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He claps a giant palm on my ass and smacks me, the sound echoing off the glass like a gunshot. I yelp and laugh, dizzy with power and lust. “Told you, baby. Couldn’t let you get away with teasing me like that.” He’s grinning, wild and wicked, like a wolf that just locked onto his prey. The look in his eyes is pure freaking hunger. Possessive. Obsessive. Like he wants to memorize and put his mark on every inch of me.

His hands reach up, and his thumbs circle my nipples until they are tight, aching peaks. My pussy clamps down on his cock, the first waves of an orgasm beginning to ripple through me. He feels it, his thrusts becoming faster, more desperate. He’s pounding up into me now, his muscular body wound tight beneath me as the sound of our bodies meeting echoes around the room.

"I’m coming," I gasp. "Jaxson, I’m⁠—"

The orgasm hits like a physical blow, a white-hot explosion that starts at the point where we are joined and radiates outward until I’m shaking, my vision swimming with stars. He thrusts one last time, deep and hard, and then he’s erupting, filling me with hot spurts of his cum as a low, guttural roar breaks from his throat.

I drop down onto his chest and lay my head right against his heart. We stay like that for a long time, locked together as our breathing slows and the world outside the windows begins to realign. The silence of the penthouse returns, but it’s different now. It’s no longer empty.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JAXSON

The red light of the scoreboard blinks in my periphery, but my focus is narrower than it has ever been. Usually, my mind is a grid of angles and trajectories, a cold machine calculating the path of a six-ounce piece of vulcanized rubber. Tonight, the ice feels different. It’s been three weeks since our first date, three of the best goddamn weeks of my life.

Harper’s still insisting we keep our relationship a secret, but at least she’s embraced her rule-breaker side.

“Thorne! Wake up!” Mick screams, his voice muffled by his cage as he skates past my crease. He taps his stick against my leg pads, a sharp crack that should snap me back into the game. I give him a quick glove-save nod, but my eyes are already drifting toward the tunnel, toward the world that exists outside this arena.

The game ends in a blur of whistle-blows and the heavy scent of ozone. Another win, another game where I played like a man possessed, but as I peel off my sweat-soaked jersey in the locker room, the victory is a little hollow. And I’m feeling off. I thought I’d be content to keep things with Harper on the down-low, but I’m tired of hiding our relationship. I’m fucking in love with her, and I want the whole goddamn world to know.

“You’re doing it again,” Mick says, leaning against the wooden stalls as he unfastens his skates. He’s looking at me with that annoying, observant grin that suggests he knows exactly where my head is. “The brooding. It’s more intense than usual.”

“I’m fine, Mick,” I say, my voice raspy from shouting directions on the ice. I shove my phone into my pocket before he can see the name on the screen. “Just a long game.”

“Right,” Mick chuckles, shaking his head as he stands. “You’re not as impenetrable as you think, Jax. The guys are starting to notice. Someone caught your ornery ass smiling at the equipment manager. Then you actually grunted out a response to a nosy reporter. People are worried.”

“I’m just in a good mood,” I mutter, grabbing my bag and heading for the door before he can dig any deeper. The truth is, I’m in a terrifying mood. I’m in the kind of mood that makes a man forget he has an image to maintain. I’m in the kind of mood where the secrecy is starting to feel like a weight I can’t carry, a debt I can’t pay off without losing everything.

Ten minutes later, I’m idling my car in the darkened corner of the Seattle General parking lot. This is our ritual now—clandestine meetings in the shadows of the hospital, shared minutes stolen from the demands of our separate lives. It’s messy, it’s addictive, and it’s the only time I feel like I can breathe. When the side door opens and Harper steps out, the night air suddenly tastes like everything I’ve been missing.

She’s still in her scrubs, her hair pulled back in a messy bun that’s losing the fight against gravity. She looks tired, the kind of deep-set weariness that comes from twelve hours of holding people together, but when she spots my car, her face transforms. It’s a small shift, a softening of her jaw and a light in her eyes that I’ve started to crave more than the roar of a shutout crowd.

She slides into the passenger seat, the scent of hospital soap and something sweet filling the small space. She doesn’t say anything at first, just leans her head back against the leather and closes her eyes. I don’t start the car. I just watch her, the way the dim light from the dashboard catches the curve of her throat.

“Rough shift?” I ask, my hand reaching out to cover hers where it rests on the center console. Her skin is cool, a sharp contrast to the heat radiating off mine.

“Code blue at one, a compound femur fracture at three, and a man who tried to put a lightbulb in an unmentionable spot at four a.m.,” she whispers, her fingers curling around my thumb. “So, the usual. How was the game? I saw the score on the break room TV. You looked… aggressive.”

“I was distracted,” I admit, and the confession feels like a crack in the glass. I trace the line of her knuckles, my thumb lingering over the spot where her pulse beats steady and fast. “Every time I went down for a save, I was thinking about whether or not you’d had dinner. It’s a hell of a way to play professional hockey.”

“You’re really sweet, which is downright scary,” she says, opening her eyes to look at me. There’s a teasing glint there, but beneath it, I see the same uncertainty that’s been gnawing at my gut for weeks. “Ryan called me today. He spent ten minutes complaining about hockey. I feel guilty keeping this from him.”

“Then tell him.” I pull her hand up to my lips. I kiss the back of it, a slow, deliberate contact that makes her breath hitch. “It isn’t a crime to want something real, Harper,” I say, and I realize as I say it that I’m not just talking about her. I’m talking about the void I’ve lived in for years, the cold, sterile excellence that I used to call a life. I pull her closer, my arm draping over the back of her seat as I bridge the distance between us. “The secrecy… it’s starting to feel wrong. Not because I’m ashamed, but because I want to shout it from the rafters.”

“Not yet,” she breathes, her expression turning serious. She reaches up to touch the scar on my palm, the one she treated. “I want to tell my brother in person.”

“Okay,” I agree and lean in to rest my forehead against hers. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy.”

“Jaxson,” she whispers, her hands finding the collar of my jacket. She pulls me down for a kiss, and it’s not the frantic, desperate heat of our first time. It’s something deeper, a slow-burn connection that tastes like heat and longing. Her lips part against mine, and the rest of the universe blurs away. It’s just Harper and the way she feels in my arms. I need more. I need all of her.

I break the kiss and rest my forehead against hers, fighting the urge to just toss her over my shoulder and drag her to my penthouse, caveman-style. “You want to go get real food, or…?” I let the question hang, but it’s not even a question. We both know exactly what we want.

She laughs, soft and low, the sound instantly making my cock turn to stone. “Take me home, Jaxson.”

Fuck yes. I’m the luckiest bastard alive.

The drive to her apartment is a blur. All I can focus on is her hand on my thigh and the way she keeps glancing over, eyes lit up with that heat that’s become my personal addiction. I barely remember to put the car in park before I’m at her door, opening it for her.