Chapter 4 #2
I glanced around the expensive apartment and let just enough sarcasm drip into my voice when I agreed, “Oh, he spoils you, Princess.”
Her soft laughter told me she wasn’t offended by the pet name. “I think he tries to make up for things he can’t fix.” She reached for her wine. “He bought me an ice rink.”
I snorted. “That’s a lot of I’m sorry.”
She looked at me over the rim of her glass, and something shifted in her expression—like she hadn’t expected that from me and wasn’t sure what to do with it. “Yes,” she said finally. “I suppose it is.”
We ate for a moment in the comfortable quiet I was still getting used to with her, and then she said, almost carefully, “Can I ask you something about the last game?”
My jaw tightened. I hated talking about that last game, but she’d answered my personal questions. “Go ahead.”
“Not about the penalty.” She set her glass down, and I saw her take a deep breath, which did all sorts of interesting things to her tits beneath that deceptively simple black wool top.
“I know why you did it—I’ve watched enough of your games to know how you play.
You protect the guys on your left. Always.
” She said it matter-of-factly, like she was telling me the weather.
“It’s not instinct, or it’s not only instinct. You always know where they are.”
I stared at her.
“Jord—the young one—you cover his left flank during most shifts. I’ve wondered if he knows.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. Then: “He knows.”
I just couldn’t believe she knew. She’d recognized the pattern? She’d watched enough of my games to recognize the pattern?
“So when the Crushers’ defenseman went after him—”
“I didn’t think.” Which was the whole problem, wasn’t it? “I just moved.”
Lila nodded slowly, like she’d already worked this out and just needed to hear me confirm it. It was such a particular feeling—being known by someone who wasn’t supposed to know you—that I found I had nothing to say for a moment.
“You watch a lot of our games,” I said finally. It wasn’t really a question.
The pink in her cheeks said more than she’d planned on admitting. “My father has season tickets, of course,” she said, which was technically an answer to a different question.
But I didn’t push.
She knew me. She recognized my instincts.
Huh.
I stood when she did, because my mother had raised me right even if she’d raised me in a cave, and started stacking plates without being asked. Lila blinked at me like I’d done something unexpected.
“You don’t have to—”
“I know.” I carried the stack to the kitchen.
She followed with the glasses, and I did what I always did in unfamiliar spaces—took inventory.
Force of habit. The apartment had told me one story when I’d walked in: careful, considered, every object chosen to be on display.
The matching art on the walls, the throw pillows that had probably never been thrown…
But there were cracks, if you knew how to look.
The cabinet above the stove, just slightly ajar.
I nudged it open while she had her back to me at the sink, and found what I was looking for—not wine, not spices, but a shelf of hot sauces that had no business in a kitchen this tasteful.
Eight, maybe ten bottles. A few of them nearly empty.
One of them, I was fairly certain, was the kind that came with a liability waiver.
I closed the cabinet before she turned around.
It seems my princess had a spicy side that didn’t fit the pearls-and-cardigan public display.
And then, carrying the last of the glasses back, I made the mistake of glancing down the short hallway.
The bedroom door was open. I looked away immediately, the way you do when you’ve accidentally seen something private—but not before I’d clocked the unmade bed, the clothes on the floor, and what looked like either a strange piece of art on the bedside table… or a familiar-shaped sex toy.
Huh.
Again.
Her messy bedroom—that hot sauce collection—her inside knowledge of hockey…they were parts of the real Lila, weren’t they? How much of her public appearance—the art, the perfection, the refinement—was just a performance, and how much was real?
Was it possible my princess wore diamonds and spoke with a hundred-dollar vocabulary…while also throwing her dirty clothes on the floor, refusing to make her bed, and dumping nuclear-level hot sauce on her takeout?
“Living room?” Lila said from behind me, and I turned around.
“Lead the way, Princess.”
She’d pulled up a playlist on her phone—something instrumental, strings and piano, the kind of music I associated with the figure skating videos I’d been watching all week. It filled the apartment quietly, like this was the sort of music that belonged in a place like this.
Except for the hot sauce, a voice whispered in the back of my head.
I wondered which part of Lila was the real deal, and which part I liked more.
She had pushed the coffee table back against the wall and was standing in the center of the living room in her bare feet, her hair still up from dinner. She’d lost her heels somewhere, and I decided that made her feel far more approachable.
And sexy as fuck, the way her toes curled into the thick rug as I eyed her appreciatively.
She was starting to blush again. “Okay. I think the routine will probably focus on lifts, since you’re so strong.
” Her gaze dropped to my chest as she stepped closer, shaking out her hands, as if she was trying to remain professional.
“Obviously, we’re not ready to skate any, but I thought we could learn the basic lift positions tonight, get your hands comfortable with where they need to be. ”
My hands know where they’d like to be.
I didn’t say it. Instead, I nodded curtly. “Walk me through them.”
Lila clicked something on her phone. A video played—a pairs competition, the male tossing the female overhead like she weighed nothing. She paused it and pointed with her other hand.
“That’s the goal. But we start here.” She tossed the phone on the uncomfortable-looking couch and positioned herself in front of me, close enough that I could smell the slight coconut scent of her lotion that had been driving me nuts all week. “Put your hands on my waist.”
I put my hands on her waist.
She looked up at me with an expression that suggested she was focusing very hard on being professional. “The first lift is a press lift. It’s exactly what it sounds like. I put my hands on your shoulders, you take my weight, I go up. That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“For now.” Her hands came to my shoulders. “The hard part isn’t the lift. It’s that you have to feel the moment I’m ready to go—there’s a gathering, a shift of weight onto the balls of my feet. You’ll learn to read it the same way you read me on the ice. Ready?”
I lifted her.
She made a soft surprised sound—not frightened, something else—as her feet left the floor and she rose above me. Her hands tightened on my shoulders. I held her there, steady, watching her face shift from startled into something more like wonder.
“You didn’t even flex,” she said. “I didn’t push off or anything.”
“You don’t weigh anything.”
“I absolutely weigh something.” But she was smiling as I lowered her back down. “Again. This time feel for the moment I shift my weight.”
We did it four more times. By the third, I knew exactly when she was ready—a small transfer of weight, a slight lift of her chin—and I was already moving when she was.
On the fifth, she laughed, delighted.
“See?” she said, tipping her head back to smile up at me. “You read me.”
“I told you.” I could still feel the warmth of her waist through the thin wool of her top. “I always know where you are.”
She looked at me for a moment too long, then stepped back and consulted her phone. “We’re going to try the tabletop lift next, where I’ll be thankful for the tall ceilings. This one’s about trust on your part as much as mine.”
With a nod, she swallowed, then positioned herself in front of me.
“I’m going to fall forward into your hands—you catch me under the hips, here”—she guided my hands to the position—“and you lift me over your head. Carry me horizontal, I’ll be face down. My weight will feel strange at first.”
It didn’t feel strange. It felt like the most natural thing I’d done in weeks—her weight distributed across my palms, her body elongated above me, arms wide, back arched.
Her strength and control were breathtaking…or maybe it was just that my Kteer couldn’t figure out how to react to the feel of my hands on her waist. My head was tipped back to watch her—unlike the male in the video, who’d focused on the ice—but I wanted to see all of her.
I turned slowly on the spot.
“Kardok.” Her voice came from above me, somewhere between a laugh and something more fragile. “You’re supposed to hold still.”
“I know.” I wasn’t entirely sure why I was turning. “I wanted to see what it looked like.”
I set her down. She was pink-cheeked and bright-eyed and smoothing her top with a jerky sort of movement that looked like she just needed something to do with her hands.
“Last one,” she said. “The overhead. You’ve seen it—she runs, he catches at the waist, she goes all the way up.” She demonstrated the arm position—fully extended overhead, body long. “In competition there’s a jump and a rotation, but tonight we’re just doing the catch and hold. Don’t let me fall.”
Never.
“I won’t let you fall.”
She looked at me, and I meant it for more than the lift, and I think she knew that.
She took three steps back, watching me expectantly.
And suddenly, the thought of this female running to me, throwing herself into my arms… I swallowed, feeling my Kteer rumbling in my chest and my cock hardening in the jeans I’d chosen to wear tonight.
Lila was magnificent.
I took a deep breath and nodded, letting her know I was ready, and…
She trusted me. Without hesitation, Lila ran toward me.
I caught her at the waist as she left the floor and pressed her overhead in one motion, and she rose above me with her arms out and head cocked back. The music was still playing, and the apartment was quiet around us, and my hands were completely steady.
“Good?” I asked.
Her voice was soft from above me. “Perfection.”
Just like her.
I held her there a few heartbeats longer than necessary.
Then I lowered her slowly—slowly enough that she slid down the length of me before her feet found the floor. Slowly enough that by the time she was standing again, we were too close, and her hands were at my chest, and mine were still at her waist, and the music had shifted to something quieter.
Neither of us moved.
Lila’s lips parted, as if she wanted to speak, but didn’t. My gaze dropped to them, and I could feel my heart slamming against my ribs as my Kteer howled something unidentified.
And then…
The softest, sweetest scent of her arousal drifted across my tongue, and my cock lurched in my jeans.
I was no stranger to female arousal; that was part of my reputation, after all. There was no mistaking it.
But from Lila?
This prim, proper princess in my arms?
My head was lowering toward hers before I recognized what I was doing, lips aching to taste her.
Right before my mouth reached her, she sucked in a sudden breath, and that noise was enough to drag me back to my senses, realizing what I was doing.
I couldn’t kiss her.
Couldn’t kiss her.
Not only was she my pairs partner, and my position on this team relied on not fucking up this exhibition, but she was Fairbanks’ daughter. She expected all the best things from life.
Not me.
So I straightened and swallowed down my first urge—and my second, fifth, twelfth—urge and nodded to her.
“Again?”
Her smile was a little watery when she stepped back, pulling my hands from her hips.
“Again.”