Chapter 6
Mauricio POV
The digital tablet in my hands displayed three different power-play breakout alignments, but the blue and red tracking arrows might as well have been static.
I stood on the second-floor mezzanine of the St. Jude Ice Arena, leaning my forearms against the cold steel railing.
Down below, the wide concrete concourse was filling with early ticket-holders, equipment managers pushing wheeled trunks, and visiting staff from Boston Commonwealth.
Pale, late-October sunlight cut through the four-story curtain of glass, throwing long, angled bars of gray across the floor.
Beside me, Gabriel Thorne dragged an index finger across the screen, highlighting Commonwealth’s left-wing lock. "Brody is cheating toward the neutral zone on the penalty kill. If we cycle low behind the net, you've got an open lane from the high point."
I didn't answer.
My teeth were locked together, the masseter muscle jumping in my cheek with a steady, rhythmic spasm. My throat was parched, tight with a bitter, sour heat that forty ounces of water hadn't cleared.
Every time I closed my eyes, my brain dragged me straight back into the auxiliary basement at midnight.
The image was seared into my retinas: Kiyomi Blake trapped between my arms, her back pressed against the laminate counter, her honey-brown eyes refusing to drop while her pulse fluttered like a trapped sparrow in the hollow of her throat.
I had felt the heat of her thighs through my pants.
I had smelled that bitter orange on her skin, so close my lips had been a breath away from hers.
She had stood there, small enough that I could have snapped her in half, and told me she wasn't afraid of me.
My fingers tightened on the edge of the tablet, the plastic casing groaning under the pressure.
A cold, furious disgust at my own weakness burned behind my breastbone.
I had fifty hours of compliance drills left with that girl.
Fifty hours of pretending her small, cold hands didn't set my skin on fire whenever she strapped telemetry pads to my legs.
I needed to be thinking about Boston Commonwealth. I needed to be thinking about the sixty scouts sitting in the press box tonight with clipboards and draft rankings. I needed the ninety-five thousand dollars for Rafael’s specialized clinic bed in Scarborough.
I had no business obsessing over the way an honors student’s mouth parted when she was angry.
"Leal," Gabe said, his voice dropping into that cautious register he only used when he thought I was about to crack someone's helmet with a stick. "You're going to snap the glass on the iPad."
I forced my fingers to loosen, exhaling a slow, ragged breath through my nose.
Then my gaze dropped over the railing to the main concourse, and the air froze in my lungs.
She was walking past the ticket plaza.
Kiyomi had her dark hair twisted up with a silver pen, wearing a fitted black ribbed sweater, dark jeans, and boots that clicked against the polished concrete.
She was carrying a heavy canvas tote loaded with diagnostic drives and clipboards, her posture straight, her chin held at that stubborn, combative angle.
My internal compass locked on her like a crosshair. Every other person on the crowded concourse blurred into background noise.
* * *
She never made it to the south tunnel.
A figure stepped out from behind the massive concrete pillar supporting the mezzanine stairs, directly into her path.
Tyler Brody.
Number nine for Boston Commonwealth. Six-foot-three, two hundred and twenty pounds of arrogant forward mass, dressed in Commonwealth’s charcoal travel suit with his silk tie loosened at his throat.
He had a smirk carved into his face that made the blood in my jugular vein throb with sudden, violent pressure.
Brody planted his wide frame in front of Kiyomi, cutting off her line to the locker room corridor.
She stopped, taking a half-step back to keep her distance. I watched her shoulders go rigid beneath the black wool of her sweater. She shifted her canvas bag to her other shoulder and tried to sidestep him to the right.
Brody moved with her, blocking the lane with an easy, mocking slide.
My knuckles turned white around the steel railing. The metal bit deep into the calluses of my palms. A low, continuous roar started in my ears, drowning out the ambient chatter of the concourse, drowning out Gabe’s voice beside me.
Down on the floor, Brody leaned in. He was too close.
His face was barely eight inches from hers, crowding into her personal perimeter with the greasy familiarity of a guy who thought a varsity letter gave him rights to whatever crossed his path.
He said something that made the smirk on his face widen.
Then his hand came up, his thick fingers catching the fabric of her sleeve near the shoulder.
My vision tunneled. The gray light in the concourse turned a sharp, violent red.
The air scraped through my constricted bronchial tubes in a harsh, dry hiss. My chest went tight as a vise.
Kiyomi didn't hesitate. She brought the corner of her heavy metal clipboard up, striking Brody’s forearm with a sharp, audible crack that forced his hand away. Her chin snapped up, her lips moving with rapid, venomous precision as she shoved him back with her free hand.
Brody laughed. He didn't back off. Instead, his jaw set in a hard, ugly sneer, and he stepped directly into her space, his right hand shooting out to grab her by the elbow, his fingers digging into her arm through the sweater.
He touched her.
The tablet slipped from my fingers, hitting the steel mezzanine floor with a sharp clatter.
"Mauricio, wait—" Gabe reached for my arm, but his hand slid off my shoulder.
I was already moving.
* * *
I didn't take the stairs one at a time. I hit the landing in two heavy strides, the rubber soles of my training shoes taking the impact with a dull thud that sent a spike of white-hot fire up my fractured fibula.
I ignored it. The pain didn't exist. Nothing existed except the two hundred feet of concrete between me and Tyler Brody’s hand on her skin.
I cut through the crowd of students and staff like an icebreaker through thin harbor ice. People scattered out of my path, sensing the freight-train momentum radiating off my shoulders.
Brody was still talking down to her, his grip locked around her elbow, trying to pull her closer to the pillar, when my shadow fell over them.
He didn't even have time to turn his head.
I grabbed Brody by the back of his suit collar with my left hand, hauled him backward off his feet, and slammed him face-first into the poured concrete of the structural pillar.
The impact was a blunt, wet crack of bone and masonry.
Brody let out a choked gasp of pain, his forehead bouncing off the concrete.
Before he could rebound, I stepped into him, driving my right forearm hard across his throat, pinning his two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame flat against the wall.
The rough wool of his lapels bunched in my fist. My chest hit his back, my full weight bearing down, grinding him into the concrete until the plaster dust drifted down over his shoulders.
"Take your hands off her," I said.
My voice wasn't loud. It was a flat, gravelly scrape that sounded like two millstones grinding in the dark.
Brody struggled, his fingers clawing uselessly at the thick muscle of my forearm, his polished shoes scraping across the floor as he fought for air. His eyes were wide, bloodshot with panic, the smug arrogance wiped completely from his features.
"Leal—" Brody choked out, his tongue thick in his mouth. "You're crazy—the game starts in two hours—"
"I don't care about the game," I rasped, leaning my weight forward another fraction of an inch, feeling his trachea compress under my arm.
"Touch her again. Put one finger on her in this arena.
I'll take your knee off at the red line during the first shift, and I'll make sure you never skate on two good legs again. Understand me?"
Brody nodded frantically, his face turning a dark, mottled purple.
"Mauricio, stop!"
A small, cold hand clamped onto my right bicep.
Kiyomi.
Her fingers bit into the thick muscle above my elbow, pulling with all her strength. "Let him go! Vance is on the mezzanine. Lindqvist will pull you from the lineup!"
I didn't care about Vance. I didn't care about Lindqvist.
Up on the mezzanine railing, sixty feet above us, Julian Cross was leaning against the steel rail. The scout had a slick, tailored topcoat draped over his shoulders, a phone in his hand, watching the violence with a calculating, predatory smile that made my stomach turn.
I looked back down at Brody.
With a vicious shove, I threw the Commonwealth forward away from the wall. Brody stumbled, his knees buckling, hitting the concrete floor on his hands and knees, coughing and gasping for breath as two of his teammates rushed down the tunnel to drag him up.
I didn't watch them leave.
I grabbed Kiyomi’s upper arm—my grip firm, hot, unyielding—and hauled her around the side of the concrete pillar, dragging her into the shadowy, recessed alcove behind the equipment bay door, well out of sight of the mezzanine.
I shoved her back against the cinder blocks, planting my right hand flat against the wall beside her ear, caging her small frame between my body and the cold stone.
My chest heaved against my ribs in violent, ragged pulls. The adrenaline was a toxic rush in my blood, making my hands shake where they rested against the wall.
"What the hell were you doing?" I snarled down at her, my mouth inches from her face. "Why was he touching you?"
Kiyomi’s honey-brown eyes were blazing with pure, unadulterated fury. She didn't shrink back. She shoved both of her hands flat against my chest, trying to force my weight off her, her breath coming in quick, ragged gasps that matched mine.
"Get your hands off me, Leal!" she hissed, her voice shaking with rage. "I was telling him to leave me alone! I had it handled until you came charging down here like an unhinged animal!"
"He had his hands on your arm, Blake!"
"And you have your hands on me right now!" she fired back, her chin tilting up, her eyes wide and defiant. "Who the hell do you think you are? You don't own this building, you don't own this hallway, and you sure as hell don't own me! You have zero right to police who I talk to!"
The defiance on her tongue was a match thrown onto gasoline.
I leaned down, closing the remaining inches between us until my nose brushed the dark hair at her temple. My hand slid from the wall, my thick fingers wrapping around the side of her neck, my thumb resting right over the frantic, jumping rhythm of her carotid artery.
Her breath hitched sharply in her throat. Her body went rigid against the cinder block, but she didn't pull away.
"Listen to me, Kiyomi," I growled, my voice dropping into a dark, rough rasp that vibrated directly against the shell of her ear.
"Right or wrong doesn't mean a damn thing to me.
When you are in this barn, you don't let other men put their hands on your skin.
You're in my perimeter now. Understand me? Mine."
The word hung between our mouths in the cold, shadowy alcove, heavy as an iron chain.
Her lips parted, her breath washing hot and sweet against the stubble on my jaw. Her pupils were blown wide, consuming the gold, staring into my eyes with a shock that paralyzed her limbs.
She didn't tell me no.
She just stood there, pinned beneath my hand, her pulse hammering against my palm, while the terrifying realization settled into the marrow of my bones: I had just claimed her in public, and there was no going back.