Chapter 13
Kiyomi POV
The subterranean auxiliary lab was quiet enough that the steady hum of the hydraulic ice-treadmill sounded like a dull heartbeat beneath the floorboards.
Five-fifteen on Monday morning. Outside, the November rain had turned into a wet, heavy sleet that glazed the high frosted window grates, keeping the basement locked in a pale, murky twilight.
Thirty compliance hours remained on the ledger. Exactly half of the sentence.
I stood by the stainless-steel prep cart, my fingers mechanically laying out four wireless telemetry pads on a fresh sheet of paper toweling.
The diagnostic software on my laptop was booted, its blue grid pulsing with empty baseline metrics.
Everything on the screen was orderly, predictable, and governed by mathematical law.
Everything inside my chest was a disaster.
For forty-eight hours, my nervous system had been firing on raw adrenaline.
My lips still felt tender, swollen with the ghost memory of Saturday afternoon beneath Section 112: the heavy wool of the hanging jerseys muffling my back, the rough scrape of Mauricio’s calloused palm cupping my jaw, and the low, ruined rumble of his voice when he called me his good girl against my mouth.
I had never felt anything like it.
I was twenty-one years old, and my entire life had been constructed inside clean, fortified walls.
My father had demanded clinical perfection; I had delivered high honors, ninety-ninth-percentile board scores, and eighty-hour weeks between lecture halls and biomechanics rigs.
There had been no time for boys, no space for the sloppy, careless entanglements of campus parties.
I had never let anyone close enough to see past my intellect, and I had certainly never let a man lift me off my feet and kiss the breath straight out of my lungs.
My inexperience wasn't a moral stance; it was a vulnerability. An exposed flank that left me utterly defenseless against an enforcer who took up space like he owned the ground beneath him.
I adjusted the adhesive backing on a sensor pad, my thumb spinning the silver ring on my knuckle until the skin turned raw.
Thirty hours, I told myself, drawing a cold breath that caught high in my throat. Thirty hours, and then Colorado. Keep the electrodes between you.
The heavy exterior door at the top of the iron stairwell swung open.
Footsteps hit the concrete treads—heavy, measured, unhurried.
My heart slammed against the wall of my ribs like a caged bird. A sudden, suffocating heat climbed from my sternum, blooming across my collarbones before I could draw another breath.
* * *
Mauricio stepped into the doorway, his massive frame blotting out the hall light.
He was wearing dark gray fleece pants and a black compression shirt with long sleeves, the St. Jude Sentinel shield faded across his broad chest. His dark hair was damp at the temples from the freezing sleet outside.
Over his left brow, the butterfly bandages had been removed, leaving a thin, jagged pink line slicing through the dark arch of his eyebrow.
He brought the smell of winter with him—cold cedar, wet wool, and the crisp, clean scent of fresh shaving soap.
He closed the door behind him. The latch clicked into the strike plate with a finality that made the muscles in my lower back lock tight.
His dark umber eyes found mine instantly.
He didn't say good morning. He didn't drop his duffel bag. He just stood there on the rubber runner, his gaze heavy and unblinking, sweeping over my white lab coat, my tight posture, and the pale, flushed skin of my neck.
The silence between us was so thick it felt like moving through water.
"Hour thirty-one, Leal," I said. The words came out thinner than I wanted, but the clinical edge held. "We need baseline heart rate and dynamic pectoral load metrics before we put you on the incline."
Mauricio dropped his duffel onto the floor with a dull thud.
He crossed the room without a sound, his slides making no noise on the rubber flooring. He stopped beside the high vinyl examination table, barely three feet from where I stood behind the prep cart. The radiant heat off his body rolled across my face, intoxicating and familiar.
Without breaking eye contact, he reached down, caught the hem of his black compression shirt, and pulled it up over his head in one smooth, fluid movement.
The air vanished from my lungs.
His torso was a landscape of dense, functional muscle, broad across the shoulders and carved down to a flat stomach.
Dark purple bruises from the Vermont game lingered along his ribs, fading to yellow at the edges.
A jagged white scar split the flesh over his right collarbone, pale against his olive skin.
He tossed the shirt onto a wooden stool, turned back, and sat on the edge of the high examination table, his hands resting on his knees, his dark gaze pinned to my face.
"Put them on, Blake," he rasped, his voice low and gravelly in the quiet room.
I reached for the first telemetry pad.
My fingers were trembling. A fine, uncontrollable tremor ran through my hands, rattling the thin plastic backing against the metal tray. I tried to peel the protective adhesive strip, but my thumb slipped twice on the edge.
Before I could reach for the second pad, Mauricio’s right hand shot out.
His large, calloused fingers closed around my wrist.
The contact was a physical shock, heat bleeding through my skin like boiling water. He didn't squeeze. His grip was firm, immovable, halting my trembling hands in mid-air.
He slowly drew my hand toward him. He didn't look down at the plastic sensor. He kept his eyes locked on mine as he brought the back of my fingers to his mouth, pressing his warm lips against the sensitive skin of my knuckles.
My breath caught in a sharp, audible hitch.
"You're shaking, Kiyomi," he murmured against my skin.
"I'm cold, Mauricio," I lied, my voice shaking as his mouth drifted from my knuckles to the inside of my wrist, his lips brushing over the frantic, violent drumming of my radial pulse.
"You're not cold," he said, pulling back just enough to look into my eyes, his thumb resting over the throbbing artery. "Your pulse is running at ninety beats a minute, and your face is burning."
* * *
I tried to pull my hand back, but his fingers held me fast, anchoring me to the heat of his bare thigh.
The raw, searching focus in his dark eyes stripped away the last shredded remnants of my defenses. He wasn't looking at me like an intern with a clipboard, and he wasn't looking at me like a teammate. He was looking at me like he saw the sheer, uncoordinated panic humming through my blood.
"You look at me like you've never been touched before," he said softly.
The observation was blunt, stripped of mockery, but it hit me with the force of a clean check against the glass.
A sudden, sharp sting prickled behind my eyes. My chin tilted up by pure reflex, but the lie wouldn't come. My throat felt tight, constricted by a knot of raw pride and terrifying vulnerability.
"Because I haven't," I whispered.
The words hung in the freezing air between us, fragile and absolute.
Mauricio went completely still.
The relaxed, heavy posture of his shoulders vanished, replaced by a rigid, coiled tension that made the muscles along his neck stand out.
His pupils dilated, consuming the dark amber of his irises until his eyes were pure, bottomless pitch.
His chest stopped rising, his breath suspended in his throat as his gaze searched every millimeter of my face.
"Say that again," he rasped, his voice dropping into a dark, ragged register that vibrated against my cheekbones.
"There hasn't been anyone else," I said, forcing myself to hold his stare, refusing to look down even as the heat burned across my neck.
"I study. I run data models. I don't go to campus bars, and I don't let athletes back me into corners.
I don't know how to navigate this, Mauricio. I don't know what you want from me."
A low, guttural sound broke from the back of his throat.
His hands moved before I could blink. His thick, calloused palms clamped onto my waist, his fingers digging into the denim of my jeans, and with effortless, terrifying power, he lifted me straight off the rubber floor.
I gasped, my hands flying out to catch the dense muscle of his bare shoulders to steady myself.
He deposited me on the high vinyl examination table, planting his massive frame squarely between my parted thighs.
The position was suffocatingly intimate. My legs were draped over the outside of his hips, my waist trapped between his hands. The heat coming off his bare torso scorched through the cotton of my shirt, his chest heaving with deep, ragged draws of air.
He leaned forward, crowding my space until his shadow swallowed me, his palms sliding from my waist to plant flat on the vinyl table on either side of my hips, caging me completely.
His mouth came down to the shell of my ear, his stubble scraping rough and hot against my sensitive skin.
"You don't navigate anything, Kiyomi," he whispered, his voice a ruined, gravelly rasp that sent a molten wave crashing straight down through my pelvis. "You don't have to figure out a damn thing. You just hold on to me."
His lips brushed the hollow beneath my ear, hot and slow, making my back arch off the vinyl.
"Nobody else ever touched you," he murmured against my throat, his voice thick with a dark, terrifying reverence that made my vision blur. "Nobody else ever tasted your mouth. And nobody else ever will. You're mine now, sweetheart. Every single inch."
My fingers knotted into the fabric of his athletic pants at his hips, my knuckles turning white as his mouth claimed the side of my neck in a slow, searing kiss that shattered every remaining wall in my soul.
He called me his good girl, low and rough, and for the first time in twenty-one years, I let the control go.