Chapter Five

Ian couldn’t sleep. He’d faked it long enough for Shelby to crash out, but not even the soothing crackle of the fire could help lull him under. He was too aware of her. He couldn’t see a lot of her in the light of the fire, but he could see enough that his imagination could fill in all the details, which had left him with a head full of Shelby and half a hard-on.

Fuck, he needed to cool off. Since throwing himself into one of the snowdrifts outside wasn’t an option unless he wanted to freeze his dick off, he got up and went into the kitchen. He grabbed one of the water bottles from the pantry and took a huge gulp as he scrolled on his phone in vain, looking for hockey updates when he didn’t have shit for a signal.

It wasn’t the best use of his battery, but it was better than sitting on the couch thinking about Shelby, because she was very much off-limits.

When the new owner had come in, he’d gone over in great detail how there was to be no fraternization, as he put it, between players and anyone else involved with the team. With his busted thumb, the drama in the locker room, and the fact that the Ice Knights were in a fight for their playoff lives, the last thing Ian needed was to make more waves for the team. All he wanted was to keep his head down, do his job, and stay the fuck away from Christensen.

As long as that happened, he could finish out his contract in Harbor City and then transition into a career in coaching.

He was a man with a plan, and he was sticking with it no matter how tempting Shelby was.

Water finished, he set his phone down on the edge of the counter and then crumpled the plastic bottle before shooting it basketball-style into the recycling bin on the opposite end of the counter. During the day, the sound would hardly register, but in the middle of the night with the wind finally calmed down, it boomed in the open space. He whipped around to make sure he didn’t wake Shelby, accidentally hip-checking his phone off the counter. It crashed down onto the hard tile floor, hitting just right so that his screen cracked in three places.

Fucking A.

He jerked his gaze over to Shelby on the couch, but she was still—amazingly—dead to the world. Curled up on her side, her breathing steady and the occasional mumbled word coming from her lips.

Instead of looking softer in her sleep, she managed to still look badass, even with that stupid bear-covered comforter pulled all the way up under her chin. It was her lips that really got to him, though. Full, pale pink, and slightly parted in sleep. His cock started to thicken against his thigh and he forced himself to pivot from thinking about her mouth to rehashing every missed pass he’d ever had in his career—yes, he remembered them all.

He’d been an ass to her enough as it was without adding in her waking up and spotting him sporting a tent in his pants as he watched her sleep. She’d probably go after him again with her Taser, and he wouldn’t blame her.

Making his way over to the fireplace, he grabbed a couple of logs and put them on the fire, using the poker to push them in place so the blaze would continue through the night. Waking up in an icebox wasn’t something he wanted to deal with. Of course, he’d have to fall asleep first. That wouldn’t be an easy task even if Shelby wasn’t here.

He was a man with a sleeping routine and without it, he was a man without sleep. He needed mostly quiet, total darkness, his white-noise app, and a solid hour of staring at his ceiling.

“Robber baron moose on a train,” Shelby said. “Look out.”

Ian jerked around. “What?”

Shelby’s eyes were still closed and she was half in a ball like before. She was talking, but there was no way she was awake.

“Orgasms give you endorphins; that’s what I told the conductor.” She shoved her comforter down to her waist. “I love to dance, don’t you?” She sat up, her eyes open but her face blank. “The moose is waiting for you.”

He knew she was just talking in her sleep, but Ian still looked over his shoulder at the huge kitchen window. Just a few months ago, there’d been a story in the Harbor City Post about a seven-hundred-pound moose (a small one, the article had noted) that had busted into a cabin to get out of a snowstorm. It had taken a massive tranquilizer to knock it out so it could be treated for injuries from going through the glass and relocated back out in the wild. Luckily there wasn’t a moose out on the porch that he could see, but still it was one more thing that his brain would be directing as he tried to get it to shut up long enough for him to go to sleep.

“This is my song.” Shelby shoved more at the comforter, as if she was going to get up. “I’ve never slow danced with a moose before. Don’t step on my feet.”

Worried she’d hurt herself, Ian rushed over to the couch and gently pushed her back down, adjusting the covers so they were back up at her chin. Then, pulling a move from his mom’s playbook when he was a kid and couldn’t sleep, he ran his fingers over Shelby’s hair. Brushing over the prickly buzz of the close-cropped side to the silky smooth waves over and over slowed the spinning of his thoughts, and relaxing back into the couch cushions, he closed his eyes.

Suddenly, she jolted into a sitting position, completely awake, and scooted away from him, her eyes wide and not even a little bit sleepy. “Why are you petting me?”

He held up his hands, palms forward. “It’s not what you think.”

“You weren’t petting me while I slept?”

“You started talking about a moose on a train.” The words came out as fast as a slap shot. He did not want her freaked out that she was trapped with a hair-petting weirdo. “And then dancing and then you tried to get up and I thought you’d trip over the coffee table or something. I was trying to get you to go back to sleep, and the whole hair thing was one of the tricks my mom used to use on me.”

“Oh God, I haven’t done that in years.” She let out an embarrassed groan and slumped against the couch. “Did I wake you up?”

He shook his head. “I’m not a good sleeper, and I can’t without the white-noise app on my phone.”

“Lay down.” She grabbed one of the decorative couch pillows covered in silhouettes of deer, put it near her, and patted it. “You heard me—grab your covers and come put your head here and I’ll teach you the secret to falling asleep.”

That sounded very unlikely but he did it, spreading out lengthwise on the couch instead of on the chaise so his head was close to hers. As soon as he did, she got back into her previous position, snuggled upon her side facing him so that together they formed an L.

“Close your eyes and picture a porch swing,” she said, her voice more of a whisper than its usual volume.

“This isn’t going to work.” None of it ever did.

She flicked him in the shoulder with her fingers. “Not if you’re talking.”

“Fine.” He closed his eyes and his mouth.

“With each inhale, the swing goes back and with each exhale it goes forward,” she said, each word calm and deliberate, without sounding like a carnival hypnotist. “Keep your breaths slow and steady so it just gently swings in the breeze. Back and forth and back and forth.”

He’d tried meditation and visualizations before. None had worked, but there was something about Shelby and the higher pitch of her voice that settled him. It didn’t make any sense. It was supposed to be lower voices that soothed, but he couldn’t deny that his eyes were getting heavy the longer they lay there, their breaths syncing as he imagined a white porch swing moving back and forth.

“I like listening to you talk,” he said, the words coming out before he could second-guess.

“No one likes that,” she said, her voice soft and sleepy. “There’s a reason why I do most of my talking from a keyboard, because otherwise I’m The Squeaker.”

Her voice wasn’t that high-pitched. Jesus. “People are assholes.”

A barely there scoff in agreement. “They can be.”

In and out, he concentrated on the sound of his breathing, making sure to match her inhales and exhales, as the fire crackled in the distance. It was better than any option on his white-noise app.

“Shelby?”

She mumbled something that might have been an acknowledgment that she was still sort of awake, or it could have been a half snore—he had no fucking clue.

“Thank you.”

If she was still awake to hear it, he couldn’t tell, and he was about half a second from joining her anyway.

…

It was still way-too-damn-early-o’clock, according to her body, when Shelby woke up trying to figure out who she was, let alone where she was. It came back to her in bits and pieces as she blinked the room into focus. Ian was hunkered down in front of the fireplace, a cast-iron pan in his oven-mitt grip and the unmistakable scent of bacon in the air. Suddenly, some parts of her were more awake than others.

Sure, she could pretend it was because of the bacon—who didn’t love bacon?—but that wasn’t it. Thank God he was turned away from her, because if he could see her face right now, she had no doubts he’d know every single one of the dirty thoughts she was having about him.

Maybe you should have stuck with Mediocre Matt for longer so you wouldn’t be perving off seeing a guy cooking over an open fire.

Nah, the whole line about how sex was like pizza, even when it was bad it was good, pretty much applied only to the bro-dudes-in-finance kind of person. Six months of occasional orgasms while banging Mediocre Matt on the regular had taught her that. There was no way she was going to rethink her decision to send him packing.

Ian put the skillet down on a grate in the fireplace and turned around. Her brain hollered at her to play it cool, but her whole body did a hello-good-morning-to-me shiver of appreciation.

“Are you cold?” he asked as he stretched his arms and rolled his neck from side to side.

No, she most definitely was not; watching the way his muscles moved as he lifted his arms and brought them across his chest was mesmerizing. “I’m good. You like to cook?”

“I like to eat, so cooking is part of it.” He turned back to the skillet, flipping the bacon and then cracking two eggs into the pan.

“What can I do?” she asked, throwing back the covers and getting up before she realized her sleep pants had worked their way down—waaaaaaaay down—in the middle of the night.

Ian glanced back over his shoulder at her and froze. His gaze dropped to her exposed lower belly and lingered for two breaths too long as he worked his jaw back and forth before his focus traveled slowly up her body.

Her breath caught as she stood there, feeling naked under his attention, as electricity zinged through her and touched every nerve ending. Her nipples pebbled under her thermal underwear that left pretty much nothing to the imagination when it came to her high beams. She had to clasp her hands together to resist the urge to touch them, to roll their peaks between her fingers to dull the building ache inside her.

Ian turned back around, his shoulders stiff, then said, “You can get the plates.”

Hitching up her pants while trying to make it look like she wasn’t, she crossed the living room. “From the kitchen? Yeah, sure, sure, the kitchen. I will get them.”

Way to sound like you aren’t a giant weirdo, Shelby girl.

Like there was any hope of that around Ian Petrov.

Beyond his scruffy hotness, he was from hockey royalty. She knew his stats, his pregame meal preferences, and she’d let slip his deepest secret—one he hadn’t even known he had. So yeah, she would never be able to just act normal around him. And with that reminder, the idea of breakfast became totally unappealing.

After delivering a plate, bottle of water, napkin, and utensils, she gathered up some clothes in a bundle and headed toward the bathroom. “You go ahead without me.”

He looked down at the single place setting on the coffee table. “You’re not eating?”

“The snow stopped, so I’m gonna go see if I can shovel my car out and get out of your hair.” And yeah, she needed to get out of here before she made an idiot of herself by getting caught ogling him.

“The roads aren’t safe,” he said as he took the cast-iron skillet off the grate and slid the eggs and bacon onto the waiting plate.

“Well, once they are, I’ll be all ready.” Yeah, that sounded totally believable and not at all like she needed a snowbank between them to get her wayward body back under control.

He let out a rumbling sigh. “Is it because being here alone with me makes you uncomfortable?”

Not in the way he was thinking. She caught herself staring at the vee lines that disappeared under his waistband and jerked her focus back up to his face where it should have been the whole time.

“It’s not that.” She started toward the bathroom again. “Lucy obviously made a mistake, and I’m the one who should leave when the roads are better. You had plans that didn’t involve me, and I’ll let you get back to them.”

“And I can’t change your mind?”

She plastered on a cheery smile that she hoped didn’t look totally off-kilter. “Nope.”

Nodding, he shrugged. “Okay, then.”

She hadn’t expected him to give in so easily, but she’d take the victory. Making good on her win, she hurried off to the bathroom to change. By the time she got back, Ian was nowhere to be seen. A frigid blast of air hit her as soon as she stepped out onto the porch and reached for where the shovel had been the night before. It was gone. That’s when she spotted Ian still in those shouldn’t-be-sexy-but-were blue pants and a thick parka shoveling out his car.

Victory? More like total subterfuge!

Oh no. That is not how this is supposed to go. I’m the one who should be shoveling out my car.

She marched over, sticking to the narrow path he’d cleared between the porch and the vehicles, and held out her hand. “My shovel, please.”

He lifted it above his head where she had no hopes of reaching it unless she climbed him like a tree, which—as tempting as it was—she was not going to do because she had some pride left.

“The roads aren’t safe yet,” he said, as if that explained his overprotective-bordering-on-patronizing actions.

“What, you think I’m going to squeal off, leaving nothing but burned rubber on the snowpack?” She planted her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “I don’t have a death wish.”

“Good, then I’ll clear out my car, and I’ll leave when the roads clear up so you don’t have to drive on the roads.”

She held out her hand again, just like last night when she’d checked his thumb. “Give me the shovel.”

“If you want it, you’ll have to take it,” Ian said.

Of all the high-handed things. It wasn’t fair. She was taking the high road. She was giving him the cabin. She was going to win.

“This isn’t fair,” she said.

He just shrugged.

Frustration winning out, Shelby grabbed a handful of snow and shoved it right in Ian’s face. She had three seconds of oh-shit-what-did-I-just-do making her pulse spike before he started laughing. He didn’t drop the shovel, though; he put it on the roof of his car and grinned down at her.

“Oh, you want to have a snowball fight? It’s on,” he said as he cleared the snow from his face. “You’ve got a five-second head start.”

Giddy adrenaline pumping through her veins, she took off looking for cover, bending over and scooping up a handful of snow as she went. She almost made it to the porch when a snowball landed with a thwat in the middle of her back. Turning, she let fly the half-formed one in her hand. Ian dodged it easily, but that attack gave her time to get up to the porch, which may have less snow than the yard but had better coverage.

“You realize you’re trapped,” he hollered from behind his car.

“I have the high ground and access to the house,” she shot back. “I could lock you out.”

He shot off three quick snowballs. “You wouldn’t.”

“Not for a long time, anyway.” Really, not at all, but it wasn’t like he didn’t know that already.

He laughed and shot off another snowball, but it went wide, hitting the front door with a splat. And so it went, snowballs flying through the air as he circled the porch, dodging her limited-supply snowballs. The rest of it all didn’t matter. For the moment, there wasn’t a world beyond their little snowed-in patch of earth, and Shelby gave in to the absolute joy of that freedom.

That anxious feeling always in the bottom of her gut, the one that had kept her from walking into the media room a few weeks ago, it shrank into nearly nothing. There was only here and now. Before, that had only happened in the moment between buzzed and drunk that she’d tried to ride for way too long. This was so much better. In the mix of everything, she’d forgotten how to let go and just have fun.

By the time they were out of snowballs, Shelby had snow down her shirt, her socks were soaked to her toes, her fingers were half frozen, and her cheeks hurt from laughing so hard. After kicking off the snow stuck to their boots outside, they shucked them off just inside the door, leaving them on the thick weatherproof mat, and hurried to the fireplace to start to defrost.

“I’ve got to get out of this,” she said. “Turn around. No peeking.”

Ian grunted in agreement, his shirt already half off. Fighting the urge to freeze to death so she could watch him finish taking off his shirt, she turned and faced the staircase. Getting off wet jeans with icicle hands was second only to trying to take off a sweaty sports bra on her worst-clothes-to-remove list, but she managed. By the time she had on a pair of yoga pants, a long-sleeve T-shirt, and a pair of wooly socks, she’d started getting feeling back in her toes.

“Is it safe to turn around?” she asked.

“You’re clear,” he said.

She turned and nearly ran into Ian, he was so close. He was mismatched in joggers and a fisherman’s sweater, the thick cream-colored kind that made her fingers itch to touch him—it! She wanted to touch the sweater, not him. Really. Sorta. Maybe. Oh God, not at all.

He took her hands in his, cupping them and bringing them up to his mouth to blow on them. “You’re freezing.”

“My gloves weren’t made for snowball fights.” The knit gloves had been soaked through by her third snowball. “I hadn’t been planning on going to war.”

“I’d better warm you up, then.” He brought her hands to his mouth again, blowing on her knuckles.

It wasn’t even a touch, but it sent a wave of scorching-hot desire slamming into her that made her forget all of the very good reasons why this was a very bad idea. “What are your plans for getting me warm?”

Her hard nipples pressing against the thin material of her tank top were directly at eye level. She could blame it on the cold, but her body was hot, overheated, even—and it had nothing to do with the temperature.

A mewling sigh sounded in her ears, soft and needy. It took her a second to realize the sound had come from her. Her hands still in his, he glanced up at her, his eyes dark with a possessive lust that made her core clench.

She wanted to straddle him, ride him, feel his cock rub up against every sensitive spot at the apex of her legs. She wanted to take him inside her, press her palms against the hard ridges of his abs, and ride him slow and sure. She wanted to be under him on the bed, pressed up against him with the wall at her back, and on her hands and knees as he pounded into her like she craved each time her fingers slid between her slick folds.

“Shelby…” He made her name sound like a naughty promise and a desperate plea as he stripped off his sweater. He let her hands go, obviously giving her the space to make the call. “How hot do you want to get?”

Tempting. So damn tempting. Her fingertips were tracing the line of his jaw, the coarse hair scraping her tender flesh before she even realized what she was doing. He didn’t touch her in return. He waited—patient, enticing, confident—letting her take the lead, as if he already knew what she’d say next. It wasn’t triumph in his dark eyes but pure focused need—all of it directed at her. It was incendiary to be at the center of it, and she was going up in flames.

She traced the line of his throat and across his corded shoulders, the whole time feeling like a woman who’d made this decision a million years ago and was only now admitting it. “No one could know, and it would have to be a different-zip-code-only thing.”

“There’s no one here I’d ever tell,” he said, his voice strained with need.

The springy hairs dusting his pecs tickled her fingers as she continued her explorations. “It can’t be anything more than just sex, and only this one time. You hockey players are off-limits for corporate.”

Okay, that was more for herself than Ian. It wasn’t like someone like him had ever had problems separating orgasms from something more.

“We might be snowed in for days,” he said, his eyes fluttering shut for a second as she traced her way downward, following his narrow happy trail. “And nobody’s on the clock here.”

She hesitated at the waistband of his joggers, her nipples so hard, they hurt. “Ian…”

“God, I love the way you say my name.”

Just the rumble of his words was enough to make her clit quiver with anticipation, but he still didn’t make a single move to touch her. She knew why. He wanted her to make the first move, to have control, to show him just how much she wanted him. The moment was as empowering as it was sexually frustrating.

“Ian, please.” She hooked her fingers in the waistband of his joggers. “I wanna get really hot.”

Cupping the back of her head, he dipped his head lower, his mouth centimeters from hers, hovering there above her so close, she could feel him even without actually touching him. Another opportunity to back out? To run? It didn’t matter, because she wasn’t going anywhere right now. It only took the slightest move to press her lips to his in a kiss, and she let herself fall back into the delicious pleasure of it all.