Chapter 3 #2
He seemed, instead, like something the ice had been waiting for.
Poetic, Lila.
I needed to stick to thinking about edges and transfer of weight, and only about edges and transfer of weight…not about how Kardok looked like he was at home on my rink.
Or the way his shoulders had softened, and his lips curled on either side of his tusks, and the tension had drained from that scarred jawline.
Right.
Right.
I pressed my lips together and made a note in my head: stronger on his left edge, right needs work.
Useful. Clinical. Exactly the kind of observation that had nothing whatsoever to do with the way his shoulders moved, or the quality of his focus when he was doing something well and he knew it.
He completed the second lap and came to a stop in front of me with a precision that kicked up a small spray of ice across the toe of my skate.
The corner of his mouth moved. Just slightly.
He did that on purpose, a voice in my head announced. The same voice that had opinions about ridged anatomy and had absolutely no place on a professional ice rink.
Hush, I told it.
“Well,” I said instead, in my most measured tone. I nodded firmly. “You can skate.”
It wasn’t a compliment, exactly. But it wasn’t nothing, either, and from the way his chin lifted—just a fraction—I thought perhaps he understood the difference.
And that wasn’t the way to begin. “I mean, you can skate.” He glanced at me, and I offered a small smile. “Very well. You’re not just trying to get somewhere, you’re moving like someone…”
At home.
But I trailed off because that sounded dumb. I mean, of course he was at home on the ice; this was his job!
Kardok held my gaze, then shrugged. “I grew up on the ice. Didn’t have skates—we didn’t need them back home—but shit gets clearer when I’m out there, you know?”
I saw the moment he realized he’d cursed, because his eyes widened just slightly, and he flicked his gaze over my shoulder and mumbled, “Sorry.”
To be honest, I was just happy he was opening up to me, so my smile and dismissive flick wasn’t feigned. “Don’t be. We’re going to be working together for the next few weeks, Kardok, and we should feel comfortable with each other.”
Then I did something stupid.
Phenomenally, unbelievably, wonderfully stupid.
I reached out and took his hand.
I’d held hundreds of hands on the ice.
Partners, students, the nervous seven-year-olds who needed someone to cling to on their first skate. It was the most unremarkable thing in my world—a hand was a hand, a point of contact, a tool.
I knew this. I reminded myself of this.
It didn’t work.
Because his hand was hard and soft all at once—callouses I didn’t recognize and skin far warmer than mine. No wonder he was in just a t-shirt!
My breathing had shallowed, my eyes were wide as I stared up at him, both of us balancing on blades.
Oh.
Oh.
I’d known, academically, that orcs ran warmer than humans.
I’d read it somewhere, probably, or perhaps Maddie had mentioned it, or maybe I’d simply absorbed it from years of living adjacent to a team of them.
It was a biological fact, like a few other bits of orc biology Kardok’s female fans had undoubtably learned.
What I had not accounted for academically was what it would feel like to have all that warmth wrapped around my hand. His fingers were enormous, calloused, and they swallowed mine completely, and the heat of them went straight up my arm like I’d grabbed a live wire.
Edges, I told myself. Weight distribution. Right crossover. Left—
“You good?” he asked. Quietly, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear. Though there was no one else to hear, Joshua hadn’t arrived yet, and the rink was empty except for the two of us and the hum of the refrigeration system.
I realized I’d stopped breathing entirely.
Oh no.
“Lila?”
“Pairs skating!” I blurted, my fingers unconsciously squeezing his.
“Side by side.” Right. I had to explain.
Start with a deep breath, for crying out loud, before you pass out.
“We keep our outside hands free, inside hands joined.” Swallowing, I maneuvered us so we were facing the same direction.
“We’ll start with something simple—just laps, getting used to moving together. Finding a shared rhythm.”
Kardok didn’t say anything. But he didn’t let go of my hand either, and when I pushed off, he matched my stride without being asked.
Honestly, our skating together was smooth. Smoother than my breathing, that’s for sure.
He was wearing his hockey skates, and I was wearing my figure skates. There were differences in how they worked, of course, but I doubted he’d had much experience with toe picks, so I wasn’t going to ask him to try something new so quickly.
Especially not when he moved so fluidly on his own skates.
I grew up on the ice.
Like me, then.
But he’d been in his wild and primitive world…is that where he’d gotten that scar?
Focus, Lila.
Right.
I felt his gaze on me and glanced up to find him skating without paying attention to where we were going—instinct. “You okay?”
My, “Fine!” was a few octaves too high. “Why?”
His lips curled again. “You’re not breathing.”
He could tell? He was paying attention to my breathing? Oh, be still my heart! Since he was still watching me, I forced myself to inhale, then offered him a smug smile, as if to say See? I can breathe. No problem. Breathing is one of the things I do best—I’m a champion breather!
Kardok’s little snort, and the way he switched his attention to the ice ahead of us, told me I wasn’t fooling him.
Still, by our second lap, I was finally breathing normally, and his hand in mine had graduated from Oh dear God, I could stand to lick him to totally normal.
Yay, me.
“So…” He didn’t glance down at me. “We just…skate in circles? Holding hands?”
We had rather mastered that, hadn’t we?
I cleared my throat, pretending a professionalism I didn’t feel, and gave myself a push to spin around without breaking our stride. Now I was skating backward, staring up at him.
“Now we try something a little more difficult.” I lifted my left hand toward his. “We’ll do a few laps with you leading.”
His brows drew in as he wrapped his large hand around mine—There’s that zing again!—and his gaze flicked from my face to the ice behind me. “Lead?”
“By the time we’re done with rehearsals, you won’t need to lead, because we’ll each know where the other—and the wall—is at any given moment.
But for now, with me skating backwards and us holding hands…
” I gave his a little encouraging squeeze.
“You’re in charge of steering us. Like the coxswain of a crew team. ”
The noise he made might have been a snort of laughter, but more likely was a dismissal. “I don’t know how to do that either, Princess.”
Still, I felt him turn us both as we approached the far end of the rink, and I—despite knowing the ice like the back of my hand—relaxed into his hold, allowing him to guide me. As we came out of the turn, I grinned up at him.
“Good! Pairs skating is about trusting your partner, and it’s clear I can trust you not to run me into the wall.”
He was staring at my mouth, which made me self-conscious.
Tomato time again.
We didn’t speak through the remainder of the lap, or the next one. It was, again, Kardok who broke the silence. “So we can skate side by side, or me leading. Want me to flip around and take the backward shift now?”
I shrugged, trying for nonchalance and professionalism. “Sure. You’re doing great so far. Let’s try switching positions.”
As I spoke, I slowed and gently spun myself back into forward position, to keep us skating in the same direction. At the same time, Kardok smoothly flipped around, likely a move he’d done a million times in practice…
And promptly stumbled.
Rage flickered across his features for a moment as his grip on me tightened, and I felt myself wincing in sympathy. Here was a male who expected himself not to fail, and he’d failed too many times in recent memory.
Now, he did not fall. I want to be clear about that. Kardok was too skilled a skater to simply fall, and his balance was extraordinary.
What he did instead was produce, over the next thirty seconds, what I could only describe as a controlled argument with the ice. Every correction was half a beat too late. Every edge was chosen with a grim determination that had nothing to do with flow and everything to do with stubbornness.
He was willing himself backward through sheer force of personality.
It was almost funny to watch.
“Relax your knees,” I said.
He relaxed nothing.
“Kardok.”
“I’m fine.”
He was not fine. He was a large, powerful, deeply competitive orc who had discovered something he couldn’t immediately dominate, and he was handling it the way I suspected he handled most adversity—by applying more force to the problem.
“You’re fighting it,” I said. “You don’t need to—the blade does the work. Trust the edge.”
A muscle in his jaw flickered. “I know how to skate backward.”
“Of course you do.” I kept my tone light and squeezed his hands. “But not while holding someone else, right?”
His dark gaze flicked down to me, and I saw the rage, the determination, flicker once, so I smiled gently.
“Kardok, you have to let me lead. Just relax and trust the edge. And me.”
He was studying me now, and I saw the corners of his eyes soften, as well as the lines around the edge of his mouth. I offered another smile and nudged him into a turn.
“You’re doing great,” I told him soothingly. “It must be disconcerting to do this holding my hands instead of a stick.”
His eyes flicked down to where we held hands. “I guess. I could pretend you’re a stick.”
I wasn’t sure that was supposed to be a joke, but I laughed anyway. I was in my favorite place, teaching someone something I adored, and my body kept tingling deliciously.
At the sound of my laughter, his lips twitched again, but he didn’t look up. I understood why, thanks to years of coaching.
“You’re looking at your feet,” I said, because I needed to say something that wasn’t about how wonderful his hands felt.
“My feet are the things I’m trying not to fall over with.”
“Look at me instead.”
He looked at me.
That was, in hindsight, not my best coaching advice.
Because Kardok looking at me while skating backwards in the quiet of my rink, his enormous hands wrapped around mine, his expression doing something complicated that I couldn’t name from this distance—that was a problem I hadn’t accounted for in any of my very thorough preparation notes.
Edges, I told myself firmly. Left crossover, right—
“Better?” he asked. His voice had dropped slightly. I didn’t know if he’d meant it to.
“Yes,” I said, very professionally. “Much better.”
And I was delighted to discover it was the truth.
When Kardok looked at me—instead of the ice, or our hands, or our feet—his movements became smoother, more confident. I felt us both relaxing, and suddenly, the feel of our hands clasped together was less a novelty and more just…normal.
I exhaled, smiling up at him, and led him through the next turn. Normal. Gliding across my ice with my new pairs parter; a big, green, hockey player.
One whom, I was beginning to suspect, might be my favorite.
We moved together, spending the next hour practicing switching back and forth between who was leading and skating side by side.
He never once tried to drop my hand, and I didn’t even consider dropping his. I showed him a few basic turns, and he mimicked them so easily I suspected hockey players must do something like this regularly.
And through it all, he kept his focus on me. On my face. On my body, as if he could guess my move before I made it. I’d gone past tomato stage, on to firecracker, then sheer nuclear embarrassment…and somehow ended up back in normality. Comfort.
Yes, that was it.
By the end of our practice together, I was comfortable with Kardok the Wicked, something I never would have guessed would happen. To my surprise, I didn’t mind at all.
Not even a little bit.