse. Dozens of students were staring, frozen in place, but I didn't give a damn about any of them.
I spun around.
Nadia stood backed against the massive granite pillar, clutching her leather satchel to her chest. Her dark honey eyes were wide, flashing with a mixture of shock and sheer, blistering fury. A furious flush burned high on her cheekbones, contrasting sharply with the pale skin of her neck.
"Are you insane?" she whispered, her voice trembling with rage.
I didn't answer. I took two crowding steps toward her, boxing her into the alcove of the stone pillar. I planted my right hand flat against the cold granite beside her ear, leaning down until my chest hovered three inches from hers.
The scent of her soap and winter-cold wool washed over my senses, fighting through the hot fog of my adrenaline.
"What was he doing?" I demanded, my voice a dark, rough rasp that vibrated between our chests.
"He was asking about the lab syllabus, you psychotic brute!
" she hissed, her fingernails digging into the leather strap of her bag.
She didn't shrink into the pillar; she leaned forward, her chin tilted up, meeting my lethal glare with eyes full of fire.
"You have no right to come over here and threaten students like an unchained attack dog!
You don't own this floor, and you sure as hell don't own me! "
"He had his hand on you, Gregory," I growled, leaning in another fraction of an inch until the heat radiating off my jaw warmed her cheek. The muscle in my temple throbbed with a sickening, possessive pulse. "He was touching your waist."
"And what business is that of yours?" she fired back, her breath hitching, her chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow bursts that brushed against the heavy cotton of my hoodie.
"You're a student on disciplinary probation.
You're my five-thirty AM appointment. That's it!
You don't get a say in who I talk to, who I stand with, or who touches my coat! "
The defiance on her tongue was poison, sweet and lethal, driving every rational thought from my skull.
I dropped my left hand to the stone on the other side of her head, trapping her completely. I leaned down until my mouth was a millimeter from the shell of her ear, my lips brushing the stray chestnut curls that had escaped her clips.
"You listen to me, Nadia," I rasped, the words thick with a dark, primal authority that left no room for argument. "You have forty-six hours left on that contract. Until that clock hits zero, your body is in my lab, under my eyes, and inside my perimeter. You belong to the protocol."
Her breath caught in her throat with a sharp, ragged gasp. Her pulse, hammering frantically against the side of her neck, fluttered against the heat of my mouth.
"You're not his to touch," I whispered, the gravel in my voice cutting straight to the bone. "You're not anyone's to touch. Anyone who puts a finger on you answers to me. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"
She shivered—a long, helpless tremor that rippled straight through her spine. She looked up, her dark eyes drowning in the shadows of my face, her lips parted and wet with shallow, rapid breaths.
She didn't tell me I was wrong. She couldn't.
Because as the silence stretched between us, thick with the heavy, suffocating weight of an attraction that had just obliterated every rule in the book, we both knew the truth.
The line hadn't just been crossed.
It had been burned to the ground.