Page 9 of Cold as Ice

Their goals would go way down, and the line—and the team—would suffer, and Coach would shift things around again, removing Elliott from the first line and reducing the thorn in Mal’s side.

That had not happened.

Elliott had another speed during a game and an instinct for the puck that Mal hated but couldn’t denycouldbe effective. Their line had scored lots of goals already and seemed to get better every week.

Of course he’d never actually admit that out loud.

“Hey, guys.” A pause and Mal looked up and there he was. No trace of guilt or shame on his face. A hickey on his neck and what looked to be beard burn disappearing under the collar of his T-shirt. “Malcolm.”

His voice was pointed. Insolent.

Like he was rubbing his face in the fact that he’d just had sex.

He doesn’t know. He can’t know. Nobody knows.

But Mal knew, and as much as he tried to pretend it didn’t matter, it was eating him up from the inside out.

“Where have you been?” Mal demanded even though he really didn’t want to know.

Elliott dumped his bag in front of his locker and pulled off his T-shirt.

“Here and there. Doing some stuff,” Elliott said, shooting Mal a glance that, if he’d given it to anyone else, Mal would believe was flirtatious.

But it wasn’t. It was a taunt. Not a flirtation.

There had been no overt flirtations, not after the first time he’d shut Elliott down, which only proved that he’d been right about him.

Mal forced himself to look at Elliott’s face. Not the undeniable flush of beard burn leading all the way down his bare chest.

“Oh, yeah,” Brody said, laughing behind Mal. “Doing somestuff, huh?”

It was possible Elliott’s deliberate taunting was forhisbenefit, because this wasElliott, but why would he? Mal had just been one of dozens—maybe even hundreds at this point—of guys Elliott had hit on during his time at Portland.

He hardly seemed to be carrying a torch for him, and besides that would be ridiculous.

They’d had one almost-civil conversation and hundreds of non-civil ones.

Doesn’t stop you from looking at him.

No, it did not. But that was just an unfortunate accident of genetics which made Elliott so goddamn attractive Malcolm found it almost impossible to ignore the heat burning inside him every time he saw the guy.

“The stuff was pretty hot stuff, actually,” Elliott murmured.

He was looking at Mal again, like he was trying to get a rise out of him, and Mal looked away, feeling his temper spark inside him again.

“Next time,” he said, slapping his hand against Elliott’s bare chest. Ignoring, as much as he could, the firmness of it and the way his muscles tensed at his touch and the sparks that shot up his arm, “ignore the hot stuff and be on fucking time, okay?”

He stomped off towards the ice, pulling on his glove and wishing away the feel of Elliott’s skin.

Behind him, he heard Elliott say, “Who shit on his cornflakes this time?”

A round of laughter.

“You, always,” Brody said wryly.

Mal pushed himself hard, before practice even began, skating in hard lines back and forth on the ice, and by the time Elliott arrived with the team, his hair was damp and his face streaked with sweat.

“Trying to make the rest of us look bad?” Elliott commented between drills, wiping face down.

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