Chapter 1 #3
"If you’re going to read trash," I murmured, "at least read something with better mechanics. You’re a stats major. You should appreciate accuracy."
Her mouth fell open. A perfect, pink 'O'.
"I—it’s not trash," she whispered, a sudden spark of defiance lighting up her eyes. "It’s escapism. Some people need a break from reality, Volkov. Not everyone wants to live in a spreadsheet."
The retort surprised me. It was sharp.
I narrowed my eyes. "Reality is where the game is played, O’Shea. Escapism is for people who can’t handle the ice."
I turned my back on her before she could reply. I needed to leave. I needed the cold air of the rink. I needed to stop smelling her.
"Practice!" I barked at the room. "Five minutes. Anyone late runs suicides until they puke."
The team scrambled, boots thundering as they rushed for the exits.
I walked out, my heart rate steady at 55 beats per minute.
But my skin felt tight.
Twitching like a divining rod.
Jesus Christ.
Belinda
I hid in the women’s bathroom on the second floor for twelve minutes.
I sat on the closed lid of the toilet, my head between my knees, breathing in the scent of bleach and regret.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
I had blown it. I was the joke. I was the "Porn Girl" now. I could already hear the nicknames brewing in the locker room. Fifty Shades of O’Shea. Belinda the Bodice Ripper.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. A text from Sloane.
Sloane: Why did Jax just tweet "The Earl has entered the chat"? What did you do?
I groaned and shoved the phone back into my pocket. I couldn’t deal with Sloane’s mockery yet.
I stood up and splashed cold water on my face. The girl in the mirror looked flushed, her eyes bright and frantic.
Pull it together.
I had a job to do. I was the Head Analyst. My father had put his reputation on the line to hire me fresh out of the undergrad program. If I quit now, I proved him right—that I was too soft for this world.
I dried my face with a rough paper towel, adjusted my glasses, and marched out of the bathroom.
I headed for the Sanctuary—the Crow’s Nest. The media booth at the very top of the arena. It was my designated workspace during practice. It was glass-enclosed, soundproof, and freezing cold. Perfect.
I climbed the four flights of stairs, my thighs burning, and keyed into the booth.
The view was spectacular. The entire rink lay spread out below me like a pristine white canvas. The ice gleamed under the high-intensity floodlights.
The team was already on the ice. They were blurred shapes of black and gold, moving in drills that looked chaotic to the untrained eye but looked like a symphony to me.
I sat down at the console, opened my laptop (carefully checking for rogue smut first), and pulled up the live-feed tracking software.
I zoomed the camera in.
There he was.
Peter Volkov.
He was in the net, a fortress of pads and menace. He wasn’t moving much. He didn’t have to. He was efficient.
I watched a player—Jax—streak down the wing and fire a slap shot that clocked in at ninety miles per hour.
Peter didn’t flinch. He just... absorbed it. He shifted slightly, the puck hitting his chest protector with a dull thud and dropping dead to the ice. He swept it away with his stick in a motion that looked disdainful.
I zoomed in tighter on the monitor.
Even through the mask, I could see his eyes. They were scanning the ice, constantly calculating.
Reality is where the game is played.
He was so arrogant. So cold. He treated life like a math problem he had already solved.
And yet.
I thought about the way he had looked at me in the film room. The way he had leaned in. The way his size had made the air feel thin.
I shivered, pulling my cardigan tighter around me.
I should hate him. He had humiliated me. He was everything I wasn’t—controlled, confident, experienced.
But as I watched him slide across the crease, doing a butterfly split that demonstrated a flexibility that made my romance-novel-addled brain short-circuit, I realized something terrifying.
He was right.
The book was inaccurate.
Because looking at Peter Volkov, listening to the snap of his glove and the scrape of his skates, I realized that the "throbbing desire" the books talked about wasn’t a metaphor.
It was a physical ache. A tightness in my chest. A heat in my belly that had nothing to do with the Earl and everything to do with the Tsar.
I was in so much trouble.
I opened a new file on my computer. I should have titled it Practice_Notes_Sept12.
Instead, I stared at the blinking cursor.
My fingers hovered over the keys.
Subject: Peter Volkov.
Status: Liabilities.
Observation 1: He is going to ruin me.
I deleted the line, slammed the laptop shut, and stared down at the ice.
Peter looked up.
It was impossible. He couldn’t see me. I was four stories up behind tinted glass.
But he looked up. Straight at the Crow’s Nest. He lifted his stick in the air—not a wave, but an acknowledgment. A warning.
I know you’re watching.
I sank down in my chair, my heart hammering a rhythm that had no business being in a hockey arena.
Game on.