Centuria Books · Man Advantage 5
Man Advantage 5 — Read the First Chapter
Henrik Varga and Niall Madigan are trying to beat each other bloody when three kittens tumble into an arena drainage trench.
Chapter 1
Bria Keane heard the first punch through two steel doors.
The hit came hard enough to shake dust from the loading-hall frame. A second blow followed. Then a skate blade scraped ice, a man cursed, and thirty college donors cheered from the far side of Lakefront Coliseum.
Bria checked the time on her phone. 12:43 a.m.
Her final vendor had left nine minutes ago. Her last paid bartender had taken the cash box to the office. The Wardens’ closed captain’s skate was meant to end at midnight, which proved that rich hockey players respected schedules as much as drunk freshmen respected white carpet.
She pushed through the first door.
The practice rink smelled of cut ice, wet wool, and blood.
Henrik Varga had Niall Madigan by the front of his practice jersey. Both men wore half their gear. Neither wore a helmet. Henrik’s left eyebrow had split beneath an old scar. Blood ran beside one pale gray eye and darkened his cheek. Niall’s lower lip had opened against his teeth. He grinned through the blood and drove his fist into Henrik’s ribs.
Henrik stood six feet seven in bare skates. The hit moved him one inch.
He answered with a right hand that snapped Niall’s head aside.
Bria stopped at the boards.
She had watched hockey fights from the event tunnel since freshman year. Most followed rules. Gloves fell. Two men grabbed cloth. Linesmen waited until balance failed. Pride spilled, the crowd got its blood, and the night moved on.
This was private.
Niall caught Henrik behind the neck and hauled him close enough to bite. Henrik shoved a forearm beneath Niall’s chin. Their faces met over blood and teeth. Rage held the shape of old knowledge.
Bria’s tired body woke all at once.
Both men were openly gay. Every sports desk in the league had covered that fact. Neither had ever named the other. They had spent four seasons on rival teams and left enough broken sticks between them to build a cabin.
Now Niall wore a Wardens practice jersey.
Henrik drove him into the gate.
The latch broke. Both men crashed through and struck the loading-hall wall. Niall hooked Henrik’s knee. Henrik fell against a steel pipe. The pipe gave a deep metal groan.
Bria knew that sound.
“Move.”
Neither man heard her.
Water punched through a split joint above their heads. The first sheet hit Henrik across the shoulders. He turned. Niall used the opening and landed another blow.
“Varga!” Bria shouted. “The pipe.”
Henrik looked up.
The joint tore free.
Black water burst across the hall. It rolled beneath stacked beer trays, knocked a mop bucket sideways, and carried strips of old cardboard toward the freight ramp. Bria ran for the red shutoff wheel beside the dock door.
The wheel held fast.
“Madigan, behind you.”
Niall spun and caught a falling rack before it struck her. The loaded shelf hit his back with a clang. He braced both forearms against it and shoved. Cases of plastic cups slid onto the floor.
Henrik reached Bria in three strides. He wrapped both hands around the shutoff wheel and turned. Rust cracked. The wheel moved halfway, stuck, then moved again beneath his grip.
The water slowed.
A thin cry rose beneath the freight ramp.
Bria froze with both hands on the wheel.
The cry came again. Higher this time.
“Kill the music,” she said.
Niall stared at her.
“There are animals down here. Kill the damn music.”
He pulled his phone and called the event booth. Henrik crouched beside the ramp. Water spread around his skates and carried a torn liquor label past his ankle.
The donor music stopped mid-beat.
Three small cries filled the loading hall.
Bria dropped to her knees beside Henrik. A steel service grate sat beneath the ramp, bent inward where a forklift had struck it years before. Soaked cardboard pressed against the bars. Two tiny paws clung to the lower edge.
“Kittens.” She put her face near the grate. “At least two.”
“Three,” Niall said behind her.
His voice had lost every trace of humor. He pointed toward the back corner. A gray-and-white face showed beneath a collapsed box flap. Water climbed around its chin.
Henrik gripped the grate.
“Bolts,” Bria said. “Four corners.”
He pulled anyway.
The steel bowed. His cut eyebrow sent a red drop into the water.
Niall wedged his fingers beside Henrik’s. They planted their skates against the wall and hauled together. The upper bolt tore loose. The lower corner held.
“Again,” Henrik said.
Niall looked at him. Blood shone on both men’s mouths.
They pulled.
The second bolt ripped from the concrete. The grate twisted outward with a shriek.
Bria pushed between their bodies before it hit the floor. She reached through the gap and caught the first kitten under its chest. Cream fur lay flat against a body no larger than her forearm.
Henrik took the kitten from her with both hands.
His palms could have covered the animal twice. He held it against his bare throat, tucked beneath his jaw, and bent his head as the kitten coughed water onto his jersey.
“Next,” he said.
Bria reached for the orange one. Sharp teeth closed over the edge of her thumb. The bite barely broke skin.
“Good,” she whispered. “Fight me.”
Niall took the orange kitten. It caught his jersey with every claw and climbed toward his injured mouth. He let it. His grin returned around the tiny body.
“Little bastard knows quality.”
The third kitten had stopped crying.
Bria flattened herself against the wet concrete. The gray-and-white body sat beyond her reach. Water pressed the box against its spine.
“I need six more inches.”
Henrik set the cream kitten inside his open gear bag. He dropped to one knee and seized the lower bar. Niall tucked the orange kitten into the same bag, then joined him.
They looked at each other over the twisted metal.
No hatred lived in that look. Hatred had less hunger.
“On three,” Bria said.
They pulled on one.
The last bolt snapped. Niall fell backward with the grate across his thighs. Henrik caught Bria around the waist before the rush of water shoved her beneath the ramp.
His forearm locked below her breasts. His wet chest covered her back.
“Reach,” he ordered.
Bria reached.
Her fingers closed around a cold belly. She drew the kitten free and turned inside Henrik’s hold. The gray-and-white kitten lay still in her palms.
“Towel.”
Niall tore off his practice jersey. He pressed the dry inner layer around the kitten while Bria rubbed its ribs with two fingers.
“Come on.” She cleared water from its nose. “You have two loud siblings. You don’t get to be the quiet one.”
The kitten coughed.
Niall made a rough sound behind his teeth.
The small body pulled in air and screamed.
Henrik’s arm tightened around Bria once. Then he released her.
Security reached the hall with towels and a plastic carrier. Bria checked each kitten’s mouth and gums. The orange one tried to climb out. The cream one shook inside Henrik’s hands. The gray-and-white kitten dug four claws into Niall’s torn jersey and refused to let go.
“Emergency vet,” Bria said. “Now.”
Henrik put the cream kitten in her arms.
Niall added the orange one.
Then he set the gray-and-white kitten on top of both.
Bria stared down at three wet faces.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you your cats,” Niall said.
“They are not my cats.”
Henrik stepped close. Water ran from his black hair. Blood had reached the corner of his mouth. At that distance, the captain looked less handsome than dangerous, which improved him.
“They answered you,” he said.
“They were drowning. They would have answered a chainsaw.”
“You heard them first.”
“That is how ears work.”
Niall took Bria’s phone from the back pocket of her jeans.
She shifted the kittens against her chest. “Give that back.”
He held the screen before her face. “Unlock it.”
“You were dropped on your head too often.”
“True. Unlock it.”
Henrik stood behind him, silent and bleeding. Two huge men blocked the loading door. Three kittens clung to Bria’s shirt. She had forty-seven dollars in her checking account until Monday and six unopened bottles of bottom-shelf vodka in the freezer upstairs.
Good sense suggested surrender.
Bria unlocked the phone.
Niall entered two numbers. Henrik took the phone and added a shared calendar invite titled KITTEN REPORTS.
“Eight each morning,” Henrik said. “Weight. Food. Water. Waste. One photograph of each.”
“Or?”
His pale gaze moved from the kittens to her mouth.
“We come check.”
Bria looked up at him. “You will do that anyway.”
Niall laughed. Henrik did not.
The gray-and-white kitten climbed beneath Bria’s chin. Tiny claws caught in her event shirt.
Henrik touched one wet paw with the side of his finger.
“Raise them well,” he said.
The order slid through her with more heat than the fight.
Bria tightened her hold on all three kittens. “Stop punching each other long enough to drive.”
For the first time that night, both men obeyed her.
Chapter 2
Henrik Varga carried one kitten into the emergency clinic and watched Bria carry two.
The unfair count bothered him.
Niall walked behind her with blood on his teeth and no shirt beneath his open coat. The orange kitten had rejected the carrier twice. It now rode inside Niall’s coat with its head above the zipper.
The scene should have looked absurd.
Henrik had spent nine months learning how little absurdity mattered when Niall stood near him.
The clinic nurse looked up at three wet kittens, two bleeding hockey players, and one woman in an event shirt that read ASK ME WHERE THE PARTY IS.
“Who needs treatment first?”
“The kittens,” all three said.
Bria gave Henrik a quick look.
The nurse led them into an exam room. Bria set the cream and gray kittens on a warmed pad. She stripped off her wet overshirt and wrapped it around the smallest one. Beneath it, her black tank top clung to a lean body and a narrow waist.
Henrik looked at the kitten.
Niall watched him look away.
The vet arrived with two assistants. Bria gave a clean report: trapped behind a loading grate, cold water exposure, one brief loss of response, likely eight weeks, no known owner. She named the rescue time to the minute.
The vet placed all three beneath warm air and began the exam.
Henrik stood beside the door. Niall took the chair and spread his legs across half the room. Bria stayed at the table until the cream kitten caught her finger.
“She has you,” the vet said.
“She has skin.”
“Do you plan to foster?”
Bria glanced at Henrik.
He kept his face still.
“Apparently I have been appointed,” she said.
Niall wiped blood from his lip. “By a unanimous vote.”
“Two men are not a voting body.”
“We are very large men.”
The vet hid a smile and scanned the kittens for chips. None appeared. She checked gums, lungs, bellies, ears, and eyes. The gray kitten needed oxygen for ten minutes. The other two tried to escape the warming box.
Henrik paid attention to each drug name and feeding mark. Bria did the same. Niall watched Bria.
Henrik had arranged the trade because Niall would never choose Chicago.
He had not arranged this.
The woman at the table wore cheap silver rings and a bruise on one knee. A club stamp marked the inside of her wrist from some event the night before. A close platinum pixie sharpened the clean line of her neck. Her gaze moved fast. It counted exits, staff, prices, and every time Henrik stepped closer.
He wanted to put his mouth below her ear.
He wanted Niall to watch.
Henrik had never wanted a woman. He had admired women. He had protected them, worked beside them, laughed with them, and turned down more offers than Niall would ever let him forget.
Bria Keane had shouted one word across the rink and made his body answer.
Niall rose from the chair.
“Bathroom,” he said.
He waited at the door.
Henrik followed him into the hall.
Niall caught Henrik’s coat and drove him against the wall. The clinic door clicked shut behind them.
“You fixed the trade.”
“Yes.”
Niall’s split lip drew tight. “Bell said the roster changed after your call.”