So Over You (Chicago Rebels #2)(33)

They walked to her car, the silence barely masking the whirligig of thoughts in his brain. The five-minute wait had given him time to think. To brood. To plan.

She stopped at her car, unlocked the trunk, and loaded her bag inside. Her green eyes held his, those tilting eyelashes fluttering wide.

“So, see you tomorrow?”

He needed to know. It was a thrumming imperative, and he could no longer go without an answer.

“Isobel, when we were together, did I make you come?”





TEN




Isobel froze, not quite sure she’d heard that right. Perhaps it was a problem with Russian-English translation. In Vadim’s pretty head, maybe “come” meant “enrage you” or “drive you bonkers.” Or perhaps he was still reeling from being throat-chopped by his female coach and former teen crush.

Because he couldn’t possibly be asking that.

“Excuse me?”

“Must I repeat it?”

“Uh, yes. You must.”

“I have reason to believe that you may not have”—he paused, and that hesitation gave her hope that he’d realized his error and was self-correcting—“completed the sex act.”

The sex act? “You mean, did I come with you?”

He looked exasperated. “Is that not what I said?”

“Yes, but is that what you meant?” Her cheeks were heating, but not quite enough to counteract the March wind chill. “Vadim, it’s cold and late and—”

He leaned around, his body covering her with that mountain of pure-carved muscle, and opened the door of her Camry. “Get in.” Then, leaving his gym bag on the icy ground, he walked around to the passenger side, opened that door, and climbed in. He pushed the seat back, but he was so tall that his legs remained bent.

Brain in disarray, heart struggling to catch up to her muddled thoughts, she got in, started the engine, and turned up the heat.

“This might take a while,” she muttered, hyperaware of his hulking presence in her car and still reeling from his question, the one she was hoping he’d just forget. She glanced over to find Vadim rocking his usual sexy-serious self.

Good grief, she was going to have to discuss this.

“Now.” She turned to him, a touch of schoolmarm in her tone, ready to make allowances for English being his second language, or maybe it was his fourth or fifth. Vaguely, she recalled he spoke French, Spanish, and German. “What makes you think I didn’t, uh, do what you said I didn’t do?” Other than the fact it was true and any guy who wasn’t completely focused on his own pleasure would be able to figure it out. “Have you been thinking about it? Or maybe you knew all along?”

“So it is true.” He looked crestfallen, or as crestfallen as a stoic Russian could get.

“Well, yes, why would you ask if you didn’t think it was a possibility? Where is this coming from, Vadim?”

He grunted something in Russian. Hell and damn, she was going to have to massage the poor guy’s fragile ego. “Listen, I hear that happens a lot when it’s a first time.”

“It does not happen to the women I’m with,” he said with just the right amount of imperiousness. And we’re off.

“Are you saying I’m the problem?”

“Have you had this issue with other men?”

“That’s none of your damn business!”

“Are you a lesbian?” Unfazed by the scowl that ridiculousness deserved, he continued to probe. “Do you fantasize about women?”

“Do you fantasize about yourself?”

That amused him. “I am at the center of all my fantasies, yes.”

Of course he was. The man was sex on skates. “Vadim, what the hell has inspired this word vomit? Did you have a little ‘problem’ with one of your club bimbos, and it’s brought on a bout of dick gazing?”

“I may have overheard you discussing your first time with your sister.”

Her heart fell through the floor of her car. “You were eavesdropping on my private conversation?”

“It was loud enough to inform the entire arena!” Said as if he was the wounded party. “Was this just standard locker room talk? Were you merely venting because you were annoyed with me after our practice?”

“You think I’d make that up?”

“Women can be very vengeful.”

“All right, listen, oh mighty Petrov. You might be living in your own paranoid Shakespeare fantasy where the women who are not out to fuck you are out to get you, but believe me when I say I wouldn’t lie about something like that. You sucked in bed!”

All of Chicagoland might have heard that one.

This outburst didn’t shock him. Instead, the shock was all on her side because of what he said next.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re what, now?”

“I’m sorry.”

With a shaky hand, she turned down the heat on the dash. It was pumping out at full blast now, and she was feeling far too toasty.

They were clearly at cross-purposes, his true meaning lost in the snarky back-and-forth. “Sorry that you called me a lesbian?”

“I did not call you a lesbian. I asked if you were one while I gathered evidence.”