Body Checked (Center Ice Book 1) (4 page)

“
Molodtsa,
” he tells me, voice pitched low.
Good girl.
 

Sergei stands to full height. His erection is bulging against his jeans. Even though I’m just starting to catch my breath, I’m ready for more. I need him inside of me. I want to spank his firm ass and ride him like goddamn Russian cowboy. “Do you have condoms?” I ask, trying to match his husky tone.

He laughs; a faint touch of red graces his cheeks. “I, ah, think you’re sitting on them.”

I blush, too. “Sorry.”

I hop up off the stack of boxes and open the top one. Sure enough, it’s toiletries, including a box of Magnum size condoms. Oh, god, don’t let him be one of those guys who insists on buying Magnum to make him feel better about himself. I pull one out and grip the edge of the package between my teeth, then take a step toward him, panties dangling around one foot. Sergei takes the condom from me and slips it into his back pocket.

We kiss again, and the sweet and salty taste of me on his lips is intense. Sergei Drakonov’s lips. Covered in
me
. It’s unreal. I suck at his tongue. I just want to devour him, pull him into every part of me. I start to unbutton his shirt, my hands shaking, and the sight of that smooth, sculpted muscle gets me wet all over again. I kiss right at the top of his abdomen and finish with a nip at his flesh.

“Naughty,” he scolds me. His hands are on my thighs again, and in one smooth flick, he yanks my dress up over my head. “Mm. What did I tell you? The best real tits in America.” He coaxes one of my breasts free from my bra cup and pinches my nipple hard between his fingertips. My nails dig into his chest as I gasp.

“Fuck me,” I whisper. I fumble with his belt buckle and tug it open. “I need you to fuck me.”

“Are you sure?” Sergei asks. Some of the playfulness is gone. His expression is earnest—inviting.

“Completely.” I tug down the fly of his jeans and shove them down his hips.

His cock stands at full attention, and I can tell instantly that the Magnum is no exaggeration. Holy shit. The muscles of his abdomen point toward it in a perfect V, and I can see his thighs contracting, pulsing, eager. How the fuck am I scoring with this perfect Adonis? He grips his shaft and strokes it, even his massive palm barely fitting around the girth. Then he fishes the condom out of his jeans pockets, tears the packet open, and rolls it down. I bite my lower lip, aching in anticipation.

“Don’t hold back.” Sergei steps toward me and grabs my ass firmly with both hands. “I want to hear you. I want to know you’re enjoying yourself.”

I grin. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

Sergei hoists me into the air and backs me up against the wall. Oh, god. I squeeze my eyes shut and brace myself. He slides inside of me, so thick and hard and strong, the ridges of the condom sending a new delirious wave of delight through me.

“Jael,” he purrs, as he buries himself all the way inside of me.
Fuck,
this guy is so hot, from his dark, brutal accent to his rippling muscles to his sly, wicked grin. “You’re so goddamned beautiful. I want to feel every inch of you.”

I hook my ankles together at the small of his back and contract around him. I’m certainly feeling every inch of him. I’m drunk on that mischievous glint in his eyes and the way he’s thrusting into me, slamming me against the wall in slow, steady moves.

Then I can tell. It’s going to happen again. I nip at his neck as I feel another orgasm coming over me, readying myself for the tidal wave.

“Do it,” he hisses. “Do it again and again.”

Oh, I do.

“Yes.” Sergei thrusts faster, pounding me with an intensity I’ve never felt before. He is a fucking temple of muscle and strength. “Fucking do it. Let me feel you.”

I’m barely aware of his words, though, lost in the throes of my own ecstasy. This man has done something crazy to me—I’m delirious with pleasure, crackling inside as if electrified. Then he pins me in place as a growl rips out of him. He sucks at my earlobe again as his entire body shudders against me, an earthquake of muscle and raw power temporarily tamed.

Slowly, achingly, he eases out of me, and we both collapse side by side on the floor rug, gasping for breath.

My head is spinning. I can’t even believe it’s real. I just slept with Sergei Drakonov, after months of watching his every move on the ice. Somehow, it was even better than I could have imagined—more poetic than the way he guides the puck around the ice; more intense than when he’s winding up for a slapshot. And that way he looked between my legs, eyes meeting mine while his mouth worked wonders—

“Jael.” He runs one finger absently along my arm, breath whistling through his nose. “I promise you, I’m not who they say I am. I don’t want you to think that . . . that’s all there is to me.”

My face feels warm. I’m not sure what I expected to happen after, but it isn’t this. “I already slept with you. You don’t have to persuade me anymore.”

“No, but . . . I want to.” He twists his head to look at me directly. He’s not smiling, though he’s flush with the afterglow of exertion, like another hat trick he’s just scored. “I want someone to know the real me.”

“Okay. I believe you.” I smile. I can feel my eyes getting heavy, but I force them wide open. “Trust me, I know what it’s like to play a role.”

He grins, big and goofy. “Thank you.” Then he bends his legs and springs to his feet, all that coiled energy in his long, sturdy muscles being put to use once more. “I’ll get you some water.”

I watch his sculpted backside as he struts, completely naked, into his kitchen. The artful tensing of his ass. I want to bite it like an apple.

He’s whistling something to himself. It takes me a minute to recognize it as Tchaikovsky—his first piano concerto, all bold brassy chords and delicate, breezy piano trills, like lovers basking in a golden meadow. I blush all over again. No matter what Sergei says, I know we’re not lovers. That this can’t be anything more than a one-night fling—for either of us. I’ve got my schoolwork to finish and my internship, and he’s got—well, he’s got hundreds of women throwing themselves at him every night. He doesn’t want or need someone like me.

Whoever the hell I am.

Sergei struts back toward me from the kitchen in the doorway and pauses. “My sponsorship deal says I have to be seen drinking this, so . . . watch closely.”

He grins, and raises some neon purple power drink bottle to his lips and chugs it down. I laugh and clap for him, though my attention is elsewhere. Like the perfect indentation of his calves, the flawless curve of his thighs, the brilliant V of his lower abs, and, yes, the fact that even soft he’s still incredibly well-hung. His throat ripples with each swallow. He finishes the entire bottle, wipes his mouth on the back of his arm, and takes a goofy bow for me.

“Here. Catch.” Sergei tosses me a bottle of water, and I catch it and screw it open.

Sergei stays propped against the doorframe, watching me at first, but then I see his gaze drift—toward the chandelier, the elaborate crown moulding, the marble fireplace on the opposite wall. He sighs, lopes toward me, and plops down beside me on the rug. “It’s too big, isn’t it?”

“Please tell me you’re not talking about your dick.”

He grins and nips at my cheek. “This house.” Despite the grin, his tone has gone softer.

I trace one finger along the ridge of his spine. “It’s huge. But it’s not the ten-thousand-square-foot monstrosities the Washington football players live in, either.”

“I guess so.” His eyes glimmer in the chandelier light. “And do you live in a monstrosity?”

My hand falls away from his back. Carefully, I bring my knees up under my chin and wrap my arms around my legs. “Not anymore.”

Sergei’s quiet for a minute. I feel so stupid for telling him that. He doesn’t want to hear about my money troubles, and he
certainly
doesn’t need to hear about the life I used to have with Todd. I don’t need him thinking I’m some gold digger looking to cling to him and bleed him dry. This is just temporary, I tell myself over and over. Enjoy the moment while it lasts, and disappear into the night.

“We had nothing, growing up,” Sergei says at last. “It was just my mother, my brother, and me. She lost all her savings in the crashes during the Yeltsin years.”

“I’m so sorry.” My parents left Brazil right before I was born for much the same reason. Too much instability. Too much uncertainty. Mama said the whole world felt like a sandcastle, slowly getting eaten away by the sea. But I don’t feel like sharing that with Sergei right now.

“I promised them both that I’d make it big someday. That I’d be a bigger name in hockey than Vyacheslav Kozlov. Than Wayne Gretzky, even.” He rolls onto his back and props his hands behind his head. “But it wasn’t enough for my older brother. He’d only gotten a taste of capitalism before we lost everything, and he wanted more.”

“But you made it big,” I say. “You kept your promise to your mom.”

Sergei closes his eyes. “It was too late.”

I swallow hard. What the hell do I say to that? “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sure she’d be very proud of you for all you’ve accomplished.”

He doesn’t answer.

I hold my breath, wondering if I’ve pissed him off. But then I notice the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest; the faint rush of air in and out of his nose. He’s out cold.

Well, he’s had quite the night, and I can’t even pretend I was a major part of that. Three goals for his stateside debut and a season opener win? Jael Pereira and her complete lack of a life plan can’t begin to compare.

I stand up quietly from the rug and slip back into my maxi dress. My panties are way too gross to even consider putting back on, so I decide to leave them for him. Something to remember me by, I think bitterly. As if he remembers any of the girls in his endless chain of conquests. I set the lock on the door to close behind me and slip out into the crisp early October night.

I slept with Sergei Drakonov.
Sergei motherfucking Drakonov
. If that shouldn’t shake all the self-doubt and self-loathing from my system, I don’t know what will. And yet I feel an odd heaviness around me, a strand of unanswered questions still dangling around my neck. The DC night buzzes with an eerie sense of unfinished business that works its way inside my head.

An engine rumbles somewhere behind me, like some giant SUV stalling out just beyond my periphery. I turn around, but Sergei’s street is silent. No idling cars.

I head toward the Metro and hope I’m not too late to catch the last Red line train. The bars are still hopping along the main Connecticut Avenue drag, and somehow, hearing the whoops and hollers of drunken interns and junior staffers reassures me. I’m not alone in my restlessness, my aimless ambition just looking for a goal to latch onto.

Then I hear the engine stalling again. A black Escalade rolls by, so slow that it can’t be an accident. Are they cruising for someone? I can’t shake the sense that they’re following me. But that’s ridiculous. Who cares about Jael Pereira? For one brief moment, I fucked Sergei Drakonov, but now I’m back to being a nobody.

It’s Monday morning, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s J. Edgar Hoover building looms over me like a Brutalist architecture hangover. It’s easily the ugliest building in the entire District of Columbia, its drab brown concrete walls and weird panopticon of a crow’s nest leering over the sidewalks with all the class of a Metro drunkard. But this is my internship for the fall semester. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, I get to greet the good ol’ Hoover Building with a tray of coffees for the Special Agents I work for and a cheap single-ply smile plastered on my face as I set to work filing all the paperwork they’re too lazy or too “important” to file for themselves.

Look. It’s not like I expected to waltz into the FBI and become the next Clarice Starling on Day One. I haven’t even finished my Criminal Justice degree, though, yes, I’d harbored secret hopes of bagging myself a serial killer or busting up a terrorist ring before the semester was over. But I’m no slouch, either—I’ve taken classes on psychological profiling, criminal behavior, money laundering, terrorist operations—everything the budding FBI hotshot needs to know. And guess how much of that knowledge I get to use on a daily basis?

“Four pumps of sugar free vanilla, two pumps of sugar free toffee, one shot of soy, double espresso,” I announce to my main boss, Frederica Monteverdi, Special Agent in Charge of the Organized Crime Unit. She holds up one finger for me to wait. I know this ritual well—Frederica won’t let me leave until she’s verified that the coffee (if you could still call it that, after all the crap she puts in it) has been made to her specifications. I’m supposed to actually stand over the baristas and watch them make it. An order quite obviously given by a woman who has never had to order her own coffee in a crowded downtown DC Starbucks at nine in the morning on a Monday.

Frederica takes a sip of her coffee. Her blonde pixie cut is looking even more severe than usual today; she’s buttoned her plain white blouse all the way up to her throat. Her face scrunches up—even she finds her concoction hideous—but then she nods. “Thank you, Miss Pereira. That will be all.”