Ryan

Fuck, I wanted to hear that whimper she made again.

Repeatedly.

While naked.

In my bed.

Not fully clothed in this damn elevator while she was thinking about the fucking Jacuzzi tub in her place that was bound to be an exact match for mine. A tub I wasn’t going to be able to look at without picturing her in it. Just thinking about it made me hard as fuck. I adjusted myself when the doors opened before I followed her off the elevator.

“Which way?” she asked, with a glance over her shoulder towards me.

If it’d been a split second earlier, she would have busted me with my hand on my cock. It would have been another strike against me—one I didn’t need if I wanted the chance to ever see her naked again. Schooling my face into an expression that I hoped was at least semi-innocent, I jerked my head to the left. “Your unit isn’t too far down. This one’s mine.”

I released the handle of her suitcase and rapped my knuckles against my door with a smile on my face. It’d be virtually impossible for her to avoid me from such a close distance. But as I snagged the handle and moved past the apartment between hers and mine, my good humor quickly vanished. “And there’s a fireman in between us,” I grumbled. A single fireman. Hell, at least three quarters of the complex was filled with single guys. Firemen, cops, hockey players...this place had ‘em all. Something that I’d never minded; not until Tamara moved in.

“A fireman, huh?” she echoed with a gleam in her brown eyes as she unlocked the door to her unit. “That’ll come in handy if I have any incidents in the kitchen, so I don’t end up burning the whole place down.”

I peered into the grocery bags I was carrying for her and found the basics—a bunch of cartons of Greek yogurt, sandwich fixings, protein bars, almonds, granola, cherries, beef jerky, coffee, water, and sports drinks. “Doesn’t look like there’s anything dangerous in here.”

She flipped on the lights as she walked inside the apartment. It was fully furnished; an option I hadn’t even known they offered. After she dropped her carry-on and purse onto the couch, Tamara turned around and reached for the groceries. I reluctantly let her take them from me, rolling her suitcase next to the coffee table before following her to the kitchen area. I leaned against the counter while she unloaded her items and put everything away except for the sandwich stuff.

“Is that what you’re having for dinner?”

“Yup. It’s been a long day.” Her gaze drifted over my shoulder at the door, and I had a feeling that she was about to ask me to leave—something I didn’t want to do.

“Which makes a healthy dinner even more important.” I shook my head slowly and made an exaggerated tsking noise, hoping to distract her from wanting me to go. “I’m sure you know better than to skimp on meals, what with your gold medals and all.”

“Of course I do.” She rolled her eyes and huffed. “But I spent thirty-one hours traveling due to delays and didn’t make it into town last night like I’d planned. I don’t have the energy to do a big shopping trip and cook dinner. Or to deal with you.”

“Could you find the energy if it meant I was going to feed you a hot, nutritious meal in fifteen minutes flat?” I pointed at the package of sliced, deli turkey. “Dealing with me has to at least be worth not eating that for dinner, right?”

“Hmmm.” She tilted her head to the side and tapped her finger against her cheek like my question required deep thought.

“C’mon, I owe you after I was such an ass earlier. Let me pay you back in food.” But only because we weren’t in a place where I could do so in orgasms. I’d forgo dinner to feast on her pussy without a second thought, even if I was starving. That’s how badly I wanted another taste of her.

“I guess I could eat a real meal if I didn’t have to cook it myself.”

She didn’t sound too sure about her answer, so I didn’t give her time to think about it. I scooped up the deli meat, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, and mustard and tossed them into the fridge. Then I tugged on her hand and led her out the door and down the hall to my apartment. As I flipped the light switch on the wall, I sighed in relief when I remembered that the cleaners had come today while I was at the rink. Maybe my luck had shifted from shitty to good when it came to Tamara.

“Grab a seat and get comfortable while I wow you with my cooking skills.” I waved towards the two bar stools at the kitchen counter while I walked past them to grab ingredients from the fridge.

“I’m not too sure about the wow-ing part, but comfortable sounds good to me.”

I turned and quirked a brow at her. “Is that doubt I hear in your voice?”

“It could be.” She propped an elbow on the counter and rested her cheek on her palm. “Or it might just be sheer exhaustion.”

“This is where my secret weapon comes into play.” I pulled my George Foreman grill from the cabinet, set it down, and plugged it in. “Dinner will be ready in less than ten minutes.”

“You’re a cheat. That’s not cooking. It’s not even grilling. Did you have to turn in your man card when you bought that thing?” she laughed.

“Hey! I can grill with the best of ‘em. Charcoal or gas,” I grumbled. “But I don’t always have the time. At least this way, I can eat right during season without having to order out all the time.”

“You might have a point there,” she conceded as she aimed a smile my way. Finally. I didn’t even mind that it’d come at the expense of her making fun of me. “I’d say that I should get one except my mom would spot it in an instant, and then I’d never hear the end of her lectures on cooking things the right way.”

I oiled down the grill and placed boneless, skinless chicken breasts on it after sprinkling them with seasoned salt and garlic. “Your mom sounds like a handful. The apple didn’t fall too far from that tree, did it?”

“Since she’s awesome, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

I measured equal amounts of instant brown rice and water into a dish, covered it, and placed it in the microwave. Then I pulled out my cutting board and sliced a zucchini and squash to put into the steamer. “You mentioned that you were two when you started to skate. Is she the one who got you on the ice?”

“Yeah.” Her tired eyes light up. “If it was possible to learn how to skate before walking, she would have tried it with me.”

“She’s that into skating?” My parents were supportive, but they hadn’t cared which sport I played growing up as long as I was doing something. They’d just wanted me busy enough to stay out of trouble. It’d been a stroke of luck when I stumbled across hockey and fell in love with it.

“She has the Olympic gold medals to prove it, too.”

I hadn’t been expecting that answer. “For speed skating?”

“Yup. It’s kind of a crazy story because she grew up in Russia, well it was part of the Soviet Union back then. She earned some of her medals playing for them, but when she was at her third Olympics in Calgary in 1988, she defected to the States with the help of one of the coaches from the US team.”

“Like Sergei Fedorov?” I asked, thinking of the hockey star who’d defected a couple of years later during the Goodwill Games. “He ended up returning to Russia and playing for a team there after his career with the NHL was over. Has your mom been able to go back, too?”

“No, but it’s not that she couldn’t have. It’s more because there isn’t anything left for her there,” she answered with a shake of her head. “My grandparents died before she left, and she was an only child. She wasn’t close to anyone in her extended family since she spent most of her time training from a young age.”

“It sounds like you have that in common with her as well if she had you on skates when you were two.”

“Yeah, but it was more than worth it since I went to my first Olympics when I was only seventeen.”

I did a quick tally in my head and figured her to be twenty-four, a year younger than me. What she’d accomplished was damn impressive, and I wanted to slap myself upside the head for not putting the time in to get to know her back when we first met. But I damn well wasn’t going to waste the second chance I’d been given. “Did you get your work ethic from her, too?” I asked while I piled food onto our plates.

“Yup. I had the best damn coach money didn’t have to buy—my mom.”

I went to set the plates on the higher part of the counter where she was seated, but then I rethought that decision. “Let’s eat in the living room.”

“Are you sure?”

Hell yeah, I was. It meant I’d be on the couch next to her instead of on separate stools at the counter, and getting closer to her was my goal.