TWENTY-FOUR
Vadim shook hands with Lenny, the Rebels’ HQ head of security.
“Sorry ’bout this, Mr. Petrov. I could have called Ms. Chase or Mr. Moretti, but I figured you might be the best person to handle it, seeing as how you’re no stranger to night skates yourself.”
“You did the right thing.”
Lenny shuffled alongside Vadim as he headed toward the practice rink.
“I thought about shutting the lights out, force the issue, so to speak, but I didn’t want her to have an accident. She wouldn’t listen to me when I told her she should take it easy and come off the ice.”
That sounded like Isobel. “How long?”
“Going on ninety minutes now.”
Vadim mentally kicked himself. After the fund-raiser, she had disappeared, not even telling Violet where she had gone. No answers to his texts, either.
That video.
He should have known when he couldn’t find her that she would come here. The rink was her cathedral, the ice her touchstone. It was where she would always return.
But ninety minutes? That was more than any set of legs, even those of a powerhouse like Isobel Chase, could endure.
“I will take care of it, Lenny. Thank you.”
“All right, Mr. Petrov.” Lenny turned and walked back to his post near the entrance.
Should Vadim go back and grab skates from the equipment room? Deciding against it, he continued to rinkside, the sound of ice being crisscrossed and shredded getting louder with each step.
His heart stuttered, stalled, and crashed at the sight before him.
Bella on the ice, the green fabric of that sexy dress flapping behind her. Her dark hair flew like the wind, her silhouette that of a Valkyrie as she corralled the puck and shot it into the net.
But even a Valkyrie needed armor. On her body, no pads. On her head, no helmet.
Fury reared up in his blood, chasing away his admiration. If she fell and struck her skull—that would not happen.
“Isobel!”
She spun on her blades to face him, a glare already daggered his way. Then she pivoted and skated back to the center, where she had lined up several pucks.
Fine. He would play her game.
Two minutes later, he was out on the ice. He’d left his jacket and tie behind and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Skating in suit pants and a dress shirt felt odd, but maybe the moment deserved oddness. He would give her this.
And then he would put her over his knee and give her the spanking she deserved.
“Ready?” he asked, thrusting a helmet toward her. A foolish question. This woman was born ready. She was the daughter of greatness, the child of Clifford Chase’s destiny.
“I don’t need that.”
“Then I will be forced to take it easy on you. No checks. Hockey for toddlers.”
Growling, she grabbed the helmet and forced it over her head. He grasped the chin straps, absorbing her ire while he took care of securing her safety. As soon as it was tight, she shoved him in the chest.
“Don’t spare me.”
“Never.”
It took him a few minutes to catch up, to warm to the rhythm of the ice. The rhythm of her. His clothes restricted his movement and he would not be surprised if his pants split right down the center on his first lunge. Perhaps that’s why she was able to whip the puck away from him twice in a row.
“Come on, Russian, you’re going easy on me.” The words were a tease, the tone was disgust.
She floated the puck in front of him, inviting him to slap at it. Instead he circled so he hovered behind her, a predatory move.
“It is colder than I expected,” he said against her ear.
“You’ve gotten soft since you moved to the NHL. What would your countrymen think of poor little Vadim who can’t handle a little chill?”
“They would think I should find a woman to warm me.”
She turned and passed the puck to him. “Try to score.”
He moved until he was close enough to kiss her. The temptation was almost unbearable, but he resisted. “Try to stop me.” Then he struck the puck so it hit the board behind the net and ricocheted back.
The next ten minutes were spent in a game of wits and hits. He was careful not to check too hard. She didn’t give him the same consideration.
At the third slam of his body into the Plexi—and der’mo, he did not enjoy playing without padding—he dropped his stick and flipped their positions. Covering her body with his, he held her securely against the plastic.
Skating with her turned him on. Isobel had always excited him, but watching her talent as she danced rings around him, the balletic ice moves of a master—this made him feel alive. And with that life, that zest spiking his blood, he knew he was back to where he had started.
In love with Isobel Chase.
Had he ever not been in love with her? He could barely remember a time he did not want her. Did not need her. Did not adore her with every part of his body and soul.
“Why are you here, Bella?”
“On this earth?”
“Tell me.”
Her eyes flamed behind her mask and he released the strap, pulling it off her head. He needed to see her properly. See her pain. He lifted her chin to look her in the eye.
“Lindhoff called. I didn’t make Team USA.”
He stared hard at her, stripping her more bare than that phone call two hours ago. Coach had called while she was in the bathroom at the Drake, where she’d holed up so she wouldn’t be tempted to raise a hand when some Lincoln Park socialite made a bid for Vadim during the dumb auction.
She shouldn’t have answered the phone. She should have let it go to voice mail, so she would have one more night of hope.
“What did he say?” Vadim’s tone was careful. Of course it was; he was dealing with a time bomb.
“What you said. What everyone has been saying. He was clear this wasn’t an indictment of my talent.” The words were choked out, dripping with bitter understanding of the position Lindhoff was in. “But he ran it by the lawyers, and they can’t risk the liability. One minute winning gold, the next their center bleeding out on the ice. Think of the optics.”
She dropped her stick, the clatter of it against the ice loud and final. It was over. She was done.
“Bella,” he whispered, his voice soft with pity she neither needed nor wanted.
She pushed him away, but he crowded her back, all brute Russian strength. His power mocked her weakness. His health scorned her failure. Nothing was stopping him from reaching the pinnacle of his sport. Their sport.
She shouldn’t begrudge him, but she did. Oh, how she did.
“And now you are here, unleashing your fury on these poor defenseless pucks.” He gave a half grin at that, but she couldn’t see the humor in it. Not yet.
His fingers tunneled into her hair, and he traced his warm lips along her jaw, her cheek, her hairline. Giving him permission, she turned her head slightly, anxious to get it over with. He smudged his thumb over the raised ridge of flesh, his eyes riveted to the path his thumb took.
“You have your trophy, Bella.”
This scar? She made a noise between horror and sadness. “Thirty-seven minutes. That’s what I got.”
“Most men never accomplish in a lifetime what you did in those precious minutes.” He cupped her jaw and held her in place while his lips moved over the physically healed wound. “You fought well, my angel.”
“Did—did you see it? The game?” She shouldn’t ask, but she had to know.
Sadness dimmed his eyes. “I saw it. Your goals were beautiful, your skating sublime. There was nothing you could not do on the ice.”
Her chest constricted on hearing his compliments. Was this what she wanted, fishing for praise just as she had with her father all those years ago? Yet Vadim’s words chilled her—they were all past tense. She would never achieve those heights again.
She must have drawn back, for he pulled her close to him, his eyes ripping her heart open until it was butterflied and bleeding.
“I know that you are trying to find your place again, Bella. That since your injury, you’re not sure where you fit in.”
“Hockey was my life for so long, and I can’t imagine it not being my—my everything. That’s why this shot at the Games meant so much. Otherwise, all I’ve got is coaching and—it’s hard, Vadim. It’s hard trying to get respect, and I’m really not helping my case by fooling around with you.”
“Fooling around? Is that what this is?”
“What would you call it?”
“It is what we are meant to do. We are who we are meant to be, and I want this with you.”
It sounded like Russian doublespeak. She didn’t understand it, but she knew it scared her. Was she trying to sabotage her coaching career by messing around with Vadim? But if she didn’t have that, who was she?
Not a hockey player. Not a coach. With Vadim—if that’s what he wanted, if she could stop being a jealous shrew about his star-bright career and the sexting hordes—she’d be a WAG. A player wife or girlfriend.
“I don’t know who I am without hockey, Vadim.” And a WAG is not enough.
He circled her neck with his hand, his chest flush with hers, his heart beating hard against hers. “You are Bella. The girl who can do anything. The woman who drives me crazy. There is plenty for you to be.” He kissed her, and after a soft press, she kissed harder, then pushed him away, scooping up her stick as she went. But not her helmet.
She didn’t want to be the woman who drove him crazy. She didn’t want to be defined in relation to a superstar, because as soon as that happened, she would slip away into the shadows as Vadim Petrov’s woman. Surely she was more than that.
“Bella,” he said, resignation in his voice. Tired of her drama, no doubt.
She raced to the end of the rink, sliding a loose puck into the empty net with ease, but her skate caught on the goal frame and she fell to the ice.
He was on her instantly, down on his knees.
“Isobel!”
“I’m okay,” she whispered, but her tears contradicted her desperate assurance. That womanly weakness her father despised.
“This stops now. You have been on the ice for long enough.” He stood and held out his hand.
She hesitated, but then she allowed herself to be pulled up. To be supported.
The notion made her ill.
Back in the locker room, he placed her on the bench and knelt before her to unlace her skates.
“We were like figure skaters out there,” he murmured, evidently trying to make light of what had come before. “In our sparkling costumes.”
She inhaled a deep breath, though her lungs seemed incapable of filling. “What would you do if you couldn’t play hockey, Vad?”
He stopped unlacing and considered her question.
“I would take more naps and drink more tea.”
He grinned at her, and she grinned back, suspecting she looked like a funhouse mirror version of herself. But his smile? It was like this rare outbreak of spring sun after a long, hard winter, and unfortunately it wasn’t only her hormones that skipped in delight.
Bella, I am here. Wake up.
Yes, my love, you are.
She inhaled a sharp, cutting breath, barely able to cope with the shocking recognition.
She was in love with Vadim.
Oblivious to her distress, he kept on smiling, that devastating, soul-destroying grin. It was either cry her eyes out or punch his perfect jaw or—she bent down to taste him. To absorb his life force and beauty into her blood. His hands fell away from her skates and crawled up her legs, plotting his way to the heart of her.
Bastard.
His mouth on hers was the only thing keeping her grounded in this world, but she didn’t want the security his strength would give her. She didn’t want the love. She wanted the danger.
She couldn’t have hockey, but tonight she could have him.
With a shaking finger, she traced his perfect cheekbones, ran her thumb over the seam of his lips. She’d fallen for him in a way that was a million times worse than all those years ago. Then, her future was mapped out, and no man—not even the destined-for-greatness Vadim Petrov—would stand in her way. Now her future was uncertain, and this man on his knees before her was either her port in the storm or the rocks she would happily dash herself against.
She loved him.
She hated herself for it.
And in this sublime moment of realization, something else struck her. “My ass is cold.”
He blinked. “Your ass?”
“You took my panties, remember?”
“You were skating for over an hour with no panties?”
She pushed him back and slipped from the bench to straddle him.
“Either you give them back or you figure out another way to warm my ass.”
“I refuse to return what belongs to me. I have many dirty fantasies designed around them.” He pushed his hands up her thighs to cup her chilly rear. “I shall take care of this problem of yours if you take care of this problem of mine.” He slid her flush over his problem.
She moaned softly on coming into contact with his erection, pushing against her slick softness through his pants. “Have you ever fucked with skates on, Russian?”
“It has never seemed wise.”
“Let’s live dangerously, shall we?”
Never removing her eyes from him, she unzipped him slowly—a tough job given how much resistance his dick was putting up. With determined hands and his help, she pulled his boxers down to free him.
She tilted her head, left, then right, taking him in like a centerfold. “You’re so beautiful, Vadim. So perfect.”
“Only when I am inside you. Don’t leave me waiting, Bella. I am cold, too.” He lifted her, spreading her ass cheeks and parting her with his thumbs. She shivered wonderfully as he stroked through her wetness.
“Condom,” she murmured. Her hand patted his pocket and he obliged with his wallet and the rubber.
“Before the next time, we will discuss this,” he said. “Skin on skin. I want that.”
It might happen, if she could survive this moment with her sanity intact.
“Next time,” she said as she slipped her body over his like a glove.
In keeping with the location, her mood, the proximity to dangerous weapons on their feet, it should have been frenzied and urgent. So why did it feel like a dream? Possibly because she was trying to hold on to the essence of herself.
She closed her eyes against the intensity waving off him, but he was having none of that. Beneath her, he shifted his body up and closer. His hand palmed her neck.
“Do not hide from me, Bella,” he whispered, his breath a warm wisp of entreaty.
Her eyes fluttered open to find him smiling at her. That damn smile. The hand at her nape shifted, and his thumb swiped at her cheek, coming away damp.
Oh, God, she was crying. During sex!
She jerked back from him, intending to separate altogether. He already had her heart. Anything more was far too selfish of him.
Still, the tears fell. He sopped them up with his thumb and put that thumb in his mouth, just like that night in New York when he had tasted her pleasure. Now he got to taste her pain.
“Yes, my beautiful girl. I see all of you now.”
He pushed her dress—this stupid dress she’d worn because she wanted to look pretty for him—up above her waist.
“Take everything you need from me, Bella.”
Dreams abandoned, she thudded to the reality of now. The pain, the pleasure, Vadim. Only and always. This she could control, and so she moved up and down, sliding along that hard length, marveling at his power to hold himself and fuck up into her with long, liquid pulls. They found a rhythm that rhymed, a tempo that teased, a pleasure that knew no beginning or end.
They found each other—but a part of her knew she was forever lost.