Elena couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so well. No bad dreams. No jaw-clenching headaches. No middle-of-the-night anxieties. Just a deep, cleansing sleep. Waking up was even better, because she opened her eyes to find a pair of soft brown pools of molasses staring down at her.
“Hi,” she whispered.
He dropped a gentle kiss on her lips. “Good morning.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“About ten minutes.” He brushed a curl from her face.
“Have you been watching me sleep?” Her cheeks heated at the thought. She was not a cute sleeper. She drooled and made weird noises sometimes.
“I have,” he said smoothly. “I’ve waited a really long time to wake up next to you. I wanted to remember it.”
He kissed her again, this time with a little more intent. “I wish we could stay in bed all day.”
“What time do you have to be at the arena?” He was supposed to start longer rehab sessions today with the on-site trainers.
“Ten.”
“What time is it now?”
He nuzzled her neck. “A little before nine.”
“I missed my plane again,” she whispered.
“Money well wasted.” He hauled her across his lap. As he crunched to a sitting position, his arms came around her, and he kissed her deeply. And before long, he was hard and insistent between her legs. But when Elena reached between them to guide him inside her, he shook his head. “You first.”
Vlad leaned back on one hand and slid his other hand between her legs. She gasped and tipped her head back as he began to stroke and circle. “Rub on me,” he coaxed.
Her eyes flew open. She didn’t know what he meant. He flexed his hips, and his hard length slid back and forth through her wetness. “Like that,” he rasped. All the while, he continued to stroke her with his fingers.
Elena gripped his shoulder to hold on. The sensations he generated were too much and not enough. When he crunched up again, bringing her sex against the coarse hair of his hard stomach, she lost all sense of time. She rocked against him.
“You’re so pretty, Elena,” he whispered. “I can’t stop looking at you.”
She gazed down at him. Between their bodies, he covered her breast with his hand and flicked his thumb across her nipple before bending and sucking it into his mouth.
“Vlad,” she cried, throwing her head back.
“That’s it, my love. Let me take care of you.”
His thumb once again found the pulsing nub of her sex, and she seized up in an explosion of color and sound. Wave after wave of pleasure rocketed through her from the tip of her head to the ends of her toes. She trembled and shook and called his name over and over again.
He held her tightly as he thrust up inside her, and the sensations began again. She moved atop him, riding him faster and faster until their groans merged and mingled, until she crested again and felt him shudder, her name wrenched from his mouth.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, dropping her forehead to his shoulder. “I can’t believe we waited this long. All this time, this is what we’ve been missing.”
Panting, he fell back against the bed. “I don’t think I would have been very good at it when I was younger.”
She gazed down at him, his eyes closed and his brow sweaty. “Why are you good at it now?”
The corner of his mouth curled up in a cheeky smile. “I watch a lot of dirty movies.”
She laughed. “Liar. I know your little secret.”
He peeled open one eye. “What secret?”
Elena crawled off his lap and settled next to him. Both eyes open now, he watched her carefully. “What secret?” he asked again.
“Tell me about your book club.”
Vlad blinked and then coughed. “Who—who told you about that?”
“Are you mad?”
“No. I just . . . I wanted to tell you myself.”
“Did you really join the club because of me?” she prodded.
He opened and closed his mouth before finally answering. “Yes. At first. I was desperate to find a way to make you want me the way I wanted you.”
She closed her eyes. “Vlad, I’m sorry—”
“Hey.” He stroked her arm. “Look at me.”
She opened her eyes reluctantly.
“You remember that old coach I had, the one you hated?”
“Yeah?” What he could possibly have to do with this conversation, though, Elena had no idea.
“You remember how my parents pulled me off his team when I was sixteen?”
“Yeah.”
“We told everyone it was because the schedule was getting in the way of school, but that wasn’t the truth.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat with a hard swallow. “He was pretty abusive to me.”
“Abusive how?” Her brows pulled together in a single, angry line.
“I didn’t exactly meet the ideal of a manly Russian hockey player.”
Elena sat up fully. “What are you talking about? You were one of the best players on the team!”
“I was soft.”
“I don’t even want to know what that means.” She crossed her arms under her breasts.
“I’m emotional, Elena.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I cry. A lot.”
She threw her hands out. “So?”
“I never had a girlfriend. Never disrespected girls the way the other guys did. I read poetry, for God’s sake. Plus, my best friend was a girl. Coach picked on me for it. He used to call me some pretty vicious names. Ugly names. I’m sure you can imagine.”
Her heart thudded with rage. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Russian men embraced some toxic ideas about masculinity.
“My parents overheard him once, and they defended me. He said I was lucky just to be there. That every team needed a duster. If I tried to stick around, that’s all I’d be because I was . . . I was too much of a pussy for higher play.”
She pried her clenched jaw apart. “I am going to find that man and remove his balls with a spoon.”
“How very Russian of you.” He brushed her hair off her forehead. “The point is, I didn’t realize how much his words had become part of how I defined myself until I found the book club. I thought I was reading romance to fix our marriage, but I ended up realizing I need to fix myself too. To accept myself.”
“You learned all that from romance novels?”
“Not just the novels, but my relationship with the guys. I’ve never been so accepted, so valued. I realized there are a lot of men like me. Men who aren’t afraid to be vulnerable. And these books, they show you what it’s like to be truly respected. I didn’t just see how I wanted to be treated in a relationship. I saw how I wanted to treat myself. How I deserved to be treated. How I deserved to be loved.”
Her heart sank. “And that you deserved better than me?”
“No.” He sat up and cupped her face. “That’s what I’m trying to say. When I joined the book club, I thought you left me because you didn’t believe I was good enough for you.”
Her heart cracked. “Vlad—”
He pressed his fingertip to her lips. “But I realized that I was the one who believed that. I’m still working on it. Even right now, there’s a part of me that is scared this is just a dream, that you’re not really here, that you couldn’t possibly feel about me the way I’ve always felt about you.”
A tear dripped down his cheek. Elena wiped it away before pressing her brow to his. “How could you ever not know that you deserved to be loved?”
“How could you ever think that you were just a burden?”
She laughed thickly. “It’s sort of a miracle we’ve made it this far, isn’t it?”
“Maybe this is just how our story was supposed to be written.”
She kissed him and wiped her cheeks. “So what do we do now?”
Vlad tugged her back down to his chest and wrapped his arms around her. “We get up, take a bath together”—she mmm’d against his skin—“and we take it day by day for a while.”
“I like the sound of that,” she said, burrowing closer to his warmth.
He hugged her tighter. “It’s going to be okay now, Lenochka. Everything is going to be okay.”
A little less than an hour later, Elena pulled into the employee and player parking lot of the arena.
“Can I walk in with you?” she asked.
Vlad grinned. “I’d love that.”
The entire building vibrated with an indescribable energy. The next game in the Stanley Cup was tomorrow night, and it was in Nashville again. A small piece of her heart broke for Vlad that he was missing out on what was essentially the pinnacle of any player’s career, but he displayed none of the sadness that he had a week ago. They approached a T at the end of the hallway, and she followed Vlad when he turned left. A short distance later, two automatic doors blocked their way. Vlad swiped his player credentials on the keypad to their right, and the doors swung open with a whoosh and a rush of air.
Her steps faltered just inside the doors of what was basically a small-town hospital. A bright center room featured what looked like rehab equipment, and along the perimeter were separate rooms for X-rays, MRI machines, trainers’ offices, and— “Is that an operating room?”
“Sometimes we have to get stitched up before going back out on the ice,” Vlad said. He stopped and hopped around to face her. “Should I just text you when I’m done?”
“Sure.”
“What are you going to do while I’m here?”
“I think I’ll go to Alexis’s café and get you some more gluten-free cookies.”
“She will be happy to see you.”
They stared at each other awkwardly. Elena bit her lip. “Um . . .”
He smiled. “Come here.”
She rose on tiptoe as he dipped his face toward hers. And there, in full view of the entire training staff, he kissed her. “See you in a little while,” he said.
Elena wondered as she walked back out to the car if it was normal at her age to still feel the kind of teeth-tingling giddiness of a teenage girl. Whether normal or not, she felt it. And soon, the entire team staff was going to likely know about it. Not just that Vlad’s wife had been there, and not just that he’d kissed her, but that she walked out grinning and sighing like the front row of a Harry Styles concert.
When she walked into ToeBeans a few minutes later, Alexis once again spotted her immediately and greeted her with the same enthusiasm as the first time.
“Elena!” Alexis raced over and hugged her. All of Vlad’s friends were huggers. She was trying to get used to it. Alexis pulled back. “I’m so glad you’re here. Is Vlad with you?”
“No, I just dropped him off at the arena for rehab.” Elena’s face grew warm. She hadn’t seen Alexis since the disaster at the party. “I’m sorry about what happened the other night.”
Alexis shook her head and waved a dismissive hand. “No need to apologize. We all rather enjoyed seeing Vlad lose it over you.”
Elena blinked rapidly for a moment. “You did?”
“That man wears his entire heart on his sleeve, and it’s all yours.” Alexis shrugged with giddiness. “We’re so happy that you two are trying to work it out.”
At whatever expression must have crossed Elena’s face, Alexis winced. “I’m sorry. That was rather personal. I’m not trying to pry.”
“No, don’t apologize. It’s just all very . . . new. I don’t really know what to say.”
“I understand,” Alexis said. “When Noah and I finally got together after being just friends for a long time, I was so scared to jinx it. It’s scary when a relationship changes from one thing to another.”
For some reason, Elena felt herself opening up to Alexis. “There are things I need to figure out.”
“Of course.”
“I still want to be a journalist.”
“And you should try to find a way to make it happen.”
“I just have a lot of questions about the requirements of my visa and . . . sorry. I don’t know why I’m dumping this on you.”
“Because I asked, and because we are becoming friends, I hope.”
“I hope so too.”
“I don’t know if this helps or not, but a good friend of mine is an immigration attorney. She specializes in asylum cases, but maybe you could talk to her.”
“Yes, I—I would love that. Thank you.”
“Her office is just up the street, actually. You probably passed it. Her name is Gretchen Winthrop. I’d be happy to let her know you might be calling.”
Elena filed the name away in her memory as she nodded. “That would be incredible. Thank you.” She laughed self-consciously again. “You’ve all been so nice to me when you didn’t have to be.”
“Are most people not nice?”
“In my world, yes.”
“Well,” Alexis said, laying a gentle hand on Elena’s arm. “You’re in a different world now. And we care about one another in this one.”
Once again, before she could formulate a response, Alexis plunged forward into the next subject. “Anyway, I have been seriously dreaming about your blinis from the party. They were so good.”
She tugged Elena toward a table.
“I will make you some more, if you’d like.”
Alexis beamed. “That would be awesome.”
Elena hung out at the café for a half hour, and then she walked up and down the street to visit some shops to kill time. Finally, Vlad texted her that he was done. He was waiting for her just outside the parking lot when she pulled up. She helped him get in, and as soon as she returned to the driver’s side, he leaned across the console, wrapped a hand around the back of her head, and kissed her.
“How fast can you drive?” he rasped.
She drove very, very fast.