So Over You

by Kate Meader

  “Paging paranoia.”

  He regarded her with half-lidded eyes. “It is a Trojan horse gambit.”

  “I’m sure your sister would love to be compared to a Greek classic. Or a wooden horse.” Or a battle in the war between her brother and mother.

  “This is how she plays the game. My father is dead, I am rich, she is back. And look, I have a sister!”

  Waiting until Vadim’s father died definitely put an odd spin on it, but Isobel refused to judge. Her own mother had left her father for good reasons: lesbianism and adultery were pretty much top two, she’d say. Walk a mile and all that.

  “Mia told me you were her bone marrow donor. I don’t remember you being off the ice for long over a year ago.”

  He smirked. “Keeping tabs on my career, Bella?”

  “Keeping tabs on my team’s assets, Russian. It wasn’t in your file.”

  “I only needed a week to recover and I convinced the Quebec team doctors to keep it secret. My life is very public, and she has enough pressure as it is, being the next great thing in female hockey.”

  Isobel could relate. “So if you didn’t meet your sister until recently, how come she plays hockey?” Not many girls “fell” into hockey by accident.

  “Mia says she was encouraged to play all sports: soccer, tennis, swimming, lacrosse, hockey. But the ice is in her blood.”

  “The genes are strong with this one, huh?”

  Vadim allowed himself a moment to look proud. “Have you seen her play?”

  “Only online. It’s amazing how strong she is, considering she’s not fully grown. But she’s not a muscle factory, either. Her speed reminds me of yours.”

  “She will be an all-time great. I have no doubt.”

  Isobel blinked away threatening tears. How petty of her to think of her own ruined potential while admiring another player. Even Isobel could see that Mia was more talented than she’d been at that age.

  “Well, my work here is done, so I should go.”

  He grasped her wrist. “Have you had a flu shot?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then you will stay.”

  “Shouldn’t you be napping?” Hockey players were big on naps, and this would be about the right time for one.

  His lips curved. “Get under the blanket.”

  “Vad . . .”

  He pulled back the blanket to reveal wafer-thin sweatpants, ridiculously low on his hips. Her Kryptonite! Those V indents were something else, absolutely lickable. His arm stretched along the back of the sofa, inviting her into paradise.

  “There are people here.” She looked around as if the people were actually present in this room. Gordie Howe, proxy for society’s judgment, eyed her with ambivalence. “This is crazy.”

  Sex she could handle. Insane, lights-out monkey sex, maybe against that floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the lake. But the comfort of his body was another thing entirely. Becoming accustomed to it would not be good for her mental well-being.

  “Mia will sleep after her soup. Alexei has an errand to run that will take all afternoon. Lay your head on my chest and take a nap with me, Bella.”

  She was pretty wrecked, and a few minutes wouldn’t hurt, she supposed. Feeling completely overwhelmed by his sheer Russian-ness, she threw an arm around his hard body, snuggled in the crook of his arm, and closed her eyes.

  EIGHTEEN

  Vadim woke up to indescribable pleasure. Isobel’s hand was stroking his cock.

  He turned his head, noting her dark lashes fanned over her cheekbones, her breathing steady and even. Still asleep, yet she pleasured him in her dreams?

  This girl—this woman—had completely bewitched him. Had she any idea how sexy she was or how much he wanted her? Likely she credited this attraction between them to proximity. Coaching had thrown them together in a relationship that was pressurized and adversarial. Sex was a natural way to relieve the intensity.

  So strange, when it appeared that he was barely a blip on her radar all those years ago. His trade to Chicago was not his choice, but he had embraced it, his curiosity about her almost overwhelming. Now he was here, and he was determined to see this through.

  Isobel would be his.

  Because there was no doubt he was hers.

  She owned him with every stroke of his cock inside his sweatpants, not hard enough to be deliberate, but tantalizing enough to drive him wild. He wanted to wake her, to make her aware of her actions so she would take it to the next level. Hard, fast strokes that would hurl him over the edge. But he also wanted to stay in this twilight where Isobel didn’t realize he was about to tilt her world off its axis as she had done to his.

  So he watched her, half in agony, as she continued to give him the comfort he refused to admit he needed.

  A moment later, her eyes fluttered open. She flushed bright red. Her hand stopped moving.

  “Hi,” she said, a shyness in her voice that warmed his chest.

  “Hello.”

  “Did you put my hand down your pants?”

  “Do not be ashamed of your dreams, Isobel.”

  She looked confused. “I thought I heard you say something when I was asleep. Telling me you were here, the same as in New York.” Shaking herself awake, she sat up, dragging her hand away from his cock, which twitched in misery. “It was just supposed to be a nap.”

  “If it’s any consolation, my cock usually undergoes a vigorous workout during my naps. It’s nice to get an assist.”

  “You should see how your sister is doing.”

  “Ah, the perfect way to make my boner go away.” He stared at it. “Usually.”

  She held up her palms. “Magic hands. Extra long-lasting boners even when sisters are mentioned.” She smiled. It destroyed him. “How about I go see if she’s okay? Keep your germ exposure at a minimum.”

  A minute later, she returned. “She’s still asleep. Gordie Howe’s curled up on the end of her bed, watching over her.”

  He hoped Alexei remembered to pick up food for the dumb dog. “Come here, Bella.”

  “Think I’ll stay over here.” She moved to the window. “View’s much better.”

  Yes, it was; Isobel framed against the white lunar landscape like an ice princess.

  “You look cold,” he said.

  “Then warm me up, Russian.” She didn’t even turn, so sure of her power over him. But hadn’t it always been this way?

  Switching the afghan to his shoulders, he stalked toward her and covered her body with his, chin on her shoulder, the blanket shrouding them both.

  “This place is going to look amazing in the summer,” she murmured. “All that impossible blue, but then you probably like the white. Reminds you of home.”

  “I couldn’t wait to get out when I was a kid. Come to America, the whole cliché.”

  She stiffened, and he wrapped his arms around her waist. “I was bitter at first, Isobel, but no more. And my father was as much to blame. We are where we are supposed to be.”

  “I had no idea Cliff would do that. Mess with your visa. Blackball you in the league. I only found out later. He was always so worried I’d meet a boy and let him lead me astray. He didn’t have enough faith that I’d put my career first. As if I’d—” She broke off.

  “As if you would’ve put hockey second to go moon-eyed over a boy? I knew that. I knew you.”

  She relaxed. “But my father didn’t. It’s the model for how relationships in pro sports work. Everything revolves around the male player, not the other way around. He was used to women putting him first. His wives gave up everything, and to be honest, he didn’t give them a whole lot back. But I wanted to succeed in hockey more than anything and I wouldn’t have let a guy stand in my way.”

  “So even if I’d stayed, visited you at Harvard, tried to make something of us, we were doomed?” He said it lightly, though his heart mourned the conclusion.

  “Hockey was all I cared about. Sure, I liked you—I had a giant crush on you—but given the choice,
you would have lost.”

  “Of course I would. I couldn’t even satisfy you in bed.”

  She laughed, her body rocking against his. “You’ve made up for it, Russian. But it wasn’t the right time.”

  No. Clifford Chase, who didn’t trust his daughter to choose her first love—the holy trinity of a stick, a puck, and an ice oval—had decided to remove the temptation to the other side of the world. But the old man was dead, and his daughter was in Vadim’s arms where she belonged. Was it the right time now?

  To stop himself from saying something stupid, he kissed her neck, held her tight.

  “I’m sorry about how he treated you,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for you and that your chance to play here was delayed.”

  “I made it back.” To you, his tricky heart finished. Was this what he’d been striving for all along? An open path back to Isobel Chase?

  He wished she didn’t make him crazy and tie him up in knots. He wished he didn’t want to take care of her and snuggle with her on the sofa. He wished this feeling were merely lust.

  But with Isobel, it had always been so much more.

  Eager to unite his mental and physical needs, he crept a hand to the waistband of her tracksuit bottoms and broke the border. Down, down he inched, to paradise.

  “Vad,” she moaned, and he heard encouragement that sent his hand deeper, his fingers parting and entering. All this wetness, all for him.

  His mouth moved along her jaw, the shell of her ear, the delicate feathered wisps at her dark hairline. Beneath his lips, he felt the pinched skin of her healed scar. That night in Buffalo, he had thought he had lost her when an opponent’s skate sliced through her skull.

  Never again.

  Stroking through her slick heat, he caught her clit with his callused finger on each return. He knew what she liked now, a steady rhythm, a slow build, barely-there glances against her pleasure center so she wouldn’t go off too quickly.

  He shoved her pants and underwear down, encouraging her to part her thighs and give him better access. It also gave his rock-hard cock, still confined in sweatpants, a home to nuzzle against. The cleft of her bare ass invited him to settle in and grind hard. He could come like this. So easy. So good.

  But it would always be his Bella first. Her moans increased in volume, and she wrapped a palm around his neck to anchor herself. Her other hand shot out toward the window, and he reached for it and locked his fingers with hers. Needing to connect at every extremity. They were twined together, moving as one mass of heat and sex and pleasure. Who would have thought he would find so much satisfaction with his raging cock positioned outside his woman’s body?

  Beyond the glass, the shadows of late afternoon stretched over the lake. Lace-frilled waves pounded the shore of his private beach, the wildness on the other side matching the passion on this one.

  “Vad—yes, yes.”

  As he couldn’t bury his cock inside her—condoms were in the bedroom—he used the next best thing: two fingers slipped inside just in time to feel the clamp of her muscles as she exploded in release. His cock continued to thrust, his hips flexing, his body demanding. Feeding his fingers into her mouth, he bit down on the sweet juncture where her neck met her shoulder, and she returned the favor with a clamp over his hand to muffle her cries.

  Her pussy jerked around his fingers again. She still had more to give him!

  “Moya!” Mine. A lusty suck on her neck soothed the sting. His Bella, so insatiable.

  She was not the only one.

  Her liquid pleasure flooded his hand and triggered a response that hadn’t occurred since Vadim was a schoolboy.

  With a stifled roar, he came inside his pants.

  NINETEEN

  “I should leave.”

  It was at least the tenth time she’d said that, yet she found it impossible to move. Apparently, she’d checked her spine at the door and now her postorgasmic lethargy kept her pinned to the sofa. The perfect weight of Vadim’s arms around her wasn’t helping her bid to go, either.

  Every time she brought up her departure, he kissed her. On her eyelids, her nose, the corners of her mouth. Outside, waves crashed and night descended. Oddly, she felt as if she’d made some peace with Vadim over how they’d parted all those years ago. Not that it changed anything going forward. He was still a hockey player, and she knew all too well that pro athletes always put themselves first. Two cheating college boyfriends and a father who couldn’t keep it in his hockey shorts had skewed her frame of reference.

  Her mind returned to the one and only time her father had taken her to an away game, long after he’d given up playing and just after he’d bought the majority share in the Rebels. Barely twelve years old, she’d been excited to have her own room with its pillow chocolates and a minibar fridge—fun-size Pringles!—and especially pleased that it adjoined her dad’s. So cosmopolitan, she’d thought. Big mistake, as she found out later.

  A nightmare had jerked her from sleep, and she’d sought out her dad for comfort. But as she approached the door leading to his room, she heard it: the giggle of a woman not her mother. A hockey groupie. Isobel didn’t need to go in or listen further to learn more—her heart knew the score, and in that moment, her all-encompassing love for him cracked. Violet wasn’t on her radar yet, but Isobel understood then what he had done to Harper. What he had done to both his wives. How he took what he wanted because he was a man of reckless appetites and minimal compassion.

  He never asked her to lie. At the time, she had thought it was because his infidelity was so accepted by her mother that there was no secret to keep. She saw it differently now, how complicit she was because she knew he would never treat her with such contempt. He might break his marriage vows, but he would never betray Isobel. Only later did she realize that he hadn’t seen her as a daughter. Not really. He had put her in a box that fit his ambition: the son he never had. The son he would mold into greatness.

  She sat up, determination in her bones, tugging her sweatpants higher on her waist and pulling her hoodie’s zipper as high as it would go. No more funny business, that zipper pull said. “Really, this time.”

  Arrogant Vadim Petrov, a man who had women at every game proposing marriage and more on huge signs held against the Plexi, watched her beneath hooded eyes, so sure of his control over her body. He’d changed into jeans, which, along with his shirtlessness, was an unreasonably unfair check in his favor.

  “Yet you continue to stay.”

  She opened her mouth to protest—no, really, this time, I must—but was cut off when Alexei walked in with a rolling suitcase, a small figure trailing him.

  Vadim snorted. “What did I tell you?”

  The dark-haired woman Vadim had snubbed at the Spartans arena in New York stood apart from Alexei, clearly frantic with worry. “Where’s Mia? How is she?”

  “She’s asleep and she’s fine,” Vadim said. “Or she will be. There was no need for you to make the trip.”

  The woman, with fiery blue eyes like her son’s, shot momma-wolf daggers in his direction. “Excuse me if I don’t take your word for it. Now, I’d like to see my daughter.”

  With a disgusted glare, Vadim jerked a hand at Alexei. “Show her.”

  Once they’d left, Isobel turned to Vadim. “She’s worried. She doesn’t need your attitude making it worse.”

  “I told you before to stay out of it. That hasn’t changed.”

  She debated this, but decided that there was nothing she could do. At least, not now. She turned to leave, only to find that Vadim’s mom had returned, her face crumpled with worry.

  “Her temperature is 103. I’d hoped to take her to the hotel with me.”

  Vadim stood and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “She will stay here until she is better. Alexei can inform you when she’s awake.”

  “Vadim!” Isobel couldn’t believe his bullheaded insensitivity. “Your mother can’t stay at a hotel.”

  The petite woman thrust her hand
out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Victoria Wallace.”

  Isobel shook it, enjoying the strong grip. “Isobel Chase.”

  She brightened. “I know. My daughter adores you. Your picture is on her bedroom wall along with Vadim’s.”

  “That’s scary.” And wasn’t that an image, the two of them paired together on a teenager’s bedroom wall? Isobel cut a look to Vadim, who evidently wasn’t as impressed with this news as Isobel.

  Victoria addressed her son, her expression chilly. “I’d like to be here when she wakes up, so I’m going to sit in her room.”

  “Alexei can call you—”

  “Of course it’s all right,” Isobel cut in. “And there’s no need to stay in her sickroom. You might catch the flu. I’m sure Vadim can put you up elsewhere in the house.” She led Victoria gently to the sofa. “Now have a seat while he and I go into the kitchen and talk about you behind your back.” Then to Vadim: “Petrov. Kitchen. Now.”

  She steered him into the kitchen, but only because he let her.

  “She should be staying at a hotel,” he grated.

  “While her daughter is sick?”

  “I can take care of my sister. That woman should not even be here!”

  Isobel placed her hands on his chest. His hard, broad, perfect—focus. “Vad, it’ll just be for a couple of days. Let’s eat, and if after that you still can’t bear it, then Victoria can stay with me. It’s a ten-minute drive from here to my place, and she can visit her sick daughter while you’re at practice.”

  “Unacceptable.”

  “Then you can move into a hotel and leave this place to the two of them.”

  Color flagged his aristocratic cheekbones while his decadent mouth twitched in annoyance. He wanted to shout at her, but he didn’t want his mother to hear. Perfect.

  She smiled sweetly. “Now, what’ve you got here that could be turned into a meal?”

  “Alexei cooks. He will make dinner.” He squinted at her. “I do not enjoy when you interfere in my life, Isobel.”

  “I know,” she said with a pat on his arm. “Now, go put on a shirt. You’re blinding us all with those pecs.”