I take a long drink of my water, letting it cool my nerves about Stella’s absence and the blatant attraction I’m feeling toward Petra. When I tip the bottle back down, she’s standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the butler’s pantry, wearing a white dress with wide straps and a full, but short, skirt. She’s got on platform wedges with tan leather straps that barely stand out against her olive skin and make her legs look a mile long.
“If we’re married, why aren’t we having sex?”
Her question is so unexpected that the water slips down the wrong pipe and my throat spasms. I can feel the liquid tickling my lungs and I need to cough, but it’s like my entire esophagus is paralyzed. I can feel my eyes widen as my lungs contract, but the cough is frozen inside them. Finally, everything releases and I’m left sputtering.
I bend at the waist, coughing violently into my elbow. When the liquid is out of my lungs, I look at her and say, “This isn’t that kind of marriage.”
“I fail to see what I’m getting out of it, then.”
It’s a fair point. “Petra, we’re doing this for Stella.”
“A woman still has needs,” she says, then she spins on her heel and stalks through the pantry.
“Where are you going?” I ask, too stunned to follow her at first.
“Out,” she calls over her shoulder as I follow her through the dining room. In the entryway, she grabs the jean jacket and straw purse sitting on the cushioned bench. “If you’re not going to meet my needs, then I’ll find someone who will. I’ll be back in the morning.”
I’m practically on top of her before she can even get her first arm into her jacket, backing her into the wall. I plant my hands on either side of her head. “Like hell you will. You’re a married woman.”
She snorts, a derisive sound that emanates from the back of her throat. “Are marriages even real if they’re not consummated?”
She’s been married for fourteen years and I’m confident she’s slept with her fair share of men in that time. But she knows she’s married now, and that should make a difference to her like it’s made a difference to me.
“You have no idea what you’re asking,” I growl, my face inches from hers.
She lowers her eyes to my lips. “I don’t ask,” she says quietly.
Yes, this is a woman who is used to calling the shots.
“You’re going to beg,” I say, my voice low, steady. I can’t control this desire any longer, not when she’s standing in front of me challenging me to do the thing my body most wants to do. “And you’re going to like it.”
I swallow her scoff with my lips, and her mouth parts for me like she’s been waiting for this since she first walked into my apartment over a week ago. I have sixteen years of pent up sexual frustration when it comes to Petra Volkova, and it’s going to be damn near impossible to take this slow, with the attention and reverence she deserves.
With one of my hands, I cup the back of her head, digging my fingers into her thick hair until my fingertips rest against her skull. Her tongue laps at mine, presses into it, circles, retreats. I chase after her, pressing her further back against the wall as my whole body advances toward her. The need to touch her, to feel her against me, supersedes everything else. I am out of control, and I don’t lose control. This woman makes me crazy.
She pushes her hips forward, tilts them up so she presses along the hard length of me, then she sighs into my mouth and leans her head back against my hand to break the contact as she breathes deeply. Her neck is elongated and exposed, so I trail kisses along her jaw and down the column of her neck. I nip at her collarbone and slide the strap of her dress off her shoulder so I can taste her smooth skin. Then I trail kisses across her cleavage, but the minute I move up the other side of her neck, she’s pushing her chest into me. I don’t have the superhuman strength it would take to resist her.
When my lips meet hers again, she wraps her hands around my lower back, anchoring our bodies together. She runs her fingers under the hem of my shirt and the sensation of her fingertips riding the ridges of my muscles has me groaning into her mouth. The need is consuming, like a fire just waiting for a lick of oxygen before it explodes.
The small dose of oxygen comes when she unbuttons the waistband of my jeans, then slides them down over my hips and pushes them past my thighs and lets them fall to the floor. Suddenly, the only things standing between us are the thin cotton of my boxer briefs and the gauzy material of her dress. The fire explodes into an inferno.
I pull away from her, just enough to see her face as I bring my hands to the straps of her dress. I watch her eyes as I slide the other strap off her shoulder, and she raises one eyebrow like she’s challenging me to actually slide that dress down her body. With careful hands, I pull the straps along her arms, and that smocked top follows as it drags along her sides. Her breasts spring free and my cock swells even bigger and harder than I thought possible. I want my mouth all over those tits. I want to fuck them, I want to feel them dragging along my abdomen as she lowers herself to her knees in front of me, I want to see them spread before me as I hold myself over her and plunge into her, I want to see them bouncing as she rides me, I want my hands on them as I bend over her back with my hips pressing into her from behind. There’s no shortage of ways I want to be with her. And I already know, with absolute certainty, that once will not be enough. Tonight will not be enough.
I’m not sure there is an “enough.”
I continue pulling the straps down until the fabric slides over her hips and pools at her feet, where I drop on one knee to pull the dress aside as she steps out of it. I gaze up at her from the floor. The sunset has golden light streaming in from the glass ceiling above us, so she’s literally glowing. It’s like looking at a painting of the goddess Venus, but Petra is far hotter than any Venus I’ve ever seen captured on a canvas.
From here, my head is at her waist, so I drag my tongue along the top seam of her skimpy underwear, then up to her belly button. I continue my path up the center of her abdomen as I slowly stand until my tongue is between her breasts. I cup one in each hand, wanting to both devour them and worship them at the same time. When she moves her hand between us and wraps it around me through my boxer briefs, I dip my head so my mouth meets one of her nipples. My tongue laps at it, and she leans into me, pushing her breast further into my mouth. My lips latch over her skin as I suck, gently pulling her nipple deeper as I slide my tongue over it. Her response is exquisite: the way her hand tightens on my cock, the groan that escapes her throat, the way she whispers, “Yes, Sasha.”
I let one of my hands travel down to her bare ass, where I give her a playful squeeze that has her hips pushing forward, seeking me out, so I trail my fingers around her hip and dip my fingers into her underwear. I slide them down, brushing over her clit, then trailing along her slick seam until they arrive at her entrance. She’s so wet for me—this would be a turn-on no matter what, but it’s all the sweeter because I have wanted her forever.
I dip one finger into her and pull out slowly, then enter with two fingers. “Yes,” she hisses, and her hips move like they have a mind of their own so that her warm, tight pussy slides back and forth over my fingers. “Holy shit,” she sighs, and I glance up at her from where my tongue still plays with her nipple. Her lips are forming a small O, and her eyes are heavily lidded, almost half-closed in pleasure. She’s close, and there’s no way the first time I make her come is going to be against a wall in my entryway. It’s bad enough that I’ll never be able to walk into my apartment again without hearing and seeing her exactly like this, I don’t need to remember the sound of her coming every time I walk in here too.
I pull my fingers out of her as I fully stand, and she whimpers. It’s an intoxicating sound that makes me feel powerful, like I have some modicum of control over this uncontrollable creature. With both arms, I reach around her, my hands coming between her thighs from behind and lifting her so she’s wrapped around my waist. Her legs grip my hips as I turn and walk her down the hall, and she bends her head to trail her tongue along my earlobe before capturing it between her teeth. “Walk faster,” her husky voice demands.
When we reach my bedroom, I set her at the foot of the bed, then I slide her underwear down her legs and pull her wedges off her feet one at a time. When I stand, she’s got her hands in my boxers and is pulling them down my legs. They don’t come off easily, it’s always hard getting them past my muscular thighs. She’s squatting, sitting on her heels at my feet and her eyes are firmly locked on my cock where it juts out from my body at a hard angle. She reaches up and wraps her hand around my shaft as she takes the head into her mouth, swirling her tongue around the tip before closing her lips around me and sliding me all the way to the back of her throat.
“Shit.” It’s the only coherent thought I have as I reach behind her and grip one corner post of my bed. She slides me out of her mouth, then takes me in as far as her throat will allow a few more times, and I’m feeling way too close. This isn’t ending with a blow job.
I take her chin in my hands and tilt her face up until I slide all the way out of her mouth, but she’s still got the base of me firmly in her hand. Her lips are wet and her eyes are wild as she looks up at me. “The first time we do this, I’m coming inside you.”
“That’s fair,” she says as her lips curve into a smirk. She stands. “The inside of me feels amazing, if I do say so myself.”
Holy shit.
I push her backward onto my mattress, pull my shirt over my head, and pull her knees up over my shoulders as I kneel at the end of the bed. She’s laid bare before my face, her slick folds are mesmerizing in their silkiness. I run my tongue over her clit and watch as her entire body convulses in response. It only takes a few more passes of my tongue over that sensitive area before she’s saying my name with reverence and longing. I enter her again with two fingers while my tongue works her clit, and she lets out a guttural moan. I know she’s extraordinarily close, so I slow down.
“Don’t stop,” she says with that throaty voice that’s sexy as hell. “Please, Sasha, I’m so close.”
I keep up the slow pace even as she wants more.
“Please, Sasha, make me come.”
I’m so hard I’m going to explode if I don’t get inside her soon, so I continue as she asked. She’s chasing her first orgasm and in my mind I’m already planning out her second.
“Yes,” she chants, as I feel her muscles contract around my fingers. “Yes, yes, yes.”
I slow my assault, giving her a moment to ride the wave of her orgasm, then I stand and reach my arm under her back as I drag her up the bed with me. “I told you you’d beg,” I say, brushing my lips across her eyebrow.
She reaches behind me and smacks my ass in response. “I let you make me beg.”
“Whatever you say.” She rolls her eyes at me as I reach over to the nightstand where I keep my condoms, even though I’ve never once brought a girl back to my place. The thought of sharing my own bed with someone has never crossed my mind. Until tonight.
She sits up, taking the condom from me where I stand on both knees in front of her, then tears it open and rolls it on. The feel of her fingers skimming over my erection has my eyes rolling back in my head.
“Not too quickly,” she says as she looks up at me through her eyelashes. “You owe me at least one more orgasm.”
I push her shoulder so she falls backward onto the pillow, then drop my hand on one side of her head so I’m propped up over her. “Are you always this demanding?”
“There’s nothing wrong with a girl who knows what she wants and goes after it.” Her eyes challenge me to disagree.
“There certainly isn’t.” In fact, there is nothing sexier than a confident woman who knows what she wants in the bedroom.
Sliding into her feels like coming home, like making a full circle. I’ve wanted her and us and this for what feels like my entire life, and so I refuse to think about all the reasons that I insisted it was impossible. Instead, I focus on her face—the bright blue eyes that are locked on mine, the straight ridge of her small nose, the perfect Cupid’s bow at the top of her full lips—as I pause, giving her time to adjust to me.
She reaches up, cupping the side of my face in her hand. “What are you waiting for?”
I pull out about halfway and slide back in slowly, and the small moan that escapes her mouth has me gritting my teeth. Her dark hair is splayed around her, the silky strands so different but no less sexy than her normal curls. Her lips are swollen and her breath is coming in shorter pants, her ribcage expands and contracts with each inhale and exhale and the way her breasts roll with the movement has me wanting my mouth on them again. I pull out again and slide back into her, trying to memorize the feel of her skin sliding along mine and the way her muscles grip me as I enter her.
She slides her hands from my face down to my neck. “Yes.” Has one word ever sounded so right before? My hips start moving to their own rhythm and she matches each thrust with the upward motion of her own hips. I’m trying to focus on her face, on the way her half-closed eyes are focused on my lips, the way her mouth is parted and letting out small gasps of pleasure. But I’m again distracted by the way those perfect breasts are bouncing with each thrust of my hips and I just want my mouth on them, which is impossible from this angle. So I sweep my arm under her back, and lift her with me as I sit back on my heels.
With her thighs spread on either side of my hips and her legs wrapped around my lower back, I can’t imagine that I could penetrate her any deeper than I already am. She rocks her hips away and toward me and moans another “Yes!” as I hit the deepest recesses of her. Then she leans back a little, resting one of her hands on the bed behind her while the other grips my neck, and with her back arched like this, those sexy-as-fuck pale pink nipples are pointed up like she’s waiting for me to devour them.
I bend my head down, sucking first one, then the other, into my mouth. Petra’s arched body slides along my abdomen as we move in tandem, joining and parting, skin slapping each time she sinks down onto me. I lift my mouth from her and try to memorize each movement, each moment, each look she gives me, but there’s not enough time. We’re both panting and I’m already feeling that tightening at the base of my spine. I grit my teeth and increase the pace, biding my time and watching as she half closes her eyelids while her lips part. I swear the sound of our bodies meeting is the most erotic thing I’ve ever heard, until she whispers, “Fuck, yesss.”
Her muscles are clenching and releasing rhythmically, and she’s bucking her hips wildly against mine. I hold back as long as I can, wanting her to ride out every second of this orgasm, and then I move my hands to both her hips, pulling her down to me over and over as I spill everything I have into her.
We collapse back onto the bed, me on top of her. I want to prop myself up on my elbows but I can’t muster the energy, so I roll to my side instead, bringing her with me so we’re facing each other.
“Why haven’t we done this before?” she asks.
I just stare at her, unsure how to respond.
“Did you not want me like this, back when we were teenagers? Did you just think of me like a little sister?”
Her question stuns me. “I’ve never thought of you like a little sister, which is half the problem.”
“I don’t see why that’s a problem. But what’s the other half of the problem?”
I can’t tell her the truth about my dad and her mom, can’t tell her that her mom and brother’s blood is on his hands—or that I’ve known about it the whole time. I can’t tell her that I kept her in the friend zone out of guilt and a respect for my dead best friend, or so I don’t have to tell her the truth about her father’s role in this arranged marriage. So instead, I say, “It’s just an expression.”
I reach my fingers up and trail them along her face, noticing how her expression softens. It’s like watching someone let down their metaphorical guard.
“You really hurt me,” she says. “Back when you left.”
“I know.” I see the question in her eyes, but I can’t answer it. I want to tell her that I had to, but I won’t have an explanation if she asks “why.” So instead, I opt for another truth. “And I’ve never not been sorry about it.”
She stretches herself over to me and takes my lips in hers, kissing me slowly, lazily, like we have all the time in the world. But we don’t. Stella will be back midmorning tomorrow, and we have a lot of catching up to do before then. I deepen the kiss and run my hand up the side of her thigh, along her obliques, over her breast, and then down her abdomen to her center.
She pulls back and looks at me. “Already?”
“Don’t plan on sleeping tonight,” I tell her, then pull her against me to begin round two.
I know she’s in the stands, but I’ve managed not to look for her this entire game. I’ve never let my eyes track up to the eighth row where I know she’s sitting. I can’t let her presence here distract from my game. In the regular season, that wouldn’t be okay. In the playoffs, it would be unforgivable.
Head down, I take the puck up the outside, passing it to Thompson just before their left defenseman reaches me. Thompson stops the puck, spins, fakes a pass to me and instead slaps it to Ottowan, who acts like he’s taking a shot on goal but instead passes it across the ice right to where I’m waiting. I slap it into the top right corner of the net.
The horn signaling the goal echoes in my ears. I skid across the ice on my knees, then hop up to my feet, holding my stick in the air.
My eyes involuntarily turn up, searching for Petra exactly where I know she’ll be. She’s holding Stella up so she can see, while jumping up and down cheering. Her cheeks are pink, her smile is huge, and her straight hair is tucked behind one ear.
It feels like the muscles in my chest have tightened, so much so that it’s hard to breathe. That C on the jersey she’s wearing—without even seeing the sleeve, I know she’s wearing my number. I know my name is printed across her back, like I can see it printed across Stella’s, and the clarity of what I want is astounding: she should be, and in many ways already is, mine. As much as I’ve fought against that desire my whole life, I realize it’s fruitless. I will never be happy until we’re together. It’s the inevitable ending of our story.
She glances down at me, her eyes locking with mine, and I can no longer hear the thousands of cheering fans, I can only hear the thumping of my heartbeat, which sounds like it’s between my ears.
She holds my gaze, heat burning in that hungry look. I’m frozen in place until Stella points toward the roof and Petra looks up at the jumbotron above the rink. I follow her gaze to see myself reflected there. Every person in the rink was just watching me watch her. Shit.
The impact to my body when Ottowan crashes into me in celebration would be enough to knock me on my ass while I’m this distracted, but Thompson is behind me, cheering and holding me up and mumbling “keep your head in the fucking game” as his eyes follow my gaze and land on Petra. “No chick is worth getting this distracted.”
I shake my head to clear it. I need to be at the top of my game tonight, and he’s right that I can’t let her distract me. He’s wrong about her not being worth it, though.
We hold our one-point lead for the remaining three minutes of the final period, and when the buzzer sounds to end the game, my teammates on the ice pile together with our sticks in the air and the rest of the team hops over the boards and surrounds us. It’s a sweet victory because now we lead this series by one game, only two more to clench this round and move on. I have to remember not to get ahead of myself.
The minute we’re back in the locker room, I text Petra to ask her to wait for me after the game, letting her know how to get to the hallway that leads to the players’ indoor parking area. I check my phone after my shower, and again after I’m done with the invasive interviews the press insists on conducting in the locker rooms, but there’s no response. I try not to let that bother me. She was probably rushing to get Stella home and in bed because she has school tomorrow morning and it’s already after 10:00 p.m. Or maybe she didn’t want to be seen waiting for me, didn’t want the attention that might bring. Or maybe she didn’t even see the text. In my head, I run through a long list of reasons she might not have responded as I look at my text message and her lack of response while walking with a few teammates down to the parking garage. I’m so lost in my thoughts that I’m not sure why Thompson is elbowing me in the ribs until I hear Ramirez say “Damn, Ivanov” under his breath.
I glance up and Petra is leaning one shoulder against the cinderblock wall. Stella is wrapped around Petra, her head resting on Petra’s shoulder, her arms hanging limply by her sides, and her legs dangling from each of Petra’s hips. I focus on how supporting Stella’s dead weight like that must be killing her back, shoulders, and arms, rather than focusing on the way my heart seems to be twisting around itself at the sight of them together waiting for me after my game. It’s everything I didn’t know I wanted.
“Can I take her for you?” I ask as I approach them. Behind me, my teammates move on toward their cars.
“Please,” she groans.
Stella wakes up when I shift her to my arms. She looks up at me adoringly and says, “Dada,” before resting her head on my shoulder and closing her eyes. It’s only the second time I’ve heard her call me Dada instead of Dyadya, and it does funny things to my insides just like it did the first time.
She’s dead weight in my arms, and I can’t even imagine how Petra held her like this for any length of time. Petra bends to take my bag that I’d set down on the ground. “I can get that,” I tell her.
“Please, this is nothing compared to holding Stella for the last half hour.”
“I’m sorry it took me so long,” I say as we start walking. “I didn’t know you’d be waiting.”
“It’s fine. I was going to text you once we got down here, but Stella fell asleep in my arms right after security let us through, and I couldn’t get my phone out of my bag after that.”
“Thank you for waiting for me,” I say, glancing down at her as we move.
She tilts her head up toward mine, like she’s going to say something, but instead she just gives me a smile, then says, “Of course.”
“Your body must be killing you from holding her so long.” In my arms, Stella is like a fifty-pound sack of flour.
Petra just raises her eyebrows in response and gives me a tiny nod of her head. I don’t know how she manages to make the movement so sexy. It’s got to be the way her face changes when her features move. Those big blue eyes under perfectly arched brows, the angular line of her cheekbones under her smooth skin, those full lips that are as sexy right now covered in lip balm as they are when they’re painted bright red. And I love her curls, but there’s something incredibly sexy about her with straight hair. And just like that, I’m flooded with memories of last night and the way she looked with her hair spread out on my pillow. I want to know what that hair feels like wrapped around one of my hands, with the other on her hip as I enter her from behind, what it would feel like to own a piece of her, to know she was mine.
That got serious quickly. I don’t know why my thoughts keep going to this “forever” state. That’s not the path Petra and I are on. She might help me with Stella, but she’s not staying in New York, she’s made that very clear.
“Let me give you a massage when we get home,” I say quietly as we step into the garage.
She rolls her shoulders, stretching them out a little. “You’re the one who just played two hours of hockey. Shouldn’t I be offering up the massage?”
The thought of her small hands being able to massage my body in a productive way is comical. “I’m all set. I want my hands all over you now.”
“We’ll see,” she says with a small shrug.
I raise an eyebrow at her. Last night was not one and done, and we both know it. Not only because we had sex four times before we finally fell asleep, but also because I woke up this morning to her climbing between my legs and waking me up with a blow job. Then there was the sex we had in the kitchen after we ate breakfast, and the way I came up behind her while she was doing her makeup before we went to get Stella, my fingers dipping into her underwear and getting her off while we locked eyes in the mirror. I’m trying to forget the way she sank to her knees after that and gave me my second blow job of the day, because the way she looks with her lips around my dick is something I will never get over.
When we get to the car, Daniel opens the door for me. I buckle Stella into her booster, and though she wakes for a minute again, she slumps toward the door as soon as it’s shut.
Daniel goes to the driver’s side and gets in as Petra and I go to the back of the car to drop my bag off. When the trunk is popped and blocking Daniel’s view of us, I slip the bag from her shoulder, letting my fingers graze a path down her arm and trail over her hand.
My mouth is mere inches from her face when I ask, “Is it wrong that all I can think of right now is getting you back into my bed, preferably in that jersey?” The thought of her in nothing but my sweater has my dick trying to escape through the waistband of my pants.
“It depends on what you plan to do to me while I’m there.” She fucking winks at me, and it has a growl escaping the back of my throat. I’m so turned on right now that I’m contemplating dragging her to the other side of one of the enormous pillars, where we might be out of view, and getting naked with her. I’ve never had sex in public, but right now it feels like the reward might outweigh the risk. She looks at me like she can read my mind, then says, “In the meantime, let’s get Stella home and in bed.”
In the back seat, she snuggles up next to me and I throw my arm around her shoulder, pulling her even closer. She trails her fingertips up my thigh and back down, and from her vantage point, I’m sure she can see how hard she’s got me. But even though she drags those nails up and down my leg, getting closer and closer each time, she never actually touches me where I need her to.
I’m so keyed up when we get back to the apartment that I don’t even care if anyone else notices I’m sporting a huge boner while carrying my kid through the lobby toward the elevator. Petra’s eyes never leave mine the entire ride up to the apartment, and the tension that’s building between us is exquisite. We go together to Stella’s room to get her in bed. Petra insists we take the jersey off her because it’s too loose to be safe to sleep in, but otherwise we leave her in her clothes as we tuck her into bed.
And the minute we are in the hall with Stella’s door closed behind us, Petra says “Meet me in my room in five minutes” and walks away without looking back.
