Todos os capítulos de The Pucking Ice King : Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

I spent the entire morning flight staring blankly out the scratched window, my jaw clamped so tight my teeth ached. The weekend was supposed to be a fragile, stolen taste of freedom but he had ruined it. I came straight from O'Hare to the arena, still wearing the wrinkled dress from yesterday. My body ached. My head throbbed with a vicious, blinding migraine. Every single muscle in my back was locked in a state of chronic tension that never truly left me anymore. The media circus started the exact second I stepped through the staff doors. “Logan wants to put the incident behind him.” That was the clinical, rehearsed lie I repeated to every reporter shoved into my face. “He is entirely focused on the upcoming playoffs now. The legal matters have been resolved privately.” Money and the McAllister name had taken care of the two victims; a massive settlement and a quiet, terrifying threat of retaliation had ensured no charges would be filed. I smiled politely for the flashing

The soft, chime of the private elevator echoed through the penthouse at exactly six in the evening. My heart seized instantly, a violent spike of adrenaline flooding my veins. I stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows, the cream-colored knit dress I had chosen from the closet hugging my skin. Logan had been gone for hours at his mandatory practice, leaving me alone with the crushing weight of my new perimeter. I had spent the afternoon telling myself to play the part,the perfect submissive But the moment the heavy elevator doors slid open and Logan stepped into the foyer, the air in the room turned completely freezing. He had his gym bag slung over a broad shoulder, his ink-black hair still damp from the team showers. He looked massive, exhausted, and terrifyingly dominant. His slate-grey eyes instantly locked onto me. I tried to force a soft, compliant smile onto my face. I tried to take a steps forward to welcome him like a good girl. But as his gaze dragged over my jaw—w

The silence of a completely empty house is supposed to feel peaceful, but inside the penthouse, it felt heavy. Suffocating. It was the kind of quiet that pressed against my eardrums until I could hear the erratic, frantic thudding of my own heart. He was gone. For the next seven hours, I was completely alone. The first thing I did wasn't reasonable or was it smart. I just walked back into the kitchen, leaned my forehead against the cool, stainless-steel front of the refrigerator, and let my knees give out. I slid down to the floor, pulling my robe tight around myself, and just let the tears come. It was a raw, ugly, snotty sob that made my chest heave until it physically hurt. I cried because my life had been hijacked by a lunatic who weighed two hundred and twenty pounds of pure muscle, and I was entirely powerless to push him off me when the lights went out. But most of all, I cried because of the sick, oily layer of shame coating my ribs. My mind loathed Logan McAll

The transition from a prisoner to a spy requires a rearrangement of your own mind. You have to take the emotions that make you human—the raw, suffocating terror, the knee-jerk instinct to scream, the deep, oily layer of shame—and compress them until they form a stone-hard wall. Behind that wall, you watch and wait. By Wednesday afternoon, I had gotten exceptionally good at building that wall. I sat on the white leather sofa, the expensive Chopin book resting open on my lap.I was staring at the heavy, dark oak door of Logan’s home office down the hall. He had been in there for almost an hour, his low, rumbling baritone bleeding through the wood as he argued with his agent and the Tigers’ front office about a mandatory PR statement regarding his "extended personal leave." “The narrative is locked, Marcus,”I heard him growl, his voice sharp enough to pierce the classical melody I was pretending to study. “Rhea’s health comes first. The league handles the press, or I don't skate

The human brain can process an entire lifetime of terror in the span of a single heartbeat. Standing in the freezing darkness of the hallway, the blinding red glow of the security pad washed over me like fresh blood. My heart slammed against my ribs so violently I could feel the pulse hammering in my fingertips. Two feet away from me, Logan loomed like an executioner, his bare chest rising and falling in slow, heavy contractions, his gray eyes completely unreadable, and totally lethal. INVALID CODE. AUTHORIZATION DENIED. The words on the screen glared between us, an indictment of my treason. “Rhea,” his voice was a low, gravelly vibration that crawled down my spine. “What are you doing out of bed?” My mental wall had been pulverized, but the survival instinct that had kept me alive this long didn't care about my panic. It demanded something . It demanded a lie so flawless, so perfectly tailored to his massive, dark ego, that it would override the flashing red evidence star