Chapter Forty-One Sadie
I look beautiful.
Ro found the dress, though she refused to tell me where, and it fits like a glove. Black silk down to my ankles with a single slit to mid-thigh. Just enough to be sexy without being indecent.
While I did my makeup, my best friend did my hair, slicking it all back into a bun and letting two tendrils hang from the front and frame my face. I still sport my usual dark-cherry lips and smoky eyes, but it’s more regal. Less “competition Sadie.” More like Rhys’s Gray.
Rhys’s . His.
I’ve never belonged to anyone, or anywhere.
It’s a warm feeling when I thought it would be suffocating.
Ro offered to pick up the boys after they carpool home from practice—something I’m quite sure Rhys’s parents had a hand in organizing. For now, we’re at the Hockey House, so it feels a bit like prom when I descend the stairs to a room full of tuxedo-clad boys.
Rhys, Freddy, and Bennett—the latter two going solo—look mouthwatering.
Bennett resembles his father even more now. His height and width are just as daunting, but he’s in a crisp black tux, sans tie. His unruly golden-brown curls are only somewhat smoothed, but his face is clean-shaven, which somehow makes him more intimidating.
Freddy is in a blue suit with his hair combed back, his shirt open just enough for a glint of the metal he usually wears.
Maybe I’m biased, but Rhys looks like the cover model of a magazine, or some celebrity on the red carpet. His hair is cut shorter, not as shaggy as it’s been, and he’s put something in it to keep it tamed. His tux is black, simple, with a crisp, perfect bow tie at the center of his collar.
A bow tie I decided to fix anyway, even knowing nothing about it. I just shift it this way and that, because this moment feels like a dream and I want it to stay that way.
He grasps my wrists, stopping me for a gentle kiss. His eyes smolder as he pulls away and takes me in.
“You’re so goddamn perfect, Gray.” He smiles. “And I’m so fucking lucky.”
I almost say it, tell him the words that have been hanging on the tip of my tongue for five days, ever since Halloween. But we’re surrounded by friends, and if I know Rhys, the moment those words leave my mouth, we won’t be leaving his room for a while.
So instead, I kiss his hand. I’m softer in my affection, and I see the way it makes his cheeks blush.
He might be a solid ice captain when in a pair of skates, the Waterfell Wolves’ fearless leader. But for me, he’ll always be soft.
Rhys’s parents planned to meet us at the entrance, but they’re already swarmed in the corner when we get there.
It’s a fundraiser for the First Line Foundation—which I recently realized is not just a volunteer opportunity for Max Koteskiy, but is his charity.
He started it, funds it, and everything, so that all kids get a chance to skate.
Anna, Rhys’s mother, looks dazzling in her deep green dress.
I’ve heard his teammates tease Rhys about how beautiful his mother is, and they are not wrong.
She’s gorgeous, clearly fit, and always bright-eyed.
But it’s easy to be around her; she makes everyone smile, and I think that’s the real reason everyone finds themselves drawn to her.
This is only my fourth or fifth time around them, and without the buffer of Oliver and Liam occupying their attention, I’m nervous. I’m learning to trust Anna. Slowly. Max too.
Eventually, after a few spins on the checkered dance floor—where I was pleasantly surprised by Rhys’s waltzing ability—we make our way to them.
The photographers jump at the chance for photos of the great Maximillian Koteskiy with his up-and-coming hockey-star son, Rhys Maximillian Koteskiy.
They don’t bother with Anna until Max makes a fuss and starts shouting about her architectural achievements, which he says matter much more than a washed-up NHL player.
And I see it then: the reason Rhys loves me the way he does. The reason he cares for the boys and wants to keep us close. It’s because he’s seen this his whole life. Has been surrounded by love.
Loving me, loving my brothers—it’s easy for him.
My chest tightens, and keeps squeezing until I’m almost sure I’ll die.
So, when they finish posing for photos, I drag Rhys into the conference center’s carpeted hallway and down toward the staff entrances. I shove him into an empty conference hall that’s vast, dark, and full of tables and chairs in disarray.
He laughs even as I feebly pin him to the wall. His eyes smoldering down at me, half-lidded and all warm chocolate, heating me with his gaze.
“Can’t even make it through a few hours, huh? Need me that badly, kotyonok ?”
He doesn’t use the word often, but it never fails to light me up when he speaks Russian.
“I love you.”
It isn’t exactly how I planned it in my head—no beautiful speech to match the one he gave that I replay in my head almost constantly. So I keep going.
“And I’m sorry that I didn’t—”
He shuts me up with a kiss, gripping my hips in hands that nearly span my entire waist, hefting me up so I can wrap my legs around him. It causes the silk of my dress to slip all the way up my legs and bunch at my waist, which seems to be his goal.
“No apologies, Gray.” He kisses down my neck. “Never apologies with you. I love you so much. I love you.”
Rhys never stops saying it as he lays me across one of the cloth-covered tables, the glow of moonlight illuminating my skin.
His bow tie disappears along with his suit jacket before he latches his mouth to my collarbone and gently slides the thin straps of my dress down my arms until my breasts are bared to him.
My breath stutters out of me as his hand drifts to my center. He hisses when he finds only bare skin.
“All night?” he asks, pressing firmly against my clit, then drifting his fingers lightly down my lips before circling back in a cruel little pattern.
“No panty lines,” I barely eke out, followed by a desperate, loud moan as his fingers enter me.
I try to calm myself down and keep from coming, because I know Rhys is about to sink to his knees and lick me until I’m a shaking mess, but nothing I do is working.
I’m already on the precipice, just from looking at him in the dark shadows of the room.
Golden boy Rhys Koteskiy has disappeared, and in his place is the darkness that I know thrums in his veins.
Maybe it scared him before, but this unleashed version of him—I love him just as much as the shining star.
He gives me that dark, teasing look, like he knows exactly how close I am.
“Say it again,” he demands.
“I love you.”
“Good girl,” he says, sinking to his knees. He teases my slit with his tongue, not bothering to remove the two fingers he has stilled inside me. It takes barely two minutes with his lips around my clit, sucking and tonguing in rapid succession, before I go off like a bomb.
I clench around his fingers even as he moves his lips away. He appears over me again to kiss me, and the taste of myself on his lips, in his mouth, is so erotic I pulse again.
Rhys undoes his belt and pants, pulling himself free before fishing a condom out of his pocket and sliding it on. I lie like a boneless mass of muscle just watching him.
I think I’d do anything he wanted right now.
“God,” he grinds out, sliding slowly into me as my still-pulsing pussy clenches up around him. It doesn’t matter that I’ve barely come down from my orgasm; I can feel that my heartbeat has taken up residence in my center, like it’s begging for more.
“The first time I saw you like this, I thought you were too fucking small for me.”
I whine, high and loud, as he inches forward again, still holding back.
“But you fit me like a fucking glove, baby,” he coos before slamming in to the hilt. My back bows, breasts heaving as he starts to fuck me, hard and insistent.
It always feels like the first time with Rhys, and I wonder if, years from now, when we have kids and a yard and a dog, I’ll still feel this way.
He doesn’t let up, doesn’t pause; he continues to thrust and works me through another orgasm before he’s pinching my nipple with one hand and holding my chin with the other.
“Give me one more, kotyonok. ” His voice is hoarse now, his temples shining with a light sheen of sweat.
“Rhys—I-I can’t,” I cry.
“You can. Say it again, and come for me.”
He plays his fingers across my clit, waiting until the words, “I love you,” pour from my lips before pressing on me. Like striking a match, I lose myself again.
He follows me, telling me he loves me; murmurs a constant stream of praise as he discards the condom and cleans me up, putting my straps back over my shoulders and helping me up. And he never stops kissing me. I straighten my dress as he tosses the tablecloth we used into the corner trash can.
I can’t stop smiling at him, but I finally turn to grab my phone while he gets redressed.
I have five missed calls from an unknown number with a local area code.
Just as I unlock the phone, it starts buzzing again.
“Hello?”
“Is this Sadie Brown?”
Rhys’s eyes flicker to me in mild concern and I know he can hear every word in the quiet of the room.
“Yeah, who is this?”
“I’m Samantha, a nurse at Greenwood General.” My stomach drops at the mention of the hospital one town over from Waterfell. “We’ve been trying to reach you. Your father was brought in about an hour ago after a drunk driving accident.”
My eyes burn, but I try to keep it together until she finishes.
“But, um, your brothers, I think? Liam and Oliver? They were in the car with him. And you’re listed after your father as next of kin.”
“Oh my God,” I cry, already running barefoot for the door and into the bright, loud hallway. “Are they okay? Are they—”
I can’t breathe, I can barely hear what she says. My vision grays out for a moment, and I stumble into the wall.
Rhys is there, like he always is. His hand wraps around mine and he gently pries the phone from my grip, taking over.
And I still can’t breathe.