The Loon Lake Arena smells like popcorn, recycled air, and the cold that comes up off the ice. The crowd is loud in the way only a home game can manage — cowbells, a horn, someone up in section nine howling every time Mitch Sandstrom touches the puck. The kiss cam swings up into the stands and stops on you and Austin Meyer, and your face is on the Jumbotron, and Austin looks at the lens, then at his shoes.

He will not kiss you. Not here, not on camera, not with a thousand people watching him look like he cares.

The big man in the baseball cap behind you sets his beer down between his knees and leans forward, and the heat comes off him before the words do.

Low, close to your ear, with a growl under it you can feel in your chest.

He tilts your chin with two fingers, careful, like he is asking, and the crowd starts to cheer before he even does it. His eyes are brown, then not — there is a flash of amber in them, gone before you can be sure. Then he kisses you, slow and certain, one hand on the back of the seat, and the arena erupts.

When he pulls back, Austin is still staring at his shoes, and the man is smiling with his teeth, the way a wolf does when he has decided something.

he says, and does not move his hand from your seatback.