Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Edie's entire body hummed. She lay sprawled across Tarmek's formerly dining table and tried to remember how to form coherent thoughts.
It wasn't working.
Her brain had been reduced to a pleasant static, all higher functions temporarily offline while her nervous system catalogued the absolutely devastating things that had just happened to her.
Things involving hands the size of dinner plates and a mouth that should come with warning labels and an intensity that had made her forget her own name somewhere around the third time he'd—
Stop.
She needed to stop replaying it. She needed to gather the scattered pieces of her composure and reassemble them into something functional.
But God...
She'd had lovers before, scattered across various towns and temporary homes like breadcrumbs marking her wandering path. She'd had fun and passionate and experimental. She'd had disappointing and awkward and memorably terrible.
She had never had this.
He was still partially covering her, his massive frame propped on his forearms to avoid crushing her. His breathing was slowly evening out, but she could feel his heart pounding against her chest—a racing tempo that matched her own.
"You're thinking," he murmured.
"How can you tell?"
"Your face does this thing. Your eyebrows scrunch up."
"My eyebrows do not scrunch."
"They absolutely do." He brushed his thumb across her forehead, smoothing the alleged scrunch. "What are you thinking about?"
You. This. The fact that I may never recover.
"Nothing," she lied.
The corner of his mouth twitched. "Now who's the terrible liar?"
Fair point.
She turned her head to survey the damage.
His shirt was hanging from a chair. Her tank top had somehow ended up draped over the fruit bowl and she couldn't even see her shorts or her underwear.
The protein shake she'd stolen had pooled on the floor, creating what was sure to be an impressively sticky mess.
"We're going to have to clean that up," she said.
"Later."
"Your floor is going to be disgusting."
"Don't care."
"Tarmek Stonefist, willingly tolerating mess? Who are you and what have you done with my roommate?"
He shifted, and the movement reminded her that he was still right there, still pressed against her in ways that made thinking difficult.
"Your roommate," he repeated.
"Landlord? Host? Captor?" She grinned up at him. "What's the proper term for someone who kidnapped you during a blizzard and then thoroughly debauched you on their dining furniture?"
"I didn't kidnap you."
"You literally picked me up and put me in your truck without asking."
"Your heater was broken. You would have frozen."
"Consent is still a thing, even when there's hypothermia involved."
He went still above her. "I didn't mean to—"
"I'm joking." She reached up to cup his face, feeling the tension coiling through him.
"Hey. I'm joking. I could have protested a lot harder if I'd actually wanted to stay in that camper.
You gave me an excuse to accept help without having to admit I needed it.
That's not kidnapping. That's..." she searched for the right word. "Aggressive hospitality."
The tension eased slightly. "Aggressive hospitality."
"It's a compliment, I promise."
He studied her for a long moment, those dark eyes searching for something she couldn't identify. Then he nodded, apparently satisfied with whatever he found.
"Can you stand?"
"Unclear. My legs seem to have stopped working."
Another almost-smile. "I'll carry you."
"Where?"
"Bed. You need sleep."
"I need to go back to my—"
"No."
The single word was absolute. Non-negotiable. The captain's voice, the one that made teammates fall in line without question.
She should argue. She should insist on her own space and her carefully maintained boundaries.
Edie Anderson did not spend the night. Edie Anderson left before things got complicated.
Edie Anderson had a camper for exactly this reason—an exit strategy, a way out when intimacy threatened to become permanence.
But she was so warm. And so tired. And his arms were already sliding beneath her, lifting her with an ease that should have been illegal, cradling her against his chest like she weighed nothing.
"This is becoming a habit," she murmured.
"What is?"
"You carrying me places."
"Would you prefer to walk?"
She thought about it. Her legs. The distance to the bedroom. The cold floor versus the warmth of his arms.
"Not particularly."
"Then stop complaining."
She wanted to protest that she hadn't been complaining, she'd been observing, but the effort required seemed monumental. Instead, she let her head drop against his shoulder and closed her eyes.
His condo was dark except for the kitchen light they'd never turned off. She heard the soft scuff of his feet on hardwood, the subtle creak of a door opening, and then the mattress was beneath her back—impossibly soft after the unforgiving table surface.
I should leave.
The thought surfaced automatically, conditioned by years of practice.
She should get dressed, thank him for the evening, and retreat to her camper where everything was hers and only hers.
Where she didn't have to worry about morning breath or awkward post-coital conversations or, worse, the expectation that this meant something.
She should definitely leave.
She started to sit up.
A massive arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her back down.
"Stay."
It wasn't a request.
"Tarmek—"
"You're exhausted." His voice was a rumble against her ear, his body curving around hers like a shield. "Sleep here."
"I have a perfectly functional bed in my—"
"Stay."
She could fight him. She could probably slip out of his grip and retrieve her clothes and escape into the night like she always did.
But his arm was so heavy around her waist. And his chest was so warm against her back.
And she still didn't have any heat. And some treacherous part of her didn't want to leave.
That was the terrifying part. Not his insistence—she'd dealt with clingy lovers before. No, the terrifying part was her own reaction. The way her body relaxed into his hold instead of tensing against it. The way her mind, usually so quick to calculate exit strategies, went quiet and still.
She fit here, in his bed and wrapped in his arms, like a puzzle piece clicking into place. Like coming home after a long journey, except she'd never had a home to come back to.
"One night," she heard herself say.
"Fine."
"I mean it. This doesn't mean—"
"I know what it means."
Did he? Did she?
His arm tightened fractionally, pulling her closer. His breath was warm against the back of her neck. His heart beat steady and slow against her spine.
Just one night, she told herself. In the morning, I can go back to normal. Back to distance. Back to safe.
But as sleep pulled her under, she couldn't quite remember why safe had ever seemed appealing.
She woke slowly, in stages.
First an unfamiliar warmth, the kind that came from another body rather than piled blankets. She was surrounded by it, cocooned in heat that made her never want to move.
Then the scent. Clean and masculine, something woodsy underneath the faint lingering chlorine of arena ice. It was everywhere—the pillow, the sheets, the air itself.
Third, the weight or an arm still draped across her waist, heavy and possessive even in sleep.
Edie opened her eyes.
Grey morning light filtered through curtains she didn't recognize. The ceiling above her was unfamiliar—no water stains, no glow-in-the-dark stars she'd stuck up in a moment of whimsy. Just clean white paint and perfectly even edges.
Right. Tarmek's room.
She turned her head carefully, trying not to wake him.
He was still asleep.
She'd never seen him sleep before. Awake, he was all tension and control, every muscle held in readiness like he expected an attack at any moment.
But unconscious, some of that rigidity melted away.
His face was softer in sleep, the permanent furrow between his brows smoothed out.
His mouth was slightly parted. His hair had escaped its usual tie and spread across the pillow in dark waves.
He looked younger, almost vulnerable.
Almost being the operative word, because even relaxed, he was still massive. Still clearly dangerous. His shoulders alone took up half the bed, and the arm pinning her in place could probably bench-press a small car.
She should find that intimidating. She should feel trapped and claustrophobic. She didn't.
Instead, she found herself cataloguing details she hadn't noticed last night.
The scar through his eyebrow, faded to a pale line against his olive skin.
The smaller scars scattered across his knuckles—hockey injuries, probably.
The way his chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, deep and even and peaceful.
This is a mistake.
Not the sex. The sex had been fantastic, possibly the best of her life, and definitely something she wanted to repeat at the earliest opportunity. No, the mistake was this. Staying. Watching him sleep like some kind of lovesick teenager.
She didn't do this. She didn't let herself get attached to people or places or the way someone looked in the early morning light.
Attachment meant roots. Roots meant permanence. Permanence meant being stuck in one place long enough for everything to fall apart, the way it always did, the way it had with her family and every foster home after and every relationship she'd tried to build.
Better to leave first. Better to stay in motion. Better to keep things light and casual and temporary.
Except.
Except the way he'd looked at her last night, like she was someone precious rather than someone passing through. Except the way he'd touched her—not just with hunger, but with attention. Studying her responses with the same obsessive focus he probably brought to hockey plays.
She'd had enthusiastic lovers. She'd never had a meticulous one.
Every sigh she made, he noted. Every shiver, he catalogued. When she reacted to something, he didn't just do it again. He refined it, experimenting with pressure and speed and angle until he found the exact combination that made her lose her mind.
It was methodical. It was intense. It was absolutely devastating.
He pays attention to my body like it's game tape he's studying, she'd thought at one point, delirious with pleasure. Like there's going to be a test later and he's determined to get an A.
She'd laughed at the absurdity of it, and he'd actually paused to ask what was funny. She'd tried to explain, still giggling, something about hockey analogies and graded performances, and he'd gotten this look on his face.
Half offended, half intrigued, entirely focused.
"You think this is funny?" he asked.
"A little."
"I'll change that."
And then he'd proceeded to do exactly that, with the same relentless precision he applied to everything else, until laughing was the last thing on her mind.
Mistake, her brain insisted. This is a mistake. I'm getting attached. I'm going to regret this when this is just another town in my rearview mirror.
But a quieter, more dangerous part of her whispered something else. What if I didn't have to leave?