Chapter 21
Nola POV
The third-floor study lounge of Goldthwait Library was quiet, smelling of dry binding glue, stale radiator steam, and damp wool coats drying over chair backs.
I sat at a corner carrel, my laptop open to a three-dimensional musculoskeletal rendering of a human shoulder girdle.
Across the screen, color-coded vectors mapped the rotational torque of a glenohumeral joint under forty pounds of lateral force.
To any student passing my desk, I was Nola Wagner: lead biomechanics fellow, eyes fixed on the display, notes arranged in immaculate, parallel stacks.
Beneath my heavy wool trench coat, my reality was fractured in two.
I was wearing his shirt.
The washed-out black-and-gray flannel hung loose against my ribs, the cuffs rolled twice to keep my hands free.
The thick cotton smelled of his cedarwood body wash and the freezing air of his truck.
Every time I shifted in the wooden chair, the fabric brushed against the sensitive skin of my collarbone, a quiet physical reminder of the hours we had spent tangled in his dark sheets before dawn.
My pulse sat slow and heavy in my chest, a deep, rhythmic thrum that had replaced the frantic fluttering of the last three months.
At three in the afternoon, I packed my binders into my leather bag and headed down the granite stairs toward Kehoe Pavilion.
The service corridor outside the varsity athletic training suite was lined with gray rubber runners, slick with tracked-in slush. Silas Vance stood by the ice machine, nursing a plastic bottle of chocolate milk, his hockey bag slung over one broad shoulder.
The door to the varsity locker room swung open.
Chase walked out.
He wore his dark travel pants and a fitted black long-sleeve team shirt with the sleeves shoved up to his forearms. Fresh white tape was wrapped around the knuckles of his right hand, a souvenir from morning battle drills against North Dakota’s forecheck.
His dark hair was still damp from the shower, combed back from his forehead, leaving the jagged pale line through his eyebrow stark against his skin.
He didn't break stride. He didn't offer a smile.
The enforcer mask was locked tight over his features—cold, impassive, and forbidding.
"Wagner," he said, his voice flat, professional, and loud enough to bounce off the concrete blocks.
"Guzman," I replied, matching his tone as I stepped into his path, extending a blue manila folder. "Hastings wanted your updated neuromuscular recruitment indices verified before the weekend travel roster locks."
Chase took the folder.
His large, calloused fingers closed over the edge of the cardboard, his thumb deliberately brushing the inside of my wrist where the sleeve of my coat had ridden up.
The contact was brief—less than a second—but the heat of his skin sent a sharp, scalding rush straight up my arm into my throat.
He leaned down by half an inch, pretending to scan the first page of the report. As his broad frame angled past mine, his shoulder clipped the wool of my coat, his mouth passing two inches from my ear.
"Eight o'clock," he muttered, the voice a dark, rough rasp below the register of human hearing. "Eat your dinner, sweetheart."
Before I could draw breath, he straightened up, handed the folder back with a curt nod, and walked past Silas toward the parking bay without looking back once.
My lungs seized on a shallow, ragged inhale.
Silas gave me an easy grin, lifting his chocolate milk. "Good luck keeping that monster within parameters, Wagner. He almost took Hastings’s head off in film review."
"He's within acceptable variance," I managed, my voice steady only through pure, stubborn discipline as I turned toward the exit.
* * *
At ten minutes to eight, the cold air off Lake Superior was twenty-two below zero.
I took the service stairs of the warehouse two at a time, my knuckles white where they gripped the brass handrail. I slipped my key into the heavy deadbolt of his loft door, turned the lock, and pushed inside.
The door shut behind me, the secondary latch clicking home with an echoing snap that shut out the howling wind.
The loft was an island of absolute warmth.
The four cast-iron radiators along the brick walls were hissing softly, throwing dry, blistering heat into the high-ceilinged room. The air smelled of seared ribeye, roasted garlic, cracked black pepper, and the dark, familiar scent of cedar shaving cream.
Chase was standing at the quartz island, his back to me.
He had stripped down to a charcoal sleeveless compression shirt and gray sweatpants, his bare shoulders vast and sculpted beneath the warm pendant lights. Fresh strips of black kinesiology tape ran over his left shoulder joint, mapping the contours of his scapula.
On the counter sat a cast-iron skillet resting on a trivet, two plates piled high with sliced steak and roasted red potatoes, and a tall glass of iced ginger tea with a slice of lemon. Beside the plate lay a clean yellow legal pad and two sharpened pencils.
He hadn't even heard my boots hit the mat, but his shoulders relaxed by half an inch the second the latch engaged.
He turned around, setting down a wooden spoon.
His gray eyes swept over me, lingering on the flushed chill of my cheekbones before dropping to my boots. He didn't speak. He crossed the kitchen floor in three long strides, his bare feet silent on the oak planks.
He reached out, his hands taking the heavy leather bag from my shoulder and setting it onto the counter.
Then his fingers went to the buttons of my wool trench coat.
He unfastened each one with slow, methodical care, peeling the heavy coat off my shoulders and tossing it over the back of an island stool. When his eyes caught his own black-and-gray flannel beneath, his jaw tightened, a dark, heavy gleam settling into his pupils.
"You wore it," he murmured, his voice thick with gravel.
"It was cold in the library," I whispered, my throat tightening as his warm hands slid over my shoulders, resting on the nape of my neck.
"Come here."
He didn't lead me to the dining table. He backed up to the deep leather sofa, sat down, and pulled me directly across his lap.
I settled sideways across his thighs, my back resting against his broad chest, my knees drawn up against the leather cushions. His left arm wrapped firmly around my waist, holding me anchored to his torso, while his right hand came up to the tense curve of my shoulder.
His thick fingers sank into the tight knotting along my upper trapezius.
A sharp, ragged gasp tore out of my mouth as he applied deep, rhythmic pressure, kneading the tension from the muscle with the effortless power of an athlete who understood biomechanics in his bones.
"Head down," he ordered, his voice a low, commanding rumble against my ear.
I dropped my head forward, letting my chin rest against my collarbone.
His lips brushed the sensitive, exposed dip where my neck met my shoulder, pressing a slow, warm kiss against my skin.
"You've been clenching your jaw all day," he murmured, his thumb digging into the base of my skull, working out the stiffness until my spine went soft against his chest. "Lean back into me, Nola. Good girl. Look at you, working yourself to the bone for that fellowship."
The praise hit my bloodstream like an opiate.
My shoulders slumped, the tight band of academic panic that had gripped my ribs since Monday dissolving beneath the slow, heavy friction of his hands.
I closed my eyes, letting my cheek rest against the warm cotton of his shirt, my lungs expanding in long, synchronized breaths that matched the deep cadence of his heart.
* * *
By midnight, the loft was swallowed in blue-gray shadows, the only light filtering through the snow-caked windowpanes from the streetlamps below.
The master bedroom was quiet, the heavy woolen comforter dragged up to our shoulders against the nighttime chill.
Chase lay on his side, his large frame curved around mine, spooned flush against my back.
His heavy left arm was draped over my waist, his broad palm resting flat against my lower abdomen, holding me pinned against the furnace of his torso.
His long legs were tangled with mine, his heavy thigh slung over my calves, anchoring me to the dark mattress.
Under the sheets, the heat between us was an inferno.
Every breath he drew was slow, deep, and steady, the soft exhalation ruffling the hair at the nape of my neck.
I was awake.
I lay in the dark, staring at the horizontal slats of the blinds, listening to the muffled scrape of a distant snowplow clearing the harbor docks.
My fingers rose, resting over his hand where it lay heavy across my stomach.
Slowly, tracing the skin with the pad of my index finger, I mapped the thick vein running over his knuckles, the rough scar tissue from an old blade cut near his wrist, the heavy heat radiating from his palm into my skin.
A sudden, sharp tightness gripped the center of my ribcage.
It wasn't physical pain. It was the terrifying, suffocating realization of absolute exposure.
Six weeks ago, this man was a tyrant on my ledger—an arrogant, untouchable athlete who had stripped my research grant away in April and made my life hell in that basement.
Now, I fell asleep to the sound of his heart beating against my spine.
I wore his clothes; I ate the food he prepared with hands built for violence; I let his voice dictate the rhythm of my breath.
My defenses hadn't just cracked. They had vanished without a trace.
If Harlan Sterling followed through on his threats, if Director Miller caught a single whisper of what happened behind this deadbolt, my fellowship was dead. My mother’s debt would consume us.
And if Chase ever looked at me with the cold, dead eyes he wore on the ice—if the pressure of the draft or his father’s poison tore him away—I would not survive the impact.
I had handed him every weapon in the world, and I had done it willingly.
I pressed his palm slightly tighter against my stomach, closing my eyes against the dark, terrified of how deeply I belonged to him.