Page 4 of Coached By the Grumpy Gargoyle

He looks at me. Streetlamp behind him, green eyes catching the light, chocolate still smeared across the front of his slacks like a crime scene, and he says absolutely nothing.

Nothing. Not "I didn't think of that." Not "I wanted it off my table." Not one syllable of denial.

Oh.

The silence stretches, and he just stands there in it, comfortable, letting it mean whatever it means, and my stomach flips again. Damn it.

"You're a brat," he says finally, conversational, like he's reading a scouting report. "A mouthy little brat looking for trouble."

"Excuse me?"

He takes one step closer. The streetlamp disappears behind his shoulders. This close I have to tip my head all the way back to hold the eye contact, and I do, because backing up is for sensible people and I have apparently resigned from their ranks for the evening.

"Somebody," he says, gravel gone low and slow and almost pleasant, "ought to put you over a knee and spank that attitude out of you."

Every drop of blood I own goes somewhere unhelpful.

I should laugh it off. I should say goodnight, Coach, and click-click home to my apartment and my throw pillows and my firm sensible rules.

I don't.

I look up seven feet of moonlit granite, into the smug green eyes of Coach Bram Stryge, and I hear myself say, sweet as whipped cream:

"Try it and see how it goes.”

Chapter 2

Bram

"Try it and see how it goes.”

The sharp words, whispered in a tone sweet as pie filling, come from a woman barely five foot three standing on a frosted sidewalk, hugging her purse like a shield. Her brown eyes shine and her face is red, but there’s no mistaking her stance.

She thinks she won. I can tell, because her chin is up and her weight is already shifting toward home, like she'll fire the shot and storm away down the harbor. Like she’s going to leave me standing here to think about what I said.

That's the plan. Say the outrageous thing, walk off, win.

I don't move.

Being made from stone has its advantages. Nobody can see when a woman you've spent a year trying not to want smiles at you like that and shifts something you thought you had locked down. That’s exactly what happens every time I look at Rory Hale.

A year of standing very still teaches you things. You learn how to watch a warm, beautiful woman with curves made for sin walk into the staff room every morning already smiling, already talking, far too cheerful for this early in the morning, and pretend the sight of her doesn't improve the room anyway. You learn how to grunt at her good mornings and pretend not to notice the coffee she brings during playoff week, because taking it would put your talons an inch from her fingers.

People flinch from cold stone. I learned that young. After a while, you stop trying to touch people at all.

I have spent twelve months pretending I don't want to touch her.

Then she dares me, on an empty street, with chocolate she put there still smeared across my slacks. Right next to my still pulsing, aching cock. A cock she brushed with those small, dainty fingers.

A cock that, if I’m being entirely honest, has started taking decisions for me right now. What can I say? I may be made of stone, but I’m still a man.

I step in. Once. Deliberate. Frost creaks under my boot, the streetlamp drops behind my shoulders, and her whole face tips back to hold my gaze. Defiance blaze in those warm, big eyes, but something else as well. Something infinitely more dangerous.

This close, I can feel her the warmth of her body, the softness of her breath fogging in the air.

That's the loudest thing about her, her warmth. The cold comes off the harbor in sheets. The frost sits on the sidewalk, the parked cars are stone-temperature, my temperature. The whole street is November straight through. And she stands in the middle of it putting out heat like a flame.

I always know where she is in a room just by the heat signature she sends like a beacon. I never let myself wonder why, partly because I don’t want to know and partly because I’m afraid of what I’ll do if I think about her too hard.