Slowly, he did, and when my feet touched the ice, I heard Joshua yell, “That was better!” but I ignored him.
I ignoredeveryonebut Kardok, tipping my head back to look up at him.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “Logically, I know you’re strong, I know you’rethere. I’m just used to being in control of my body, and it’s difficult to throw myself out into nothing…”
To my surprise, he nodded as if that made perfect sense. Considering it made zero sense to me, I was impressed.
“In hockey,” he said, “when you drive toward the net, you commit. You put your body where it needs to be, and you trust your read of the play, and you trust your teammates to be where you expect them to be. It’s notcontrol, it’s part of being on a team.”
A team. Is that what we were?
He continued. “If you’re driving toward the goal and youslow down,you lose the shot. Or worse, someone gets hurt.” His hands hadn’t left my waist, and now I felt his fingers flex against me as he dipped his head slightly. “Princess, you have to trust me. You’re my partner, and I’ll always be there for you. As long as you want to show up, want to fully commit…I’ll be here.”
There it was.
I thought about all the times I’d watched him from the stands, from the television, from the upper tier of the practice rink with my unread notebook clutched to my chest. The way he threw himself into every play without hesitation.
The way his teammates trusted him to protect their left flank—because he always did.
Because he’d nevernotbeen there.
He’d been doing this the whole time. Committing. Showing up. Trusting the process and trusting his people, giving up control. The PR machine and the media had him tagged as some kind of out-of-controlbeast, but giving up control wasn’t the same aslosingcontrol.
Kardok didn’t have to manage himself carefully, because he knew he was part of a team, and trusted the team to know what needed to be done. Certainly, sometimes his primitive side came out in the middle of a game, but that was part of his charm, the reason the ladies loved him. He was fallible the way anyone was fallible.
Since he was still staring down at me, I dug my fingers into his forearms, feeling the strength and courage there. “I’m sorry,” I whispered yet again.
His grin was crooked, his tusks intriguing as always. “Don’t be. It’s stupid to demand you trust me just because I say you should trust me. Joshua’s going to make us do this four hundred more times, and eventually your body will learn to trust me to be here, even if your brain doesn’t.”
I matched his grin. “Oh yeah? You know what my body needs?”
It was supposed to have been a joke, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized what they sounded like. And the way his lids lowered slightly, his grin curling up on one side…oh God, hiswink?
“Probably know as well as you do, Princess.”
Was it possible he knew about my orc-shaped dildo? I felt a flood of liquid heat between my legs.
And from the way his nostrils flared, I knew he’d guessed.
Abruptly, I let go of him, pushing away, dropping my gaze to his chest, swallowing down the tomato instinct.
“Hey.”
Instinctively, I glanced up, and Kardok had removed all inuendo from his expression. Instead, he nodded encouragingly. “Only three hundred and ninety-nine times to go.”
I snorted in agreement and felt my shoulders relax.
“Just think of yourself as—” He hesitated, then shrugged. “I was going to say a puck, but I don’t think hockey-based metaphors are working here. Think of yourself as a weapon—an axe. You throw those, they go end-over-end, yeah? You’re the axe, I’m the target, and you don’t want to fall flat right before you get here.”
When he tapped his chest, I blinked.
“I’m not sure that metaphor’s any better, Kardok. I’ve never thrown an axe.”
He reared back as if I’d slapped him. “What? Really? I’m not talking about a traditional coming-of-age ceremony, Princess, I mean just one of those regular axe-throwing places. There’s one downtown, right beside my apartment building.”
I felt the laugh bubbling up inside of me. “I don’t know what you think I do in my spare time, but no, I’ve never been axe-throwing.”
His expression turned thunderous, and he pointed onelong green finger at me. “I went to theballet, Lila. It’s your turn to learn fromme.”
