You’ve got this, Bea.
The room snapped back into focus as Alois was wrapping up, “…and I believe our time is up. We have a plane to catch.”
“Alois,” one young female reporter all the way in the back hollered, “any last thoughts for the game tonight in NY against the Otters?”
“All I can say is that the Frosthawks are ready for anything the Otters can throw at us.”
With that, Alois’s hand closed around mine, and he was pulling me out of my seat and off the stage as fast as my heels could keep up behind him. With stomping feet and huffing breaths, Alois led me straight into an office across the hall and locked the door.
After a few controlled breaths, while he pinched thebridge of his nose, Alois laid into me. “Stop answering things you don’t understand.”
“What?”
Alois took one large step, closing the distance enough that I had to tilt my head slightly to hold his gaze.
“You don’t guess in that room,” he growled. “Not about league discipline. Not about anything.”
My jaw tightened. “I wasn’t guessing.”
“You must have been.” The certainty in his voice hit harder than if he’d raised it.
“I answered based on standard protocol,” I shot back.
“It wasn’t accurate.”
Heat flared—sharp, immediate. Undeniable.
I took a small step forward before I could stop myself. Close enough to feel the heat of him. Close enough to see the exact shade of his eyes under the fluorescent light—cold blue, sharp, assessing.
“I had it handled,” I breathed, hating how thin my voice sounded.
“You didn’t.”
My chest rose on a sharper inhale. “And you think kissing me like that was saving me?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” he chuckled. “And you played your part very well.”
My cheeks flushed instantly, and I damned my body for any form of physical reaction. The satisfaction that danced in Alois’s gaze was not lost on me, forcing my blood to boil.
“You are a PR nightmare!” I yelled, getting up on my tiptoes in a futile attempt to meet his stare.
“You liked it, didn’t you?” The laugh that cracked out of his chest sent me into a rage.
“Don’t mistake any of this for chemistry. It’s strategy,” I hissed.
“If that’s strategy, why are you blushing?” His voice dropped into a gravelly huff as he wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me into his chiseled chest. “I thought we weren’t supposed to fall for any of the act.”
Pushing away from him was pointless. His grip held me in place, heat pressing into me as wrath and something far more dangerous tangled together. My breath caught—once, sharp and unsteady—betraying me in a way I could not afford.
I hated that my body leaned before my mind could stop it, that my hands instinctively pressed against his chest, not to shove him away, but to steady myself against the solid, unrelenting presence of him.
His gaze dropped to my mouth. That was all it took.
Something in the room shifted again, smaller this time, contained between us but no less volatile. The air felt tighter, heavier, like it was waiting to see which one of us would break first.
“Don’t,” I warned, though the word came out quieter than I intended.
“Don’t what?” he murmured, not loosening his grip.