Chapter 6
Kai
Pain is a clarifier.
It strips away the noise. It silences the doubt. It takes the tangled mess of emotions in your chest—confusion, lust, guilt, fear—and distills them down into a single, sharp point of sensation.
I slammed my shoulder into the boards, the impact rattling my teeth. The sound was a thunderclap in the empty arena, echoing off the high metal rafters.
Again.
I pushed off, my skates carving deep, violent gouges into the ice.
I skated to the blue line, turned, and sprinted back.
I hit the boards again. Harder this time.
The glass shook. My shoulder screamed, a dull, throbbing ache that radiated down my arm, right to the fingertips that had been inside Maeve Sterling twelve hours ago.
Don’t think about it.
I hit the boards again.
Don’t think about the way she tasted.
Bang.
Don’t think about the way she whimpered.
Bang.
Don’t think about the fact that you just risked your entire career for an orgasm.
I collapsed against the glass, my helmet pressing against the cold surface, my breath fogging the plastic visor. My lungs burned. My legs felt like lead. It was 6:00 AM on a Sunday. The sun wasn't up. The rink was a meat locker. And I was sweating like I had a fever.
Because I did have a fever. A fever named Maeve.
I had broken the cardinal rule of survival: Never let them see you bleed, and never let them inside your perimeter. I had done both. I had let her see me panicked over a D- paper, and then I had let her wrap those long, silken legs around my waist and drag me under.
I looked down at my hands. They were trembling inside my gloves. Not from exhaustion. From withdrawal.
It was pathetic. I was Kai Volkov. I was the "Russian Machine." I was built for efficiency, for brutality, for winning. I wasn't built for this—this gnawing, hollow hunger that felt suspiciously like need.
"You trying to break the glass, or your collarbone?"
The voice cut through the haze of my self-loathing. I didn't turn around. I knew who it was.
Silas skated out from the tunnel, his pads looking bulky and ridiculous in the dim light. He slid into the crease, tapping his stick against the goal posts. Clang. Clang.
"Go away, Si," I rasped, pushing myself off the boards.
"Can't," Silas chirped, sounding entirely too cheerful for the ungodly hour.
"Coach called. Said he saw the lights on via the security cam.
He thinks you're having a psychotic break.
He sent me to talk you off the ledge. Or, you know, just stand in the net while you fire slapshots at my head. Whichever is more therapeutic."
I skated to the center circle, leaning on my stick. I stared at my best friend. Silas St. John was a rich kid from Connecticut with a trust fund that could buy a small country, but he had the survival instincts of a golden retriever. He didn't know when to leave well enough alone.
"I'm fine," I lied.
Silas lifted his mask, resting it on top of his head. He studied me. His blue eyes were sharp. People thought goalies were weird. They were. But they were also observant. You had to be, to track a puck moving at a hundred miles an hour through traffic.
"You look like hell," Silas observed. "You have bags under your eyes, you're skating angry, and... wait."
He squinted, skating a few feet closer.
"Is that a hickey?"
My hand flew to my neck instinctively, covering the spot just above my collarbone where Maeve's teeth had grazed me last night. It wasn't a hickey. It was a scrape. A mark. A brand.
"It's a burn," I said quickly. "From the curling iron."
Silas stared at me. The silence stretched, heavy and incredulous.
"The curling iron," he repeated slowly. "You. Kai Volkov. The man who cuts his own hair with kitchen shears because barbers take too long. You burned yourself with a curling iron."
"Yes."
"Whose curling iron?"
"Mine."
Silas snorted. A loud, barking laugh that echoed in the arena.
"Okay. Sure. Let's go with that. Let's pretend you decided to style your buzzcut at 4 AM.
Let's definitely not consider the fact that a certain blonde fashion major just moved into your apartment and probably owns twelve different heat-styling tools. "
My grip on my stick tightened until the composite carbon creaked.
"Drop it, Silas."
The tone of my voice shifted. It dropped into that low, dangerous register I saved for the opposing team's enforcers. It was a warning. Cross this line, and we stop being friends and start being combatants.
Silas held up a gloved hand in surrender. The smile dropped from his face.
"Fine," he said quietly. "I'll drop it. But listen to me, Kai. You're walking a tightrope, man. The scouts are watching. The Dean is watching. If you mess this up... if you get distracted..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to. We both knew what waited for me if I failed.
Russia.
The oil fields. The cold. My father’s disappointment, which was heavier and more suffocating than any physical weight I could lift.
"I'm focused," I said, turning away from him to skate toward the bucket of pucks. "I'm always focused."
"Are you?" Silas called after me. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're running."
I didn't answer. I dumped the pucks onto the ice.
I didn't want to talk. I wanted to shoot. I wanted to hit something until the image of Maeve’s flushed face and the sound of her crying my name were obliterated from my memory.
I wound up and fired. The puck exploded off my stick, hitting the crossbar with a metallic ping that sounded like a bullet casing hitting the floor.
It wasn't enough.
The campus was waking up by the time I left the rink. It was a grey, slushy Sunday. The kind of day where the sky looked like dirty dishwater and the air smelled of wet wool and impending snow.
I showered in the locker room, scrubbing my skin until it was red, trying to wash off the phantom sensation of her touch. It didn't work. She was under my skin now.
I had to go to the library. I had a group project meeting for my Marketing elective—the only class I was actually passing. It was in the main atrium, a glass-walled fishbowl where the entire student body went to pretend to study while actually just judging each other’s outfits.
I walked in, my hood up, headphones on. I was trying to be invisible.
It didn't work.
It never worked. At 6'4", with a scowl that could curdle milk, I tended to draw attention. People parted like the Red Sea. I saw the whispers. I saw the eyes following me.
There goes the King. There goes the Robot.
I ignored them. I walked toward the coffee kiosk, needing caffeine to jumpstart my heart.
And then I saw her.
The air in the room didn't change, but the air in my lungs did. It seized.
Maeve was sitting at a corner table near the window. She was surrounded by three other girls—her squad, I assumed. They were all blonde, all wearing expensive sweaters, all laughing at something on a phone.
Maeve looked... perfect.
She was wearing a cream-colored turtleneck that looked soft enough to sleep in, and her hair was pulled back in a sleek, severe ponytail that emphasized the sharp angles of her cheekbones. She looked cool. Composed. The Ice Princess.
You would never know that twelve hours ago, she was writhing on my kitchen counter, begging me not to stop.
You would never know she was a screamer.
The secret sat heavy in my chest, a burning coal. It was a powerful, intoxicating feeling—knowing something about her that no one else in this room knew. They saw the mask. I had seen the girl beneath it.
As if she felt my gaze, Maeve looked up.
Her eyes locked onto mine across the sea of tables and laptops.
The reaction was instant. I saw her spine straighten. I saw her hand freeze halfway to her coffee cup. Her friends kept talking, kept laughing, but Maeve had gone still.
Her gaze dropped to my mouth, then snapped back up to my eyes. A flush crept up her neck—a pale, rosy stain that clashed with her cool demeanor.
She looked terrified. And guilty. And hungry.
I should have looked away. I should have kept walking. That was the safe play.
Instead, I stopped.
I stood there in the middle of the walkway, holding her gaze. I let my eyes drift down her body—even though she was sitting, I knew exactly how those curves felt under my hands—and then back up. I didn't smile. I just looked.
I remember, the look said. I remember everything.
One of her friends followed her gaze and spotted me. She nudged Maeve, whispering something behind her hand. They both giggled.
Maeve didn't giggle. She looked like she was about to be sick.
She abruptly stood up, grabbing her bag. She said something to her friends—an excuse, probably—and turned toward the exit. The exit that I was currently blocking.
She had to walk past me.
I didn't move. I forced her to navigate the space around me.
As she got closer, the scent hit me. Vanilla. Winter. Her. It punched me right in the gut.
She kept her head down, clutching her bag like a shield against her chest. She was going to breeze past me without a word.
"Running away again, Princess?" I murmured as she came abreast of me.
My voice was low, meant only for her.
Maeve faltered. She stopped, turning slightly so her back was to the room, shielding our interaction from the prying eyes of the student body.
She looked up at me. Her violet eyes were wide, rimmed with exhaustion. She looked as tired as I felt.
"I'm not running," she whispered. "I'm going to class."
"It's Sunday."
"I'm going to... church," she lied.
"You don't go to church."
"You don't know where I go."
"I know you," I said. It came out rougher than I intended. "I know exactly who you are."
She flinched. "Stop it, Kai. People are staring."
"Let them stare."
"I can't," she hissed, glancing nervously over her shoulder. "My dad has eyes everywhere. If he finds out..."
"Finds out what?" I stepped closer, invading her personal space. "That I helped you with your homework? That we had a... breakthrough?"
She sucked in a breath. " Is that what you call it?"
"What do you call it?"