Page 31 of Born of Ice

They shouldn’t be doing so well without me. They should be biting their knuckles for benching me. I’m the best they’ve got. But as I watched them play, I felt a million miles away from them. From that ice and the team I called home since I first started playing.

Hockey was my salvation from the hell I lived in. It covered the scars that ran a little too deep.

Until I lost that too. Until the hate I carried in my tattered heart couldn’t keep at bay anymore. Until one phone call broke through the cracked wall and ruined the only good thing I had left.

I shut the game off and fought really hard not to smash the TV into tiny pieces. It’s not even my fault I’m no longer there. It’s fucking Zima and Alice who just had to jump into that fucker’s bed.

We weren’t an item. She was just a convenient puck bunny, and I couldn’t care any less who she slept with apart from Yanis Zima.

She knew how much I hated the guy, and she went to him for that reason alone. I’m sure of it. Because a week before he made the announcement to me at that game, I refused to put a label on us. Well, I actually laughed in her face and told her to get fucking lost.

And she did…on his cock, which he made very known to me that day. And that’s what set me off.

Sure, it was absolutely stupid of me to react to his taunts like that. Yes, I should have known better but when my switch flips…it’s game over.

And Yanis fucking Zima justknowswhat buttons to push. He’s known it from a very young age and has exploited them since I met him in junior league.

So now, instead of slashing through the ice, drowning in the most satisfying sweat, and getting high from every puck we put in, I’m banished to babysit an angry elf while the team is having the time of their lives without me.

I plop onto my back, sighing when I hear my phone vibrating on the coffee table.

Unknown Numberflashing on the screen.

The other reason for my current predicament.

When is he going to finally get the memo I’m not interested in anything he or his asshole clients have to say to me.

But just seeing that number flashing takes my already sour mood to a whole new level. I punch the decline button and turn around, giving my back to the phone but then another loose spring in this stupid couch digs into my bicep and it was the smallest trigger, the last drop in this already tipping jug of pissed off, to flip the switch.

I jump off the couch, sending my fist into the cushion again and again, as if that will help anyone. When I’m done, I gather my blanket and my phone with that taunting missed call still on it and set off down the hall.

I don’t bother knocking as I send the door to her room flying open but just as fast, I freeze at the sight in front of me.

The anger that was coursing through my blood as a sizzling hot fire, is now a dying amber as I drink her in. Her nearly black hair is piled on top of her head, in a messy-looking bun with just those low-cut bangs barely reaching her long, dark eyelashes. Her slender, delicate neck that is now fully exposed to my eyes. And fuck, since when do I find slender, delicate necks—specifically hers—irresistible.

So irresistible I’ve got this deep-rooted knowledge burning into me, like it’s part of my DNA that if I don’t have my lips,my teethon it, I might die.

With every fiber of me I know I shouldn’t look down, but I do and cast myself into hell because her very hard, dainty nipples are poking through the white tank top she has on which also does nothing to hide the generous curve of her tits.

My blood starts to hum. My throat is dry as if I hadn’t had a drink in a year. My heart is hammering inside my chest as if I spent the whole day running the toughest drills on ice. My legs feel weak—and they never do.

And Electra fucking Monroe looks like that drink I need, the medicine I should take for the heart, and the resting place for my fatigued muscles.

Fuck…what the hell is this?

I don’t see her like that.I don’t. I don’t seeanyonelike that.

“Exton! What the hell?” she squeaks, pulling her heavy-looking quilt over her braless tits, trying to hide from me. But it’s too late because I already got an eyeful that I’m not sure I’ll ever forget. “What are you doing in my room?”

Fuck, why did I come here? Whatam Idoing here apart from destroying some cells in my brain?

But then my eyes travel back to her face where I’m greeted with a nasty glare and my memories come back. Right, no more sleeping on the devil’s couch.

“Technically, I’m not in your room. I’m standing at the door,” I point it out to her as I lean against the doorframe.

Electra rolls her eyes. “Tomato, tomahto. So? Why are you here?”

“I like your bed.”

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