Chapter 26
Chase POV
A single rod of winter sunlight sliced through the narrow split in the heavy charcoal drapes, laying a clean line of gold across the dark oak floorboards.
Outside, the sleet had turned to a steady, frozen drizzle that pecked against the high glass in an unbroken, rhythmic whisper. The loft was quiet, filled only by the dry warmth of the radiator and the deep, even cadence of Nola’s respiration.
I lay flat on my back, my left arm pinned beneath the curve of her neck, my hand splayed open across the soft swell of her bare hip.
She was curled flush against my side, her forehead tucked into the hollow below my collarbone, one bare knee slung over my thigh. The heavy down comforter was bunched around her waist, leaving the pale slope of her spine and the delicate line of her shoulder blades bare to the room's warmth.
My resting pulse sat at forty-two beats a minute, heavy and grounded, striking against my ribs like a slow hammer.
My jaw was thoroughly relaxed, the muscles along my cheekbones slack and loose for the first time in five years. My left shoulder—the joint that had throbbed with a dull, burning ache since November—felt settled in its socket, soothed by the unbroken hours of sleep.
I looked down at the contrast between us.
My hand was massive, the knuckles thickened by scar tissue and bruised blue-gray from Friday's battle drills against North Dakota’s defense.
My skin was dark, weathered by cold rink air and fifteen years of physical violence.
Resting beneath my calloused palm, the skin of her hip was pale, smooth as water, and radiating an intoxicating, fevered warmth that sank straight into my bones.
For a decade, my life had been an endless cycle of absorption.
I lived in cold concrete underpasses, under the glare of harsh arena halogens, listening to coaches bark about defensive assignments and my father sneer about wasted money.
I had conditioned myself to view every human being as an impact to brace against—a scout to appease, a teammate to carry, or an opponent to run through the boards.
Marcus in the tunnel two days ago was the world I understood: extortion, threats, and brute leverage.
Then she had stepped into my bed.
Last night, she had laid her face against my ribs and handed me the broken pieces of her childhood. She had looked into my eyes without a single scrap of pride, trusting me to hold her fears without dropping them.
She had built a sanctuary inside four brick walls with nothing more than her bare hands and her voice.
I drew in a long, slow breath through my nose, my chest expanding deep into my lower ribs, letting the scent of her vanilla lotion and cedar sheets fill my head.
I would break my own hands before I let the rot of my father or the greed of the draft touch a single inch of this room.
* * *
Her eyelashes fluttered against my chest.
Nola stirred, a soft, drowsy sound catching in the back of her throat as her toes flexed against the sheets. She stretched—a slow, unhurried roll of her shoulders that pressed the soft curve of her bare breasts flat against my ribs.
Her hazel-gold eyes blinked open, heavy with sleep, looking up at my jaw through a haze of dark warmth.
A faint rose flush bloomed across her cheekbones, her skin still sensitized and tender from the hours we had spent tangled together in the dark.
"Chase," she whispered, her voice husky and sweet.
"Morning, sweetheart," I rasped.
The syllables came out rough as crushed slate, thick with the heavy heat already pooling low in my abdomen.
I didn't give her room to retreat into morning hesitation.
I shifted my weight, sliding my left arm beneath her shoulders while my right hand tangled into the thick auburn waves at the nape of her neck. With slow, deliberate authority, I rolled over, settling my heavy, muscular frame directly over hers.
I braced my forearms on either side of her head, taking most of my weight, but letting my bare chest press flush against the front of hers.
The heat of our skin colliding was an open stove.
Nola’s breath hitched in a sharp, ragged gasp, her hands rising instantly to flatten against the dense muscle of my upper arms. Her fingers were warm, digging into my biceps, anchoring herself to my bulk as her thighs parted beneath my weight on pure instinct.
"Look at those eyes," I murmured, lowering my head until my mouth hovered a millimeter from hers. My dark stubble rasped against her soft cheek, my lips trailing down to press a slow, open-mouthed kiss against the rapid pulse point jumping beneath her jaw.
Her head tilted back against the down pillow, exposing the long, pale column of her throat to the morning light.
"Chase... we have film at noon," she breathed, though her hips shifted upward, seeking the hard, heavy line of my pelvis with an unconscious, desperate urgency.
"Hastings can wait," I growled softly against her skin, my teeth lightly catching the tendon of her neck before soothing the mark with my tongue. "Look at me, Nola."
Her eyelids fluttered open, her pupils blown wide, black drowning the gold flecks in her irises.
"Good girl," I rasped, my right hand sliding down from her hair, tracing the curve of her ribs, down to the soft flare of her hip. "Stay right here with me."
I moved between her thighs with agonizing, unhurried patience.
The first press of my body into hers drew a long, shuddering gasp from her lips, her heels dragging across the dark sheets as her inner muscles tightened around me.
I froze, holding myself suspended, my jaw clenched against the savage surge of pleasure that threatened to snap my restraint.
"Breathe, sweetheart," I commanded, my forehead dropping to rest against hers, my breath scalding against her parted lips. "I've got you. All mine."
"All yours," she whimpered, her hands sliding up to knot into the hair at my temples, pulling my face down to hers.
I began to move.
The rhythm was deep, heavy, and devastatingly slow. Every stroke was a worship of the skin beneath me, a deliberate, rhythmic friction that banished every shadow from the room. My voice stayed low against her ear, raining down thick, broken praise as my hips moved with measured torque:
"Look at you... taking every inch of me... so soft for me, Nola... good girl... you're everything."
Her breath broke into soft, weeping whimpers against my neck, her nails scoring the scars across my shoulder blades as the friction coiled tight in the center of her body.
Her hips rose to meet every drive of mine, her eyes locked with mine through the haze of golden light until the release detonated through her pelvis in long, shuddering spasms that pulled a shattered, feral groan from my chest.
* * *
By ten-thirty, the light through the drapes had turned to a brilliant, cold silver.
The bedroom was quiet again, the heavy comforter pulled high over our shoulders, sealing out the draft from the glass.
Nola lay with her head pillowed on the left side of my chest, her ear resting directly over the heavy, rhythmic strike of my heart. Her fingers were loose, tracing the jagged scar running over my seventh rib in slow, absentminded circles.
My right arm was locked around her waist, holding her back flush against my side, my chin resting against the crown of her head.
Her skin was warm, smelling of cedar and sweet sweat, her breathing steady and deep.
"Hastings called Denver on Friday," I murmured into the quiet room, my voice a low, gravelly vibration that traveled straight through my ribs into her cheek.
Nola’s fingers paused over my scar.
"What did he say?" she asked softly.
"Colorado is keeping their seventh pick warm," I said, my thumb stroking the soft skin of her hip beneath the sheet.
"They want a private interview after the Frozen Four.
When the tournament wraps in April, we're heading west, Nola.
You take the fellowship in Colorado Springs, and I sign thirty miles up the highway in Denver.
We get a place on the bluffs with a view of the mountains. No basements. No hiding."
Nola was silent for three heartbeats.
Then her face turned into my chest, a soft, relieved exhalation washing over my skin as she wrapped both arms around my torso, holding me tight.
"A place with big windows?" she whispered against my neck.
"As big as you want," I promised, pressing a firm, lingering kiss to the top of her head. "I'll buy the whole mountain if that's what you need."
She let out a soft laugh that vibrated against my ribs, her small frame relaxing fully into my heat, drifting back toward a peaceful, easy slumber.
I held her close, but my eyes stayed open.
I looked toward the heavy charcoal drapes, where the sleet continued to peck at the glass like a warning tapping on the windowpane.
A cold, instinctive dread tightened behind my breastbone—a deep, visceral pressure that made the hair on my arms stand up beneath the sheets.
My life had never handed me a clean victory. Every time something good had taken root, the ice had cracked beneath it. Marcus was circling the campus; Carter Ross was digging into my medical logs; and the national championship game was six days away.
This peace was a miracle.
And out in the frozen streets of Duluth, the machinery was already turning to tear it apart.