Or because you don’t trust me?
Do you blame her?
When she turned back toward the bar, I skirted the edge of the crowd until I came to the door to the supply closet I’d just left. I reached in and flipped on the light. Not ideal, but I’d rather bring her in here to talk than take a chance on what she’d see in one of the other rooms.
I considered how I should play this.
Act like I didn’t know who she was and try to pick her up?
No.
Ambush her?
That’d work.
The only good thing about this party was I didn’t have to act like a host. No one paid attention to me. I preferred to blend, and with this many hockey players and European athletes, it was the one place I didn’t stand out.
So I wasn’t stopped in my quest to snare my prey. She and a blonde were pretending to be in deep conversation with their backs to the room. Every so often Annika would whirl around as if she felt me closing in, but I made sure she didn’t see me.
The instant the blonde stepped to the end of the table to chat with two guys from the farm team, I swooped in.
My body blocked hers from view. I put my mouth on her ear. “Nice try, Attila.”
She gasped and tried to spin around, but I had her pinned against the table.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize you?”
Anger rolled off her. “Yes.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen. I will direct you exactly where I want you to go. You will not cause a scene.”
“You’d hate that more than anything, wouldn’t you?”
I sighed and pressed my lips to the back of her head. Yuck. It wasn’t her hair and I didn’t get a whiff of the usual warm honeyed scent of her skin. “This is between us, no one else.”
“Oh, so you’re taking me into one of the private sex rooms? Maybe the one that you just came out of?”
“As a matter of fact . . . yes.” Curling my hands around her hips, I shifted us sideways and tossed a quick look over my shoulder to make sure no one saw us doing the weird duck walk the fifteen meters to the door. I opened it and shoved us both inside, quickly closing the door behind us.
Immediately I saw Annika’s panic set in. I got right in her face to distract her. “You’re with me. I won’t leave you in here. I made sure the lights were on.”
“This is the room you were in before,” she stated.
“It’s not a room. It’s a storage closet. Take a look around.”
She did. “What were you doing in here?”
Hiding. “Looking for another garbage can. Why?” My eyes narrowed. “You saw me come out of here. What did you think I was doing?”
“I don’t know! I thought maybe it was a coat closet or something.” She smirked. “You’ve had an obsession with hanging out in them in the past.”
I’d take her pissyness over her panic. “My coat closet days are long gone. So maybe you can explain what you were trying to accomplish showing up in a wig?” I scrutinized her face. “And fake freckles. Really, Annika? Fake freckles were supposed to throw me off?”
“Yes. The push-up bra was a decoy too.” She thrust her chest out. “I’d never wear anything like this to the office.”
But you could wear something like that to bed . . . for about three seconds before I’d tear it off with my teeth.
“See? You’re leering at my boobs.” She jabbed her finger into my sternum. “So it is working. Now let me out of here so you can carry on and pretend I’m a woman you actually invited to your stupid secret party.”
And . . . there it was.
I curled my hands below her jaw, pressing my thumbs over her lips to stop the flow of chatter. “Listen to me. I didn’t want to have this stupid secret party.”
“Why did you?”
“The night the team learned I could speak English? They gave me a bunch of penalties. The last one was I had to promise to get the team into the VIP section of Flurry after the first home game of the season.” I paused. “That is the last place I ever want to go, especially when they insisted no WAGs. No exceptions. So I lied to my team. I said I called Flurry and I didn’t have the clout for the VIP section and they turned me down. I didn’t even tell the guys until the team meeting this morning that Flurry was a no-go. I suggested coming here, hoping they’d just tell me to forget it, and of course they didn’t, so there you have it.”
“You could’ve just told me all that.”
“When? In front of Peter and the damn cameras? And I wouldn’t have kept it from you if I’d had a choice. The ‘no WAGs’ rule for tonight didn’t change.”
She snorted.
That annoyed me. “Do I look like I’m having fun?”
“You don’t look like you’re having fun now that I busted you throwing a secret party for all your buddies. You might’ve been having a helluva good time before that, Ax-hole.”
“I wasn’t.” I stepped back and pulled my cell phone out from the inside pocket of my shirt. After I opened the drafts of my e-mail program, I handed it over and said, “Make sure you check the time stamp on that so you know I’m not lying.”
“Then maybe I should read it out loud.”
“Go ahead.”
She turned the phone sideways. “‘Annika. I’m sitting in the locker room after the game, wishing I could just call you and explain this. But the fact remains, I lied to you. I swore I wouldn’t do it again, and here I am. I’m not having a beer with the team tonight. I’m throwing the team a party. It’s the price they demanded for my lie about not speaking English. Not ideal but it is what it is. One of those parameters is no WAGs at the party. Likely you’ll hear about it, and then you’ll be hurt and pissed off. I won’t blame you. Maybe you’ll even believe me when I tell you I didn’t have a choice. There will be women around. But know that none of them will interest me. Because you interest me. That kiss tonight wasn’t supposed to be for anyone but us. I hate that Peter turned it into a public moment. We’ve been hit-and-miss in the last week. And tonight I missed you. Sounds strange. Maybe you’re even rolling your eyes, but I miss those bizarre questions you’re so fond of asking. I apologize and I will offer you the same deal I offered my teammates—feel free to slip on a pair of skates and knock me on my ass on the ice. A.’”
She didn’t look up from the phone for several long moments. Part of me wondered if she was weighing which body blow would do the most damage.
Annika glanced up. “Thank you. That does help clear things up.”
I quietly exhaled.
“I have two things to ask you. First, did you know it was me right away?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“The way you carry yourself and your mannerisms.” I let my gaze move across her body from her chest down to her toes and back up. “And that body. Maybe if you had worn something that covered you from the neck down. But the second you gave me your back and I saw your ass and the way you glanced back over your shoulder? I knew.”
“I fooled everyone else.”
“They don’t matter.”
“That rumbling-growl thing you do is sexy, but I will not be distracted from this last important thing.” She cocked her head. “Does Igor really have a Gypsy curse on his dick or is that a bullshit line he uses to ‘hex it and exit’?”
I blinked at her. “I have no idea what you said just now. Maybe try it again in English?”
“I’m serious, Axl. That’s what Igor told Dallas. That his ex-girlfriend put a Gypsy curse on his dick and that’s why he broke it off with her. Not that he broke off his dick with her, but he ended their relationship. And since Dallas is heavily into all that woo-woo stuff like tarot, cosmic signs, reading auras, spinning her chakras, and cleansing her whatever, she takes the Gypsy-curse thing very seriously. That is the main reason we’re here incognito, not solely because I didn’t trust you. Dallas wanted to see if Igor was cursing some other chick with his magic dick, and I couldn’t let her come here a
lone.”
I finally knew the definition of dumbfounded. “How much have you been drinking?”
When Annika closed her eyes and balled her fists, I decided I’d asked the wrong question.
“Sorry. It’s so unlike you to go off on a rambling stream-of-consciousness rant, and it threw me. To be honest, I don’t know about, uh . . . Igor’s Gypsy curse. I haven’t seen him with any women.”
“Is Igor here tonight?”
I brought my hands back around to her face. “Annika. I don’t want to talk about Igor anymore.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t want to talk at all.” I lowered my mouth to hers and kissed her, taking my time. Slowly walking her backward until her back was against the wall behind the door. When I shifted my hand to stroke my thumb along the line of her jaw, my knuckles brushed the underside of the wig and I froze for a second. This wasn’t the baby-soft silk of her hair drifting over my rougher skin.
“You flinched,” she said against my lips.
“I wish I could rip this wig off.” I kissed the corner of her mouth, then dead center on her lips. Then the opposite corner.
“You’ll have to improvise,” she said huskily as she sucked on my bottom lip. “Find another place to put your hands, since you can’t run your fingers though my hair.”
Screw using my hands. I’d use my mouth.
Palming her hips, I held them against the door as I bent my head to her chest. I pressed openmouthed kisses across the swells of her breasts, which popped over the square neckline of her blouse, back and forth until she started to squirm.
I started to use my tongue. Following the neckline, pushing my tongue into the valley of her cleavage, then taking tiny nips of that abundant flesh. A primal urge rolled through me like thunder, the need to score her skin with my teeth, suck on her until blood rose to the surface of her skin in the shape of my mouth, use the scratchy tip of my chin to mark her as mine.
She’d parted her legs enough that I could slip one thigh between them. I drove my quad up as I reconnected our mouths.
Her little gasp of surprise . . . sweetest damn thing I’d had on my tongue all day.
One of her hands twisted in my hair while the other hand slid up and down my chest from my collarbone to the waistband of my dress pants. She was scraping her nails deep into my skin on one pass, as if trying to tear through my shirt, and then on the next pass up her touch would turn tender, a sensual caress.
Annika began to grind against my thigh. Her kisses grew frenzied. Her fingers were tight on my scalp.
“Axl,” she said softly after she’d ripped her mouth away from mine. “Stop. It’s too much.”
I put my lips on her ear. “Do you really want me to stop? I will. Or are you asking me to stop because you’re surprised you forgot you were in a closet and I’m about to get you off when you’re fully clothed?”
She groaned. “That one.”
“You’ll get over it.” I rocked my hips closer to hers in short, fast thrusts, focused on giving her this, ignoring how my heart thundered.
Annika pressed her face into my neck and said, “Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.” In the next moment, her entire body went rigid, and then she began to tremble in the aftermath.
My neck stung from the bite of her teeth. No doubt she’d left a mark. I didn’t give a damn. Nor did I care my dick was hard and wasn’t guaranteed any release. What a fucking rush that I could send her flying like that.
“Annika.”
“Uh . . . Annika’s brain has left the building.”
I laughed softly. “Good. But it’s that sexy mouth of hers I want right now.”
She turned her head and looked up at me.
So freakin’ weird to know it was her, but to see that beautiful face surrounded by curly brown hair.
She smirked. “You feel like you cheated on me, don’t you?”
I smashed my mouth to hers—that was the only response that wouldn’t start an argument.
“Now what?” she said, still rubbing her body against mine.
She was killing me. I craved more of this—her curves melting into the harder planes of my body. I forced myself to focus. “We’ll have to leave one at a time and hope no one is paying attention.”
“You first.” She smacked my ass. “If it’s not safe for me to come out, warn me.”
“How?”
“Slip something under the door. Or make a whippoorwill call.”
A whippoorwill call. Where did she come up with this stuff? “You watch too many spy movies.” I opened the door and walked out, closing it behind me as if it wasn’t odd at all that I’d spent the past fifteen minutes in a closet. I snagged a bottled water out of the ice bucket and realized things had gotten wilder in those fifteen minutes.
More of the guys were lounging at the tables. But without enough chairs, they’d doubled up—with some of the ladies sitting on their laps. Or two ladies sitting on their laps, or guys getting lap dances.
Someone had cranked the music up. Relf was getting his groove on with an English curler.
Flitte and McClellan had skipped the plastic cups and were drinking straight from the bottle of Jameson. Thank god they weren’t dancing.
The married guys, the ones I’d been shocked to see show up, were arm-wrestling. The loser had to take a shot of Jäger and then defend a penalty shot against someone shooting rock-hard biscuits at him. I had no idea who’d created the game or who’d had the foresight to bring a bag of biscuits. The players appeared to be having fun. In fact, there was a waiting line to get in on it.
I scanned the room. The number of people in here had easily doubled. My gaze moved to the main doors. Where were the security guys? I started in that direction, only to be stopped by Martin. “Dude. You know how to throw a party.”
“First and last. Enjoy it.” I made it another ten meters when Igor stopped me.
First thing that popped into my head? Whether his dick was really cursed and deformed.
Thanks for that image, Annika.
“What?”
“Who invited the Flyers?”
I clapped Igor on the back. “Too much wodka, my friend. Go to your apartment and sleep it off.”
Igor got in my face. “Russian always last man standing at party. Two Flyers are here in corner. With blonde.”
The blonde was the one Annika had been talking to earlier. Then my gaze flicked to the two Philly rookies. What. The. Hell. “I don’t freakin’ know. I’ll talk to security.”
He snorted. “Do not bother. Women on knees polishing their nightsticks. Even gate guard outside holding his club, waiting his turn.”
“So not only is the gate open to the entire city, but anyone can walk into this party.” I’d had strict controls in place. Last minute by invitation only. Security at two separate places. No cell phones.
“Dallas.”
“What?”
Igor pointed at the blonde. “That is her. He is touching her. He is dead.” Then he ran at them, head down. Charging like a bull.
This party had to end now.
Before things got even more out of control.
That was when Bunny and the WAG posse stormed the place, screeching obscenities. A few of the stronger women started pulling the lap-dancing bunnies off men’s laps. Kicking over chairs.
The married players continued to arm-wrestle as if their angry wives were not yelling in their ears.
Two guys who’d lost out on their lap dances and were spoiling for a fight noticed Igor whaling on the Flyers players. They jumped in to help.
Kazakov raced over and broke it up, but not before it got bloody.
A heated argument broke out between the ski jumper from Switzerland and Verily. Then between the alpine skiers and speed skaters.