Chapter 4

ETHAN

Up close and half-naked, Cal Mercer is utterly overwhelming.

Not in the way the press means when they talk about his size, not as spectacle or intimidation, but in the way his body seems to exceed the logic of the space meant to hold it, like the hallway itself has underestimated what it would mean to contain that much heat, that much muscle, that much barely restrained force stripped of pads and context and armor.

He’s shirtless, skin still flushed from exertion, heat rolling off him in a way that I can feel without even touching. His chest is broad to the point of near-impossibility, peppered with black hair, muscles layered thick and dense, rising and falling with breaths that haven’t settled yet. Veins stand out along his arms and neck, dark and pronounced, like the map of something dangerous and alive just under the surface.

Ink crawls over him, black and dark-blue tattoos, lines disappearing beneath the waistband of his jeans, spiraling over shoulders that look built to absorb impact rather than aesthetic. The tattoos don’t soften him in the slightest, instead they emphasize the scale, the permanence, the fact that this body has been shaped by intention and consequence.

He smells like sweat and fury and adrenaline, like a fight that hasn’t realized it’s over, and I find myself thinking:

He's too close.

He's not crowding or pushing, but he's occupying the space like gravity, and the strangest thing is that he’s holding himself back. I can see it in the way his fists clench and release, the way that his shoulders lock as if braced against an internal command. As if he's telling himself, stop.

For ten years, Cal has used his size as leverage, as intimidation, as a blunt instrument. On the ice, I’ve learned how to turn that against him, how to push and pull him into penalties, into mistakes, into moments where his power becomes a liability instead of an advantage.

I’ve always liked that part of the game. The control over him, the way he reacts when I deny him the impact he’s seeking, when I force him to hold all that violence inside himself until it spills sideways.

Here, though... standing here, less than a foot away from him, with his body vibrating with unresolved force, breathing too fast, eyes dark and unfocused in that way that means he is fighting himself rather than me, I'm forced to recognize the truth:

I like this too.

The realization lands slowly. I've never seen his power this close before. Without pads. Without speed. Without distance.

I could keep him here.

The thought arrives unbidden and complete, sending an unsettling heat through my body as I recognize its truth, because I'm already doing it. I'm already standing here unmoved while he holds himself back, already watching the way his breathing stutters, the way his hands tremble with the effort of restraint.

I'm not stopping him with force... I'm stopping him with stillness.

He shifts, and his voice comes out rougher than he intends, low and unguarded.

“You done?” he mutters.

It's not a challenge, or a taunt. It's a question.

The sound of it tightens something low and dangerous in me, because I hear the strain beneath it, the fact that speaking at all has cost him something, and I understand, with a sudden, intimate certainty, that he's not asking whether I'm finished talking. He's asking how much longer he can hold himself like this.

“I’ll let you know,” I say, and the words are calm, even as my body reacts to the knowledge underneath his question, to the fact that all this power is waiting for direction.

His jaw tightens, his breath hitches, but he doesn’t look away. I've never seen him like this – exposed, still, furious – and the realization that follows is dizzying. His rage isn't uncontrollable at all. It responds. It listens. It waits.

For me.

The want that blooms from that understanding is dark and aching, because it's not the want to be touched, but the want to keep him exactly where he is, all that heat and power and violence compressed under will alone.

He wants to hit me. I know it with the same certainty that I know the angles of the ice, and that knowledge should alarm me, should send me retreating. Instead, it brings with it a clarity, because I understand – instinctively, undeniably – that it wouldn't be about violence at all.

It would be about him needing his hands on something, anything, to give the pressure somewhere to go. And the fact that I'm the object of that need makes my pulse tighten in a way that has nothing to do with fear.

I should move.

That's the correct response, the one that would return this moment to something manageable. But I stay where I am, letting him feel my continued presence, letting him register that I'm choosing not to give him what his body is begging for.

The power of that choice is dizzying.

When I finally step forward, angling past him with deliberate control, I tell myself that motion will end this, that distance will restore order.

My shoulder brushes his bare chest.

The contact is brief and devastating, and his reaction is immediate and absolute, his body going utterly still, not resisting, but freezing in a way that tells me something deep and instinctive has been struck.

Behind me, I hear him inhale sharply, and when he speaks again, it's quieter, almost involuntary.

“Jesus,” he breathes.

The word follows me down the hall.

I walk away composed, every visible line of control intact, even as something aching coils tighter inside me, because the most unsettling thing for me isn't the confusion that follows – it's the understanding that Cal's power isn't uncontrollable at all. It wants direction, it responds to restraint, and under the right kind of pressure, under the right refusal...

...I could have him exactly where I want him.

What lands, cold and final, is the realization that this has been happening all along. That his power has been learning me ever since we met – my stillness, my refusal, my control – and that somehow, over ten years of pressure and denial, it's learned to wait for me.

Just me.