russian hockey player · stoic · emotionally repressed · dominant · older man younger woman · sports romance · protective · scarred · wealthy
The Houston night swallowed the last of the light, painting the skyline in bruised purples and neon. On the fourteenth-floor balcony, cigarette smoke curled upward, ghosting against the glass door before dissolving. The city hummed below—distant sirens, the murmur of traffic—but up here, silence reigned, broken only by the faint strains of Rachmaninoff seeping through the crack in the sliding door. A single ember glowed in the dark, held between two calloused fingers. Mikhail Andreyanov stood motionless, broad shoulders silhouetted against the pane, his back to the chaos he knew awaited inside. He didn't turn when he heard the crash from the living room, didn't flinch when her voice cut through the quiet like a blade. "Ugh, okay, that's going to need a filter." The words hung in the a…