Page 21 of Puck Me Thrice
She stared at me. "What?"
"The bag can't absorb your emotion. I can." I moved to hold the heavy bag properly, positioning myself to brace against her hits. "Channel it. All of it. I can take it."
Mira looked at me for a long moment, then nodded.
She threw herself at the bag with renewed fury, and I held it steady, absorbing each impact while watching her work through grief and rage in the only way that made sense—through physical movement that her body understood.
When she finally stopped, gasping and exhausted, I was ready with the next suggestion.
"Let me teach you how to actually fight," I said. "Hockey style. How to use your small size as an advantage. You need to move through this. I'm offering a way to do that while also teaching you useful skills." I demonstrated a basic stance. "Come on."
The training session became progressively more physical, more intense. I taught her hockey fighting techniques, explaining how leverage mattered more than strength, how to use momentum against larger opponents, how to protect yourself while creating offensive opportunities.
We moved through positions that required trust and contact. I showed her how to drop her center of gravity to stay balanced, how to use an attacker's momentum against them, how to create space when someone was crowding her.
"Again," I said after she successfully executed a defensive maneuver. "Faster this time."
She was a quick study, her natural athleticism translating to combat training with surprising aptitude. Her body understood movement language, even when that language was violence instead of artistry.
We were both sweating, breathing hard, the physical exertion burning off her anger while creating a different kind of heat between us.
"Show me a full takedown," Mira said suddenly. "I want to understand the complete sequence."
I walked her through it slowly: the setup, the grip, the shift of weight that took someone to the ground. We practiced in slow motion, my hands on her hips adjusting her positioning, my body demonstrating the mechanics while trying to ignore how she fit against me.
"Try it full speed," I said.
Mira executed the technique perfectly, her smaller size actually helping as she used my momentum against me. I went down hard, my back hitting the mat with enough force to knock the air from my lungs.
And suddenly Mira was straddling my chest, breathing hard, her hands planted on my shoulders, our faces inches apart.
The sexual tension that had been building for weeks exploded.
My hands came up to her hips automatically, steadying her, my thumbs pressing against her hip bones through her athletic wear. Mira's eyes were dark, her breathing ragged from more than physical exertion. Neither of us moved to change our position.
The moment stretched, loaded with the terrifying inevitability of what was happening between us.
I lifted my head and kissed her. Not tentatively, not with questioning—with the kind of certainty that came from knowing something was exactly right despite being completely insane.
Mira kissed me back immediately, her hands sliding from my shoulders to my face, the kiss deepening with an intensity that made me forget every reason this was a terrible idea. She tasted like salt and fury and something sweetunderneath, her body fitting against mine like we were designed to connect this way.
No kiss had ever felt like this—like coming home and falling apart and being rebuilt all at once.
My hands slid from her hips to her back, pulling her closer, deepening the kiss until we were both gasping. Her fingers threaded through my hair, tugging slightly, and I made a sound that was definitely not appropriate for a team captain to be making in a public gymnasium.
The gymnasium door banged open with timing so catastrophically bad it would have been funny if I weren't currently making out with our housemate on the gym floor.
Blake and Logan stood frozen in the doorway, their expressions cycling through surprise, confusion, hurt, and something complicated that might have been jealousy or might have been longing or might have been both.
Mira scrambled off me with the grace of someone who'd spent their life recovering from falls, but her face was flushed and her lips were swollen and there was no way to pretend what we'd been doing was anything other than what it obviously was.
I sat up more slowly, my captain composure completely destroyed, my carefully maintained control in shambles.
The silence was deafening.
"So," Logan said finally, his voice carrying more hurt than his usual sarcasm. "This is happening?"
I could have made excuses. Could have apologized. Could have tried to minimize what had just occurred.
