Chapter 12
Mauricio POV
Three floors up, the heavy steel fire door slammed open against concrete.
The sound cracked like a rifle shot down the iron shaft of the stairwell, followed by the dull thud of weightlifting shoes on the upper landing.
"Leal?" Gabriel Thorne’s voice boomed down the enclosure, echoing off the bare masonry. "Lindqvist wants the line charts before noon! You down there?"
Kiyomi went rigid in my grip. Her eyes darted toward the iron steps above us, her throat working as she pulled in a sharp, shallow breath.
I didn't answer Gabe. I reached down, scooped her fallen satchel off the floor with my left hand, and caught her cold wrist in my right.
I hit the brass latch of the utility maintenance door with my shoulder, hauling her through the narrow threshold into the darkened corridor that ran directly beneath Section 112.
I pulled the heavy fire door shut until the latch clicked into the strike plate with a muted, metallic snap, cutting off Gabe’s footsteps.
The passage was narrow, barely six feet wide, illuminated only by amber safety fixtures spaced thirty feet apart along the ceiling pipes.
The air smelled of clean ice wax, damp leather shin guards, skate steel, and the faint, dry dust of wool blankets stored in plastic bins.
It was dead quiet. Nobody came down here during non-game weekends; the area was reserved for equipment overflow and off-season storage.
I didn't stop walking until we were twenty paces deep, buried in the gloom behind a wall of stacked travel trunks.
I dropped her satchel onto the lid of a gear crate.
Kiyomi spun around to face me, her back hitting a row of hanging Sentinel practice jerseys. The heavy mesh muffled the impact. Her chest rose and fell in frantic, uneven bursts beneath her charcoal coat, her knit scarf slightly askew, exposing the flushed, burning skin of her throat.
"You're out of your mind," she whispered. Her voice was thin, vibrating with an edge of pure adrenaline. "Gabe was twenty feet above us."
"I don't care about Thorne," I said.
My voice was a rough scrape in the quiet passage.
My lungs burned from the heavy sets on the bench, but the heat rolling through my veins had nothing to do with three hundred pounds of iron.
My jaw ached from the brutal pressure of my teeth grinding together, every muscle along my spine locked tight.
I stepped into her perimeter, closing the space until my shadow swallowed her.
* * *
I planted my hands on the cinder-block wall on either side of her head, trapping her between my forearms and the heavy fabric of the hanging jerseys.
The heat coming off my bare shoulders was a physical furnace in the chilly corridor, washing across her face.
Up close, I could see the tiny gold flecks in her irises, wide and dark, reflecting the amber utility light overhead.
Her breath was coming fast, small white plumes of condensation rising between our lips before vanishing into the dry air.
"You ran down three flights of stairs to get away from me," I said, leaning down until my mouth was three inches from hers. "Tell me why, Blake."
Her chin lifted with that familiar, stubborn defiance, her lips parting as she fought for breath. "I have work to finish. I don't have time to be cornered in a maintenance closet by an enforcer having a temper tantrum."
"Don't lie to me." The words came out low, dangerous, rumbling from the center of my breastbone. "You didn't run because of work. You ran because you stood in that mezzanine, looked me in the eyes through forty feet of glass, and felt the exact same thing I felt in my truck."
Her throat swallowed hard. Her hands came up, her small fingers curling around the thick, vascular muscle of my forearms where they were braced against the stone.
She didn't push me away. Her grip was tight, her nails biting into my skin, holding on like she was trying to keep herself upright on slick ice.
"You think you can intimidate every person on this campus, Mauricio," she whispered, her voice shaking slightly despite the razor-sharp edge in her words.
"You think because you're bigger, because you're louder, because you can hit harder than anyone else, everyone has to bow to your rules.
But I am not your forward line. You don't get to command me. "
"I'm not commanding you, Kiyomi."
I leaned closer still, shifting my weight forward until the front of my damp compression shirt brushed against the wool of her lapels. The contact sent a violent, jagged shockwave tearing straight through my chest, burning through every layer of discipline I had built over twenty-two years.
"I'm asking you for the truth," I rasped, my mouth hovering a fraction of an inch from her lips. "Tell me you don't want this. Tell me to back up, walk out that door, and never look at you again. Say the words, and I'll do it."
The corridor fell dead silent.
The only sound in the dark was the ragged, synchronized rhythm of our breathing.
Kiyomi stared into my eyes, her honey-brown gaze wide, dark, and wild with an emotion that stripped away every clinical defense she owned.
Her chest heaved against mine. I felt the frantic, heavy drumming of her heart through her coat, beating with the exact same violent speed as the pulse battering my own ribs.
She didn't tell me to leave.
Her fingers shifted on my forearms, sliding slowly up the thick line of my biceps to grip the bare, sweat-slick muscle of my shoulders. Her head tilted back against the hanging jerseys, her eyes never leaving mine, her lips parting on a soft, ragged exhale that brushed hot against my chin.
"You know I can't," she breathed.
* * *
The last thread of my control snapped with the force of severed steel.
My right hand came off the cinder blocks, my thick, calloused fingers burying deep into the dark hair at the base of her skull. I tilted her face up, my thumb locking beneath the sharp angle of her jawline, and I brought my mouth down onto hers.
The collision was rough, hungry, and desperate.
A sharp gasp broke from her throat as my lips crushed against hers, and I took the opening instantly, slanting my mouth over hers with a demanding, possessive hunger that had been building since the second she dropped her sensor cases in my runway.
Her lips were soft, burning hot against the chill of the tunnel, tasting of mint and the bitter-orange sweetness that had haunted my sleep for weeks.
She didn't fight me. She met the kiss with an intensity that matched my own, her small hands sliding behind my neck, her fingers tangling into the cropped hair at my nape.
She pulled me closer, her body arching off the wall to press against my chest, surrendering every shred of hesitation in a breathless, mutual clash of heat.
A low, guttural groan tore from the back of my throat, vibrating against her lips.
My other arm wrapped around her waist, my hand splaying across the small of her back, lifting her slightly off the concrete floor until her boots dangled.
I pressed her firmly into the wall of jerseys, burying my face in the curve of her neck, my mouth trailing scorching kisses along the line of her jaw before dragging back to claim her lips again.
"Good girl," I rasped against her mouth, the words raw, scraped from the bottom of my lungs. "Open for me. That's it."
She let out a soft, broken sound against my tongue, her fingers digging into the muscle of my traps as I deepened the kiss, taking everything she offered and demanding more.
The world outside the narrow passage ceased to exist. There were no scouts, no NCAA compliance boards, no draft projections, and no injuries.
There was only the taste of her, the heat of her skin, and the wild, terrifying realization that having her in my arms felt more essential than the air in my lungs.
I kissed her until my ribs burned with lack of oxygen, until the pulse in my ears was a deafening roar.
When I finally broke the seal of our mouths, I didn't let her go.
I rested my forehead against hers, my chest heaving in violent, ragged draws, my hand still tangled in the soft silk of her dark hair.
Kiyomi’s eyes fluttered open, dark as midnight, her pupils blown wide, drinking in my face.
Her lips were swollen, slick, and parted, trembling with every shallow breath that escaped her chest.
She stared at me, her hands still resting on my bare shoulders, her fingers trembling against my skin.
I stared back, my heart hammering like a sledgehammer against my sternum, the cold, irrevocable truth settling into the marrow of my bones.
I had crossed the line.
And now that I knew what she felt like beneath my hands, I was never going to let her walk away.