She grinned at him, paint-smeared and disheveled and happier than she had any right to be.
"I told you painting was fun."
His laugh—an actual laugh, short and surprised like he hadn't meant to let it escape—echoed through the empty arena. And somewhere in the back of her mind, that small voice whispered again.Careful. Temporary. Don't forget what happens when I let yourself want things.
She ignored it harder.
Some messes, she decided, were worth making.
CHAPTER TEN
The puck sailed three feet wide of the net. Tarmek stood at center ice, stick in hand, staring at the goal like it had personally betrayed him. The third miss in a row. The third time his wrist had moved a fraction of a second too late, his timing thrown off by the memory of paint-stained skin and desperate sounds and?—
"Captain!"
He snapped back to reality. Groznick was skating towards him, his expression caught somewhere between concern and amusement.
"You planning to hit the net sometime today, or should we just assume it's decorative?"
"Again," he growled.
"That's what I said fifteen minutes ago. You're?—"
"Again."
Groznick raised his hands in surrender and skated back to reset the drill. The rest of the team exchanged glances that hepretended not to see. He knew he was off. Every single player on the ice knew he was off. His footwork was sloppy, his passes inconsistent, and his shot accuracy hovering somewhere around pathetic. He'd spent twenty years building himself into a precision instrument, and now he was falling apart because of one woman.
Her taste...
He gritted his teeth and forced his body into position. Focus.
The puck dropped. He moved. Shot.
Wide again.
The sound she made when I?—
"Tarmek."
Coach Morrison was standing at the boards, arms crossed, wearing an expression that promised an uncomfortable conversation.
"Office. Now."
He skated off the ice without protest. He'd earned this. Whatever lecture was coming, he deserved every word.
Morrison' office was cluttered in a way that had always made his skin crawl—papers stacked haphazardly, coffee cups from three different days, a miniature Stanley Cup replica buried under Post-it notes. Today, he barely noticed. His mind was still on the arena lobby. The paint-smeared wall. The weight of her in his arms.
"Sit."
He sat.
"You want to tell me what's going on?"
"No."
Morrison actually laughed. "Fair enough. But I'm going to need something, because whatever that was out there—" he gestured vaguely towards the rink, "—that wasn't the Tarmek Stonefist I've coached for six years."
"I'm fine."
