He dragged his mouth from hers, traced the line of her jaw with his lips, teased the curve of her ear with his tongue. She fisted one hand around the edge of his jacket, dragged the other one down along the hard planes of his chest, the tautness of his stomach. Lower, past the supple leather of his belt, to the soft wool of his dress pants. Her hand curved over the hard length of his erection, her fingers tracing him from top to bottom. Touching. Stroking. Learning the feel of him.
He rocked his hips against her palm, his breath hot against her neck when he groaned, deep and low. Feral. Almost desperate.
Yes. This. All of this and more. So much more.
His hand closed around hers, holding it place for the space of several heartbeats. He groaned again, murmuring words she didn't understand before pulling her hand away.
Before stepping away himself.
He said something else, his voice thickly accented, the low words nothing more than a growl. She thought she heard foolish, followed by no. A chill wrapped around her, a chill that had nothing to do with the dark January night.
"Non. Not here. You must go." He glanced at something over her shoulder then looked back at her. The breath caught in her throat at the naked desire etched so plainly on his face, in his eyes.
"Go, ma cocotte. Before someone sees you."
She wanted to ask what he meant but he was already stepping around her, hiding her. No, not hiding—shielding. He gently nudged her in the back until she moved.
Deeper into the parking lot, away from the lights.
Away from him.
Away from the knot of people drifting out of the club.
Chapter Six
Something was going on. Tension filled the air, to the point that every single player and even the staff seemed edgy and irritable. Corbin could see it in the way everyone was looking over their shoulder, like they were just waiting for a sneak attack coming from an unknown predator. He could hear it in the too-loud jokes coming from a few of his teammates, in the sharp edge of Coach Donovan's voice every time he barked an order.
He could feel it, in the tight set of his own shoulders, in the stiffness of his body and the throbbing of his hand.
It had been like this for several hours, ever since the start of their morning meeting, and it was only getting worse with each passing minute out here on the ice. Donovan was pushing them, hard. The drills were becoming more demanding, angry shouts to do it again slicing through the air. Over and over. Harder. Faster.
Corbin's gaze slid across the ice to where Shane Masters and Caleb Johnson and Jaxon Miller were running through one more tortuous drill. Shane's nose was swollen, the flesh around his eyes dark and mottled. A small cut marred the swollen flesh of his upper lip. The man looked like he'd gone six brutal rounds with a heavyweight champion and failed to survive any of them.
Fuck. No wonder Corbin's fucking hand still throbbed.
Corbin flexed his hand, inwardly grimacing at the pull of broken flesh across bruised knuckles. He hadn't realized the damage he'd done, hadn't even felt the pain until later last night, after he'd been home for a few hours, tossing and turning in his cold, empty bed, unable to sleep.
Adrenaline and anger.
Confusion and desire.
Regret.
What the fuck had he been thinking, kissing Lori like that? What the fuck had she been thinking, letting him do it? The only reason he had stopped was because some inner warning had been ringing alarm bells in his head—and even then, it had taken every ounce of willpower to pull away. To grab her hand and move it from his throbbing cock when all he wanted to do was—
Something hit him in the shoulder, hard and stinging. He looked down, surprised to see a puck spinning at his feet. Brendan Hayes slid to a stop next to him, his face twisted in disgust.
"Christ, Gauthier. What the fuck? You're not even paying attention." He bent down and retrieved the puck, tossed it lightly in his hand as he looked over his shoulder then back at Corbin. "None of you are paying attention. What the fuck happened last night?"
Corbin rolled his shoulders and shook his head. Nothing happened last night—although he had wanted it to, with the desperation of a drowning man wanting air.
But that wasn't what Brendan meant, and he knew it. He wanted details, wanted to know what had happened between Corbin and Shane. Corbin had no intention of telling him—of telling anyone. The only way anyone would find out what happened is if Shane or Hunter ran their fucking mouths.
So far, the other men had been quiet.
Thank God for that, at least.
Which meant nothing. Everyone else knew something had happened. It was just a matter of time before the details came out. The tension was too thick, too sharp, for the incident to remain quiet for much longer.
Corbin didn't care about that. All he cared about was Lori—and keeping her name out of it. He could withstand any punishment Donovan meted out, didn't care about any rumor or innuendo that might make the rounds. Let them think what they wanted. Let them twist and warp it until a sensational story came out of it. He'd been on the receiving end of vicious rumors before and survived, he'd survive this as well. The only difference was that this time, he actually cared.
It didn't matter. He'd still survive.
As long as Lori wasn't involved.
A shrill whistle split the air, the sound long and loud, scraping down Corbin's spine until his flesh pebbled with anxiety. There was something different about this whistle blast, something almost sinister—
He pushed the helmet to the back of his head and looked over toward the bench. The coaching staff was huddled in a tight knot, their faces drawn and tense.
And angry. No, they were beyond angry.
Corbin's stomach clenched with dread as Coach Donovan blew the whistle again—and looked straight at him. The tension sharpened, tightened, threatening to crush him with its weight.
Fuck.
Donovan's dark gaze moved from Corbin to the other end of the ice. "Gauthier. Masters. Billings. With me. Now."
Fuck.
Corbin hesitated for only a fraction of a second then pushed away from the net, the weight of his gear threating to crush him. The tension grew heavier with each stride across the ice; the muscles in his legs tightened, threatening to cramp, threatening to topple him to the ice before he could make it to the bench.
He clenched his jaw, forced the dread away, reminded himself he didn't care. As long as Lori was left out of this, he didn't care.
He reached the bench the same time as Shane and Hunter, paused to give them both a silent warning. Could they see the hidden message in his cold stare? He thought that maybe Hunter did.
But not Shane. The man wasn't even looking at him.
They filed down the hallway, each step marked with a muted squeak as skate blades pushed against rubber. Donovan waited for them, his face dangerously red beneath his short beard. Next to him stood George McAdams, the Banners' GM, and another man Corbin had never met before.
Fuck. This couldn't be good.
A muscle jumped along the side of Donovan's face. He took in all three players with an arctic glare then turned into the locker room with the same intense focus of an executioner leading his prisoners to the gallows.
The men followed, gear clanking against gear, sticks banging against the walls with hollow thuds. Corbin dropped to one of the benches, his gaze never leaving the AV system that had been placed in the middle of the room.
Fuck.
The bottom of his stomach opened up, filling him with a blast of frigid dread. He looked over, saw identical expressions of dread on the faces of his teammates.
Fuck.
The deathly silence was finally broken when Donovan stabbed a remote and the television blared to life. Loud music and surprised shouts filled the air, the words unintelligible. Shane's image filled the screen, bent over as he clutched his face, blood streaming through his fingers. Hunter stood beside him, a stunned expression on his face. The camera pann
ed to the left and Corbin's face filled the screen, his eyes blazing fury. The image was just a little blurry, a little too grainy, but there was no mistaking the anger etched on his face.
Corbin held his breath, waiting to see a picture of Lori pop onto the screen. Wasn't it about this time that he had grabbed her and dragged her away? He couldn't be sure, but he thought so.
There was no picture of Lori. Instead, the image changed, another video taken from another angle. This one showed Hunter jerking Corbin away from a bent-over Shane. Blood. Fury.
Still no Lori.
Another video, another angle. Over and over, all of them focused on Shane's bloodied face and Corbin's furious expression. All of them except the last one.
The background was different, the sound a little clearer. Corbin's heart slammed into his chest, the force of it knocking the air from his lungs. This video was taken from just outside the club's front doors, facing the parking lot. The camera zoomed in on Corbin just as he lifted his head and turned to face the camera's owner. He moved his hand from the arm of the woman he had been kissing—a woman with darker blonde hair that fell just below her shoulders, with a sharply-angled face and a full mouth.
Not Lori.
Thank God, not Lori.
The television went black, an eerie silence filling the room. The vice around Corbin's lungs eased, allowing him to slowly pull in air. He uttered a small prayer of thanks that he had pushed Lori away, urged her to leave before anyone in the crowd started using their phone. Uttered a small prayer that a woman with a similar build and blonde hair had been standing right there. She had stepped closer, as if someone had jostled her, placed her hand on his chest. Then they had been kissing, just a surprised meeting of lips, nothing more. He still wasn't sure how it happened, if he had kissed her or if she had kissed him. It certainly wasn't the first time a woman he'd never met had kissed him, or vice versa. He hadn't cared, hadn't been thinking of anything except keeping attention away from Lori.
Corbin shifted the slightest bit. His gaze slid to the left, met the surprised looks of both Hunter and Shane. He shook his head, just the slightest motion, and turned back to face the trio of men watching them.
"Does someone want to fucking tell me what the fuck happened last night?" Donovan's voice was low, tightly controlled as his dark gaze scanned the three of them before landing on Corbin. He met the coach's glare straight-on, trying to decipher the cold expression in his eyes. Anger. Fury. Rage.
But there was something more than that. Something that almost looked like a twisted combination of disgust and disappointment.
Donovan finally broke the eye contact, his voice still tightly controlled but a little louder when he spoke. "None of you have a fucking thing to say?"
Corbin shifted, his gaze shooting toward Shane and Hunter for a quick second before darting to the front of the room. He focused on Donovan's shirt, on the ferocious eagle emblazoned on the front, above the team's name.
"It was a misunderstanding, eh? Just a lack of communication."
"A misunderstanding?" Donovan leaned forward, the color of his face deepening as he pointed to Shane's face. "That is a fucking misunderstanding?"
Shane shifted on the bench, cleared his throat and started to talk. "Coach, I—"
"This has gone fucking viral! Teammates fighting, drawing blood. Against each other! Do you have any idea what kind of fucking public relations nightmare this has caused?"
Corbin frowned. The coach's anger didn't make sense. It had been a minor altercation, nothing more. Certainly nothing that should have Donovan so angry.
And certainly nothing that required the presence of McAdams and the other unknown man.
"Coach, it's my fault." Shane's words cut through the growing tension, surprising Corbin. He exchanged a glance with the other man, held his breath when he kept talking. "I, uh, I said something inappropriate about...about Corbin's friend and he corrected me. That's all."
"Inappropriate? About his friend?" Coach Donovan stared at Shane long enough that the other man finally shifted and looked away. A muscle jumped in Coach's jaw. Once, twice. Then he turned to Corbin, fury dancing in his eyes. "Who's your friend?"
"I—" Corbin's mouth snapped shut, his brows lowering in a frown. Why the hell did Coach care? Did he suspect something? No, he couldn't—there hadn't been even a glimpse of Lori in any of the videos. "Nobody. Just a woman I met."
Not entirely true. Corbin had asked for her name, right before he apologized to her and offered her tickets to an upcoming game. She had simply offered him a bright smile then politely declined and went back inside and Corbin had left to return home.
"Just a woman you met?" Coach Donovan repeated the words in a low voice, advancing on Corbin one slow step at a time. "You don't know her?"
Corbin straightened, slid back on the bench. "I—no. I don't."
"Then let me tell you who she is." Donovan stopped less than a foot away, his voice dangerously low, his angry glare impaling Corbin. "Her name is Dawn Lowry. She's a friend of my niece. And she's claiming you assaulted her."
Chapter Seven
Bile rose in her stomach, burning the raw flesh of her throat as it fought for release. Lori closed her eyes, swallowed it back, forced herself to suck in a deep breath as she blindly reached for the bottle of water sitting on the corner of her desk. How long had she been fighting her body? How long had she been resisting the urge to lean over and empty the meager contents of her stomach into the closest trash bin?
Twenty-nine hours—ever since the videos had gone viral.
She ran a hand over her face and opened her eyes, her vision swimming as she stared at the screen in front of her. She didn't believe it. She couldn't. None of it made sense.
Yet the evidence was right there in front of her, in grainy video posted from someone's phone. Corbin, with his lips pressed against another woman's. Corbin, raising his head and staring into the camera, one corner of his mouth curled in something that could either be a grimace that might or a grin.
Corbin, offering a careless wave to the crowd before turning his back on them and leaning down to say something to the woman.
Saying something to Dawn Lowry, the friend she had taken to the club that night on the off-chance a few of the players might show up—because Dawn wanted to meet them. Because Dawn was a hockey fan.
Corbin...and Dawn Lowry—who was now claiming she had been assaulted.
A small groan made its way up Lori's throat, burning raw flesh before falling from lips dried and cracked from biting them. She replayed the video again, seeing the evidence for herself but not believing it.
Not wanting to believe it.
How many times had she watched it over the last twenty-nine hours? How many times had she pressed her hand against her knotted stomach, not wanting to believe what she was seeing? How could she not believe?
Because she couldn't. Corbin would never hurt anyone, would never assault a woman. She knew it. She knew him, knew he could never do something like that.
But there was the tiniest doubt in the back of her mind, reminding her she didn't really know him. It had been eight years since she last saw him. He had changed, become a little harder. Even by his own admission, he wasn't the same man he had been all those years ago.
But could he have changed that much?
Her gut told her no. Or was it her heart that was saying that? Was she being stupidly naive in wanting to believe he would never do something like that? Was she being nothing more than a pathetic cliché, like in that old country song that talked about standing by your man?
She didn't want to think so, but she couldn't completely discount the possibility—except her gut was screaming that was something off. Something wasn't right.
Yes, there was evidence of the kiss. That couldn't be discounted, not when Lori had seen it with her own eyes a hundred different times. But assault? There was something missing, a piece not being told.
And there was nobody she could talk to a
bout it.
Dawn had been evasive yesterday evening, almost smug when she told Lori that she wasn't discussing it, that her lawyer was handling everything. Not the police—her lawyer. Dawn wasn't pressing charges. At least, not yet. And Lori hadn't missed the glitter of satisfaction in her friend's eyes when she made that point.
She tried to push the suspicion from her mind, tried to tell herself she was reaching for an ulterior motive simply because she was being stupidly naive in wanting to believe Corbin couldn't do something like that. She didn't want to believe that Dawn was twisting this into something more, not when so many women were assaulted on a daily basis.
How well did she really know Dawn? Was she capable of doing something like that? They were neighbors, a little friendlier than casual acquaintances. They would occasionally go out together, but not very often because Lori wasn't as into the club scene as Dawn. Was she capable of making up a story like this?
Lori replayed the video, watching it again. This wasn't a made-up story, no matter how much she might wish it was. But was there more to it than the kiss that was caught on the screen? What had happened before the kiss? What was the camera not showing? She didn't know. Nobody knew except for Dawn, who was letting her lawyer speak for her, and Corbin—who wasn't speaking at all.
The team had issued a statement, a very generic one about supporting their player and reminding anyone who listened that there was always a presumption of innocence. As statements went, it was a total fail. Too generalized, too basic, nothing more than typical PR lip service. Corbin had been conspicuously absent, not available for any comment.
Not available at all.
And everyone else was under strict instructions to not comment or reply on any of the team's social media accounts. Lori knew it was standard procedure when something like this happened. Stay away from the negative. Don't respond. Don't comment. Ignore it.
Yeah, because ignoring it always meant it went away. That's why she'd had to turn off both work phones to stop the incessant noise from the never-ending alerts—because people were ignoring it. In the blink of an eye, attention had gone from the mostly overwhelming positive support of Shannon Wiley being put in as EBUG and winning the game two nights ago, to a virtual lynch mob out for Corbin's blood, ready to believe the worst.
Game Misconduct_A Baltimore Banners Hockey Romance Page 5
