Her Man Advantage. Joanne Rock
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and weight rooms with little commentary, occasionally flipping light switches and nodding to the last few personnel in the building as they went home for the day. Could he make it any clearer that he didn’t want to be around her?
His behavior was a puzzle since she knew damn well he was attracted. The heat between them when he’d plucked her from the steel girders had sent her into a full-on meltdown, and she wasn’t a woman whose head turned easily. He’d even said he needed a chance to cool down when he finally released her. So he must have been overheated, too.
And resenting it, apparently.
Frustrated with him, with herself and with the way the day was going, she stopped in front of a poster of the team’s playmaker, Kyle Murphy. She needed to get to the bottom of this before she moved on. She couldn’t scout filming locations for the documentary series until she resolved the Axel dilemma.
“Axel?”
He’d outpaced her by about four miles down the long corridor. Well, at least twenty feet. He turned now, and peered back at her in the semidark vacated part of the building.
“Did I miss something?” His voice echoed a bit in the wide hall with decorative concrete floors polished to a high shine.
“Yes.”
She stared him down, willing him to come closer and not be so difficult. For some reason, she felt that if she could win him over to her cause, she could make this film project a success.
“Care to clue me in?” he said finally, not budging.
“Why are you trying to get rid of me?”
Even from twenty feet away, she could see the moment of guilt in his expression. And, while it wasn’t necessarily pleasant to have her suspicion confirmed, she appreciated that he had the grace to appear abashed over the fact.
“Am I going too fast?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t answer the question. Why are you trying to set a new land speed record?” She wished she had her Nikon in hand now, partially because it felt awkward to ask tough questions with no barrier between her and her subject.
Also because the camera would love this man.
She wanted to linger over the harsh angles of his face with her naked eye. Zoom in on the unusual scar that had to be the outline of a hockey puck under one cheek. Pan out for a long shot of his body to appreciate the way he dwarfed everything around him.
He really did clean up well. His brown hair was shorter than his Viking ancestors’, but he had the strong bone structure, which highlighted his magnetic blue eyes. Even without the hockey pads, his physique was extraordinary, a testament to the hours of work in the gym and on the ice. Constant skating, apparently, yielded a truly spectacular butt. She’d been following him around long enough to become familiar with the way the man filled out a pair of jeans.
Now he came toward her slowly, his feet erasing the space between them.
“Maybe I don’t like your idea for this movie.”
“TV documentary series,” she corrected automatically. “I gathered as much when you said that private lives don’t belong in a film about a sport.”
He paused a foot away from her. Looming.
“So focus on the training. The year-round preparation that goes into playing at this level. Why do you need to manufacture personal lives for athletes who dedicate all their time to hockey?” He leaned closer, as if he could impose his wishes on her through sheer will.
She sucked in a steadying breath and could almost taste the soap he’d used, the warm, clean scent of him filling her lungs and giving her nerve endings a private thrill. Her heart rate tripped into a staccato beat.
“Are you trying to intimidate me?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper given his proximity and her breathlessness.
“Of course not.” He stepped back a bit, though. “Just giving you my opinion. You asked, you know.”
“Yes, but when you proclaim it while hovering over me like that, I feel like you’re trying to eclipse me with your bigger presence.”
“I am the team enforcer,” he informed her, lowering his brows in a semiconvincing menace while flexing his arms. His chest. Actually, everything seemed to tighten and bulge at once.
“Which means … what? You’re going to duke it out with me over this film?” She couldn’t help a shiver of awareness at the he-man muscle show, perhaps a leftover genetic reflex from the days when women were driven to seek out strong men for protection’s sake.
Because surely she wasn’t the kind of woman to be swayed by something so earthy?
“Probably not,” he admitted, his expression clearing as his gaze did a slow sweep of her. “But as the Phantoms’ newly imported enforcer, my role is to be on the alert for threats to my teammates.”
“And you’ve decided I’m the threat?”
“Definitely.” His eyes zeroed in on her lips and her mouth went dry.
She shook her head, trying to deny it, but the movement felt slow. Leaden. Almost as if she didn’t want to say no to whatever it was they were talking about—she’d forgotten in the hypnotic lure of his proximity.
“Say what you want,” Axel said, coming closer again, within easy touching distance. “That look in your eyes right now is threatening the hell out of me. You might not know it, but I’m in big-time fight-or-flight mode this very minute standing next to you.”
Any possibility of breathing was gone. She’d probably start hyperventilating at any moment. Beside her, his chest rose and fell as if he was engaged in battle.
“That’s ironic,” she managed finally, her voice sounding far away and not like her own. “Because I can’t seem to move.”
His eyes widened a fraction before he narrowed his gaze. That battle he’d been waging? She suspected he’d decided the outcome.
“I tried to outrun you,” he reminded her, his voice a soft, minty breath. “You saw me try to avoid this.”
The gentle words chipped away at her defenses, surprising her with the note of stark honesty. She hadn’t seen where this was headed, but apparently he had.
The thought evaporated along with the rest of her brain waves when Axel stepped even closer, crowding her.
“I … um …” She wrestled with a sudden urge to fling her arms around his neck and kiss him until he was as breathless as she felt. “Maybe avoidance was a smarter policy than I gave it credit for.”
“You called. I came.” His last step backed her neatly into the wall.
Her heart beat faster. She swallowed hard.
“Sometimes I don’t know what’s best for me,” she managed, her throat dry as she became intensely aware of his chest mere inches from hers.
“That became apparent when you climbed the rafters.” He lifted a hand and she held her breath, wondering if he would hold her steady for the kiss she foolishly craved.
Instead, his fingers skimmed beneath her hair to encircle the back of her neck, one thumb resting on the pulse point at the base of her throat. Her neck had never been much of an erogenous zone, but the feel of his thumb softly stroking there struck her as more erotic than full-blown intimate encounters she’d had before.
She wasn’t sure if that spoke to how lacking her previous sensual experiences were or what talented hands Axel possessed. Either way, she soaked up the sensation and tried not to arch into him for more.
“Axel,” she murmured against the glide of his fingertips along her throat, her sensitive skin registering every callus.
“Mmm?” He never paused the seductive caress.
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