Page 43 of Slashed Bonds

And I step forward.

Into his space. Close enough that the bergamot and leather stop being a scent and start being a temperature. Close enough that he has to look down to keep me in frame, since he’s got most of a foot on me and I’m making him use every inch of it.

“But I ain’t no bitch,” I say. “Unless I allow you to bend me over and fuck me right. So best hold that tongue and pray I don’t ruin you on the ice.”

There it is. There’s the girl.

He goes still.

Both eyebrows now. The left eye does a small, involuntary twitch. And his mouth, that mouth with the ring through it, is fighting a war. One corner wants to lift. The rest of him is refusing permission.

Impressed. Or shocked. From this distance it’s hard to tell the difference, and I’m not sure he knows either.

“Boldly believing you can handle me,” he says. “The captain of this team. That’s a level of delusion I’d love to explore.”

He hums it. Pleased.

And he leans in.

Not much. An inch, maybe two, until my brow ring and his are close enough that a sharp breath would touch them. The tension between us spikes so hard I’m half convinced there’s a current running through the silver.

Electric. Literally. Someone call an electrician.

“Then wait in line,” I say.

I don’t back down. I don’t blink. I don’t do anything about the fact that every animal part of me wants to climb this man like a tree and find out exactly how much pain he can dish out and how much pleasure comes bundled with it.

That’s a moral problem, probably. Potential teammates. Some code about it, surely.

Codes are for people who plan on staying.

“I already have a favorite plaything,” I tell him. “I don’t need another.”

Then I walk past him.

Through the door, into the lobby, into that low expensive lighting, before he can respond, because my dog is loose in a building full of strangers and that’s the emergency, not whatever happened out there on the concrete.

Definitely not that.

The lobby is warmer than it looks. Black stone floors, violet light strips running along the baseboards, a trophy case the length of a bus with hardware in it I’d have killed for at seventeen. It smells of floor polish, cold, and somebody’s expensive cologne, and underneath, faint and real, the mineral bite of a fresh sheet.

My whole chest loosens at that smell.

Traitor.

The trophy case is lit from inside like a jewelry counter, and I don’t mean to stop at it, and I stop at it.

Conference titles. Regional banners. Three years of a division championship in a row, the most recent one from last spring, the plaque still bright.

No national title. The space where it would go is empty, dead center, backlit, a glass shelf holding nothing at all.

They left a hole for it. That’s either arrogance or a promise.

There’s a photograph at the far end. Team shot, last season, the whole roster in black on the blue line with their sticks crossed. I find number four immediately because he’s the only one not looking at the camera; he’s looking at something off to the left, over the photographer’s shoulder, the way a man looks at a door he’s already decided is a problem.

And at the center of the front row, wearing the C, arms folded, looking straight down the lens like it owes him money…

The man from the door.