Chapter 18
Killian POV
The fire crackled behind the mica glass of the cast-iron stove, spitting a shower of dull amber embers across the hearth.
Outside, the lake gale threw tons of frozen powder against the saltbox walls, shaking the window sashes in their wooden frames. Inside, the world had shrunk down to the heavy wool rug, the dry heat of the birch logs, and the girl sitting straddled across my thighs.
Nadia’s hands remained planted flat against my bare chest.
Her palms were scorching, branding the skin over my sternum, the delicate bones of her fingers pressing hard against my pectorals.
She didn't pull back. Her dark honey eyes, wide and dilated until the amber was almost drowned in black, stared straight into mine.
Her chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow bursts, brushing against my ribs with every inhale, her lower lip parted and trembling from the rough drag of my thumb.
The last wall inside my skull didn't just collapse; it turned to dust.
I didn't rush. For three weeks, every touch had been an ambush—a collision in a hallway, a standoff in a basement, a stolen breath in the cab of my truck.
Not tonight.
Tonight, the roads were closed, the phone was silent on the counter, and I had all the time in the world to break her down to ash.
My right hand slid up from the small of her back, fingers splaying wide across the nape of her neck. I tangled my calloused fingers into the thick, dark curls of her hair, exerting a slow, deliberate pressure that tilted her chin upward.
"Look at me, Nadia," I rasped, my voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated against the floorboards.
Her eyelids fluttered, her gaze locking onto mine. There was no hesitation left in her face. The clinical armor was gone, stripped away by the storm, leaving behind a raw, dizzying vulnerability that made the pulse in my throat pound with savage, rhythmic force.
"Killian," she whispered.
The sound of my name on her lips was a match dropped into dry timber.
I leaned in and covered her mouth with mine.
The kiss wasn't a punishment. It was a slow, deep claiming.
I parted her lips with the tip of my tongue, tasting the heat of her mouth, drinking in the mint-sharp flavor of her breath.
Nadia gasped against my lips, her small hands sliding up from my chest to wrap around my neck, her fingernails pressing into the dense muscle at the base of my skull.
She leaned her entire weight into me, her hips settling heavy against my lap.
A ragged groan tore from the back of my throat. My hands slid down to the hem of the oversized charcoal hoodie she wore—my hoodie, with my name and number stretched across her chest—and gathered the thick fleece in my fists.
Slowly, without breaking the friction of our mouths, I dragged the fabric upward.
The cool air of the room hit the bare skin of her waist. My broad palms found the curve of her hips, rough callouses catching on the soft, burning expanse of her skin.
Nadia shuddered—a long, violent tremor that rippled straight through her spine. Her mouth opened wider for mine, her breath turning frantic, her thighs tightening around my hips in an instinctive, desperate hold.
"Good girl," I murmured against her lips, the praise thick and rough as grinding stones. "Just like that. Take it for me."
* * *
I broke the kiss by a fraction of an inch, our foreheads resting together, our breaths mingling in hot, shallow clouds in the firelight.
I pulled the heavy hoodie up over her arms, lifting it clean over her head, and tossed the fleece onto the floorboards behind us.
Nadia sat before me in only a thin white ribbed tank, her dark curls tumbling over her bare shoulders, framing the delicate hollows of her collarbones.
The firelight washed over her skin in waves of deep gold, illuminating the rapid, visible thump of her carotid artery and the soft swell of her breasts rising and falling beneath the cotton.
She looked small in my lap, fragile in a way that made a protective, vicious ache tighten behind my ribs.
My jaw worked on a heavy, uneven breath. I raised my hand, the scarred knuckles stark against the pale line of her throat, and traced the path of her collarbone down to the hollow between her shoulders.
Every muscle in her body went rigid for a second, then softened, melting against my touch.
"You're beautiful, Gregory," I rasped, the words raw, stripped of every ounce of sarcasm I had ever possessed. "You're so damn pretty it makes my chest hurt."
A dark, burning flush crept up from beneath her tank, staining her neck and cheekbones.
Her eyelids lowered, heavy and glassy with a dazed, intoxicating heat.
She reached out, her small, smooth hands framing my jaw, her thumbs tracing the rough stubble along my cheek, resting right over the scar through my left eyebrow.
"Killian," she breathed, her voice trembling with an unvarnished wonder. "You're so warm."
"I'm burning up, sweetheart," I rumbled, leaning down to press a slow, open-mouthed kiss to the sensitive junction where her neck met her shoulder.
Nadia’s head dropped back against my arm, exposing the pale column of her throat to the firelight. A broken, breathy sigh escaped her lips, her fingers knotting into the short hair at my temples as my mouth mapped the curve of her jaw, trailing down to the notch above her sternum.
I didn't rush. I tasted the salt of her skin, felt the frantic, wild galloping of her pulse under my lips, felt the microscopic tremors running through her limbs.
She had never been touched like this. She had never let anyone see the soft, ruined parts of her.
Knowing that I was the first man to put his hands on her skin, the first man to hear the ragged hitch of her breath in the dark, unlocked a dark, possessive reverence in my gut that felt like an iron anchor dropping through deep water.
I slid my left arm beneath her knees, my right arm wrapping around her back.
I stood up from the wool rug in one fluid, unhurried motion, lifting her off the floor as if she weighed nothing at all.
Nadia gasped, her arms instantly locking around my neck, her face burying into the crook of my shoulder. The heat of her mouth pressed against my skin, sending a jolt straight down into the heels of my bare feet.
I carried her out of the living room, leaving the glow of the woodstove behind, and walked down the dim hallway into my bedroom.
* * *
The bedroom was cold, smelling of cedar shavings, clean cotton, and the sub-zero chill seeping through the panoramic windows facing the lake.
Outside, the blizzard was a swirling wall of gray and white, obliterating the horizon, but inside, the low drone of the cast-iron radiator filled the shadows with steady warmth.
I laid her down in the center of my bed.
The dark navy sheets were cool against her back, making her draw in a sharp, startled breath.
Her chestnut curls splayed across my pillows in a dark, unruly halo, her chest heaving beneath the thin tank top, her honey-brown eyes looking up at me through the dim blue moonlight filtering through the frosted panes.
I kicked my shorts off, standing before the bed in the cold dark.
Nadia didn't look away. Her gaze dragged down the length of my torso, taking in the bruised ribs from Friday's scrimmage, the thick slabs of muscle along my abdomen, and the surgical line across my clavicle.
There was no fear in her eyes. There was only a fierce, hungry curiosity that made the blood roar in my ears like a turbine.
I climbed onto the mattress.
The wooden frame creaked under my two hundred and twenty-eight pounds as I settled between her thighs, bracing my weight on my forearms so I wouldn't crush her.
The heat passing between our bodies was immediate, suffocating, and absolute.
I framed her face with both hands, my calloused thumbs stroking across her cheekbones, feeling the fever burning beneath her pale skin. I leaned down until my lips were a hair's breadth from hers, my breath washing hot over her mouth, letting her feel the raw, untamed trembling in my arms.
"Look at me, Nadia," I whispered, the command rough and low in the quiet room.
Her dark eyes locked onto mine, unblinking, wide with surrender.
"You tell me to stop, and I stop," I rasped, each word dragging through my chest like jagged glass. "You have the whistle. Always. You understand me?"
Nadia didn't hesitate. She reached up, her small hands closing over my wrists, her fingers pressing into the heavy veins along my forearms with fierce, unshakeable strength.
"Don't stop, Killian," she whispered, her voice steady as iron, her lips parting on a ragged exhale. "I don't want you to stop."
A deep, violent shudder rippled through the shelf of my shoulders. The final knot in my chest loosened, releasing a flood of molten heat that flooded every nerve in my body.
"Good girl," I growled softly, my voice dropping into that dark, heavy register that made her eyelids flutter. "That's my girl. Let me take care of you."
I lowered my head, capturing her mouth in a slow, claiming kiss that banished the chill of the Michigan winter from the room.
Her hands slid down from my wrists, her fingers trailing over the dense muscle of my shoulders, her nails digging into the skin of my back, pulling me down until there was not a single inch of space left between her chest and mine.
Under my hips, her body shifted, yielding to the weight of my frame, soft and burning and entirely mine.
The storm screamed against the glass outside.
And as my mouth traced the wild, frantic beat of her throat in the dark, I knew that whatever happened when the snow melted, I was never going to be the same.