TEN
Isobel froze, not quite sure she’d heard that right. Perhaps it was a problem with Russian-English translation. In Vadim’s pretty head, maybe “come” meant “enrage you” or “drive you bonkers.” Or perhaps he was still reeling from being throat-chopped by his female coach and former teen crush.
Because he couldn’t possibly be asking that.
“Excuse me?”
“Must I repeat it?”
“Uh, yes. You must.”
“I have reason to believe that you may not have”—he paused, and that hesitation gave her hope that he’d realized his error and was self-correcting—“completed the sex act.”
The sex act? “You mean, did I come with you?”
He looked exasperated. “Is that not what I said?”
“Yes, but is that what you meant?” Her cheeks were heating, but not quite enough to counteract the March wind chill. “Vadim, it’s cold and late and—”
He leaned around, his body covering her with that mountain of pure-carved muscle, and opened the door of her Camry. “Get in.” Then, leaving his gym bag on the icy ground, he walked around to the passenger side, opened that door, and climbed in. He pushed the seat back, but he was so tall that his legs remained bent.
Brain in disarray, heart struggling to catch up to her muddled thoughts, she got in, started the engine, and turned up the heat.
“This might take a while,” she muttered, hyperaware of his hulking presence in her car and still reeling from his question, the one she was hoping he’d just forget. She glanced over to find Vadim rocking his usual sexy-serious self.
Good grief, she was going to have to discuss this.
“Now.” She turned to him, a touch of schoolmarm in her tone, ready to make allowances for English being his second language, or maybe it was his fourth or fifth. Vaguely, she recalled he spoke French, Spanish, and German. “What makes you think I didn’t, uh, do what you said I didn’t do?” Other than the fact it was true and any guy who wasn’t completely focused on his own pleasure would be able to figure it out. “Have you been thinking about it? Or maybe you knew all along?”
“So it is true.” He looked crestfallen, or as crestfallen as a stoic Russian could get.
“Well, yes, why would you ask if you didn’t think it was a possibility? Where is this coming from, Vadim?”
He grunted something in Russian. Hell and damn, she was going to have to massage the poor guy’s fragile ego. “Listen, I hear that happens a lot when it’s a first time.”
“It does not happen to the women I’m with,” he said with just the right amount of imperiousness. And we’re off.
“Are you saying I’m the problem?”
“Have you had this issue with other men?”
“That’s none of your damn business!”
“Are you a lesbian?” Unfazed by the scowl that ridiculousness deserved, he continued to probe. “Do you fantasize about women?”
“Do you fantasize about yourself?”
That amused him. “I am at the center of all my fantasies, yes.”
Of course he was. The man was sex on skates. “Vadim, what the hell has inspired this word vomit? Did you have a little ‘problem’ with one of your club bimbos, and it’s brought on a bout of dick gazing?”
“I may have overheard you discussing your first time with your sister.”
Her heart fell through the floor of her car. “You were eavesdropping on my private conversation?”
“It was loud enough to inform the entire arena!” Said as if he was the wounded party. “Was this just standard locker room talk? Were you merely venting because you were annoyed with me after our practice?”
“You think I’d make that up?”
“Women can be very vengeful.”
“All right, listen, oh mighty Petrov. You might be living in your own paranoid Shakespeare fantasy where the women who are not out to fuck you are out to get you, but believe me when I say I wouldn’t lie about something like that. You sucked in bed!”
All of Chicagoland might have heard that one.
This outburst didn’t shock him. Instead, the shock was all on her side because of what he said next.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re what, now?”
“I’m sorry.”
With a shaky hand, she turned down the heat on the dash. It was pumping out at full blast now, and she was feeling far too toasty.
They were clearly at cross-purposes, his true meaning lost in the snarky back-and-forth. “Sorry that you called me a lesbian?”
“I did not call you a lesbian. I asked if you were one while I gathered evidence.”
That was some mighty fine hairsplitting, but she let it slide.
“I’m sorry because I failed you during your first sexual experience, Bella. I should have made it better for you.”
His regret seemed genuine. She knew she was supposed to love seeing this arrogant man brought down a peg and filled with remorse, but she didn’t like it. Not at all.
However, she secretly loved that he called her Bella.
“Well, I didn’t tell you I was a virgin. You didn’t have all the facts, so—”
He held up a hand. “No, I didn’t, but that is no excuse. I was young and horny and excited because I wanted you more than anything. It was a time in our lives when anything seemed possible, yes? We were healthy, strong, and hot for each other, but I didn’t take the time to discover how to please you. Any decent man would have done that. Perhaps I thought there would be more time to do so.” He looked out the window, pain in the set of his beautiful mouth.
“Vadim, about what happened. After.” My father, your exile.
“Let us not rehash the past.” He returned his gaze to her. “Everything occurs for a reason. We end up where we are supposed to be.”
True, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be sorry that her father had banished him and put a stutter step in his promising career. Also, there was a finality about his words. They couldn’t go back to those halcyon days of teenage infatuation and lust. They were all grown up, burdened with responsibilities.
“Vadim, some of the things I said before when I was talking to Violet . . .”
“About the quality of my lovemaking?”
Did he have to talk like a dissolute duke? No one should be able to say “lovemaking” with a straight face and make it sound so . . . sexy.
“Right. That. Well, I was pissed at your attitude that day in the rink, and it made me petty.”
“Bringing the Ukrainians into it was a low blow, Isobel.”
She rolled her lips in. Must not laugh. Must not laugh.
“You’ve always been so touchy about your neighbors.”
“So you have not slept with the Ukrainian delegation at the Games?”
“Not the entire delegation.” She grinned, and Lord love a duck, he grinned right back at her. Dangerous heat bloomed all over her body. Maybe she should flip to the AC, because any more Smiles of Devastation from the Russian and she would melt into the seat.
“I—I probably should get going. So, see you for practice tomorrow?”
He merely held her gaze. “Isobel, I am not nineteen years old anymore.”
Didn’t she know it. “Got that.”
“In the last eight years, I have worked on improving myself. I am a better skater, and no one can beat me in a face-off. I know more about wine than any self-respecting hockey player should. I recognize designers on red carpets.” He leaned in, his breath warm even in the heated car. “I have improved in all areas.”
She swallowed. “I’m sure all your girlfriends appreciate it. Especially the designers thing.”
His shrug was that of a man who considered himself woefully underappreciated.
“I would like to apologize. Properly.”
Her lungs went on hiatus. He couldn’t mean what she thought he meant. “Apology accepted,” she said cheerfully, though it came out chipmunk style. Alvin would be so proud.
“You choose to act clueless about what I mean?”
“Are you offering to apologize with your penis?”
“It is my most improved area.” He said it with such sincerity that she laughed, but immediately turned serious again because this was not a laughing matter.
“We tried it, and it didn’t work, Vadim. In fact, I’d say it was disastrous.”
“You’re overstating the situation. It wasn’t that bad.”
She practically dislocated her eyeballs trying not to roll them. “Famous last lines in the history of seduction.”
“We were kids. Neither of us knew what we were doing. I can guarantee we will not have the same problem.”
“Vadim, you know I can’t get involved with you. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, it’s a terrible idea.”
“So you like Kelly?”
“No comment.”
“You do like him. Perhaps you are thinking this will be a good match for you. I suppose he is . . . nice.”
That was her word for Kelly, and Vadim had no right to use it, especially when he made it sound like dog food.
“As if you’re qualified to know that.”
“I can recognize nice. It is very easy for a man to spot what he is not.”
“You’re not nice?”
He laughed mirthlessly. “Would you like to argue this point with me?”
“I’m sure all your girlfriends think you’re nice.” Don’t defend the man from himself!
“They think I am attractive, rich, and . . .” He paused and shrugged. “That is it. That is what they think.”
“How sad for you,” she said sarcastically. Though she did think it sad if that was truly what he believed.
“So we are agreed. You are looking for nice.”
“Most everyone is, Vadim. No one wants a creep.”
He inclined his head until it almost touched hers. “The opposite of nice does not have to be a bad thing. Not when it comes to certain areas. Sex, for example.”
“You can never stray long from that subject, can you?”
“Men think of it often, yes. I am just a slave to my gender. My offer is still open, you know.”
Oxygen was at a premium. He was far too close. “What offer?”
“To apologize. With my cock.”
Oh, she got it now. There was no apology on the table. This was purely Vadim Petrov trying to prove he was top dog, the man who could make a woman’s panties drop with a smile and a wink.
“You raging dingus! You’re not interested in ‘my disappointment’ or in making up for that first terrible time. All you care about is that there are women living in this universe who didn’t go off into the stratosphere when your dick made its debut inside their vaginas.”
“Only one woman, Isobel.”
She scoffed. “So sure.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t know back then. You just assumed tectonic plates shifted because, like all men, you imagine you’re the epicenter of the orgasm earthquake. As long as you feel the earth move, to hell with everyone else.”
Nothing but aristocratic hauteur from him now. “I am trying to be nice—”
“Nice? You just said you only recognize nice because you’re the opposite!”
He curled a hand around her neck, his touch shockingly sensual. “Then I shall be the opposite. I shall be very, very bad, Isobel.”
She wanted to say something about how “bad” wasn’t the opposite of “nice,” but this wasn’t an appropriate time for an English lesson. Her pulse stuttered, then gathered strength, a relentless pounding of yes, yes, yes. He must have heard it because, the next second, his lips crashed into hers, taking control as if it was his right.
But she knew better, didn’t she? She knew that Vadim Petrov was all smoke and mirrors, style without substance, a man whose only focus was his own pleasure.
Boy could he kiss, though.
This wasn’t your standard teenage fumbling. This was a man who knew exactly what to do with his mouth. Probably all that practice over the years, she thought bitterly.
The bitterness melted in the face of a wildfire consuming her body. Pure, white-hot need. Maybe the owner of the lips didn’t matter. Maybe it was just a joining together of body parts that worked in this never-to-be-repeated moment.
He halted, his expression impossible to read in the shadows.
“It is bad, yes?” His breathing was labored.
“Terrible,” she murmured. “Again.”
She expected him to say something cutting, but he surprised her.
He did as he was told.
He didn’t taste like the boy she remembered. She thought she’d committed everything about that experience to her soul, both the bad and the good, yet Vadim’s mouth was different now. He was different.
This kiss . . .
. . . different.
Spicy and sweet, authoritative yet testing. It cracked open something. Not inhibition, because that had never been her problem, but reticence. With other men, she would hold back, waiting for the sparks to fly. If it didn’t ignite within a few seconds, she was already moving on, steeling herself for the disappointment that would come later.
Vadim’s kiss blew her wariness away. If it was this good, then the rest . . . No, that was not going to happen.
He was an employee, a coworker, a tabloid manwhore, sort of a dick, and the guy who took her virginity and did a piss-poor job of it. If none of these reasons were enough to put a halt to this nonsense, then she was in deep freakin’ doo-doo.
“Well?” he asked, though there was no missing the blink back to reality of his eyelids. He was just as affected as she.
“You want a score?” she panted. “Seven point four. The French judge marked you down. Too much tongue.”
This appeared to delight him, delight coming in the form of a lift at the corner of his decadent mouth. “It seems we both have lessons to learn. Again.”
In a flash, he had pulled her across into his lap—okay, she may have helped because this couldn’t not continue. Strangely, the snark fired her up. That hadn’t been their thing before, but maybe his time in North America had improved his personality.
She liked this version of Vadim. She liked it very much.
She also liked his positioning of her core over his erection. His hands kneading her ample ass to bring her closer was another check in the “like” column. And, additionally, helping her improved opinion of him was his mouth back on hers, sucking, testing, exploring.
“Again,” he murmured.
“Again,” she sighed right back into his mouth.
Again.
Rubbing her center against him was divine.
His hands everywhere were divine.
That mouth . . . oh, God, that mouth was ten steps above divine.
And then that mouth was speaking Russian, rough, sexy, sweet nothings that drove her wild. Forced out all common sense. His mouth trailed her jaw, delivering little nips and hot licks to her neck.
“Bella”—something in Russian—“Bella”—more Russian—“Bella.” As if one language was inadequate to express how she affected him.
She heard the scrape of her track jacket zipper, felt tingles as he applied openmouthed kisses to newly exposed skin. Her nipples were on fire, sensitive and needy. Can’t stand this. Going to die. She ripped her bra strap off her shoulder and freed one aching breast.
“Suck me,” she begged, and then his mouth closed over her tit and suckled hard. His moan on tasting her sounded like he was in pain, but she didn’t care; all she cared about was this mindless grasp at pleasure.
The insistent pulse thrumming through her body beat louder, stronger, showing no sign of stopping and heading for the one place she’d never visited with this man. She rolled her hips and hiked her suggestive rubs into a dirty grind. He was huge against her, toting this hard, hot instrument of pleasure that stroked her just right.
Still not enough.
“Please,” she begged as she rode him harder. Faster. Dirtier.
“Da, da, da,” he said. Yes, yes, yes.
No. A loud noise shook her out of the madness. Though the window was steamed up Titanic style, she could make out the shape of a face. Lenny, the facility’s head of security, jumped back.
“Ms. Chase! Shit, sorry. I thought you might be—uh, sorry about that,” he called out, his voice receding as he was already double timing back toward the facility.
Shocked back into reality, her heart in a mad clatter, she placed a hand on Vadim’s shoulder to leverage herself back. His mouth made a popping sound as it dragged off her breast. Oh. God. She scrambled out of his lap, which meant she had to avoid several “sticks” poking her on the way back to the driver’s seat. Vadim’s penis, the gearshift . . .
Was she out of her mind, making out in the parking lot of the Rebels’ practice facility? So the players—except the one she had just dry humped in the passenger seat of her Camry—were out of town, but security was here.
She’d need to double the number of cupcakes she brought next time.
“We’re going to forget about that,” she said while she shoved her breast back into her bra, the abrasion of her nipple still deliciously sensitive.
He touched his lips, then licked as if savoring her taste. “Are we, Bella?”
“Don’t call me that. It’s ‘Isobel’ or ‘Coach.’ That’s all there is.” She slashed a hand through the air. “I know you think you’ve got something to prove because of what happened last time, but it won’t be at the expense of your recovery. Your bruised ego will have to take a backseat to getting you on the ice.”
“You think this is what that kiss was about? My need to prove something?”
“Of course it was. That’s all any man’s kiss is about.” And that was a damn sight more than a kiss, mister. She pointed at the door. “Out.”
He placed a hand on the handle, a slight curve to his lips that said This ain’t over.
Oh, but it was. It had to be.
He climbed out, which took a while because he was tall and the car was small. Once outside, he held the door open, letting all the heat escape.
Unfortunately, her embarrassment chose to stay right here.
“I will see you for practice tomorrow, Bella. Do not be late.”
With the grin of a wolf, he closed the door too quickly to hear her unbelievably witty response of, “Shut the hell up.”