24. March 25, Friday
Chapter twenty-four
Zoey
By the end of the third week, secrecy had become a skill set she was pretty sure the CIA would envy.
They could duck into service corridors for a rendezvous and walk out looking completely innocent.
They learned to optimize the eleven minutes between a morning meeting and media availability.
They even mastered text threads so bland they read like pure schedule logistics to anyone glancing over a shoulder.
Never, “Miss you.” Not in writing. Not when Zoey’s foster file, her job, and the kids who needed the happiness of the clinics all lived and died by optics. Nina would eat anyone who handed her a PR problem and had interns who watched for drama headlines like sharks looking for blood.
But that was the thing; whatever this was, it had become passion with no discussion of the future.
They stole what they could: one hard kiss in his truck while the arena lot was empty, his mouth at her throat in the back stairwell with skates clacking below, one half-dressed tangle in a side conference room that ended in both of them laughing from panicked relief after someone tried the doorknob only to find it locked.
In public, he was Captain Sergechev. Steady. Dry. Untouchable.
But in private, he touched her like he was making up for every second he couldn’t.
Zoey wasn’t proud of how quickly she’d learned to adapt to managing their secret affair, but she had.
Restraint had become its own kind of discipline: staying busy with Nina’s projects, burying herself in work, spending extra time “reacquainting” herself with the gym—anything that kept her from replaying her favorite moments with him.
Tonight, though, she needed focus. Nina’s stupid sponsor deck wasn’t going to finish itself, and Zoey planned to get through it before she started hallucinating gremlins crawling out from under the piles of projects in her chaotic office.
Flyer mockups for the youth clinic were scattered across the center of her desk. Her laptop glowed in the corner. Somewhere under the mess lurked the granola bar she’d abandoned an hour ago and fully intended to count as dinner if anyone asked.
Outside her narrow window, loading dock lights cut across dirty lingering snowbanks.
The arena had settled into its after-hours hum—compressors, the distant clatter of a janitor’s cart, muffled music from a lower-level event.
Zoey blinked at slide eight long enough that the words started to separate from meaning.
Community engagement metrics. Sure. Love those.
About as much as she loved Mitch just randomly swinging by her office and trying to win her back.
Not.
Which he’d done twice today. Nothing overt, just contrite-charmer mode, a protein bottle, and a question about a photo he could have emailed. Mitch smiled like history was a shared inside joke instead of the wreckage she’d crawled out of alone. Everyone watched. Everyone judged.
And then there’d been Ilya all day too; across the rink, across the conference tables, across that invisible line they both pretended to respect. Measured in public. Hungry in private. Frustrating in both.
Her computer chimed with another email from Nina. Zoey read three lines of, “Just a few minor tweaks,” and dropped her forehead to the desk.
A knock sounded on the door.
“If this is another minor tweak, I’m filing a restraining order,” she called without looking up.
The door opened anyway.
“I’m choosing to assume that wasn’t for me.”
She straightened too fast and nearly knocked her hours-old coffee into orbit.
Ilya stood in the doorway with two coffees in a cardboard tray and a wolfish grin. Black team hoodie. Dark jeans. Damp hair at the temples. His shoulders filled the frame so completely her office suddenly felt toy-sized.
Her pulse did a traitorous little kick.
“Well,” she managed because eloquence apparently left the building, “that’s unsettling.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Good evening, Mama Bear.” That name still landed weirdly low.
She eyed the coffees. “Are those bribes?”
“Possibly.” He nudged the door closed with his foot. “You are overworked, underfed, and have been glaring at your phone all day like it personally offended your honor. I brought reinforcements.”
He set a cup by her mouse. Her order. Too much cream, three sugars, the perfect blend of flavor shots from the little place across the street, not the Cyclones’ sludge.
The tiny detail landed harder than it should have.
Mitch had once forgotten her birthday dinner because he got stuck at poker and sent flowers the next day with a note from his assistant.
Ilya noticed her stressing and came back after hours with exactly what she would have wanted to make sure she was taken care of.
A deeply inconvenient comparison.
“You happened to be wandering around with my exact coffee order?” she asked incredulous.
“I was here already.” He shrugged, though his slight blush made her believe that he wasn’t being completely truthful.
“Doing what?”
“Checking the garage.”
For Fido. Of course. The answer softened something in her chest. “Still nothing?”
“Not a sign.”
He leaned his hip against the desk. Up close, he smelled like soap, cold air, and the rink, the scent that threaded through these last few weeks.
“How bad is it?” he asked, glancing at her screen.
“Nina wants a logo two percent bigger because capitalism is measurable in millimeters.”
“Pure evil.”
“Thanks for your professional assessment.”
“I bring many strengths.”
His gaze lingered in a way no one else would have clocked. “You have a headache,” he said; not a question.
Zoey rubbed between her eyebrows. “Only a small one. It’s just starting. Have you been minoring in witchcraft?”
He ignored the joke. “Did you eat dinner?”
“That feels unrelated.”
He looked at the granola bar. One brow went up.
“Fine. No.”
“Zoey.”
“What?”
“This is your third late night this week,” he murmured. “You need to rest.”
That landed strange and unexpected. “You know that sounds uncomfortably like concern, Mr. I’m-not-a-worrier,” she teased, reaching for sarcasm.
His mouth softened. “Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation.”
“How was practice?”
“Long.”
“And Mitch?”
He didn’t answer. That was answer enough.
“You okay?” she asked, circling the real question.
“Will be in a minute.” He crossed to her door with that deliberate calm she recognized and turned the lock. The metallic click cut through the room.
“Captain!” Zoey gasped, hand on her chest in dignified mock-affront.
He lowered the blinds over the small door window and even remembered the trick with the angle so the anchors wouldn’t pop off.
“How bad is your headache?” he asked.
There was something in his voice—quiet, controlled, threadbare—that sent heat skittering down her spine.
“I’ve heard orgasms can help,” she ventured with a grin.
He stepped closer. “Is that what you want?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Yes,” he repeated softly, testing the word.
The office wasn’t large. Every inch he took felt deliberate, like he was giving her a chance to stop and counting on her not to.
“You are insatiable,” she murmured.
“I know.”
“Do you remember this morning?”
His gaze dipped to her mouth and back up. “Oh, yes.” He echoed her words.
Her heart fluttered.
He stopped in front of her chair. She could see the rough skin across his knuckles, the shadow of stubble, the fatigue from three games in four nights. She could see the exact point where his restraint was about to snap.
“You really should go home,” he said.
Her heart did a stupid lurch. “That’s your move?”
“You’re exhausted.”
“I’m working.”
“You’ve been extra scattered today. I see three different half-cups of coffee in this room alone. Not counting the one I just saw forgotten on your car roof.”
Whoops. Guilty.
“I was busy. Plus, they didn’t taste right.”
“They didn’t know what you wanted,” he muttered placatingly against her neck.
“And you do?”
Ilya hummed, his beard scratching softly against her skin as he kept nuzzling against her.
“I thought you said you were checking the garage.”
“I was. But I decided I needed a kiss to cheer me up before I leave you to a very exciting night glaring at PowerPoint.” He grazed kisses up her neck. “But now that I see you, I just want to convince you to please go home and rest.”
His care landed intimate and raw.
“If I say yes, will you make it worth whatever chewing-out I’ll get tomorrow?”
His hand slid to the back of her neck; not rough, just there. “Tell me if you want me to stop so you can get back to work,” he instructed quietly, leaving the choice in her hands.
It did something treacherous. “I won’t,” she promised.
Relief eased across his face and he kissed her.
This kiss was slower than the stolen ones; deliberate, like he was trying to memorize every place that made her toes curl. She made a small, helpless sound; his hand found her jaw and angled her.
Her chair wheels squealed as she shoved back. His mouth broke from hers on a breath that sounded like a curse. “Subtle,” he muttered.
“Your fault,” she joked, tugging at his hoodie.
The hoodie came up; she slid her hands underneath. His breath hitched at the contact. He peeled his hoodie and T-shirt off in one impatient motion.
“Your hands are cold,” he muttered against her mouth.
“You play on ice for a living,” she shot back.
“Point.”
She kissed him harder and the day’s built-up frustration lit at once—every interrupted touch, every careful public glance, every time Mitch entered a room that was supposed to be just the two of them.
“Stand up,” he instructed, low.
She did.
He pulled her until she stood between his knees, desk at her back. He tugged her lanyard free and dropped it on the desk.
No badge. No one’s coordinator. No one’s ex-wife. Just her.
She touched his face. He leaned into her palm with a weariness that wasn’t captain posture. There you are, she thought.
“I hate this,” she said before she could stop herself.
He went still. “This?”
“The sneaking. The pretending. Watching you all day and not…” She gestured, helpless.