Chapter 12
Justin POV
When Penny stepped through the threshold, the bitter draft of the outside blizzard followed her into the room, swirling around the hem of her black parka and melting against the warm concrete floor.
Ninety days remained until the ECAC Championship in Lake Placid.
Forty-eight hours had been logged in the three-ring clinical binder sitting on the stainless-steel desk. Seventy-two hours of this mandate remained between me and medical clearance.
I hadn't slept in two days. The muscles along my jawline ached from hours of grinding my molars into dust, and the dull, grinding throb in my right clavicle was nothing compared to the pressure pounding behind my eyes.
Every time I had closed my eyelids since Saturday night, my head had filled with the scent of her hair, the heat of her mouth against the freezing air of the cab, and the sound of her breath breaking when she told me not to stop.
I didn't move from the edge of the examination plinth.
Penny stood by the door, her chest rising and falling beneath her damp coat.
Snow clung to the dark, unruly curls escaping her knit beanie, melting into tiny glistening beads along the pale curve of her neck.
Her hazel eyes were wide, the pupils dark and guarded, watching me like I was a live wire lying in a puddle of water.
She hugged her canvas satchel against her ribs, her knuckles white around the nylon strap.
"I answered your text in ten minutes," she said, her voice tight, clinical, and paper-thin. "You don't get to call me late, Ibarra."
I didn't answer.
I pushed off the edge of the vinyl plinth, my bare feet silent on the floor. I crossed the twelve feet of space between us, my shadow swallowing her as I closed the distance.
Penny’s chin snapped up, her lips parting around a sharp inhalation, but she didn't step back. She held her ground, her body vibrating with that stubborn, infuriating defiance that had been chipping away at my restraint since the afternoon she slapped three hundred dollars against my chest.
I reached past her left shoulder.
My fingers caught the heavy brass slide-bolt on the door frame. With a single, smooth shove of my palm, I drove the metal into the strike plate.
The latch engaged with a heavy, echoing clack that sealed the room shut.
Penny’s throat worked on a dry swallow, the tiny pulse point at the base of her neck leaping like a trapped sparrow.
"The door stays unlocked during clinical sessions," she whispered, her eyes tracking my hand as it dropped from the bolt. "Department regulations—"
"Regulations are for people who are doing therapy, Correa," I rumbled, my voice scraping low and raw out of my chest, thick with the gravel of two sleepless nights. "And we both know that's not why you're here."
* * *
Penny backed up two paces, her snow boots squeaking on the smooth floor, putting the stainless-steel hydrocollator cart between us.
With hurried, trembling precision, she unzipped her satchel and hauled out two steaming canvas heat packs wrapped in white terry cloth. The moist heat hit the chilly air, smelling of damp linen and lavender-scented mineral salts.
"Sit on the plinth," she commanded, her voice rising an octave, trying desperately to sound like the clinician in charge of my chart. "We have twenty minutes of passive heat application to loosen the inferior capsule, followed by forty minutes of scapular retractions. Take off the shirt."
I looked down at the steaming terry cloth, then slowly dragged my gaze back to her face.
"Put the towels down, Penny."
"Justin, sit on the table." Her voice cracked slightly on the second syllable.
"No."
I stepped around the corner of the cart.
Penny moved with me, retreating another three feet, but the subterranean room offered nowhere to run. Her shoulders hit the cold, glazed cinderblocks of the back wall, right between the hydrotherapy supply shelf and the wall-mounted spine board.
She stood pinned against the masonry, the white towels clutched against her chest like a breastplate.
I didn't stop until my chest was six inches from hers.
The heat radiating off her skin cut through the cold basement air, washing over my bare arms and throat in a thick, intoxicating wave. Her scent—clean rain, almond soap, and the crisp bite of winter—filled my lungs, making the blood in my ears roar like a collapsed roof.
I raised both hands and planted my palms flat against the cinderblocks on either side of her head, caging her between my arms.
The space between us vanished.
"You didn't answer my call on Sunday," I said, my voice dropping to a low, quiet rasp that brushed across her forehead.
Penny’s chest heaved, the coarse terry cloth of the heat packs pressing against the black cotton of my compression shirt. "I was studying. I had an exam in biomechanical instrumentation."
"You were hiding in your bedroom with the blinds closed," I countered, leaning down until my mouth was inches from the shell of her ear. "Because you knew if you saw me, we’d end up right back where we were on the lake road."
"I was doing my job," she whispered, but the defiance was losing its edge, replaced by a ragged, shallow breath that hitch-hiked in her throat. "I'm protecting my fellowship, Justin. If anyone sees us—"
"Nobody is here, Penny," I rasped, turning my head until my lips grazed the sensitive, heated skin below her earlobe. "The campus is empty. Hauer is in Albany. Vance is at home. It’s just you, me, and this locked door."
A soft, shuddering sound caught in her throat.
Her fingers lost their grip on the terry cloth. The two heavy heat packs slipped from her hands, hitting the concrete floor with a dull, wet thud.
Her hands didn't drop to her sides.
Slowly, hesitantly, her small, cold palms rose, flattening against the front of my shirt, right over my bruised ribs. Her fingers curled into the black fabric, clutching the material as if she were holding on to keep from drowning.
"Justin, don't," she breathed, but her face tilted up toward mine, her hazel eyes glittering with a dark, terrifying hunger that matched the sickness in my own chest.
"Don't what, sweetheart?" I rumbled, my lips hovering a millimeter from hers, breathing her in until my vision went black around the edges.
"Don't touch you? Don't think about the way your mouth tasted in that truck?
I haven't slept in forty-eight hours because every time I close my eyes, you're telling me not to stop. "
"We're going to burn," she whispered, her lips brushing mine with the movement of the words.
"Then let it burn," I growled.
* * *
My hands left the wall.
My large, calloused palms came up to frame her face, my fingers tangling in the dark curls tumbling from beneath her beanie. My thumbs hooked beneath the sharp angle of her jaw, tilting her chin up, exposing her mouth to the light.
I didn't give her another second to think. I didn't give myself another second to pull back.
I bent my head and took her mouth.
The impact was rough, starving, and absolute.
A sharp, ragged gasp tore from her throat, swallowed instantly as my lips parted hers. The taste of her hit my senses like a line brawl—sweet, hot, and wild with an adrenaline that burned straight down to the soles of my feet.
Her hands tightened in my shirt, her nails digging through the fabric into the skin over my sternum, pulling me closer. She didn't fight. She didn't retreat. She met the desperate, heavy rhythm of my mouth with a fierce, reckless hunger that shattered the last shred of discipline I possessed.
I stepped into her, my 228-pound frame crowding her flush against the glazed cinderblocks, using my weight to trap her body between mine and the wall. The cold masonry was behind her; the open furnace of my chest was in front of her.
My tongue swept deep into her mouth, tasting the mint of her gum, the heat of her breath, claiming every millimeter of the space she had tried to deny me for four weeks.
Penny let out a small, muffled whimper against my lips, her head tilting back against the stone, her thighs parting slightly on pure instinct to accommodate the heavy press of my hips.
The sensation tore a guttural groan from deep in my chest.
My right hand left her face, sliding down the side of her neck, my thumb stroking the wild, frantic pounding of her pulse before my fingers gripped the curve of her waist through her heavy parka.
I squeezed, the thick down yielding under my grip, lifting her until her boots were barely skimming the concrete.
"Justin," she gasped against my mouth when I tore my lips away to catch a ragged breath. Her eyes were black, blown wide, her lips swollen, slick, and parted in raw shock. "Justin, please—"
"Look at me," I commanded, my forehead crashing down against hers, my chest heaving in violent, ragged bursts that burned my lungs.
She looked. Her hazel eyes were dazed, clouded with the same fever-hot madness that was ripping through my veins.
"You're done running from me, Penny," I rasped, my thumb dragging hard across her wet lower lip, pressing until she let out a shuddering breath. "You're done hiding behind Vance, and you're done hiding behind that clipboard. You're mine now. You hear me?"
She nodded, a microscopic, helpless movement, her fingers still twisted in the cotton over my heart.
A low, possessive rumble vibrated in my throat. I leaned back in, catching her bottom lip between my teeth, tugging with a slow, agonizing pressure that made her arch against my chest.
"Good girl," I murmured against her skin, the praise dripping from my tongue like dark honey. "Say it."
"I'm here," she whispered, her voice breaking on a breathless sob that shattered into my mouth as I kissed her again. "I'm yours, Justin."
I swallowed the words whole, slanting my mouth over hers in a deep, bruising rhythm that obliterated the past, the future, the Bruins, and the championship.
There was only the cold concrete at our backs, the heat boiling between our ribs, and the terrifying knowledge that we had just crossed the line we could never walk back across.