Page 31 of Off-Ice Misconduct (Daddies of the League #8)

Ace lies there, mouth swollen, eyes wide, beautiful and wrecked from restraint, panting hard. As if being chastised like this really gets him going.

The ache leaves my cock, coiling behind my ribs instead. It’s deeper. Hungrier for something more. And the way Ace is looking at me…

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Cuz you’re hot, and you’re you,” he murmurs.

“Because I’m … me?”

“Yeah. You’re so commanding and fucking dominating. I love all this shit we do—the spanking, the punishment, the discipline. I just … love all the shit we do.”

He really does, doesn’t he? I should know that by now. But there’s still that echo chamber within me, telling me that no one could actually want what I am.

“I have one complaint, though,” he says.

“Do I look like a fucking suggestion box to you, McKinnon?” I say, but the corners of my lips twitch, fighting the smile.

I climb off him, rolling to the side, and distract myself from whatever he’s going to say by spreading my cum across his skin.

I’m not letting him shower. He can smell like me all day.

“You didn’t mark me up like you usually do. I’m worried you’re going soft on me because we’re, y’know, kind of a thing now.”

Kind of a thing?

My fingers freeze in my dirty work. I’m literally in the middle of marking him, just not with visible blemishes. “First of all, we’re not ‘kind of a thing’, McKinnon. If you don’t know you’re fucking mine by now, maybe I need to carve it into your arm.”

“If that’s what you think I need, carve away. Least I’ll have something,” he complains.

“Second, you still have hickeys on your neck.” I paint some of my cum over them while he continues to pout. That fucking pout. He can’t ever find out how much it affects me, or I’m done for.

“But they’re almost gone.”

As much as I’m trying to prove otherwise, McKinnon might be right. I have been soft in some ways, but doesn’t he know that if I have any softness at all, it’s only for him?

I sigh. “It’s better this way, baby.”

Please stop pouting—it’s short-circuiting my brain. He might have the power to get anything he wants out of me.

I have to at least try to resist.

There have been too many times he’s pulled out my baser instincts, tugged my careful constraint right from the tether I had it shackled to. But I didn’t have anything to lose then. Now I have everything to lose, and I have to fight harder.

I hear the sharp breath.

Then, impact.

Ace tackles me like it’s the third period of a playoff game. A full-bodied, unapologetic check that sends me back onto the mattress with a startled grunt.

“What the?—”

“I’m only obedient for you, Luke,” he growls.

“You’re a fucking brat.”

“An obedient brat,” he says.

It sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s accurate for him. He taunts and he toys and he plays, but when push comes to shove, he obeys Daddy, which is the perfect brat for me.

“It’s a fucking privilege you get. Don’t insult me by coddling me.

” He’s straddling me now, bare-chested, flushed, his eyes like two blue flames.

“You holding back is bullshit. It’s unnecessary.

I want everything. Y-You can’t show me what it’s like to have everything I didn’t know I wanted and then rip it away. ” His voice breaks.

I can’t stand it.

“Ace, I?—”

Whap!

His knuckles crack across my jaw. I’m a boxer, so I can take a hit, but he’s still gonna get it if he keeps it up.

“Not a porcelain doll, you fucking bitch.”

Whap!

Another hit.

He flashes that smug “fight-me” expression I’ve seen him use on the ice. But I won’t. If I punched Ace like he was punching me, he’d be out cold.

I’ll never do that to him.

“You haven’t done a damn thing that scares me.”

“Because I stop myself.”

His arm pulls back, ready to swing again, but this time I catch it, flipping him so fast he barely has time to brace, his brain doesn’t have time to register that I’ve taken the upper hand.

He doesn’t have time to notice that Daddy’s left the room.

I let the danger in, consuming it, becoming one with it until it’s mine to wield.

There’s no more warmth, no softness.

I pin him, one hand around his throat, breathing heavily.

Ace freezes, not afraid, just alert. Like an animal that knows it’s been hunted.

Because he senses it—senses he’s provoked something deep.

I feel like I’m watching him through a mask.

Like it’s not my hand around his throat or my still dripping cock pressed into his abs.

Distantly, my jaw aches with imprints from his knuckles.

“I want every single piece of you, princess,” I purr. “I want to make you cry and lick your tears, I want to spank your ass until it’s bruised and fuck your throat raw.”

“Yes. I want that, Luke,” he rasps. “Give me all of you.”

His breath saws out of him, ragged, and aroused. He’s … turned on. Maybe more fucking turned on than I’ve seen him yet—which is a statement. But it’s not the first time he’s told me he wants what I want.

What I am.

It’s just the first time I’m starting to believe it.

My hand’s still wrapped around his throat. His chest rises beneath me, ribs flexing. He licks his lips. Waiting. Holding stock still.

That’s when it slams into me. Like a cracked whip across my mind, sharp and sudden. The weight of control returns, brutal and uninvited, snapping me in half with it. The haze fractures, and I see us.

Ace, pinned. Me, hovering over him like a goddamn storm.

I drop his throat like it’s on fire.

My pulse roars in my ears, drowning out whatever sound I make when I stumble off him. The air feels thick. My skin too tight.

What the fuck did I just do?

Solid arms catch me from behind, pulling me back to the bed. Ace. It’s Ace. He’s still here. There’s a fumbling of limbs until I’ve got him held against me, haphazardly strewn across the bed, predator wrapped around his prey.

Yeah, he’s still here, and I don’t plan on letting him go. I want to give him what he wants—he won’t allow it to be any other way.

So, I’ve got to figure my shit out.

My gear bag lands with a heavy thud, in stark contrast to the silence of the empty gym. It smells like sweaty hockey player in here, but otherwise, there’s no evidence of their existence. Do they keep their frat house as clean as they do their sacred conditioning grounds?

I wrap my hands methodically, a ritual I learned from my first instructor.

It kept me grounded on the nights I didn’t want to fight and on the nights I did.

Once they’re wrapped, I flex and extend my fingers, checking them for durability.

They’ve taken a beating since I’ve arrived at this school, and they’re about to take another.

Thwack!

The heavy bag jolts under my fist, already swinging back to me, shaking the whole gym. And it begins.

The chain creaks, sweat burns my eyes, and pain so hot it burns laces through what’s left of the nerve endings in my knuckles. I hope I bleed. I want to bleed.

This is my meditation. And like with all meditation, things come to me. Visions, feelings, awakenings.

I see him—Uncle Jasper. His handsome face, with cruel eyes. His perpetual frown. Sometimes the man smiled, but it wasn’t often. More often, he was filled with bitterness and a vengeful devotion to success. His version of affection was blood and bruises. Winning no matter the cost.

The air stank of sweat, rubber mats, and the regret pouring off the man in the corner, clearly having stewed in it for most of his life. My hands were taped, knuckles bruised through the gauze. I was eighteen, and fucking exhausted, having already been through hours of Uncle’s grueling training.

“Wait,” Uncle Jasper said. “There’s one more.”

I still don’t know who that man was, or what brought him to Uncle Jasper’s dark basement gym, but he had no business being in a ring with me.

Even in my tired state. He was twice my age and half my size.

But if Uncle Jasper snapped his fingers, I’d crawl.

No questions asked. So, I got in the ring, and I hadn’t just beaten him, I’d destroyed him.

He lay crumpled in the ring, wheezing with a busted nose, searching for where he’d left his spirit, and scraping what was left of his pride off the canvas.

“You see that?” Uncle Jasper said. “That’s who you are.”

He wasn’t comparing me to the wreckage. The state of that man was the fruition of my values.

I was a breaker of men.

I shook my head. “I … no. I was just doing what you said.”

“I told you to get in the ring with him. I told you to win. I didn’t tell you to do that.”

His words could have been a reprimand, maybe even an expression of disgust, but his tone and his body language screamed pride. He smiled one of his rare, true smiles while I panicked on the inside.

Proud or disgusted? Was he proud or disgusted? I couldn’t tell. I could never tell.

My throat filled with shame, and my breaths came faster, because either way, he was right. He hadn’t told me to do that. I didn’t need to do that. The way I danced around that man … winning required little more than a few well-timed punches.

“I lost control.”

“No, Lucas.” He gripped the back of my neck, squeezing his hand like it was a leash. He dragged me to the stretch of mirrors across the gym walls and forced me to look.

Wild eyes. Hair like a windblown mess. Face glistening with sweat and blood. Teeth stained red from where I’d bitten through the man’s shoulder.

“I’m a monster,” I whispered as a tear slid down my cheek.

Jasper’s tone matched mine. “I know, kid. It’s beautiful. You’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You did this to me.”

“Had I that power, I’d make a million more of you. I didn’t make you, but I forged you. Embrace who you are, Lucas, just like I have.”