Chapter 5 #2
The zipper starts to move, her fingers sure and unhurried on the pull tab. The sound is absurdly loud in the cramped cabin, a small metallic rasp over the howl of the wind.
“Careful,” I say, catching her wrist lightly. “We’re still in a box that occasionally remembers other people exist.”
Her mouth curves. “You said whatever I want,” she reminds me. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
Not even a little.
I let go of her wrist and lace my fingers with hers instead, pressing our joined hands flat against my chest for a second so she can feel how hard my heart is going.
“I haven’t,” I say. “I just need to know you’re still here with me and not just…
high on adrenaline. You know, the kind you regret after it’s done. ”
She looks straight at me, that same unblinking focus she must have in a start gate.
“I was scared before,” she says. “Of the wind. Of you. Of myself. Right now, I’m just…
greedy.” Her free hand slides down, knuckles brushing the inside of my thigh through the suit.
“And very aware that we might not get a moment like this again.”
That hits somewhere deep and raw. For all the circus around my life, the private, honest moments are rare. “Okay,” I murmur. “Then, be greedy.”
She smiles, quick and wild, and goes back to work on the zipper.
This time, I don’t stop her. Cold air spills in under the open suit, raising goosebumps along my stomach despite the thermal layer.
Her hand follows, palm hot against the thin fabric as she maps the line of muscle like she’s learning a new course by feel.
When her fingers find the hard line straining against the base layer, my hips jerk before I can stop them. Embarrassing, how fast I react to her like I’m a teenager in a lift for the first time, not a man who’s seen more than his share of beds and cabins and dark hallway corners.
“Jesus,” I mutter. My hand finds her hip, fingers flexing there, holding on. “You move like that, and I’m going to embarrass myself long before the rescue team gets here.”
She laughs under her breath, pleased rather than apologetic, and strokes me again, a slow, deliberate glide that makes my vision go white at the edges for a second. There’s nothing fan-girlish about the way she touches me now. No hesitation, no performance. Just intent.
“I’ve thought about this so many times,” she admits, voice low, almost conversational, as if we’re discussing line choice and not the way her hand is closing around my shaft. “On lifts, in bed, watching your races. I always wondered if I’d freeze if I ever had the chance.”
“And?” My voice comes out hoarse.
“And apparently not,” she says simply. Her fist tightens, thumb dragging over the sensitive ridge through the fabric. “Apparently, I’m very adaptable.”
Heat surges through me. I want to shut my eyes and drown in it, but I keep them on her instead.
On the concentration in her face, the flush on her cheeks, the way her lips part when my own hand coasts down her spine in answer.
Every tiny reaction she gives me feels like information I didn’t know I’d been starving for.
“Zlata…” I warn, because my self-control has never felt this thin outside a start gate. “You’re playing with fire.”
“That’s the point,” she says, and then she shifts, sliding off my lap to kneel between my legs in a clumsy, careful shuffle, one hand braced on my thigh, the other still wrapped around me. The cabin rocks; she steadies herself with a palm to my knee, then looks up at me from under her lashes.
The sight slams into me harder than any compression. Her hair is messy, buff askew, eyes dark and intent. There’s nothing coy in it, nothing calculated. Just a woman who decided, finally, to take what she’s been fantasizing about since before she knew my size.
Her fingers work at the last barrier between us, deft and determined, and then there’s nothing but warm air and her hand on bare skin.
My head knocks back against the scratched plastic with a dull thud, and I barely register.
Every nerve is focused forward, on her grip, her breath, the promise in the way she licks her lips like she’s about to commit to a new line on piste.
When she finally leans in, heat and wet and the first slick drag of her mouth closing around me, my hand flies to her shoulder, holding on more for balance than control. A raw, unfiltered sound rips out of me, swallowed by the storm outside and the tight little space we’re sharing.
For the first time in months, my head goes completely, blessedly empty. No splits. No rankings. No ex. Just the rhythm she sets, the scrape of her teeth when she gets brave, the little hum of satisfaction she makes when I can’t hold back a curse.
It feels like we hang there forever, suspended in white and want, the cabin nothing but a shell around the intensity between us. Time narrows to breath, to movement, to the hot, wet slide that’s about to undo me in a way I haven’t let myself be undone in a long time.
And then, with cruel, impeccable timing, the cable above us shudders back to life. The whole gondola lurches, swinging on the line as the machinery growls and the cabin starts creeping backward through the storm.
She freezes, eyes flying up to mine, my name a startled shape around me.
The swing knocks us both off balance. I grab the rail over my head with one hand and her shoulder with the other, steadying us as the cabin creaks and settles back into its slow crawl.
For a heartbeat, we just stare at each other—her on her knees between my legs, my suit open, my breathing wrecked. Then something like hysterical laughter bubbles up in my chest.
“Of course,” I mutter, half-laughing, half-groaning. “Of course, they fix it now.”
Her eyes widen, then she lets out a disbelieving little giggle that tips quickly into real laughter.
She sits back on her heels, one hand still on my thigh, the other wiping at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.
Her cheeks are flushed, lips swollen, eyes bright with adrenaline and mischief.
“This is insane,” she says, breathless. “Completely insane.”
“Completely,” I agree, trying to drag my race suit back together with fingers that do not want to cooperate.
My cock is still hard, throbbing, not at all interested in the fact that we are approaching infrastructure and other human beings.
“We should probably… You know.” I gesture vaguely at the general area of both our clothes.
“Probably,” she echoes, but she doesn’t move right away. Her hand is still warm and heavy on my leg, thumb tracing one last slow line along the muscle, as if she’s committing the shape of it to memory.
Then, with a small, rueful exhale, she lets go.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and there’s a flicker of embarrassment now that wasn’t there a minute ago. “I’m afraid I have to return that.”
The phrasing hits me right in the ridiculous part of my brain; I choke on another laugh. “Return policy is brutal on this lift,” I say, trying to help by joking, not rushing her.
She rolls her eyes, but there’s a smile tugging at her mouth as she tucks me back in with quick, efficient movements, the way she might re-buckle a boot. Thermals up, suit zipped, everything shoved back into place with a gentleness that’s at odds with how bold she was a moment ago.
When she’s satisfied I’m at least vaguely decent, she retreats to her own side of the bench with a little hop, fumbling for her zips and buckles. I force my hands to help—jacket closed, gloves found, helmet straightened—anything to keep from just grabbing her and dragging her back.
We’re both breathing too fast for two people who’ve technically just been sitting for an hour or more.
For a few seconds, the only sound is the machinery outside and the frantic rustle of fabric. Then our eyes meet helplessly, and the tension snaps into laughter again. She clamps a hand over her mouth to muffle it; I lean my head back against the window and give up on looking dignified.
“That was crazy,” she says finally, still shaking her head. “All of it.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “All of it.”
The middle station comes into view sooner than I want. The windows are fogged from our shared breath and body heat, but the noise filters in—voices, clanking skis, a liftie shouting something over the wind. The cabin bumps into the platform, doors rattling.
The operator slides the doors open and gestures sharply. “Everyone out!”
We step onto the platform like two perfectly normal skiers whose whole worlds did not just tilt sideways. I grab my poles, then her skis without thinking, stacking them with mine as we’re swept along with the knot of people heading for the stairs.
Everyone is focused on getting down, not on us. Someone clocks me, does a quick double-take, then mercifully looks away instead of reaching for their phone. I could kiss them for that small act of mercy.
At the bottom of the ramp, I hand Zlata her skis. Our fingers brush on the bindings; the contact sends a small aftershock through me.
“Thank you,” she says automatically. Then, after a beat, with a crooked smile, “For the ride.”
I huff out a breath that’s nowhere near a real laugh but wants to be. “Anytime,” I say. “Preferably with less wind and fewer sudden restarts.”
We stand there for a moment, suspended again—but this time by nothing more than awkwardness and the roar of the wind. I want to pull her close, kiss her properly, say something that acknowledges this is not just another insane story, that it felt real.
Before I can find the words, a familiar voice cuts through the noise.
“Hey, Fabio!”
Max is standing by a snowmobile loaded with poles and skis, goggles pushed up on his helmet, jacket dusted with blown snow. He waves me over. “Thank God. I’ll give you a ride down. They’re closing everything from up here.”
“Hey,” I call back. “How did you know to wait for me here?”
“They pulled down all the cabins below the middle station,” he says. “So, we knew if you were stuck, you’d end up here sooner or later.”
“Right.” I nod, brain scrambling to catch up with normal logistics. “Give me a minute.”
I turn back to where Zlata is standing.
Or where she was standing.
The spot is empty.
For a second, I think I’ve misjudged the distance, that she’s just shifted to the side, tucked behind someone taller. I pivot, scanning the small cluster of people tightening buckles, checking phones, talking to lift staff. Helmets, jackets, goggles, all the usual chaos.
No flash of her jacket. No golden braids. No glimpse of her face.
Nothing.
It’s like she’s been swallowed by the storm.
My stomach drops in a way that has nothing to do with altitude. I take a few steps in a slow circle, skis on my shoulder, ignoring the pinch of my boots as I search for a hint of gold in the crowd, of her. There’s only gray, red, and blue. No Zlata.
Max revs the snowmobile once, impatient but not unkind. “Baier! You coming or are you moving in up here?”
I force my feet to move toward him, the automatic pilot of years of training kicking in. But as I swing my skis into the sled and climb on behind him, my head is nowhere near the set they’ve probably torn down by now.
It’s stuck back in that cabin, in the heat and the dark and the feel of her on my lap—and on the cold platform where, in the space of one shouted greeting and a turn of my head, my golden girl vanished into the white.