Chapter 17
Nola POV
The civil defense horn on the municipal water tower cut through the roar of the blizzard like a dying foghorn.
Three long, mechanical blasts wailed across the bluffs of Duluth, signaling the emergency closure of all county highways and municipal transit.
From the passenger seat of Chase’s truck, the world outside was a wall of churning white.
Lake Superior was invisible, swallowed by eighty-mile-an-hour squalls that hurled sheets of dry snow horizontally across the pavement.
Chase pulled the heavy Silverado into the underground garage beneath an old brick warehouse district at the base of the canal bluffs.
The overhead door rattled shut behind us, cutting off the shriek of the wind with a heavy, industrial thud.
Neither of us had spoken since the terrace.
The silence in the elevator shaft was absolute, punctuated only by the metallic hum of the cables lifting us to the top floor.
Chase still carried his suit jacket over his forearm, having stripped it from my shoulders in the heated cab, leaving me wrapped in my own coat with the hem of my emerald silk gown stained dark with melted snow.
The elevator doors slid open directly into his apartment.
I stepped across the threshold, my wet heels clicking softly against wide planks of dark, reclaimed oak.
The space was massive, built with industrial restraint.
Exposed brick walls ran twenty feet high, cut by four arched floor-to-ceiling factory windows that looked out into the howling void of the storm.
Snow battered the thick glass panes, packing into the iron muntins.
The air inside was dry and warm, smelling of cedarwood shaving soap, aged leather, fresh laundry detergent, and the faint, metallic hum of three cast-iron radiators clanking softly along the baseboards.
Chase walked past me, tossing his heavy key ring into a black ceramic tray on the quartz kitchen island.
He didn't take off his boots right away. He walked back to the heavy steel entrance door, turned the brass deadbolt, and flipped the secondary security latch.
The double click of the brass mechanism echoed through the quiet loft with finality.
The outside world—the athletic department, the trustees, the whispers in the ballroom—was shut out behind two inches of reinforced steel.
Chase turned around, his charcoal vest unbuttoned, his black silk tie pulled loose and hanging open around the unfastened collar of his white dress shirt. His gray eyes tracked the fine tremor in my jaw, then dropped down to where the hem of my silk gown was clinging to my ankles in wet, icy folds.
"You're shivering," he said.
His voice was a low, gravelly rasp that scraped the quiet air between us.
"The wind off the terrace was below zero," I answered, my throat tight, my pulse thudding a heavy, dull rhythm against my collarbone.
"Go to the bathroom," he commanded, unbuttoning his cufflinks and tossing them onto the counter. "I'll get you out of those clothes."
* * *
He returned from the bedroom ten seconds later with a folded stack of dark gray cotton and a thick charcoal bath towel.
He thrust the bundle into my hands. The heat of his fingers against mine was an immediate, stinging contrast to the ice in my knuckles.
"Hot water in the basin," he said, nodding toward the master suite down the short corridor. "Strip out of that wet silk. Put these on."
I walked into the master bathroom, pulling the heavy pocket door shut.
The room smelled of him—menthol, steam, and clean soap. I unzipped the green silk gown, letting the fabric slide down my hips, pooling around my bare feet on the dark slate tile. I peeled off my stockings, tossing them into the wastebasket, and turned the chrome faucet on full blast.
I cupped the steaming water in my palms, splashing my face, rubbing the heat into the stiffness of my cheeks and the frozen curve of my neck until my skin tingled with rushing blood.
Then I reached for the stack on the counter.
His clothes.
The hoodie was a heavyweight, charcoal-gray Vandermark Athletics fleece, washed until the cotton was soft as flannel, with GUZMAN stitched across the shoulders in faded gold thread. The pants were thick black fleece track pants with an adjustable drawstring.
I pulled the hoodie over my head.
The sensory impact was immediate, suffocating, and impossible to resist.
The fabric swallowed my frame. The dropped shoulder seams hung down to my biceps; the hem fell past my hips to the middle of my thighs; the ribbed cuffs pooled over my wrists so that only the tips of my fingers peeked out from the dark fleece.
The fleece smelled of his chest—the warmth of his skin, cedar shavings, and the clean scent of laundry dried in winter air. The heavy cotton draped over my bare torso like a physical claim, locking in my body heat, warming the hollow between my ribs until my breath hitched on a ragged inhale.
I tied the drawstring of the sweatpants twice around my waist to keep them from sliding off my hips, rolled the cuffs over my bare feet, and pushed the pocket door open.
Chase was standing in the open kitchen, his back to me, pouring hot water from a kettle into two ceramic mugs.
He had stripped out of his formal wear.
He wore a fitted black compression henley, the sleeves pushed up past his elbows to reveal thick, vascular forearms corded with muscle.
The thin fabric clung to the vast, heavy width of his back, mapping the hard lines of his shoulder blades and the ridges along his spine.
His dark hair was rumpled, loose strands falling over his forehead, obscuring the jagged pale scar over his right brow.
He turned around, holding a mug in each hand.
His boots stopped moving.
His obsidian eyes fixed on me, dropping slowly from my face down the oversized expanse of his gray fleece, tracking the way the fabric swallowed my shoulders, down to the rolled hems of the pants and my bare toes gripping the dark oak floor.
His jaw locked, the tendon along his throat pulling tight.
His chest expanded on a deep, ragged inhalation that flared his nostrils. The air in the room grew heavy, charged with a sudden, thick pressure that made the skin along my arms prickle beneath the fleece.
He didn't say a word. He simply stared at me, his gaze dark and heavy with a possessive heat that made the breath catch hard behind my teeth.
* * *
He walked into the living area, setting the two mugs down on the low cedar coffee table in front of an oversized dark leather sofa.
Beside the couch, the heavy radiator hissed, throwing a dry, blistering wave of heat into the corner. Outside, the blizzard hurled a sheet of white against the glass, the pane rattling in its frame.
"Sit down, Nola," he murmured, his voice thick with gravel.
I crossed the room, the fleece swishing softly against my thighs, and sat on the edge of the leather cushion.
Chase dropped down beside me. He didn't keep a polite distance. He angled his body toward mine, his heavy thigh pressing against the outside of my leg, his mass radiating an inferno that made the chill in my bones dissolve.
He didn't reach for his tea.
He reached out and took both of my hands into his.
His palms were huge, rough with thick calluses, and burning hot. He wrapped his fingers completely around mine, folding my small, cold hands into the heat of his grip, slowly sliding his palms back and forth over my stiff knuckles.
My toes curled into the thick wool rug beneath the sofa. The contrast of his feverish skin against my frozen fingers sent a rush of heat straight up my arms into the base of my neck.
"You shouldn't have said those things to Sterling," he whispered, his thumbs stroking the sensitive skin on the backs of my wrists with slow, deliberate pressure. "He has the ear of the regents. He could have hurt you."
I looked up from our joined hands, meeting his dark, hooded stare.
"I meant every syllable," I said, my voice steady, though my pulse was hammering against my ribs. "He had no right to use your family to cut you down."
Chase’s hands stopped moving.
His eyes searched my face, tracking the gold flecks in my hazel irises, lingering on the soft curve of my mouth. A muscle in his jaw twitched once, a sharp, visible release of tension that seemed to travel down through his broad shoulders.
He shifted his weight forward, sliding his left arm behind my back.
With a slow, gentle pull, he drew me across the leather cushions until I was flush against his side, my head resting against the hard shelf of his chest, my knees tucked against his hip.
His right hand rose, his calloused thumb gently tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering on the sensitive hollow of my throat.
His face lowered until his lips brushed against mine.
The contact was light, barely a whisper of pressure, but the heat coming off his mouth made my eyelids flutter shut on a soft, ragged gasp.
"The roads are closed until noon tomorrow," he whispered against my lips, his breath scalding, smelling of black tea and mint. "Nobody is coming down that street. Nobody is walking through that door."
His thumb slid down, pressing firmly into the hollow of my throat, feeling the frantic, galloping beat of my blood answering his touch.
"We're locked in this room, Nola," he rasped, his voice dropping into that dark, ruined register that made my hips twitch against his thigh. "And I am done pretending I have the strength to let you go."