Chapter 9
Kiyomi POV
The auxiliary basement smelled of chlorhexidine scrub, rubbing alcohol, and the stale chill of wet concrete.
Up above, the arena had emptied an hour ago after a vicious, penalty-choked regulation win over Vermont, leaving the subterranean corridor hushed save for the distant hum of the drainage pumps.
It was past ten on Friday night.
I carried thirty-eight hours on Mauricio Leal’s compliance ledger in my leather folder.
My knuckles were cold, my fingernails pressing into the cardboard cover as I reached the bottom of the iron stairs.
I had spent all Friday telling myself that the dark arena late last night had been an aberration—a momentary lapse of sanity fueled by seventeen-degree air, the scrape of skate steel, and the shock of his mouth brushing my jaw against the player box partition.
I had rehearsed a clinical, distant greeting to reset every boundary between us.
The heavy steel door was unlatched, resting open by a finger’s width.
A single fluorescent tube flickered at the far end of the room, casting an uneven yellow glare over the stainless-steel counters and the edge of the force-plate platform.
I nudged the door open with my shoulder, stepping onto the black rubber runner. "Leal?"
The sound that answered was a sharp, hitched intake of breath, followed by the dull plastic clatter of a bottle dropping onto the floorboards.
Mauricio was sitting on the edge of the high vinyl examination table.
His black game sweater and heavy shoulder armor were gone, dumped in a sodden pile beside his gear bag.
His massive chest and shoulders were bare, gleaming with a sheen of cold sweat in the dim light.
Dark, mottled purple contusions bloomed along the lower ridge of his ribcage, tracking the path of a vicious, two-handed stick check delivered during the second period.
His left brow was split open.
The laceration was two inches long, deep and ragged where a helmet visor or an elbow had cut down to the bone.
Blood had trickled down the sharp ridge of his cheekbone, pooling in the hollow of his jaw before dripping onto a stained white towel clutched in his fist. In his other hand, he held a torn square of sterile gauze, trying and failing to reach the wound with his head tilted at an awkward angle.
Every breath made his left side seize, the intercostal muscles locking in a visible spasm beneath his olive skin.
He didn't look like an impending first-round NHL pick. He looked like a wounded animal that had crawled into a subterranean cave to bind its own broken ribs in the dark.
My feet moved before my brain could calculate the risk.
The leather folder dropped onto the rolling diagnostic cart with a sharp slap. I crossed the rubber floor in four quick strides, reaching down to scoop the fallen brown bottle of povidone-iodine from the concrete.
Mauricio’s head snapped up at the sound, his jaw locking so violently that the tendons in his neck corded like steel cables. "Blake. Get out of here."
His voice was a gravelly scrape, thick with suppressed agony and rough from sixty minutes of shouting over the ice.
I didn't answer him. I reached out, my fingers wrapping firmly around his large, blood-smeared wrist, pulling his hand away from his brow. His grip on the towel was tight enough to whiten his knuckles, but when my cold skin met his burning pulse point, his fingers slowly loosened.
"Shut up, Mauricio," I whispered, my chest tightening with an ache that had nothing to do with compliance hours.
I took the soiled towel from his hand and tossed it into the biohazard bin.
* * *
To reach the laceration over his left eye, I stepped directly between his parted knees.
The physical perimeter between us vanished in a single breath.
The vinyl table was high; my eyes were level with his nose, my thighs brushing against the heavy black fleece of his training shorts.
The heat pouring off his bare torso was a wall of scorching air in the freezing basement, carrying the rich, familiar scent of crushed cedar, iron, athletic soap, and the sharp, metallic tang of fresh blood.
My hands were shaking. I forced them still by pressing my left palm flat against the back of his neck to steady his head.
The skin at his nape was hot, damp with sweat, the cropped dark hair bristling against my palm. A sharp hitch caught in his throat as my fingers settled into the hollow behind his ear.
"This needs seven sutures," I said, my voice barely carrying over the hum of the overhead ballast. I soaked a sterile pad with antiseptic, bringing it toward the split brow. "Lindqvist has three varsity doctors upstairs in the main clinic."
"Lindqvist has doctors who report to the athletic director," he growled. His dark umber eyes locked onto mine, tracking the movement of my lips with an intensity that made my throat dry out. "They sew this up, they put me in the concussion protocol for five days. I miss the Boston road trip."
"You might have a concussion, Mauricio."
"I don't. My vision is clear. My pupils are equal." He didn't blink. "Clean the cut, Blake."
I pressed the antiseptic pad against the jagged split in his skin.
He didn't flinch. He didn't pull back an inch. The antiseptic must have stung like an open flame on the raw flesh, but his expression remained carved from dark granite, his focus pinned entirely to my face.
His hands moved.
His large, calloused palms came to rest on my hips, fingers spanning the denim over my hipbones.
The weight of his touch was heavy, anchoring me between his thighs.
Through the fabric of my jeans, the heat of his hands seeped straight into my pelvis, setting off a slow, deep tremor that traveled up the line of my spine.
My breath came in shallow, uneven draws. Every time his chest expanded, his bruised ribs brushed the front of my oversized navy sweater.
"You're too rough on yourself," I whispered, dabbing the excess iodine away with a clean cloth.
My fingertips drifted from his eyebrow down to his left temple. Beneath the thin skin, his temporal artery was pounding a frantic, heavy rhythm that matched the flutter in my own throat.
"I do what I have to do," he said. His voice dropped into that dark, low register that vibrated behind my breastbone.
"You do what's going to get you crippled before you ever sign a pro contract," I countered, peeling the backing from three sterile butterfly closures.
I aligned the torn edges of the skin, pulling the split closed with careful, surgical precision before pressing the adhesive down.
"Who takes care of Rafael if you shatter your skull on the ice? "
His fingers tightened on my hips, the blunt pressure of his thumbs digging into my waist. The name hung between our mouths, stripped of the anger that had poisoned it weeks ago.
"That's why I can't sit," he murmured. His gaze dropped to my mouth, his breathing turning ragged, his chest lifting against mine.
"The signing bonus pays for three years of neuro-rehab upfront.
If I drop to the second round, the guaranteed money gets cut in half.
I don't have the luxury of sitting in the press box with an ice pack. "
I smoothed a clean strip of white medical tape across the butterfly bandages, my fingertips lingering on the warm skin of his cheekbone.
"You're a fool, Mauricio Leal," I breathed, my hand cupping the side of his jaw.
His stubble was rough against my palm, his skin burning hot. He closed his eyes for two seconds, leaning his face into my touch with an exhaustion so absolute, so naked, that my heart hammered against my ribs like it wanted to break free.
* * *
I went to pull my hand back, but his movement was instantaneous.
Mauricio’s left hand shot up, his thick fingers locking around my wrist with the speed of a spring-loaded trap.
He didn't twist. He didn't hurt me.
He pulled my arm down, flattening my bare palm against the bare skin of his chest, directly over the left side of his breastbone.
The contact was a physical shock. His chest was dense muscle, hot as a furnace, scarred near the collarbone where an old blade had caught him.
Beneath my palm, his heart was hammering with terrifying, violent power—a heavy, irregular sledgehammer rhythm that rattled straight through the bones of my fingers.
The breath froze in my throat.
"You feel that?" he rasped.
His eyes opened, black with blown pupils in the dim light, holding me captive. He didn't let my hand move. He pressed it harder against his ribs, forcing me to absorb every frantic stroke of his pulse.
"You think a stick to the ribs hurts, Blake?
" he whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, jagged truth that stripped away the last shredded remnants of our hostility.
"Taking a hit against the boards is easy.
It's clean. But having you stand between my legs, smelling like bitter orange, looking at me like you see every broken piece—it hurts ten times worse. "
My lungs refused to expand. The room seemed to shrink until there was nothing left except the hard wood of the examination table, the hum of the fluorescent tube, and the suffocating heat of his body anchoring mine.
"Mauricio," I breathed, my lips barely moving.
"Don't," he commanded softly, the rough edge of his voice softening into something desperate, something ruined. "Don't tell me to let you go. Because I can't."
He leaned forward, pulling my hips an inch closer until my sweater pressed against his bare skin. His forehead came down, resting gently against mine, his hot breath washing over my parted lips in steady, intoxicating waves.
My free hand came up on its own, my fingers tangling in the damp, dark hair at the base of his skull.
The clinical detachment was gone. The academic grant, the Colorado fellowship, the rules of the athletic department—all of it had burned away, reduced to white ash by the frantic, thudding rhythm under my palm.
I looked into the dark, bottomless depth of his eyes, inches from mine, and the truth hit me with the weight of an iron girder: I was no longer an observer in his orbit.
I had wholly lost the ability to walk away.