So Over You (Chicago Rebels #2)(56)

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.