FIVE
In the immediate wake of this revelation, a curious stillness descended over the table. Time stalled. Breath stopped. As if Vadim’s response was the only thing keeping the world itself from tipping over off its axis into outright hostilities. These men didn’t know him well, but even they must recognize that Shay was two seconds away from a skull-meets-beer-bottle situation.
“You know this because?”
“Straight from the horse’s mouth, Petrov.”
His stomach dropped to the planked floor. Isobel had shared this? That did not square with what he knew of her.
“You two are buddies now?” Ford asked incredulously.
Shay laughed, clearly pleased to have the table’s focus. He was a little man who needed attention and who would take it whatever way he could. Every fury-fueled cell in Vadim’s body was currently engaged in not ripping out Shay’s lungs.
“Nah, I was passing by her office and overheard her spilling the beans to Violet.” He leaned in, an ugly snarl on his lips. “You popped that cherry and left her hanging, man. Don’t they teach you how to satisfy ladies in Siberia? Or are they all too toasted on vodka to care?”
Vadim grabbed Shay’s shirt, a fistful that—judging by the man’s squeal—also included chest hair, and yanked him over the table. The shatter of glass provided a semisatisfying exclamation point, but true gratification would only come when Leon Shay was blinking at the last beats of his bloody heart as it lay on the floor outside his chest.
Unfortunately this pleasurable state of affairs would have to wait, as four hands restrained him to the point that he had to release his hold on Shay. A few seconds more, and Vadim was removed from Shay’s orbit and hauled toward the bar.
Cade held up a hand to the concerned bartender. “No trouble, we’ll pay for any damage.”
On Vadim’s other side, Erik let him go but ensured that his goaltender body mass kept Vadim close. He said, “We’re cool, yes?”
“No, we are not.”
“Think you might want to amend that statement,” Cade said.
“Why?”
“Because we like drinkin’ here, budski.”
They both stared at him, waiting for an answer.
He gave them the only one he could. “Shay and I need to talk.”
Cade grinned, all Texan ease. “Sure ya do. And we all need to avoid the tabloids and a night in lockup. Let’s think about how you might want to approach this, Vadster.”
Erik, as serious as Cade was lighthearted, nodded. “Think, Vadim.”
Vadim glanced over at the table, where a member of the bar staff was picking up the broken glass. Ford helped her, then raised an eyebrow in Vadim’s direction. Shay sat with arms folded over his chest, looking unfazed at the chaos he had created.
“I think I would like to beat him into an early grave.”
Cade winced. “Keep your passion for the game, Petrov, which you won’t be playin’ if you don’t cool your jets. So, let’s see where we’re at. Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“You and Isobel?”
Vadim growled. “This is no one’s business.”
The stares of his teammates continued.
Chyort! “Once, eight years ago, when we were teens, she and I—”
“Hold off on the details there. Now I’m guessin’ you don’t want this information out there in the ether, and as for Isobel—”
“Who is telling the world,” Vadim finished for him.
“Her sister,” Erik said.
With a big hand on Vadim’s shoulder, Cade turned him so he was no longer facing the table or Shay’s ugly face.
“You got any sisters, Vad?”
He thought of Mia. Beautiful, perfect Mia, who was equally as infuriating as Isobel Chase. “Yes, I have one. She’s difficult.”
“I’ll bet. So I’m guessing this sister of yours probably isn’t telling you all her deep, dark secrets, but it’s different when it’s sister-on-sister.”
Erik made a weird noise.
“Ah, hell, that’s not what I meant, Swede. Now, when a girl speaks to her sister, that’s like she’s writing a ‘dear diary’ entry. She’s not telling the world. She’s telling her best friend, or somethin’ close to it. So I wouldn’t equate a sisterly confidence with a post on her Facebook page. Now, she probably should have kept this girly chat for a bottle of vino and a pillow fight back at Chase Manor instead of sharing the deets in a drafty old office in the basement of Rebels HQ—”
Vadim turned, ready to tear Shay fifty new assholes, only to have Erik block his path as if Shay stood in the goalmouth. These D-men were impossible.
“But she didn’t,” Cade continued. “And if you do what you want to do to Shay, believe me when I say this will no longer be between a few buds in a bar, but it’ll be spreadin’ faster than a prairie wildfire with a tailwind. And while this will probably have very little impact on your day-to-day, you being the Czar of Pleasure and all, it won’t look so good for Isobel, especially considering the current situation vis-à-vis her employment aspirations.”
Vadim considered this, plucking the essentials from Cade’s circuitous reasoning. “She’ll be slut shamed.”
Cade finger pointed in the manner of a pistol. “Bingo, budski. Now I don’t know Isobel all that well, but I do know her sister Violet. She’s the kinda girl who could brush that off with a fuck-you-haters, but she’s not the Chase sister trying to get a foothold coaching men’s professional hockey. You want to make that harder on Isobel or you want to calm the fuck down and figure out a plan?”
Vadim was forced to admit the Texan was right. Rumors about a past—or current—relationship with a hockey player she was coaching would not make Isobel look good. Instinctively, he knew he could trust Cade and Erik. Ford, too.
That left Shay.
“I will be calm,” Vadim said in his fake-calmest voice.
The Swede asked, “Really?”
“Yes, I will be as calm as the Caspian Sea on a clear summer day.”
Cade looked to Erik for a translation and, satisfied with what he found there, took a few steps back. “After you.”
They returned to the table and sat again. The drinks had been replaced, the broken glass cleared away. No evidence remained of the burst of violence from a few moments ago, except for the tingle of tension tainting the air.
Shay smirked. “All right there, Petrov?”
Inside his chest, Vadim’s organs were playing musical chairs. He was unsure what would happen when the music stopped.
“I said—”
“I heard what you said.”
Shay’s lip curl was downright ugly. “Oh, I see. You’re gonna wait until you get me alone. Maybe jump me in the showers.”
He didn’t sound scared, although he should. He really should.
“Actually, what I have to say to you would be best with witnesses. This way, there will be no misunderstanding. Yes, it is true I was with Isobel a long time ago when we were teenagers. That’s in the past. Today we have a professional relationship. She is a coach. A good coach.” He rested his forearm on the table and moved closer. He preferred to look a man in the eye before he threatened to terminate his life. “Do you keep your skate blades sharpened, Shay?”
Confused by the change of subject, Shay huffed out a cough of acknowledgment.
“That is good. It will certainly make things easier. If I hear that you have spread this information or that you are talking trash about Isobel, first, I will take your skates and strangle you to semiunconsciousness with the laces. Then I will use the blades to slice off your balls. If your blades are not sharp enough, this will be more painful than it needs to be.”
The entire table had stilled, the only movement a sheen of sweat breaking out at the side of Shay’s temple.
Vadim sat back, satisfied. “Another round, my friends?”
Shay stood quickly, his thighs banging the table. “I’m out. Calling it a night.” He glanced around, perhaps waiting for his teammates to urge him to stay. No one did. “We good, Petrov?”
“That is up to you, Shay.”
With one nod, he slithered out like the snake he was.
A moment of stunned shock passed. Then another.
“Gentlemen, why so serious?” Vadim asked when the silence became awkward.
Cade shook his head. “That’s some twisted imagination you got there, Petrov.”
“I am Russian. We do not fuck around when it comes to revenge fantasies.”
This set them off into noisy laughter. Nothing like the threatened castration of an asshole to bond a group.
Another round of drinks was ordered, and Erik and Cade picked up an earlier conversation about whether a vampire or a robot would win in a fight. The important issues of the day. This gave Vadim time to brood on what Shay had said, specifically the words he had used.
“What does it mean to leave a woman hanging?”
The D-men stopped talking, shared a glance, and then looked at Ford.
“Callaghan?” Cade asked casually.
“Context?” Ford replied, equally casually.
“It’s what Shay said,” Vadim said. “That I left Isobel ‘hanging.’ Then something about women toasted on vodka in Siberia.”
Ford nodded slowly, as if he didn’t quite understand but time might help him get there.
“Burnett, that sounds like a southernism,” he said. “Care to explain?”
Cade nodded. Then nodded again, this time rubbing his chin. “Don’t know about a southernism. But by my understanding, it’s when a woman doesn’t quite . . .”
Vadim wasn’t mistaken in thinking everyone leaned in slightly. In fact, the entire bar appeared to have quieted, all waiting for the answer to this vital question.
“Um . . . complete the act.”
Vadim frowned. “Complete the act?”
“The sex act,” Cade said with the assurance of a medical professional.
Vadim arced his gaze over the table. No one could quite meet his eyes.
He remembered his time with Isobel, if not with blistering clarity, with a certain nostalgia, despite what came afterward. She had been soft and warm and . . . wet? Yes, wet. Of course she was. Passion dictated their hurry, but that was to be expected. Their foreplay was daily, on the ice, with Isobel flirting and laughing.
Just like she had with Kelly earlier.
He recalled her soft moans, her begging words. Please, Vadim. I need you, Vadim. Then the sharp cry she tried to hide. Not pleasure, but pain. So brave, his Bella. Surprise had halted his thrusts, but she clung tighter, urging him to continue because she was a tough girl. A fighter, a future champion. And while he’d been annoyed that she didn’t share with him the crucial fact of her virginity, he was already too far gone.
Beyond knowing.
Fuck.
“Are you saying that Isobel didn’t come?”
Ford grabbed his shoulder. “Keep it down, man. Who’s to say what happened exactly?”
Except the people who were there. Some women were quiet. Vadim had screwed partners who lay there like dead frogs, expecting him to do all the work. Assuming that sheer nakedness and beautifully sculpted curves were a substitute for sexual chemistry.
They were not.
But Isobel was a willing participant, arching her body into him, rubbing her breasts against his chest, moaning her encouragement. True, she did not tell him to do specific things to ensure her pleasure, but it was her first time and she was young, just eighteen, and he wouldn’t have expected it. That was his job.
His. Job.
“If that’s what she said to her sister, perhaps it’s something that happens to her always . . .” He trailed off, not wanting to voice his worst fear.
“Yeah maybe,” Ford offered, not unkindly.
“More likely, you failed in your manly duty,” Erik said.
Cade elbowed the Swede, who raised his palms to the air. “Well, that’s what it sounds like.”
That was what it sounded like. He had failed to bring Isobel to orgasm. During her first sexual experience with a man, he had not satisfied her.
Ford patted his arm, and Vadim decided he didn’t like him so much after all. “I wouldn’t pay attention to anything Shay says. He probably made that up.”
Perhaps, but it was a rather specific detail.
Vadim searched the faces of the men before him. “Do you think he made that up?”
An unmistakable delay was followed by nods and murmurs of acquiescence.
Shay must have made it up. The alternative was not possible.
Not with the Czar of Pleasure.