Chapter 15
Tallulah POV
The emerald silk slip dress had belonged to my mother in the nineties, stored in cedar tissue until the bankruptcy sale stripped our attic down to bare joists.
It fell straight from two delicate spaghetti straps, grazing my collarbones, the bias-cut fabric skimming my hips before pooling around the straps of four-inch black heels.
My dark hair was pinned back on the left side with a tarnished brass filigree comb, leaving my neck and the bare slope of my shoulder exposed to the draft whistling through the double-height mullioned windows of the Great Hall.
The Garrison Annual Athletic Booster Gala was an exercise in institutional wealth.
Four hundred donors, faculty members, and varsity athletes in black tie packed the ballroom beneath three tiers of iron-wrought chandeliers.
The air was a suffocating blend of expensive French perfume, melting candle wax, roasted prime rib, and the sharp, acidic sting of champagne bubbling in crystal flutes.
My stomach churned, a knot of pure tension pulling tight beneath my navel.
I stood beside the dessert station, holding an untouched glass of sparkling water by the stem, nodding politely as two members of the academic senate debated the new physics lab allocation.
My fingers were cold as ice. After four weeks of hiding inside oversized canvas coats, starched lab coats, and heavy wool thermals, standing in the center of the hall with six inches of bare leg showing through the side slit of my dress felt like standing naked on the center-ice logo.
Then the room seemed to tilt on its axis.
Over the heads of the university trustees near the grand stone fireplace, Coast Stuart turned his head.
My trachea seized. The air caught behind my teeth on a dry, ragged inhale.
He was standing between Coach Bramwell Hayes and Boston’s director of amateur scouting, Grant Wesley.
Coast wore a charcoal three-piece suit cut with razor precision to accommodate the broad, massive frame of his shoulders and chest. His white dress shirt was stiff and immaculate against his throat, pinned beneath a dark silk tie that accentuated the sharp, unyielding line of his jaw.
His dark hair had been combed back with pomade, neat and disciplined, though a single wave fell forward against the right side of his brow.
He looked like an aristocrat carved from dark granite.
He didn't look like the man who had groaned against my throat in a subterranean basement. He looked untouchable.
Across forty feet of crowded parquet flooring, his pale green eyes locked onto mine.
He didn't smile. He didn't offer a polite nod of collegiate recognition. His gaze dropped, deliberate and slow, tracing the emerald silk clinging to my chest, following the dip of the neckline down to the exposed curve of my collarbones, before tracking the slit of the dress down to my bare thigh.
When his eyes rose back to mine, his pupils were dilated into wide black disks, the muscle along his temple jumping once with a possessive, predatory focus that sent a dark, suffocating wave of heat straight to my cheeks.
He didn't break the stare. Even as Grant Wesley leaned in to murmur something in his ear, Coast’s eyes remained pinned to my face, claiming me across the room in front of four hundred people.
* * *
"Table four, Miss Barry," Compliance Officer Corinne Vane said, her voice cutting through the noise like a dull blade as she appeared at my elbow.
She wore a rigid midnight-blue gown that looked like an administrative uniform. "Director Thorne requested your presence at the leadership table. Scout Wesley requested a briefing on the longitudinal force-plate data before the speeches conclude."
My heels clicked against the hardwood as I followed her toward the elevated VIP tier near the dais.
Table 4 was a round, linen-covered setup beneath the central chandelier. Seated around the perimeter were Director Aris Thorne, Coach Hayes, Grant Wesley, a prominent local hospital executive, and the empty chair directly to the left of Coast Stuart.
My heart slammed against my ribs with a hard, irregular thud.
Coast stood as I approached, observing formal etiquette with an effortless, aristocratic polish that made my knuckles ache.
His broad shoulders blotted out the light from the candles.
He pulled out the heavy oak chair, his sleeve brushing my bare arm as I sat down.
The scent of him—fine wool, bitter cedarwood cologne, and clean male heat—wrapped around me instantly, obliterating the smell of the room.
"Good evening, Miss Barry," he said smoothly, his gravelly voice masked beneath a veneer of polite, distant formality.
"Captain Stuart," I murmured, my voice steady only because I dug my fingernails into my palms beneath the table.
Coast pushed my chair in, his hand lingering for half a second against the wood of the backrest before he returned to his seat.
"Miss Barry," Grant Wesley said from across the table, leaning forward over his salad plate with the sharp, evaluating eyes of an NHL scout.
"Thorne has been walking me through the eccentric load curves from last week. The peroneal stabilization on Stuart’s right side looks remarkable.
In your professional opinion, does the syndesmosis hold under heavy contact along the boards? "
"The bilateral asymmetry has dropped to four point two percent," I answered, sitting straight, projecting the clinical authority I had spent four years earning.
"His lateral force distribution is within standard deviation for Division One competition.
Provided he maintains the neuromuscular maintenance protocol, the joint is structurally sound. "
"She’s modest," Coast’s voice cut in, low and smooth as dark bourbon. "Miss Barry has been remarkably thorough in managing my physical limitations."
Beneath the heavy drape of the white damask tablecloth, his left hand moved.
He didn't hesitate. His large, calloused palm slid under the table, moving past the edge of the silk, and came to rest flat against my bare knee where the slit of the emerald dress fell open.
My breath stopped in my throat.
The heat of his skin was a brand against my cool flesh. His palm was huge, rough, calloused from stick tape, completely engulfing my kneecap.
I didn't flinch. I kept my face turned toward Grant Wesley, my lips fixed in a pleasant, professional smile, though every nerve ending in my body flared into screaming red alerts.
"The athletic department is pleased with the telemetry," Thorne chimed in, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses. "Tallulah’s kinematic mapping will be the gold standard for our graduate fellowships next fall."
Under the table, Coast’s hand shifted.
His long fingers tightened around my knee, his thumb beginning to move in slow, deliberate, agonizing circles against the sensitive skin of my inner thigh.
A sharp, ragged heat rushed up my leg, coiling tight in the pit of my stomach.
I tried to pull my leg back, tried to clamp my knees together, but his fingers gripped firmly, using his brute athletic strength to hold my leg exactly where he wanted it. His thumb drifted an inch higher, dragging across the soft, untouched skin beneath the silk.
"The discipline is what matters," Coach Hayes said, raising his water glass to the table. "Coast has kept his focus between the boards. No distractions. That’s what Boston is buying."
"To focus," Coast said quietly.
I turned my head to look at him.
Coast was holding his champagne flute with his right hand, his face composed in an expression of polite, unbothered captaincy as he nodded at his coach. But his eyes were dark, almost black, burning down into mine with a silent, terrifying dominance.
Under the linen, his thumb stroked higher, his knuckles brushing the hem of the slit, testing my composure, daring me to make a sound in front of the athletic director and the Boston Bruins.
My pulse was hammering so violently against my collarbone that I could feel the silk of my dress fluttering. My knuckles turned white where I gripped my cloth napkin. I had to draw air through my nose in tiny, imperceptible sips to keep from gasping aloud at the table.
"Are you feeling all right, Miss Barry?" Corinne Vane asked, her cold eyes fixing on my flushed throat. "You look flushed."
"It's quite warm near the chandeliers," I managed to say, my voice trembling on the edge of a razor.
Coast’s thumb applied a firm, commanding pressure against my thigh, his grip sending a deep, shuddering tremor straight through my spine before his hand slowly, reluctantly slid back down to rest over my knee.
"Allow me to get you some fresh water, Miss Barry," Coast murmured, his tone so dripping with solicitous courtesy that nobody at the table suspected a thing.
Except me.
* * *
The lights in the Great Hall dimmed twenty minutes later as the university president took the podium to introduce the season highlight reel.
The heavy brass doors to the outer terrace were twenty paces away.
I stood up from the table while the crowd was applauding the opening title card, whispering an excuse to Director Thorne about needing to review the slide deck.
I didn't look at Coast. I walked swiftly across the darkened ballroom, my emerald dress whispering against my stockings, my skin burning everywhere his fingers had been.
I slipped through the side exit into the shadowed stone corridor that led toward the private terrace.
The hallway was cold, the air smelling of old limestone, cedar wax, and the freezing winter draft seeping through the terrace doors. I stepped into a deep, recessed window alcove behind a pair of heavy navy velvet drapes, pressing my burning forehead against the freezing glass of the leaded pane.
My lungs expanded in ragged, greedy gasps, my heart thrashing against my ribs like a caged beast.
He's insane. He is completely out of his mind.
The heavy velvet drape shifted.
A wall of solid mass slipped into the alcove, cutting off the dim light from the corridor with absolute finality.
Before I could turn around, Coast was there.
His large hands clamped onto my waist, lifting me off the flagstones and pressing my back flat against the cold stone pillar. His body followed, 228 pounds of tailored wool and dense, unyielding muscle trapping me entirely against the masonry.
The heat rolling off him was suffocating, his charcoal suit jacket rough against my bare shoulders.
He leaned down, burying his face in the crook of my neck, his lips pressing a slow, scorching kiss to the frantic, leaping pulse at my collarbone. His stubble grazed my sensitized skin, sending a violent shudder through my hips.
"Coast," I gasped, my fingers flying to his chest, clutching the lapels of his suit jacket to keep my balance as my heels dangled an inch above the floor. "Someone will see—"
"Nobody saw," he rasped, his voice a low, ruined growl that vibrated directly against my neck.
His hands gripped my waist tighter, his thumbs pressing into the silk of my dress, holding me pinned against the stone. He lifted his head, his face inches from mine in the dark, his green eyes blazing with a feral, terrifying hunger that made my knees feel hollow.
"You sat there," he whispered, his breath hot against my lips. "Answering Wesley’s questions with that calm, perfect voice while my hand was on your thigh. You didn't break. You didn't flinch."
"I was trying to keep us from being expelled," I breathed, my chest heaving against his crisp white shirt, my thighs trembling against his hips.
Coast leaned in closer, his mouth brushing the corner of my jaw, his voice dropping into a thick, ragged murmur that stole the rest of my air.
"Good girl," he rasped into my skin. "Such a good girl for me. Look at you... driving me out of my mind in this dress, and you held your ground like a soldier."
A soft, broken whimper slipped past my teeth. My fingers knotted tighter into his lapels, pulling him closer, my head falling back against the stone as his lips traced a slow, burning path toward my mouth.
From the corridor outside the velvet drape, the heavy, rhythmic thud of leather soles echoed against the flagstones.
"Hayes, check the terrace doors," Director Thorne’s voice called out, barely ten feet away. "We need Coast on the dais in two minutes."
Coast froze.
His mouth hovered a millimeter from mine in the pitch-black alcove, his chest locked rigid against my ribs, our breaths mingling in short, silent, agonizing gasps as the footsteps stopped right on the other side of the curtain.