Chapter 13
Tallulah POV
My lower lip still bore the microscopic fissure where his teeth had grazed the skin four days ago.
I had spent seventy-two hours attempting to classify Monday’s breach as an acute neurochemical aberration. I had told myself it was an adrenaline spike triggered by physical exhaustion, the claustrophobic dimensions of the basement, and the sudden removal of our professional barricade.
The explanation was clean. It was rational.
And it was absolute rubbish.
My autonomic nervous system was in revolt.
My sleep had fractured into two-hour increments haunted by the ghost of his hands on my hips, the crushing weight of his 228-pound frame pinning me against the vinyl mat, and the ruined gravel of his voice whispering Good girl against my parted lips.
Every time a door slammed in the kinesiology wing, my pulse thrummed violently against the bones of my wrists.
I checked the calibration on the wireless telemetry pods for the fourth time. The digital readouts were green, the battery levels sitting at ninety-eight percent.
The heavy steel fire door unlatched behind me.
My throat went bone-dry. The air caught high in my trachea, refusing to descend into my lungs as the familiar scent of cold cedar shavings, friction-charred hockey tape, and raw male heat rolled into the cramped room.
I didn't turn around immediately. I forced my hands to remain flat on the aluminum tray, willing the fine tremor in my knuckles to subside.
"Session nineteen," I said, aiming for the cold, clinical cadence that had carried me through three years of biomechanics practicums. My voice betrayed me, thinning on the second syllable before I could force it flat. "Twenty-two hours remaining. Dynamic plyometric force-plate loading."
Heavy training shoes squeaked against the wet rubber matting.
Coast didn't head for the force plates. He didn't drop his gear bag on the corner chair. He moved with that silent, unhurried predatory stride, cutting straight across the floor until his broad shadow fell across my hands, swallowing the yellow pool of light from the desk lamp.
* * *
"Look at me, Barry."
His voice was a low, abrasive rasp that vibrated directly against the base of my skull.
I turned my head. My chin tilted up by sheer reflex, my pride refusing to let him see the panic fluttering behind my ribs.
Coast stood less than twelve inches away.
He was wearing dark gray compression gear that clung to the dense, heavy slabs of muscle across his chest and shoulders.
The shadow of stubble along his jaw was thick, his dark hair damp at the temples from a pre-dawn shower.
His pale green eyes were locked onto my face, his pupils dilated into wide black rings that left only a thin sliver of color.
He reached out.
He didn't give me time to step back, didn't give me room to mount a defense. His large, calloused hands clamped around my waist, his thick fingers biting firmly through the stiff starch of my lab coat and the wool of my sweater, finding the narrow flare of my hips.
With a single, effortless heave of his shoulders, he lifted me off the floor.
A sharp gasp tore from my throat as he hoisted me upward, setting my thighs onto the edge of the high examination table. My boots dropped between his knees, my calves brushing the dense muscle of his outer thighs as he stepped into the space between my legs, boxing me in completely.
"Coast—"
"You haven't looked at me once since you walked down that hall," he murmured, his voice dropping into a dangerous, quiet register.
He stepped closer, his chest pressing against my wool-clad knees, his height forcing my head back. His hands shifted from my hips, sliding up beneath the hem of my heavy crewneck sweater.
His bare palms were scorching hot.
The rough, calloused pads of his fingers slid over the sensitive, bare skin of my lower ribs, tracing the delicate ridges of bone with an unhurried, heavy pressure that sent a violent tremor straight through my abdomen.
My breath locked behind my teeth. My knees clamped tight against his hips, my hands flying out to knot into the gray cotton of his shirt to keep from tumbling backward across the mat.
The physical reality of him—the suffocating heat, the sheer bulk of his body crowding my perimeter, the slide of his rough skin against mine—hit my nervous system like an avalanche.
My ribs rose and fell in wild, shallow hitches, a dark, crimson flush crawling up from my collarbone to burn across my cheeks.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't process the sensory input.
A ragged shiver broke through my shoulders, my fingers tightening in his shirt until my knuckles turned white.
Coast froze.
The predatory focus in his face fractured.
His hands went perfectly still against my ribs, his thumbs resting flat against the soft flesh of my waist. His eyes narrowed, sweeping over my parted, trembling lips, the wild, rapid pounding of the pulse at the base of my throat, and the desperate way my hands were clutching his chest just to stay upright.
"You're shaking," he rasped, his brow pulling together in a sharp crease.
"I'm fine," I lied, the words trembling so hard they barely carried across the two inches of space between our lips.
"You're not fine," he murmured.
His gaze hardened, searching my face with a terrifying, surgical precision. He tracked the dilated panic in my eyes, the awkward, rigid tension in my spine, the way my body was responding to his touch with an overwhelming, uncoordinated sensory overload.
The realization hit him like a physical check.
His jaw clenched, the muscle jumping once, twice, before his expression softened into something dark, heavy, and devastatingly reverent.
"Tallulah," he whispered, the name rough on his tongue. "How many guys have had their hands under your shirt like this?"
* * *
The air left my chest in a sharp, humiliated rush.
I tried to pull back, tried to slide my hips away on the vinyl, but his hands tightened on my waist, anchoring me firmly in place. My face burned with a heat so intense my skin felt scalded.
"That is none of your business, Stuart," I bit out, my chin jerking up, my voice cracking on the syllables. "Let go of me."
"None," he stated. It wasn't a question. It was an absolute, stunned realization that seemed to knock the breath straight out of his massive frame.
I clamped my teeth shut, my fingernails digging harder into the cotton over his collarbone, my eyes burning with unshed tears of pure frustration.
"I had three jobs, Coast. I had sixteen credits every semester. I had a brother whose tuition I was paying while my parents’ bankruptcy was finalized.
I didn't have time for varsity parties. I didn't have time for... this."
I stared at his chest, refusing to look at his face, terrified of the mocking amusement I expected to find.
It didn't come.
The silence in the room stretched, thick and suffocating, broken only by the hum of the refrigeration chiller overhead and the ragged sound of my own breathing.
Coast didn't laugh. He didn't smirk.
Slowly, carefully, as if handling something infinitely fragile, his hands moved. His fingers slid from beneath my sweater, his palms coming up to frame the sides of my jaw. His thumbs were gentle, smoothing over my burning cheekbones with a slow, worshipful reverence that made my ribs ache.
He leaned his forehead against mine, his breath washing warm over my parted lips, smelling of fresh mint and cold mountain air.
"Look at me, sweetheart," he commanded softly.
The endearment hit my chest like a brand.
I forced my eyes open.
Coast was looking at me like I had just handed him the entire world on a clean sheet of ice.
The arrogance was gone. The brutal, defensive enforcer had vanished.
In his eyes was a raw, unyielding devotion that looked almost like pain—a possessive, terrifying tenderness that made my knees feel hollow.
"You don't apologize for that," he rasped, his thumbs tracing the line of my jaw to tilt my face upward. "Not to me. Not to anyone."
"Coast, I don't know how to navigate this," I whispered, the confession tearing out of my throat before I could stop it. "You're too big, and you move too fast, and every time you touch me, I feel like I'm coming apart."
A low, ruined sound caught in his throat.
He leaned down, pressing his lips to the hollow beneath my jaw, right over the wild, frantic thrumming of my pulse. The kiss was slow, scorching, and tender, his stubble grazing my skin as his mouth moved with agonizing patience against my neck.
"Good girl," he murmured against my skin, the vibration of his voice rattling through my collarbone. "You tell me when it’s too much. You tell me when to stop."
My breath hitched on a ragged gasp, my fingers knotting into the dark, thick hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer instead of pushing him away.
"I don't want you to stop," I breathed.
Coast lifted his head, his pale green eyes blazing with a dark, consuming fire that took my breath away. He reached down, taking both of my trembling hands into his large, scarred palms, lacing our fingers together and pressing them flat against his heavy, pounding chest.
"Then let me teach you, Tallulah," he whispered, his voice an iron vow in the quiet room. "You don't have to carry anything in this room. You just hold onto me. I've got you."