Daddy expected great things from me…right? That’s why he’d made certain I had every opportunity, had been sent to the best schools and given the best tutors and etiquette coaches and debutante balls.
He wanted perfection from me, so I could makehimlook perfect.
Right?
I chewed my lip. Daddy was in his office here at the ice complex today, but suddenly, I didn’t have the bravery to face him. I turned on one of my stiletto heels and hurried down the hall.
When I found myself outside the door to the upper stands of the larger rink, I hesitated. The Terrors hadn’t begun their regular practice season yet, but I knew most of the guys would be in there scrimmaging, keeping their skills sharp.
I took a deep breath, and before I could stop myself, pulled open the door and slid inside, perching primly in my heels and skirt on the edge of one of the bleachers.
Maybe it would have been easier if I’d told myself I was just there to study Kardok’s skating style, or natural movement or something.
But apparently, even in the deepest part of my mind, I wasn’t ready to lie to myself. Not about this.
I gripped my notebook to my chest and watched, wide-eyed, the players below.
Because this wasn’t careful, cooperative Kardok, the one who showed up at four o’clock and held my hands and tried—with great concentrated effort—to relax his knees.
This was theotherKardok, the original. The one whose poster hung in the hallway downstairs, which I’d looked at far too many times before eventually printing one of my own and hiding it behind my costume closet door.
He wasmagnificent.
Loud, physical, exuberant—he crashed into opponents and bounced off laughing, trash-talking in what sounded like two languages, occasionally letting out a sound—ahowl—that was less human and more apex predator when he made a particularly vicious play. His teammates gave back as good as they got, and the whole rink was alive with it, the violence and joy of orcs doing what they were built to do.
I was gripping the bleacher with both hands.
Daddy was right; the Orc Hockey League had knownexactly what they were doing when they’d signed the Terrors.
I knew this feeling. I’d felt it watching Kardok on screen for the last few seasons, while wearing my turquoise pajamas and throwing popcorn at the television. I felt it every time he turned to the glass and did that thing with his tongue and the entire female section of the arena collectively wet their panties.
Breathless.
That was the word for it.
He was wild and wicked and absolutely, completely himself, and every controlled, considerate thing I’d told myself about keeping this professional dissolved somewhere around the second line change.
I shifted on the bleacher.
Right.
Because the inconvenient truth—the one I’d been addressing with some regularity and a certain bedside drawer appliance—was that watching Kardok beKardokdid things to me that I had absolutely no business feeling while sitting in a public facility in a pencil skirt.
I pressed my notebook to my heart and tried to remember my own name.
And then Kardok…stopped.
Not gradually, the way a skater slows at the end of a drill. He just—skidded to a stop, in the middle of a line change, in the middle of the play, one skate scraping against the ice.
His head jerked up.
He turned…
He looked directly at me.
Not in the direction of the upper tier, not scanning the bleachers.At me.
As if he’d known precisely where to look, as if I’d been lit up somehow. The distance between us was significant—I was tucked into the shadow of the upper stands, well back from the railing—and yet those dark eyes found mine without a moment’s searching.
