Chapter 20
Coast POV
The silence in the bedroom was unnatural.
For four years, waking up meant an immediate, grinding calculation of pain. My jaw would be locked from clenching my teeth against nightmares of Plattsburgh; my right ankle would throb with cold inflammation; my chest would feel tight and bruised, bracing for the day's physical punishment.
My masseter muscles were loose, resting easy against my jawbone.
My resting pulse was a deep, rhythmic thud against my ribs, beating slow and steady at forty-six beats per minute.
The air inside the room was cool, smelling of cured cedar, pine needles, and the rich, musk-sweet scent of warm skin tangled in flannel.
Outside the frosted triple-pane glass, the blizzard had died down to a gentle drift, leaving five feet of clean, sculpted powder banking against the hemlocks.
The Adirondack gale had burned itself out before dawn, leaving the mountain ridge in a vast, white stillness that seemed to absorb every sharp frequency in the world.
I didn't move. I didn't breathe too loud.
Curled into the left side of my chest, her dark head resting directly over the jagged skate scar on my collarbone, was Tallulah.
One of her bare arms was draped across my abdomen, her small, ink-stained fingers resting open and relaxed against my skin, rising and falling with every expansion of my lungs.
The heavy down comforter was pulled up to her shoulder, shielding her slender frame from the draft, but the heat rolling off her body was an oven, soaking straight into my side.
Her hair was spilled across my charcoal pillowcase in thick, dark ribbons, smelling of almond oil and the sweat of our skin from midnight.
I lay there in the gray morning light, watching the steady, fluttering rhythm of her breathing. The defiant researcher who had carried sixty pounds of hardware down concrete corridors had vanished into soft curves, relaxed limbs, and parted lips.
Her skin had the delicate, flushed warmth of someone who had spent hours burning beneath my hands.
A deep, unfamiliar pressure swelled behind my breastbone—not the sharp sting of guilt, but a heavy, terrifying awe that made my throat feel thick.
She was here. In my bed. Drowning in my flannel sheets, safe from the storm, trusting me with the body she had never given to another living man.
* * *
Slowly, carefully, keeping my weight anchored so I didn't disturb the mattress, I brought my right hand up from the sheets.
My fingers were scarred, thick, the knuckles permanently broadened from fights along the boards, looking brutal against the porcelain curve of her bare shoulder.
I brushed the back of my index finger along her skin, following the line of her collarbone down to where her camisole had slipped. On the pale flesh of her hip, visible where the duvet had shifted, faint rosy shadows marked the places where my hands had held her during the final drive of our hips.
My chest contracted on a slow, rough inhale.
The sight of my mark on her skin wasn't just satisfying; it was an anchor dropped straight into the bedrock of my life.
Yet underneath the warmth, the old fear stirred in my gut, cold and sharp as winter ice.
I knew the world outside this house. I knew Arthur Cross was still lurking in the shadows of Montreal, hunting for a reason to bleed my contract dry.
I knew Derek Mercer was nursing a bruised ego in the varsity locker room, waiting for an angle to strip my captaincy.
I knew Grant Wesley and Boston were watching every stride I took with the cold, calculating eyes of men buying cattle.
If they saw this—if they figured out that a five-foot-four biomechanics fellow held my entire soul in the palm of her hand—they would use her to break me.
My hand moved to her jaw, my thumb coming to rest gently against the soft hollow beneath her ear.
I made a silent, vicious vow into the quiet room.
Let them come for my draft standing. Let them come for my plus-minus rating. But if anyone so much as breathed a threat in her direction, I would tear this university down to the foundation stones before I let them touch a single hair on her head.
Beneath my thumb, her pulse gave a tiny, fluttering leap.
Tallulah stirred, a soft, breathy sound catching in her throat as she shifted against my side. Her forehead nuzzled into the crook of my neck, her small nose cold against my skin, her fingers tightening their grip on the muscle of my ribs.
Her dark lashes fluttered, opening slowly to reveal honey-dark eyes clouded with the heavy, golden haze of sleep.
She didn't startle. She didn't jump back or search the room for a clipboard.
She looked up at me from the pillow, her face unarmored, and her mouth curved into a slow, private smile that hit my sternum with the force of a clean body check.
"Good morning," she whispered, her voice husky and rough from sleep.
"Morning, sweetheart," I rasped, my thumb smoothing over the warm curve of her cheek.
I leaned down, pressing my lips to hers.
The kiss was slow, deep, and unhurried—tasting of morning warmth, dark coffee from the night before, and the quiet, sacred language we had built in the dark.
Her lips parted softly against mine, her hand sliding up from my ribs to tangle her fingers in the hair at the nape of my neck, pulling me down until my chest pressed flat against hers.
* * *
When we finally broke apart, she rested her chin on my sternum, looking at me with eyes that were clearing into sharp, intelligent focus.
Overhead, the baseboard radiator clanked twice, sending a wave of dry heat into the room. Far off across the frozen lake, the low, mechanical rumble of a municipal plow clearing Route 73 signaled that the Adirondacks were beginning to dig out.
The real world was waking up.
"The roads will be open by noon," Tallulah murmured, her finger tracing the edge of the scar over my collarbone, her touch light and curious.
"Callahan gets back tomorrow afternoon," I said, my arm tightening around her waist, keeping her hips locked against mine beneath the heavy duvet. "And Monday morning, Thorne expects us in Sub-Two at five-thirty."
She went quiet for three seconds, her gaze fixed on the white line of tissue under her fingertip. "Mercer will be there. And Vane."
"I know."
"We can't let them see this, Coast," she whispered, looking up to meet my eyes, her expression turning serious, practical, protective. "If Vane thinks you’re sleeping with the fellow assigned to your medical clearance, she’ll void my research hours. She’ll freeze my tuition waiver before lunch.
And Hayes won't let you skate the ECAC quarterfinals if there’s a compliance investigation hanging over your head. "
The thought of hiding her made a foul, bitter taste rise in my throat, but I looked into her dark eyes and saw the reality she had lived with for four years. She had bled for that degree. She had worked late-night print shop shifts to feed her brother.
I wasn't going to let our fire burn her future down.
I reached up, framing her face in both of my large, calloused palms, forcing her to hold my stare.
"Here is how it works," I rasped, each word deliberate, binding us together with the weight of an iron contract. "In that arena, we play their game. You carry your clipboard. You talk about joint angles and force vectors. You treat me like a piece of equipment you’re trying to keep on the ice. I’ll keep my mouth shut and look at the floor. "
Tallulah’s lips parted slightly, her breath warm against my thumbs. "And outside the arena?"
A slow, dangerous smile touched the corners of my mouth, my fingers sliding into the dark hair at the base of her skull, pulling her face down until our lips were an eighth of an inch apart.
"Outside that building, there are no rules," I whispered against her mouth, my voice thick with a dark, permanent claim that made her pupils flare black. "You answer my calls. You sleep in this bed. You let me take care of you. You belong to me now, Tallulah. Everywhere. From now on."
Her breath hitched sharply on a soft, broken gasp, her hands gripping my forearms with a strength that rivaled my own.
"Everywhere," she promised, sealing the vow against my lips with a slow, searing kiss that put the rest of the world to ash.