Chapter 4
Mauricio POV
Steam rolled off the tile walls of the shower bay, thick and sour with the reek of pine-scented body wash, wet wool, and skate tape. Across the rubber floor of the locker room, the bass from the corner soundbar sent a low, rhythmic vibration through the wooden bench beneath my thighs.
My right hand was swollen across the knuckles from blocking a clearing pass during the third scrimmage period.
I wrapped a fresh strip of black athletic cloth around the joint, pulling the weave tight until the skin turned white, then red.
Beneath my ankle bone, the hairline fracture in my fibula hummed a steady, vicious warning.
Two stalls down, Gabriel Thorne unzipped his gear bag, tossing his sweat-drenched elbow pads onto the slatted wood. He rubbed a towel over his damp blond hair, grinning like he had just inherited the eastern seaboard.
"Saw your shadow down in the south corridor before morning skate," Gabe said, his voice cutting easily over the music. "The biomechanics girl. Blake."
My fingers locked on the roll of tape. The edge tore unevenly against my thumb. A sudden, sharp tightening seized the muscles between my shoulder blades, my breath snagging on the back of my tongue.
"She's Hayes's compliance intern," I said, keeping my eyes on my knuckles. "Nothing else."
"Right. The compliance intern who wears an honors fleece like body armor and looks at our captain like he’s an overgrown lab rat.
" Gabe leaned back against his stall, chuckling as he kicked his wet socks into the hamper.
"Brody’s forward line was talking about her in the rink lobby after warm-ups.
Half the roster wants to know why the prettiest mind on campus is spending dawn locked in the basement with the enforcer. "
The blood rushed into my ears, loud and hot.
I dropped the tape onto the bench with a crack that cut Gabe's laugh short. I was off the wooden slat before the sound finished echoing, the distance between our stalls vanishing in two heavy strides. My shadow fell over Gabe, broad and blocking out the overhead halogen light.
"Listen to me once, Thorne," I said. My voice didn't rise; it dropped into a dead, flat scrape that scraped like metal over ice.
"Keep your mouth shut about her. And if any forward on this roster wanders down that stairwell to look through the glass, I'll break his wrist in practice tomorrow. Understand me?"
Gabe’s smile vanished. His blue eyes widened slightly, tracking the hard line of my jaw and the vein standing out thick along the side of my throat. He held up two open hands, taking a half-step back until his shoulder hit his locker door.
"Easy, Mauricio," Gabe muttered, his tone shifting into something cautious, measuring. "It was a joke. I'm just saying the girl has a backbone."
"She has an assignment," I said through clenched teeth. "And I don't need the team running their mouths about it."
I grabbed my dry gray hoodie off the hook, pulled it over my damp skin, and shoved my feet into my slides.
My chest felt constricted, the air inside the room suddenly thin and unbreathable.
Gabe watched me with a quiet, dangerous calculation in his eyes, but I didn't give him the chance to speak again.
I hit the heavy exit door with my shoulder, the slam reverberating through the empty hallway behind me.
* * *
The metal latch on the auxiliary lab door dropped shut with a heavy, final click.
Fifty-eight hours left.
The sound cut off the distant drone of the Zamboni and the muffled thuds of the training staff above us, sealing the room into a cold, subterranean vault.
The air here was always ten degrees colder than the rest of the building, smelling of hydraulic fluid, menthol analgesic, and the sharp, clean scent of bitter orange and almond that belonged solely to the girl sitting at the worktable.
Kiyomi Blake didn't turn around.
She sat on the metal rolling stool, her spine held in that ridiculous, rigid alignment, staring at a split-screen telemetry feed on her laptop.
Her dark hair was twisted up in that tortoiseshell claw clip, exposing the pale, slender curve of her nape.
A single, loose dark strand had escaped, curling against the side of her throat right over the flutter of her carotid artery.
My gaze locked onto that strand. The pulse point beneath it was hammering at eighty beats a minute, fast and light.
She had heard the door latch. She knew I was in the room, but she kept her small fingers tapping across the mechanical keys, deliberately ignoring the two hundred and twenty-five pounds of athlete standing behind her.
The insolence of it drove a spike of heat straight through the middle of my chest.
I crossed the rubber matting, the soles of my slides making no sound. I stopped directly behind her shoulder, close enough that the radiant heat off my skin washed over the back of her white lab coat.
She reached up, her small hand moving with deliberate slowness to tuck that stray hair behind her ear. Her fingers brushed her throat, and I watched the skin prickle with sudden goosebumps where my breath hit her neck.
"You're thirty seconds late, Leal," she said, her voice crisp, cool, and devoid of tremor. She clicked a button on the mouse pad. "I already initiated the sensor sync on the force plates."
I didn't step back. Instead, I reached out and planted one large, calloused palm flat on the laminate wood of her desk, right beside her elbow, leaning down until my chest nearly brushed the nylon fabric of her vest. My other forearm rested on the metal back of her rolling stool, effectively caging her between the desk and my body.
"Clock started when I touched the door handle, Blake," I rasped, my mouth barely four inches from her temple.
She stiffened. The muscles along her jaw locked, her lips parting as her breathing hitched high in her chest. She turned her head slowly, bringing her honey-brown eyes up to meet mine.
Up close, the gold flecks in her irises were sharp, ringed with amber, completely focused on the cut along my left cheekbone.
"You're in my workspace," she whispered.
"This whole room is my workspace," I answered, holding her gaze, letting the silence stretch until I could hear the faint, rapid draw of her breath. "You're just the guest with the clipboard."
She didn't lean away. Her chin tilted up, that stubborn, defiant angle I was already beginning to recognize in my sleep.
"If I'm a guest, you're the failing subject," she countered, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp register that vibrated against my teeth.
"Your lateral force distribution from Wednesday’s scrimmage was down another three percent on your right side.
You took four unnecessary hits against the boards because you couldn't clear the zone fast enough.
You're compensating for something, Mauricio.
And if you keep crowding my space instead of stepping on that treadmill, I'll put an official note in your file that you're uncooperative. "
My jaw tightened until my back molars ground against each other. The vein on my temple throbbed with a hard, rhythmic beat. She was inches away, her scent filling my lungs, defying me with every syllable that crossed her mouth.
I wanted to back her up against the concrete wall until she forgot the word compliance. I wanted to lean down, press my weight against her small, fragile frame, and see how long her clinical composure held before she broke.
"Try it," I murmured, my voice dropping an octave into pure gravel. "Put your note in the file, Blake. See what happens to your Olympic fellowship when Lindqvist locks you out of the rink."
* * *
Her eyes narrowed to thin slits of brown flint. She didn't blink. She didn't drop her gaze.
She reached across the desk, grabbing the thick blue compliance log, and shoved it toward my chest. The corner of the heavy cardboard binder struck my sternum, hard enough to register through the fleece of my hoodie.
"Sign the log for hour three," she said. "Then take off your shoes."
I didn't move my arm from the back of her chair. I held her pinned in place for three agonizing seconds, letting the heat of my body press against her side, watching the faint pink flush stain her cheeks.
Finally, I reached down, pulled the pen from her fingers—letting my calloused thumb drag firmly across the sensitive skin of her palm—and scrawled my signature on the bottom line.
I dropped the pen onto the desk, turned, and pulled the low stool across from her table, dropping my weight onto it with a heavy thud.
The space between us was less than two feet.
When I stretched my long legs out to untie the laces of my black trainers, my thick right knee knocked hard against her thigh beneath the laminate table.
Kiyomi went completely rigid.
Neither of us pulled away.
The contact burned through the denim of her jeans and the heavy fleece of my shorts, a solid, immovable junction of bone and muscle. Her pupils dilated, swallowing the gold in her irises until her eyes looked nearly black in the harsh fluorescent glare.
I reached down, stripped off my shoes, and tossed them against the baseboard. When I looked back up, her gaze was fixed on my bare right foot, tracking the slight puffiness along the lateral margin of my fibula where the micro-fracture was buried beneath skin and muscle.
Her throat worked as she swallowed hard.
"The swelling is worse," she said softly, the clinical sharpness slipping for a split second, replaced by something raw and observant.
"The foot is fine," I growled, leaning forward over the table, resting my forearms on the wood until my face was level with hers.
My knuckles were inches from her small, clasped hands. I could see the tiny silver ring on her left thumb spinning frantically between her fingers. Her breath was coming fast, shallow and light, lifting the lapels of her lab coat.
"You're lying," she whispered, her voice barely carrying over the hum of the ice-treadmill behind us.
"And you're shaking, Blake."
The words came out dark, heavy, and low. I reached out, my thick index finger hooking beneath the edge of her silver ring, holding her thumb still. The contact of her cold skin against mine sent a sharp, violent tremor straight into my ribs, tightening my lungs until I couldn't pull air.
Her breath stopped in her throat. Her gaze shot from our hands up to my eyes, her honey-brown irises wide, dark, and wild with a panic that had nothing to do with fear.
She didn't pull her hand back. She held my stare, her chin lifting another fraction of an inch, her mouth parting as her tongue darted out to wet her dry lower lip.
"I'm cold, Leal," she whispered, the lie trembling between us in the freezing air. "Not impressed."
The heat in my gut coiled tight, turning feral and heavy.
I didn't want to scare her off anymore. The urge to intimidate her had burned out, replaced by something far more dangerous, something that made my blood pound like a war drum behind my temples.
I wanted to break her composure. I wanted to lean across this narrow wooden table, bury my hands in that dark hair, pull her down until her mouth was crushed against mine, and strip away every shred of that clinical, intellectual armor until she had nothing left to hide behind.
I slowly released her thumb, letting my finger drag down the side of her wrist before pulling my hand away.
"Step on the treadmill, Blake," I rasped, rising to my feet, looming over her until my shadow swallowed her whole. "Let's see what you've got."