Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
The puck sailed three feet wide of the net.
Tarmek stood at center ice, stick in hand, staring at the goal like it had personally betrayed him.
The third miss in a row. The third time his wrist had moved a fraction of a second too late, his timing thrown off by the memory of paint-stained skin and desperate sounds and—
"Captain!"
He snapped back to reality. Groznick was skating towards him, his expression caught somewhere between concern and amusement.
"You planning to hit the net sometime today, or should we just assume it's decorative?"
"Again," he growled.
"That's what I said fifteen minutes ago. You're—"
"Again."
Groznick raised his hands in surrender and skated back to reset the drill.
The rest of the team exchanged glances that he pretended not to see.
He knew he was off. Every single player on the ice knew he was off.
His footwork was sloppy, his passes inconsistent, and his shot accuracy hovering somewhere around pathetic.
He'd spent twenty years building himself into a precision instrument, and now he was falling apart because of one woman.
Her taste...
He gritted his teeth and forced his body into position. Focus.
The puck dropped. He moved. Shot.
Wide again.
The sound she made when I—
"Tarmek."
Coach Morrison was standing at the boards, arms crossed, wearing an expression that promised an uncomfortable conversation.
"Office. Now."
He skated off the ice without protest. He'd earned this. Whatever lecture was coming, he deserved every word.
Morrison' office was cluttered in a way that had always made his skin crawl—papers stacked haphazardly, coffee cups from three different days, a miniature Stanley Cup replica buried under Post-it notes.
Today, he barely noticed. His mind was still on the arena lobby.
The paint-smeared wall. The weight of her in his arms.
"Sit."
He sat.
"You want to tell me what's going on?"
"No."
Morrison actually laughed. "Fair enough. But I'm going to need something, because whatever that was out there—" he gestured vaguely towards the rink, "—that wasn't the Tarmek Stonefist I've coached for six years."
"I'm fine."
"You missed seven shots in a row. Seven. I've seen you hit targets while half-concussed. So either you've developed a sudden vision problem, or something's in your head."
Someone, he thought. Someone is in my head. Living there rent-free, rearranging the furniture, and leaving chaos everywhere she goes.
"I'll handle it."
"You'd better. We've got Calgary in three days, and I need my captain actually present for it." Morrison leaned back in his chair. "Whether it's woman trouble, family stuff, or an existential crisis, figure it out or shelve it. We can't afford you playing like that when it counts."
Woman trouble.
If only it were that simple.
This wasn't trouble. Trouble implied a problem with a solution.
What he had with Edie was something else entirely—an addiction, maybe.
A disease. A fundamental rewiring of his brain chemistry that made it impossible to think about anything except the way she'd arched into him, the way her fingers had gripped his hair, the way she'd said show me like she was offering him everything he'd ever wanted.
He should not want her this much.
He barely knew her. She was a free spirit, someone who lived in a camper and drifted from town to town like roots were a prison sentence. She would finish the mural and leave, and he would be left here, alone, trying to remember what his life had felt like before she'd upended it.
Wanting her was dangerous. Foolish. A violation of every principle he'd built his life around.
And yet, now I know.
Now he knew how she tasted—sweet and unforgettable. Now he knew how she felt—soft and warm and perfectly curved, fitting against him like she'd been designed for him. Now he knew how she responded—eager and bold and completely unafraid of his intensity.
That was the problem. Before, he could pretend. He could tell himself the attraction was something he could compartmentalize and ignore. But now he had proof that reality exceeded every fevered fantasy. And he couldn't unknow it.
"Tarmek."
He realized Morrison had been talking. "What?"
"I said you're done for the day. Go home. Get your head straight. Whatever it takes."
Home. Where Edie was. Where her chaos permeated every room, where her laugh echoed off his walls, and her presence had turned his carefully ordered existence into something unrecognizable. Going home was the opposite of getting his head straight.
But he nodded anyway. "Fine."
She was in the kitchen when he arrived. Standing at the counter in those tiny sleep shorts that he was fairly certain constituted psychological warfare, humming something off-key while she assembled what appeared to be the world's most structurally unsound sandwich.
She looked up when he entered and smiled, warm and devastating.
"You're home early."
"Practice ended."
"Did it end, or were you sent home for crimes against ice hockey?"
He stopped. "How did you—"
"Groznick texted me." She waved her phone. "Apparently you missed a bunch of shots and looked 'haunted,' his word, not mine. He wanted to make sure you hadn't developed brain damage overnight."
"Groznick should mind his own business."
"Groznick is worried about you. So is the rest of the team, from what I hear." She returned to her sandwich construction, adding layers of ingredients in combinations that defied culinary logic. "Something on your mind, Captain?"
You. You are on my mind. You have colonized my mind and evicted every other tenant.
"No."
"Liar." The word was cheerful, almost affectionate. "You're a terrible liar, you know that? Your whole stoic thing works great in interviews, but I've cracked the code. Your tells are all in your eyes."
"I don't have tells."
"You absolutely have tells. When you're irritated, your left eye twitches. When you're lying, you look slightly to the right. And when you're thinking about—" she paused, glancing at him over her shoulder with a knowing smirk, "—other things, your pupils dilate."
He forced himself not to react, but her smirk widened. "Case in point."
She was going to destroy him. Not all at once. That would be too merciful. No, she was going to take him apart piece by piece, pulling at threads until the entire tapestry unraveled. And the worst part was, some treacherous part of him wanted her to.
He moved past her towards the refrigerator, maintaining a careful distance between them. His protein shake was supposed to be on the second shelf, precisely positioned, waiting for him—
The shelf was empty.
He turned and found her watching him with a look of exaggerated innocence, her lips wrapped around the straw of his protein shake.
"What?" she asked, voice muffled. "It was just sitting there."
"That's mine."
"Was yours. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, according to someone somewhere."
"Edie."
"Tarmek." She mimicked his warning tone again, that teasing lilt that made his blood pressure spike. "Relax. It's just a shake. I'll make you another one."
"I don't want another one. I want that one."
"Too late." She took a long, deliberate sip, maintaining eye contact the entire time. Her throat worked as she swallowed.
Something snapped. He moved before he could stop himself, crossing the kitchen in two strides. She barely had time to react before he was crowding her backward, herding her until her back hit the refrigerator with a soft thud.
The shake was still in her hand. Her eyes had gone wide—not afraid, but interested. Alert. Like a cat that had successfully baited a much larger predator and was curious to see what happened next.
"You did that on purpose," he said.
"Did what?"
"Stole my shake. Provoked me. Again."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." But her breathing had quickened. Her chest rose and fell faster, drawing his attention to the thin tank top that was absolutely not adequate coverage for this situation.
"You've been doing it all week."
"Doing what?"
"Touching me." He planted one hand against the refrigerator beside her head, boxing her in. "Brushing against me. Putting your feet in my lap while I'm trying to read game notes. Wearing my shirts. Smelling like—"
He stopped himself. Barely.
"Smelling like what?" she whispered.
"Like you want me to lose control."
"Maybe I do."
The admission hung in the air between them. She wasn't retreating. She wasn't deflecting with humor or redirecting with chaos. She was just looking at him, those warm brown eyes holding steady, waiting.
"I can't—" he started.
"You can. You just won't." She lifted her chin defiantly. "There's a difference."
"You don't understand."
"Then explain it to me."
How could he explain? How could he possibly put into words the way his entire body ached for her or the way his orc instincts howled every time she was near? How could he tell her that he'd spent years building walls specifically designed to prevent this kind of vulnerability?
"I'm not—" He searched for the right words. "I'm not gentle. When I want something, I want it. Completely. Consumingly. If I let myself have you—"
"If?"
"When," he corrected, because clearly his mouth had stopped taking orders from his brain. "When I let myself have you, I won't be able to stop at once. I won't be able to treat this like something casual. Something temporary."
Her breath caught. "Who said anything about temporary?"
"Your camper says it. Your lifestyle says it. You said it yourself—you don't stay."
"Maybe—" she hesitated, and for the first time since he'd known her, something vulnerable flickered across her face. "Maybe I've never had a reason to."
He kissed her. Not like the arena—desperate and paint-smeared. This was deliberate. Focused. He kissed her the way he approached everything that mattered, with absolute commitment and laser focus.