“Let’s go,” a reporter says behind me.
I stand and gather my things.
I need to get it together so I don’t embarrass myself again in the press room,I think as I follow the crowd down the tunnel.
“Hey!Get back here!”Security yells.
Turning, I see some drunk fans heading my way.I jump out of the way, yelping when one of them stomps on my toes in his mad dash to get to the locker room.
“Watch it,” Declan growls as he comes out of the hall right beside me.
He wraps his arm around my waist, and he pulls me back against him.I can smell his sweat and feel the heat pouring off his body.
I shiver.“Thanks,” I murmur as I wiggle out of his grasp.I turn and look up at him, licking my lips as our gazes clash.
“Fuck,” he hisses, and then he’s grabbing me and dragging me back into the empty hall.
I trip over his gloves and realize he must have dropped them when he pulled me out of the way.
My back hits the wall, and I gasp, dropping my pen and notepad as I stare up at him in shock.
His eyes darken, and then his hands are cupping my face, and his lips are on mine.
Heat detonates under my skin.It’s not a polite press, it’s a claiming.His mouth is rough and hungry and sure, and it knocks a sound out of me I’ve never heard before.My fingers curl into the front of his jersey, dragging him closer like I’m the one starving him.The hall is cold, but he burns, sweat and adrenaline, the sharp edge of ice still clinging to him.His pads are hard and rough against me, but somehow that only turns me on more.
He kisses like he plays: decisive, relentless, and focused only on the goal.
A helpless whimper escapes me, and the sound flips some hidden switch inside him.He groans into my mouth, angling my jaw, deepening the kiss until my knees go soft.The wall catches me, and he cages me there, broad shoulders blocking out the world, one palm spreading over my waist like he already knows my exact shape.
Every rule I made for myself about staying professional evaporates under the slide of his tongue.
I taste a hint of mint and victory.The echo of the crowd is a distant roar; the only things that exist are the ragged sound of our breathing and the slick, perfect glide of mouths that shouldn’t fit this well and somehow do.
Declan nips my bottom lip, and I gasp.He swallows it like he’s been waiting all night for that exact sound.Heat zips down my spine, pooling low, and I cling to him harder, shameless, breathless, dizzy.
When he finally tears his mouth from mine, it’s like surfacing too fast.We’re both panting, eyes locked as we stare at each other, his heartbeat a heavy thud against my palm where our bodies are still pressed tight.
“Declan,” I whisper.Saying his name feels like a secret I’m not supposed to speak out loud.
His eyes flick to my mouth again, pupils blown, jaw flexing.I can feel the war inside him, want and restraint, need and regret, crashing like waves.
Then the walls slam back into place.
He steps away, the cold rushing in to fill the space he leaves.I sway, catching myself on the cinderblock as he bends and scoops up his fallen gloves with a jerk of his wrist.He turns as if he’s about to walk straight out of my life and pretend none of this happened.
The spark that’s been burning in my chest since the press conference flares into something hotter.I snatch my pen and notepad from the floor and find my voice, shaky and furious.
“You have to stop doing that.”
He goes still.Looks back over his shoulder, eyes narrowed, lip curling like I’ve challenged him to a fight.“Kissing you?”His voice is a dark scrape.“You seemed to like it.”
I lift my chin even though my lips still tingle and my legs are pretending they’ve never met the concept of stability.“Walking away after.”
Silence fills the space between us.He faces me fully now, towering and lethal in his skates, shoulder pads creaking under his hoodie, a storm contained by sheer stubborn force.For a heartbeat, I think he’s going to throw up another wall and leave me in the rubble.
“I don’t trust you,” he grinds out at last.
The words land like a slap, sharp and humiliating, but I refuse to flinch.He’s not wrong.He barely knows me, and I barely know him, except for the way he just kissed me like I was oxygen.
