Chapter 6
Roman
Regret is a useless emotion. It is a waste of caloric energy. It changes nothing about the past and obscures the clarity of the future. Regret is for people who make mistakes they cannot afford.
I was currently bench-pressing three hundred and fifteen pounds because I was terrified that I was one of those people.
One.
The bar lowered to my chest, the steel cold against my t-shirt.
Two.
I pushed up. The strain in my triceps was familiar. Safe.
Three.
My mind, however, was not safe.
My mind was still in the basement. It was still pinned against the wall, smelling vanilla and sex, hearing the way Vanessa screamed my name when she came apart on my fingers.
Four.
The bar clattered into the rack.
I sat up, gasping for air, sweat dripping from my nose onto the rubber matting of the Sentinels’ weight room.
It was 6:00 AM. The sun hadn't even thought about rising over the frozen Vermont landscape.
The gym was empty, silent save for the humming of the HVAC system and the thumping of my own traitorous heart.
I looked at my hands.
They were wrapped in black athletic tape, shaking slightly from the exertion. But underneath the tape, my skin felt different. It felt marked.
I had touched her.
Not just touched. I had claimed her. I had taken the President’s daughter, the "off-limits" princess, the one distraction I had sworn to avoid, and I had wrecked her against my living room wall.
And the worst part? The part that made me want to load another plate onto the bar until my muscles snapped?
I wanted to do it again.
I grabbed my water bottle and squeezed a jet of lukewarm liquid into my mouth. I needed to wash the taste of her away. It wasn't working. She was burned into my taste buds.
"You're going to tear a pec."
I didn't flinch. I knew Carter Banks was there. He walked with the heavy, shuffling gait of a goalie whose knees were forty years older than the rest of him.
"My pecs are steel," I said, wiping my face with a towel. "They do not tear."
"Everything tears eventually, Tsar," Banksy said, dropping his gym bag on the bench next to me. He looked terrible. His hair was sticking up in three different directions, and he was wearing pajama pants tucked into snow boots. "Even you."
He squinted at me under the harsh fluorescent lights.
"You look like shit," he added helpfully.
"Thank you," I said. "I slept poorly."
"Did you?" Banksy leaned in, his eyes narrowing. "Because I heard noises coming from the dungeon last night. Sounded like... furniture rearrangement. Or a murder."
My grip on the water bottle tightened until the plastic crunched.
"Vanessa was... measuring me," I said. It was technically the truth. "For her project."
"Measuring you," Banksy repeated. He looked at my neck.
I resisted the urge to cover the spot where I knew—I knew—there was a faint, red mark where her teeth had grazed my skin.
"She is meticulous," I said stiffly. "She needed the inseam."
Banksy stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. He wasn't the idiot he pretended to be. Goalies were observant. They spent the whole game watching plays develop, predicting trajectories.
"Right," Banksy said slowly. "Inseam. Is that what we're calling it now?"
"Drop it, Carter."
"I'm just saying," Banksy held up his hands. "If you're playing with fire, make sure you have an extinguisher. Because if Coach finds out you're 'measuring inseams' with Sterling's daughter, he's going to bench you so hard your grandchildren will feel the splinters."
"I know the stakes," I snapped. I stood up, looming over him. "I always know the stakes."
"Do you?" Banksy asked quietly. "Because you usually have that 'dead eyes, nothing to lose' look. Right now? You look like a guy who's terrified he's about to lose everything."
I turned away from him, grabbing a pair of forty-pound dumbbells.
"I am focused," I growled. "I am training. Go stretch your groin, Banks. It is tight."
"You're avoiding," Banksy sang out, walking toward the mats. "But don't worry, your secret is safe with me. Mostly because I don't want to be subpoenaed when her dad sues you for emotional damages."
I started curling the weights. Bicep curls. Simple. Repetitive.
Emotional damages.
That was the problem. The sex was physical. I could handle physical. I understood friction, biology, release.
But what happened after... the way she had looked at me, with her hair messy and her lips swollen, whispering I know... that was emotional.
And emotions were variables I couldn't control.
The lecture hall for Marketing 301 was an amphitheater of boredom. Three hundred students sat in tiered rows, illuminated by the glow of three hundred laptops, pretending to listen to Professor Halloway drone on about "Brand Synergy."
I sat in the back row, wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled up. I was hiding.
I was the Captain of the hockey team. I was 6'5". I didn't hide. But today, I was making an exception.
Because she was down there.
Vanessa stood at the front of the room, to the left of the podium. She was the Teaching Assistant, which meant she spent the lecture handing out worksheets, fixing the projector when Halloway couldn't figure out the HDMI cable, and looking devastatingly beautiful.
She was back in her armor.
She wore a sharp, tailored black blazer over a white silk camisole, tight black trousers, and boots with heels sharp enough to puncture a lung. Her hair was pulled back in a severe, sleek ponytail. Her makeup was flawless.
She looked professional. Untouchable. Cold.
Except I knew she wasn't cold.
I knew that under that blazer, her skin was soft and marked with the ghost of my fingerprints. I knew that if I touched the spot right behind her ear, she would shiver. I knew the sound she made when she was desperate.
Secret Knowledge.
It sat in my chest like a heavy stone.
Every time she moved, I tracked her. When she walked up the aisle to collect attendance sheets, my eyes followed the sway of her hips. I remembered how those hips felt grinding against mine.
I felt a flush of heat rise up my neck. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable in my jeans.
Stop it, Volkov. You are a Pavlovian dog.
She reached my row.
She was collecting papers. She moved down the line, taking sheets from students who stared at her with a mix of intimidation and lust. They saw the Princess. The Ice Queen.
She got to me.
I held out my worksheet. My hand was steady. Hers was not.
When she reached for the paper, her fingers brushed mine.
The static shock was palpable. A distinct snap of electricity.
She flinched. Her eyes snapped to mine.
For a second, the mask slipped. The professional TA vanished, and the girl from the basement appeared. Her pupils dilated. Her lips parted. A flush crept up her neck, clashing with the white silk.
We stared at each other. The noise of the lecture hall—the typing, the coughing, Halloway’s voice—faded into a dull buzz.
"Mr. Volkov," she whispered. Her voice was tight. "Your assignment."
"Ms. Sterling," I replied. My voice was a low rumble, meant only for her.
She tugged at the paper. I didn't let go immediately.
"It is... complete," I said. "The brand strategy."
"Good," she breathed. She wasn't looking at the paper. She was looking at my mouth.
"I took your advice," I murmured, leaning forward just an inch. "I added more emotion."
Her gaze dropped to the desk, then back up to my eyes. She looked terrified and thrilled.
"I look forward to reading it," she said.
She yanked the paper from my grip. She turned and walked away fast, her heels clicking a staccato rhythm of retreat.
I watched her go. I watched the way her hand trembled as she added my paper to the stack.
I slumped back in my chair, exhaling a breath I had been holding for ten minutes.
This was unsustainable.
We couldn't exist like this. We couldn't live in the same house, share the same air, and pretend that we hadn't crossed a line that could never be uncrossed.
The lecture ended. I waited until the room cleared out. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I didn't want to explain why I was sweating in a climate-controlled room.
I walked out into the corridor. The campus was busy. Students rushing to lunch, laughing, complaining about exams. Normal life.
I felt separated from them by a sheet of glass. They were living in the daylight. I was living in a secret world of obsession.
"Roman."
I stopped.
She was waiting for me. Tucked into the alcove near the vending machines, clutching her stack of papers to her chest like a shield.
I walked over to her. I blocked her from view with my body, creating a private space in the public hallway.
"You look..." I started, but I couldn't finish. You look like mine.
"We need to talk," she said. She was looking at my zipper, refusing to meet my eyes.
"About?"
"About the fact that I almost hyperventilated when you handed me a piece of paper," she hissed. She looked up then, her hazel eyes frantic. "Roman, this is... we can't do this. People are going to see. You look at me like you want to eat me."
"I do want to eat you," I said honestly.
She made a strangled noise. "Stop. You can't say things like that in the Marketing building."
"I am stating a fact," I said. I stepped closer, forcing her back until her shoulders hit the vending machine. The hum of the compressor vibrated against her. "You felt it too. In the class."
"Yes," she admitted, her voice shaking. "I felt it. That's the problem. I can't focus. I'm grading papers and all I can see is your hands. I'm designing clothes and all I can think about is taking yours off."
She closed her eyes, looking pained. "I have a thesis to finish. You have the draft. We are risking everything for... for what? An orgasm?"
"It was a very good orgasm," I pointed out.
"Roman!" She hit my arm with the stack of papers.
I caught her wrist. My thumb pressed into her pulse point. It was racing. Rabbit-fast.
"Vanessa," I said, my voice serious now. "We made a deal. You help me. I help you. We co-exist."
"We aren't co-existing," she whispered. "We're colliding."