Chapter 20
Chase POV
The whiteout reflection off five-foot snowdrifts poured through the blinds, slicing the bedroom into blinding strips of silver and dark wool.
I had been awake for forty minutes.
My left arm was pinned beneath the curve of her neck, my bicep serving as her pillow, while my right forearm rested across her hip, anchoring her back flush against my ribs.
Her dark auburn hair was scattered across my chest and shoulder in messy, tangled waves, smelling of my cedar shampoo, clean skin, and the wild, musky heat of three in the morning.
Under my splayed palm, the soft rise and fall of her flank was slow, deep, and rhythmic.
I stared at the exposed timber beams of the ceiling, waiting for the noise to start.
For five years, waking up was a physical collision with a concrete wall.
The second my eyes opened, my skull was flooded by a deafening roar: Marcus’s voice shouting from the bleachers, the sickening crack of Declan’s vertebrae against the asphalt in Marquette, the weight of fifteen thousand scouts tracking my shift times, and the dull, grinding throb of my torn shoulder.
My jaw was usually locked by 0600, my teeth grinding down to the roots before my feet even touched the floorboards.
This morning, the room was dead quiet.
There was no static behind my eyes. No adrenaline burning the back of my throat. My resting heart rate sat at forty-one beats a minute, heavy and unbothered, striking against my ribs like a grandfather clock in an empty hall. The dull ache in my left joint was just an ache, stripped of panic.
The quiet was terrifying. It was an uncharted landscape without a single dasher board or whistle, and she had built it in the middle of my bed with nothing more than her bare hands.
I shifted my thumb slightly.
Beneath her left collarbone, right over the pale slope where her neck met her shoulder, sat a faint, rose-colored mark—the exact imprint of where my mouth had bruised her skin while she gripped my shoulders in the dark.
I traced the edge of the mark with the rough callus of my thumb.
She was here. Marked, claimed, and breathing my air.
* * *
A long, slow breath hitched in her throat.
Nola stirred against my chest, her bare heels dragging across the charcoal cotton sheets. She stretched, a drowsy, unconscious arch of her spine that drove the soft curve of her backside hard against my groin.
The reaction in my lower abdomen was immediate and ruthless.
My blood surged south, thick and heavy, pressing the rigid length of my pelvis directly into the small of her back.
Nola froze.
Her respiration stuttered, her ribs going rigid beneath my arm as the tactile reality of where she was registered through her sleep-fogged brain. A deep, vivid flush bloomed across the back of her neck, staining the pale skin crimson all the way to her earlobes.
I didn't give her room to panic.
I shifted my weight, sliding my left arm out from under her head, and rolled over until I was hovering directly above her. I planted my forearms on either side of her temples, trapping her beneath the heavy, solid wall of my chest.
"Morning, sweetheart," I rasped.
My voice was a ruined scrape of slate, thick with sleep and the heavy heat pooling in my gut.
Her hazel eyes fluttered open, heavy-lidded, the gold flecks blinking against the bright winter light streaming through the blinds. She looked up at my face, her lips slightly swollen, her hair a wild halo around her head.
"Chase," she whispered, her voice husky, unpracticed.
"Look at you in my bed," I murmured, lowering my head until my mouth brushed the sensitive line of her jaw. My stubble rasped against her flushed cheek. "Look at what you did to my sheets."
Her breath hitched, her hands rising from the mattress to rest against the bare muscle of my biceps. Her fingers were warm, digging lightly into the scarred tissue, not pushing me away, but holding me in place.
"What time is it?" she asked, her gaze dropping to my mouth before darting back to my eyes.
"Doesn't matter," I growled softly against her skin. "The storm shut the city down. Don't move."
"Chase—"
"Good girl," I murmured, cutting off the protest with the flat of my tongue against the hollow beneath her ear. "Just stay right there."
I brought my mouth down over hers.
The kiss was lazy, thick with the taste of sleep and lingering devotion, but the heat beneath the surface was an inferno waiting for a draft.
My lips slanted over hers with slow, heavy pressure, coaxing her mouth open until she let out a soft, shuddering sigh and yielded.
Her tongue touched mine—hesitant, sweet, and scalding—setting off a chain reaction of tremors through my lower back.
My bare thigh slid between her legs, pressing upward against the soft, heated juncture of her hips.
She gasped into my mouth, her fingers tangling into the hair at the nape of my neck, arching her pelvis off the mattress to meet the hard, unyielding pressure of my weight.
Every muscle in my back pulled tight as I held myself suspended, kissing her until her breathing was as ragged and starved as mine, reaffirming the claim we had sealed in the dark.
* * *
Forty minutes later, the low rumble of a municipal diesel plow rattled the windowpanes from the street below.
The smell of dark roast coffee filled the open kitchen, steam rising from two thick ceramic mugs sitting on the white quartz island. Outside, the sky was a hard, brilliant blue, the snowdrifts on Canal Park Drive sparkling under the sub-zero morning sun.
I stood between the stools, wearing dark gray fleece lounge pants, my chest bare to the dry radiator heat.
Nola was sitting on the edge of the quartz counter, her bare feet resting against the dark oak floorboards.
She wore my black practice t-shirt—the heavyweight cotton falling past the middle of her thighs, the wide ribbed collar slipping off her left shoulder to leave the rose mark on her collarbone completely exposed to the sunlight.
She held a mug in both hands, taking small, measured sips, her cheeks still dusted pink.
On the counter beside her knee, my phone vibrated against the stone.
BZZZ. BZZZ.
A string of notifications lit up the screen:
HASTINGS: City cleared the lake access. Mandatory film review at 1300. Ice slot at 1500.
SILAS: Tell me you survived the blizzard, Cap. Miller’s calling an all-hands at noon.
The outside world had arrived.
The athletic department. The compliance committee. Harlan Sterling and his board of trustees. The entire campus machine that demanded our distance was waiting on the other side of the plowed asphalt.
Nola looked down at the glowing screen, the quiet ease in her posture stiffening by half an inch. Her fingers tightened around the ceramic mug.
"The roads are open," she said quietly.
I reached out, took the coffee mug from her grip, and set it down on the quartz behind her.
I stepped into the space between her splayed knees, crowding her against the edge of the island until the bare skin of my abdomen pressed against the oversized cotton covering her chest.
My hands came up, large, warm, and steady, framing both sides of her face. My thumbs rested over her cheekbones, tilting her chin up until her hazel eyes were locked with mine.
"Listen to me," I said, my voice low, flat, and absolute.
She looked up at me, her throat moving on a dry swallow.
"Out there, we play their game," I rasped, my thumbs stroking the soft skin beneath her eyes. "You walk into Kehoe with your clipboard, and you do your job. I sit on the bench and take your telemetry. We give Miller and Sterling nothing to look at."
Her breath hitched. "Chase—"
"But the second that deadbolt turns," I cut in, my voice dropping an octave, rumbling through the quiet loft like thunder, "you belong to me. Nobody talks down to you. Nobody touches your perimeter. And you don't spend a single night in that rental across town if I'm in this city."
Nola stared at me, the tension in her neck melting away beneath the heat of my hands, her pupils dilating wide in the clean morning light.
"We're doing this?" she whispered.
"We're doing this," I answered, leaning down until my forehead rested against hers, my breath mingling with hers. "I'm not letting you go, Nola. Not for the draft. Not for the Frozen Four. Not for anything."
She let out a soft, shuddering breath, her small hands rising to flatten against my ribs, sealing the pact between us as the sirens of the plows echoed down the boulevard.
Act II-A was dead. The secret had begun.