On the Brink of Passion--Snow & Ice Games Read online

  Not dropping his slip-sliding grip, he takes the last few steps toward me, and places a hand beside my head, swings a leg over my hip so he’s straddling me.

  “You sure about this, Jubilee? You can still back out.”

  There’s something seductive in his voice, something I haven’t earned at all. A coaxing, sexy teasing that I kind of like, and maybe if I were some other woman would deserve. But I’m me, and this is about convenience, not enjoyment, and fuck if Beckett is going to think he can beat me at a battle of wills.

  “Go right ahead. I’m totally fine. Just put a condom on before you do.”

  Obviously. If there are things I want less at the moment than being pregnant with Beckett’s child, they are few and far between. Like a fork in the eye.

  In the dark of night, far away from the rink and our coaches, with competitions distant, and without the pressure of the press, expectations of the public, sometimes, sometime . . . Stephen and I would talk about what we’d do when it was all over. When we couldn’t compete at a level we were satisfied with anymore, and we’d probably go into coaching, or maybe realize we had some other passion that we could explore when we were done. There were always babies in our dreams. When my body had done its work on the ice rink and it could be fully mine again, I could use it to grow and nourish something we’d made, something more precious than the medals and trophies that would line our walls. Something we’d made just the two of us, and it would be ours to cherish and love.

  My heart aches with the thought, and any warmth, any awakening Beckett had been making me feel is snuffed out in the few seconds it takes for him to get this daft look on his face, as if he hadn’t thought this entirely through.

  I have to swallow so my voice doesn’t crack when I say, “Top drawer.”

  His attention hangs heavy on me for a moment, like he’s going to change his mind, and I can’t have that. Not because he thinks there’s something weak or fragile about me anyhow. There’s not. Nothing he needs to worry about anyway. Stephen’s been dead for four years, nothing can change that, and what I had with him has nothing to do with this farce I’m putting on with Beckett. I reach for something that’ll make Beckett stop treating me as breakable, and happen to find some cruelty because it is far, far easier than kindness and sharing.

  “Could we hurry this up? I was really enjoying my book.”

  Beckett

  Some other guy might’ve lost his wood at that, but I’m not just any guy. I like women who can wield the snark. And if she’s going to goad me into this, so help me, I am not going to fail by not being able to get it up. Nope. She might have complaints about my performance at the end, but it will not be that I couldn’t keep a hard-on.

  Jesus Christ, please let me be able to keep this hard-on.

  The condoms are in the drawer, right where she said they would be, and they’re the ones that will be freely available in basically every public bathroom, training office, the SIG ER, the locker rooms, so many places around the SIG village. I heard they ordered record numbers this year. Not that it appears I’ll be using up my quota because Jubilee seems intent on putting me off of not only sex with her but sex in general for the rest of my life.

  I manage to get the condom on and then it’s time. I could stop this, say it’s ridiculous, and what the hell are we doing, because we’re two grown adults and shouldn’t we be able to work out a compromise, but Jubilee isn’t really one for a compromise. If I back down now, I’m either not getting laid until I go home to Boston or I’ll be facing a very angry partner. Which could get either one of us injured or killed during what’s supposed to be the biggest competition of our lives. Of course, the second she tells me to stop I will, and please let that happen.

  But as I move from straddling her thighs to sit back on my heels between them, she looks determined. Poised for battle. I want to make her feel good, but I suspect if I tried to offer a caress or some kind of foreplay, or heaven help me, a kiss, she’d probably punch me. I’m not some kind of monster though. I want to make sure I’m not going to hurt her, so I press a strong but slim thigh aside, and thumb her clit.

  “Just, get it over with. You don’t have to do that.”

  “I don’t have to, but I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I’m . . .” A disdainful roll of her eyes, and a hard sigh. “I’m wet, okay? Just take it slow. It’s been a while.”

  Why is she . . . oh. Maybe she liked watching me more than she let on. Maybe this won’t be quite the chore she was anticipating. But I can’t use my usual magic, because she wants to go straight to the main course while I usually do my best work in the amuse-bouche and the appetizers. That’s okay, I can improvise.

  Then I’m leaning forward, and I’m hoping against hope she calls this off before we actually have sex. It’s maybe juvenile, and maybe I should be more casual about sex than I am, but this isn’t a woman I picked up at a bar or a fellow athlete I screw after competitions. This is my partner and whether we like it or not, we know each other very well. At least our bodies do, and I can’t help thinking this is going to change something between us, though it’s hardly more intimate than some of the things we have to do already. It’s just . . . different.

  And then the possibility that this in fact will not happen, is gone. I’ve started pressing into her—slowly, as requested—and she feels, god, really fucking good. Hot and tight and welcoming in a way I can’t quite put my finger on, until I realize she’s gripping the side of my ass cheek. I suppose I could think of it as my hip, but no, that is definitely cheek.

  Whoa. I am having sex with Jubilation Lee Buford. And so far, I kinda like it.

  Eyes closed and teeth gritted, I make shallow thrusts until her body takes me all the way inside, and then I hang my head because she feels fucking amazing. Also because I heard the ghost of a noise when I’d entered her completely, and it sounded like pleasure. I want to relish that, hold onto it so I know this isn’t as soulless as she’s trying to make it out to be. I fit as well inside of her as the curve of her waist fits into my hand on the ice, as if our bodies have been sized to fit together in all the ways possible. She’d have my head for thinking it, but it’s true.

  And though she’s told me to basically just get on with it, I can’t help but try to make her feel good. I don’t want her lying limp underneath me, staring at the ceiling until this can be over with. We don’t have to fall in love or anything—in fact that path leads to madness and to me feeling hemmed in and owned in a way that doesn’t feel good—but good sex is better than bad sex, right? So why not make the best of a really frigging awkward situation?

  I run my hand down her ribcage and grasp her at her flank while levering up on an elbow so I don’t crush her—not that I could, woman’s made out of titanium, but I’ll be polite, considerate. Then I thrust, pressing into her before drawing out, and trying to catch any clues of the rhythm she wants, the pressure she’s after. Does she like a slow, gentle, lovemaking? Even if she did, I suspect she’d avoid it here, and to be honest, I expect she prefers a good hard fuck anyhow. We do so much with our bodies, it’s got to be exceptional to register.

  Despite my attention to detail, I can’t find much, but I do the best I can, repeating things when she lets the tiniest sounds of enjoyment escape—a hitch in her breath, the start of a moan that she quickly smothers. Or when she slips up and actually lets her hips rise to meet mine while I drive into her. I also hold her fast, kiss her elegant shoulder, which is as close to her mouth as she’s likely to allow. If this were someone else, I’d hold off, hold out until she was satisfied. But it’s Jubilee, and this is just some weird bet we couldn’t find our way out of, and now look at us. That thought throws my pace for a second, but then I picture my dream Jubilee, and she . . . she’d still very much want me. She’d be enjoying this, and wouldn’t hold back her desire. She’d beg for it. Yes, Beckett, please. Harder, faster, god I love it when you fuck me.

  And since in real life Jubilee isn’t givin
g me any clues, I listen to my fantasy until I’m bearing down on my orgasm and it hits me, real hard. My balls tighten up to shoot my load and my whole body goes rigid while I’m buried as deep inside her as I can get. Fucking hell, it’s been a long time, because there’s no other explanation as to why spilling into Jubilee feels so goddamn good.

  Jubilee

  Beckett is breathing hard above me, still keeping his weight from pressing down on me by holding up his torso with a single arm. The man is strong, and considerate, I’ll give him that. I will also give him that he’s not terrible in bed. He’s not some sort of miracle worker, though, obviously, since I didn’t come. But that was more likely out of my determination not to than anything he did. Or didn’t do.

  I hate the fact that despite my brain’s firm resolve that I would not enjoy this, my body seems to have different ideas. If I’d let him—

  Doesn’t matter, because I didn’t orgasm, and I won’t. So this month will be less unpleasant because Beckett isn’t a clod when he’s fucking me. Great. But it doesn’t mean anything. It sure as hell doesn’t change anything. Except that maybe I’ll have to be a bit more active in my determination not to enjoy this. I hope he didn’t notice any of the sounds I couldn’t help but make, or the one time I couldn’t resist pressing my hips up to meet his. Ugh, I do not need Beckett seizing on any of those details and becoming more fixated on making me enjoy this. I would like to just fulfill my obligation and get this over with.

  Also, I don’t understand why I did enjoy it as much as I did. In the past it’s been difficult for me to enjoy sex without foreplay. The only reasonable excuse I can come up with is that it’s been so long, and since Stephen it’s never been with someone I actually know, who I actually, in some form or another, care about. That’s all that was.

  The gasp of pleasure I had to bite back when he’d filled me to the brim and the little moan I’d stifled as he thrust, the urge to cant my hips to meet him in a rhythm that would bring me off, how the friction brought desire curling in my belly as though it belonged there, and was intent on dancing. No. And the way he’d held me, still respecting my wishes, but somehow making me feel safe, it was all too much. Too much. Maybe this was a worse idea than I thought.

  Beckett, however, does not need to know he stirred anything in me. Perhaps reawakened the idea that sex with someone you know and are comfortable with can in fact be enjoyable in a way that snuffing out the ember of an urge cannot be.

  He’s still hovering above me, his chest pressing against mine whenever he inhales, and that mat of hair is scraping against my nipples with every breath, making them hard and slightly tender. Enough to be maddening, enough to have the long-lost urge to have them touched and sucked rekindled. But that is not for today, and it’s especially not for Beckett.

  I clear my throat, and luckily for me, he takes my less-than-subtle hint.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he mutters as he pulls out, fingers keeping the condom where it belongs.

  Fucking right he ought to be sorry, but probably not for what he thinks he ought to be sorry for. Squishing me (he isn’t), overstaying his welcome inside me (he didn’t), coming before he could get me to come (I was determined not to let him). He ought to be sorry for this being far less impersonal than I’d wanted it to be.

  I . . . not so much enjoyed that, but I see how I easily could have, and my traitorous nipples would like to point that out. They’re ready for some sensual indulgence, as is my clit, and my pussy would like some more of what was just on offer.

  As someone whose livelihood depends on my body, I have a much closer relationship with mine than professors, or authors, or others who spend so much more time in their heads. I suspect they find their brains useful and their bodies merely meatsacks that are holding them back, or perhaps a workaday tool that’s helpful in, say, typing, or getting them from place to place. They somehow manage to separate their bodies as a thing that is not themselves.

  For the most part, I don’t work like that—I couldn’t and still do what I do—but at the moment, my body wants something that my brain doesn’t want to give because my heart, the organ I usually think of as so helpful and hardworking, the thing that enables all others, just can’t handle it.

  I try to tune it out, the want, and stare up at the ceiling, pretending that sex meant jack shit to me instead of rocking the foundations of the world I’ve built for the past four years. “It’s getting late. We should probably get ready to go to sleep.”

  An hour and a half and no further funny business later, the problem is that while I’ve told Beckett we should go to sleep—and I was right—I cannot seem to nod off myself. He’s over there in his bed, snoring away, probably because he was the one who got off. He gets to come and sleep? That seems completely unfair. And yet the universe doesn’t seem to give a shit about what’s fair and what’s not, because I’m wide awake and horny as hell.

  Yes, okay, Beckett turned me on. And I am so very angry at him for that. The not-coming is my own damn fault, but the craving for satisfaction should’ve dissipated by now. Somewhere between getting up and using the bathroom while Beckett lay half-comatose on my bed, brushing my teeth and washing my face, changing into my penguin pajamas, and saying an incredibly awkward good-night to Beckett once we were tucked into our respective beds . . . somewhere amidst all that stuff, I should’ve been able to shrug it off, because I usually can. And yet here I am, wide awake, staring at the ceiling, and trying not to squirm overmuch, lest I wake Beckett and he offers his . . . services. I’m headed toward so - desperate - I - might - actually - take - him - up - on - it. I cannot have that.

  What I might be able to have—no. That would be entirely inappropriate. Over the line. Not okay. It would be incredibly crass to masturbate while Beckett is in the room. And Jesus, what would happen if I woke him up? I can be quiet, but . . .

  Ugh, it’s so tempting but so mortifying at the same time. My nipples are still gathered into hard little peaks and keep rubbing against the fabric of my pajama top. It makes my breasts feel sensitive and heavy, and my hands are in fists at my sides to keep from toying with them. Which only serves to remind me what else is gathered up tight and tense. My whole pelvis feels like it’s waiting. Expecting. It’s torturous.

  Meanwhile, Beckett is over there, sounding like a damn sawmill. I’d ask Sabrina how she dealt with it, except I don’t like her. And I like even less the way she looks at Beckett. He’s not yours anymore. He’s mine.

  I clench my fists even harder, my short nails digging into my palms. This isn’t right. I have immense amounts of control over my body and it’s betraying me now? Of all the things I ask of it, can it not just give up on the idea of getting off?

  After flopping over onto my stomach and being uncomfortable because my sensitive breasts are pressed into the mattress, along with my pelvis, I flip back. Fine. And what am I doing worrying about decorum? I basically just fucked a guy because of a bet both of us were too stubborn and ridiculous to back out of. What even is propriety anymore?

  Glancing over at Beckett to make sure he’s well and truly asleep, I slip a hand under my shirt and start to tease at my nipple. I have to bite my lip almost immediately because the sensation is half relief and half vexation. It only makes me want more. And since Beckett is still snoozing peacefully, I let my other hand snake under my shirt as well, and now I can have both nipples between my fingers, rolling them back and forth until I’m squirming, and I’m also feeling so goddamn wet and swollen between my legs.

  My eyelids fall shut and I try to just enjoy myself. It took a long time for me to be able to rub one out without thinking of Stephen, but I approached the problem like any other: with pure bloody-mindedness and discipline. Because after it stopped being a source of comfort, it was just an incredible source of pain. That I’d never actually touch him again. That he’d never touch me.

  The constant rhythm of Beckett’s snuffling is interrupted and my eyes snap open, my fingers stilling. But no, he makes a li
ttle snort, rubs his face into the pillow and sighs before going back to snoring more. Not waking up then. But still, I should keep an eye on him.

  After a few more seconds just to be entirely sure that he’s back in dreamland, I toy with my nipples again. Having to stare at Beckett while I do this has the odd effect of pasting his face onto the man in my fantasies. When I’m particularly meticulous, there isn’t a man at all, and when I’m tired or have too many other things buzzing in my head, there is one, but his face is carefully blank. Which is maybe a little creepy, but better than my heart cracking open like an egg on the side of a bowl.

  Now Beckett is making that impossible. Must he ruin everything? I’m too keyed up to fight too hard, though, so when I’ve tormented myself to the point where I can barely keep my hips still, I slip a hand between my legs and it happens to be Beckett’s. Fine. I picture the way he’d study my face, his gaze intent, seeking signs of enjoyment so he could echo the things I like, do them over and again.

  It’s easy enough in my fantasy to make him pick up the way I like to be touched quickly. Partly because he is that way. Attentive, sensitive, familiar. He’s well-versed in studying my reactions, so it’s not farfetched—especially given his efforts earlier—to think he’d be a quick study in the pressure and the rhythm with which I like small circles rubbed around my clit with the pads of fingers. Thankfully for my racing heart, it doesn’t take long until the tension of an orgasm has coiled tight between my legs and then, finally, mercifully, it lets go.

  The first pulse is tight and hot, my body seizing in an approximation of ecstasy, and I have to choke back a sound of pleasure, making me gasp like a fish. Which is when Beckett’s eyes blink open and I’m staring into their depths while trying to hold myself still despite my climax still radiating throughout my body.

  Does he know? Can he tell? Did I make a noise so loud it woke him? What is he going to say? Can he smell my arousal? All of those things would be completely and utterly horrible. So while my body is still riding the now gentle waves of orgasm, I lie there, looking at him and holding my breath. A brief fantasy runs roughshod through my head, completely unbidden: Beckett smiling at me, knowing what I’ve done, and asking if he could help out with the next. And goddammit, in my weakened state, I accept all his kisses, caresses, the studious way he learns my reactions and how to please me, and yeah, he makes me come, again.