Chapter 9
Nadia POV
Thirty-eight hours remaining on the mandate. Session Eleven.
I set out the sterile telemetry adhesive pads, my fingers steady as I clicked the dual-axis force plates into active calibration mode. The dual monitors hummed, casting a pale, slate-blue hue across the empty rubber floor mats.
The heavy steel fire door swung open with a dull, shuddering scrape.
I turned around, the clinical greeting ready on my tongue, but the words withered in my throat.
Killian walked through the threshold, his duffel bag slung low over his left shoulder.
He had on a charcoal Barrow Hockey sweatshirt and dark track pants, but his usual heavy, predatory stride was broken.
His right heel dragged by a fraction of an inch, his pelvis dropping sharply with every forward step to take the load off his right leg.
His skin was gray, the hollows of his cheeks sunken, and dark, bruised smudges shadowed the skin beneath his eyes like old ink.
He didn't look at me. He dropped his bag against the locker cabinets with a heavy thud, his teeth clenched so hard the muscles along his jawline bunched into rigid knots.
"Five-twenty-eight," he grated, his voice scraping like rusted iron. "Clock's running, Gregory."
He moved toward the force plates, but as he planted his right foot, his knee gave a sickening, microscopic buckle. An involuntary hiss of air whistled through his teeth, his hand shooting out to grip the steel rim of the diagnostic cart to keep his balance.
The aluminum frame groaned under his weight.
My pulse surged into my throat. I stepped into his path, blocking the balance platform.
"Step back," I said, my voice dropping its clinical veneer.
Killian’s jaw locked. He blinked down at me through heavy, red-rimmed eyelids, the silver scar through his left eyebrow pulled taut against his temple. "Get out of the way, Nadia. I have sixty minutes of lateral jumps on your schedule."
"You're not jumping on anything," I said, reaching out to plant one flat palm against the center of his chest.
Through the thick cotton of his hoodie, the heat pouring off him was feverish, his chest rising and falling in shallow, guarded bursts. His heart was hammering beneath my palm, too fast, pounding against his sternum like a trapped fist.
"Look at the baseline monitor," I ordered, gesturing toward the screen behind him. "Your left-to-right weight distribution is eighty-twenty. You're barely putting fifty pounds of pressure on that right leg. What happened during yesterday's scrimmage?"
"Blocked a slapshot in the second period," he muttered, trying to sidestep my palm. "Puck caught the edge of the thigh pad. It's a bruise. Run the tracking."
"Strip the track pants off," I commanded.
Killian froze. His dark eyes flicked down to my face, pupils flaring with a dangerous, defensive edge. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me," I said, my voice steady, though a hot prickle of nervous friction bloomed across the back of my neck. "I can't evaluate soft-tissue integrity through fleece. Either you pull them down, or I call Coach Briggs and tell him you're skating on an unverified hematoma."
* * *
For four seconds, Killian stared at me, his breath coming in short, hot rasps that smelled of mint and bitter coffee. The arrogance was gone, worn down by sheer physical agony, but the stubborn pride remained, burning like embers in the dark hollows of his eyes.
Slowly, without a word, he reached for the drawstring of his pants.
He shoved the fleece down past his knees, stepping out of them to stand in his black compression shorts.
My breath caught in the center of my chest.
A massive, grotesque contusion covered the lateral sweep of his right thigh.
The skin from his mid-quad down to the upper border of his patella was swollen to twice its normal circumference, mottled in shades of deep eggplant, sickly yellow, and angry crimson.
The muscle belly of the vastus lateralis was locked into a rock-hard, visible spasm, the fascia pulled so tight the skin looked glossy.
"A bruise?" I whispered, my fingers curling into the cuffs of my lab coat. "Killian, that's a Grade Two intramuscular hematoma. The muscle is locked in a protective tetany. If you take another direct impact on that leg before the fluid drains, you could develop calcification in the tissue."
"I have scouts from Montreal in the stands on Friday," he said, each word dragged through clenched teeth. "I don't have time for your textbooks."
"Sit on the table," I said, my voice leaving no room for argument. "Now."
He hesitated, then limped to the high examination table, hauling himself up with an audible groan that tore through my defenses. He leaned back on his elbows, his head dropping back, throat exposed, chest heaving as the effort of moving sent a shockwave of pain through his nervous system.
I turned to the supply cabinets, moving with frantic, practiced efficiency. I pulled a stainless-steel myofascial scraping tool from the sterilization drawer, grabbed a bottle of arnica and wintergreen massage oil, and switched on the infrared heat lamp.
I rolled the cart to the edge of the table, stepping between his splayed knees.
The heat radiating off his bare thigh was intense, a localized fever that warmed the air between our bodies.
I popped the cap on the bottle, pouring a generous pool of amber oil into my bare palms. The sharp, medicinal scent of camphor and crushed wintergreen filled the cramped room, cutting through the damp concrete smell of the lab.
I rubbed my hands together, warming the oil until my skin slicked, and looked up at him.
"This is going to hurt," I warned softly.
Killian opened his eyes, dark and glassy with exhaustion, locking onto mine. "Just do it, Gregory."
* * *
I placed both palms flat on the swollen expanse of his quad.
Killian’s entire body went rigid as an iron girder. A violent tremor rippled through the corded muscles of his stomach, his hands reaching out to clamp onto the vinyl edges of the examination table. The heavy stitching groaned under the savage pressure of his fingers.
"Breathe," I murmured, leaning my weight into my palms, beginning slow, long effleurage strokes from the top of his knee upward toward his hip to encourage lymphatic drainage.
The muscle beneath my hands was dense, hard as carved granite, resisting every millimeter of pressure.
The heat of his skin burned through the oil, slick and feverish against my palms. With every upward stroke, my thumbs dug into the rigid bands of spasming fascia, working to break up the pooled blood trapped between the fibers.
Killian let out a low, guttural sound—a broken, ragged groan of pure agony that scraped along the walls of the sub-basement.
His head fell back, the tendons in his neck standing out in sharp relief, sweat suddenly beading across his forehead and dripping down his temples. His knuckles turned white where he gripped the vinyl, the veins in his forearms bulging against his skin.
"Look at me, Killian," I whispered, pressing deeper into the knot, my own breathing turning shallow and fast. "Don't hold your breath. Exhale."
He dragged in a ragged gasp through his teeth, his dark eyes snapping open, finding mine in the dim light.
The pain in his face was raw, stripped of every defense, every lie, every piece of armor he had ever worn.
He looked at me not as the enforcer, not as the campus god, but as a man entirely at my mercy.
My palms moved higher along his thigh, the oil smoothing the friction between my skin and his.
The strokes lengthened, shifting from purely clinical force into something rhythmic, steady, and devastatingly intimate.
My fingertips brushed the outer edge of his hip bone, feeling the heavy, frantic thump of his pulse vibrating through the femoral artery.
The scent of wintergreen mingled with his cedar and sweat, thick and intoxicating, filling my lungs until my head spun.
Killian’s breathing changed.
The sharp, defensive hisses slowed, deepening into heavy, shuddering exhalations that washed across the top of my head. The tension in his leg began to yield, the rock-hard knot softening under the persistent warmth of my hands.
His hips shifted slightly on the table, an involuntary, restless movement that brought him an inch closer to my waist.
My hands swept upward again, tracing the inner line of his quad, centimeters from the hem of his compression shorts. The skin there was burning, sensitive, trembling beneath my touch.
A sharp, ragged gasp tore from his chest.
Before my hands could slide higher, his right hand released the edge of the table and shot forward.
His broad, calloused fingers clamped around my wrist, stopping my stroke dead in its tracks.
His grip was firm, but not punishing—his fingers were shaking with a violent, desperate restraint that made my own heart hammer against my ribs like a battering ram. The skin of his palm was slick with oil and sweat, burning against the delicate bones of my arm.
"Nadia," he choked out, his voice dropping into a dark, gravelly register that made the air in my lungs turn to liquid heat.
I froze, trapped between his knees, my free hand resting flat against the hard muscle of his upper thigh, my knuckles inches from his hip. I tilted my head back, looking up into his face.
His chest was heaving, the black fabric of his shirt clinging to the ridges of his ribs. His pupils were blown wide, black voids consuming the amber, locked onto my mouth with a raw, feral hunger that made my knees feel weak.
"That's enough," he rasped, his thumb pressing into the rapid, wild beat of my pulse point.
"The swelling isn't down yet," I whispered, but the words were completely breathless, devoid of authority, my lips parted and trembling in the heavy air.
"I don't care about the swelling," he murmured, his hand sliding down from my wrist to thread his fingers through mine, his callouses catching on my knuckles. He pulled my hand half an inch higher, pressing my palm firmly against the burning heat of his hip.
His eyes bore into mine, dark and ruined, the silver scar above his brow catching the dim yellow light of the heat lamp.
"You keep touching me like that, Gregory," he whispered, his voice a low, rough rumble that settled in the hollow of my throat, "and we're not going to be talking about hockey anymore."
The room fell into dead silence, broken only by the hiss of the radiator and the sound of our ragged, synchronized breaths.
I looked at our joined hands, at the dark contrast of his broad fingers tangled with mine, and I didn't pull away.
The ice had cracked.
And beneath the surface, the water was boiling.