EIGHTEEN
Vadim woke up to indescribable pleasure. Isobel’s hand was stroking his cock.
He turned his head, noting her dark lashes fanned over her cheekbones, her breathing steady and even. Still asleep, yet she pleasured him in her dreams?
This girl—this woman—had completely bewitched him. Had she any idea how sexy she was or how much he wanted her? Likely she credited this attraction between them to proximity. Coaching had thrown them together in a relationship that was pressurized and adversarial. Sex was a natural way to relieve the intensity.
So strange, when it appeared that he was barely a blip on her radar all those years ago. His trade to Chicago was not his choice, but he had embraced it, his curiosity about her almost overwhelming. Now he was here, and he was determined to see this through.
Isobel would be his.
Because there was no doubt he was hers.
She owned him with every stroke of his cock inside his sweatpants, not hard enough to be deliberate, but tantalizing enough to drive him wild. He wanted to wake her, to make her aware of her actions so she would take it to the next level. Hard, fast strokes that would hurl him over the edge. But he also wanted to stay in this twilight where Isobel didn’t realize he was about to tilt her world off its axis as she had done to his.
So he watched her, half in agony, as she continued to give him the comfort he refused to admit he needed.
A moment later, her eyes fluttered open. She flushed bright red. Her hand stopped moving.
“Hi,” she said, a shyness in her voice that warmed his chest.
“Hello.”
“Did you put my hand down your pants?”
“Do not be ashamed of your dreams, Isobel.”
She looked confused. “I thought I heard you say something when I was asleep. Telling me you were here, the same as in New York.” Shaking herself awake, she sat up, dragging her hand away from his cock, which twitched in misery. “It was just supposed to be a nap.”
“If it’s any consolation, my cock usually undergoes a vigorous workout during my naps. It’s nice to get an assist.”
“You should see how your sister is doing.”
“Ah, the perfect way to make my boner go away.” He stared at it. “Usually.”
She held up her palms. “Magic hands. Extra long-lasting boners even when sisters are mentioned.” She smiled. It destroyed him. “How about I go see if she’s okay? Keep your germ exposure at a minimum.”
A minute later, she returned. “She’s still asleep. Gordie Howe’s curled up on the end of her bed, watching over her.”
He hoped Alexei remembered to pick up food for the dumb dog. “Come here, Bella.”
“Think I’ll stay over here.” She moved to the window. “View’s much better.”
Yes, it was; Isobel framed against the white lunar landscape like an ice princess.
“You look cold,” he said.
“Then warm me up, Russian.” She didn’t even turn, so sure of her power over him. But hadn’t it always been this way?
Switching the afghan to his shoulders, he stalked toward her and covered her body with his, chin on her shoulder, the blanket shrouding them both.
“This place is going to look amazing in the summer,” she murmured. “All that impossible blue, but then you probably like the white. Reminds you of home.”
“I couldn’t wait to get out when I was a kid. Come to America, the whole cliché.”
She stiffened, and he wrapped his arms around her waist. “I was bitter at first, Isobel, but no more. And my father was as much to blame. We are where we are supposed to be.”
“I had no idea Cliff would do that. Mess with your visa. Blackball you in the league. I only found out later. He was always so worried I’d meet a boy and let him lead me astray. He didn’t have enough faith that I’d put my career first. As if I’d—” She broke off.
“As if you would’ve put hockey second to go moon-eyed over a boy? I knew that. I knew you.”
She relaxed. “But my father didn’t. It’s the model for how relationships in pro sports work. Everything revolves around the male player, not the other way around. He was used to women putting him first. His wives gave up everything, and to be honest, he didn’t give them a whole lot back. But I wanted to succeed in hockey more than anything and I wouldn’t have let a guy stand in my way.”
“So even if I’d stayed, visited you at Harvard, tried to make something of us, we were doomed?” He said it lightly, though his heart mourned the conclusion.
“Hockey was all I cared about. Sure, I liked you—I had a giant crush on you—but given the choice, you would have lost.”
“Of course I would. I couldn’t even satisfy you in bed.”
She laughed, her body rocking against his. “You’ve made up for it, Russian. But it wasn’t the right time.”
No. Clifford Chase, who didn’t trust his daughter to choose her first love—the holy trinity of a stick, a puck, and an ice oval—had decided to remove the temptation to the other side of the world. But the old man was dead, and his daughter was in Vadim’s arms where she belonged. Was it the right time now?
To stop himself from saying something stupid, he kissed her neck, held her tight.
“I’m sorry about how he treated you,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for you and that your chance to play here was delayed.”
“I made it back.” To you, his tricky heart finished. Was this what he’d been striving for all along? An open path back to Isobel Chase?
He wished she didn’t make him crazy and tie him up in knots. He wished he didn’t want to take care of her and snuggle with her on the sofa. He wished this feeling were merely lust.
But with Isobel, it had always been so much more.
Eager to unite his mental and physical needs, he crept a hand to the waistband of her tracksuit bottoms and broke the border. Down, down he inched, to paradise.
“Vad,” she moaned, and he heard encouragement that sent his hand deeper, his fingers parting and entering. All this wetness, all for him.
His mouth moved along her jaw, the shell of her ear, the delicate feathered wisps at her dark hairline. Beneath his lips, he felt the pinched skin of her healed scar. That night in Buffalo, he had thought he had lost her when an opponent’s skate sliced through her skull.
Never again.
Stroking through her slick heat, he caught her clit with his callused finger on each return. He knew what she liked now, a steady rhythm, a slow build, barely-there glances against her pleasure center so she wouldn’t go off too quickly.
He shoved her pants and underwear down, encouraging her to part her thighs and give him better access. It also gave his rock-hard cock, still confined in sweatpants, a home to nuzzle against. The cleft of her bare ass invited him to settle in and grind hard. He could come like this. So easy. So good.
But it would always be his Bella first. Her moans increased in volume, and she wrapped a palm around his neck to anchor herself. Her other hand shot out toward the window, and he reached for it and locked his fingers with hers. Needing to connect at every extremity. They were twined together, moving as one mass of heat and sex and pleasure. Who would have thought he would find so much satisfaction with his raging cock positioned outside his woman’s body?
Beyond the glass, the shadows of late afternoon stretched over the lake. Lace-frilled waves pounded the shore of his private beach, the wildness on the other side matching the passion on this one.
“Vad—yes, yes.”
As he couldn’t bury his cock inside her—condoms were in the bedroom—he used the next best thing: two fingers slipped inside just in time to feel the clamp of her muscles as she exploded in release. His cock continued to thrust, his hips flexing, his body demanding. Feeding his fingers into her mouth, he bit down on the sweet juncture where her neck met her shoulder, and she returned the favor with a clamp over his hand to muffle her cries.
Her pussy jerked around his fingers again. She still had more to give him!
“Moya!” Mine. A lusty suck on her neck soothed the sting. His Bella, so insatiable.
She was not the only one.
Her liquid pleasure flooded his hand and triggered a response that hadn’t occurred since Vadim was a schoolboy.
With a stifled roar, he came inside his pants.