The Winter Games Box Set

by Rebecca Sharp

  He barely greeted me before heading into the locker room to change. The stony silence continued into the pool room where, today, we were not alone. I sat, crossing my legs as he stripped and climbed into the pool; I’d learned that not even the practical cotton panties that I’d purchased would prevent me from soaking right through my scrubs at the sight of his hard, sculpted body. Whoever told him that those tiny-ass bathing suits were necessary was a Godsend. I increased the incline and he immediately started the treadmill.

  “How is your knee feeling today?”

  “Tight.” Just like his voice. And just like my body.

  “Well, we’ll work back into the week nice and slow, opening up those muscles again.” I spoke mostly just to fill the silence between us, seeing as how the other two groups of patients and therapists were immersed in conversation.

  “Were you there to see him, Jessa?” he interrupted my talk of muscles a minute later.

  My cheeks heated as he returned to his question from the other night.

  “Kyle told me his band was playing and asked if I would come out and support him. So, yes, we did go to see him.” Safe. He was in the water; we weren’t alone. I was safe.

  I wondered if the other people in the room could see the tension that fogged around us. His angered possessiveness clashing with my determined defiance. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t; I couldn’t because he was fucking me with his eyes. His gaze punished me and penetrated me just like his body wanted to—going to the deepest place inside of me where only he had been and where I was afraid it was only he who was able to go. I clenched my legs tighter together as he pushed more furiously through the water. The rhythmic sound of the water lapping at the edge of the pool mimicking the thought of him pushing inside of me over and over again.

  I no longer cared that we were the only group not speaking. I was just lucky that I wasn’t moaning out loud. I bit my lip, watching his muscles strain, itching to dig my fingers into them as he held me.

  One by one, the other two trainers ended their time in the pool room, leaving Chance and me alone.

  My heart was beating louder than the jets in the pool—both of which stopped with a jolt as the timer went off.

  Time’s up.

  The treadmill inside the pool hadn’t even come to a stop before he was hoisting himself out. The water ran in streams over the rippled muscles of his body, evaporating off his skin from the heat of it. His suit was tight on the front. Very tight. He made no move to hide how aroused he was. Or that he was coming for me.

  Grabbing a towel, I stood, ignoring the ache between my thighs.

  I held the towel out and open for him—a white cloth wall and flimsy defense hanging in front of me ready to drop at the first provocation. He grabbed it and pulled it from my hands.

  I was done for.

  I stood frozen, ready… waiting… for whatever was next.

  Betty was right—I needed to know.

  Choking on my breath, I watched as he turned and stalked to the door, water dripping in his path like little breadcrumbs for me to follow him. He was leaving. Was I relieved or disappointed?

  He wasn’t leaving.

  The towel was bunched in his hand as he turned the lock on the door.

  Gulp.

  I began backing up as he turned to face me. “Chance…” My voice was shaking. Way to be convincing here, Jessa. I raised my hand—my finger—up as a last pitiful warning.

  I blinked and he was in front of me again—not touching me. Not yet.

  “W-what’s happening? What are you doing?” I whispered hoarsely.

  “What’s going on between you and that asswipe?” His sculpted face was a study in brooding beauty, his eyes two bright spots of burning blue.

  “Ok, first off, his name is Kyle.” Chance growled at me and stepped closer. The act of breathing now getting my scrubs wet.

  “I don’t give a fuck what his name is, Jessa. Your name, however, is mine.” His harsh breath beat against my skin. “What is going on between the two of you?”

  Anger and desire burned in my stomach. “Nothing! Certainly not as much as what’s going on between you and Monroe.”

  Shit.

  I’d played right into his hand. My face heated as my jealousy got the better of me—but how dare he question me when he was the one fucking my co-worker every afternoon?

  He crowded me against the back wall, fingers gripping my chin. Cornered. Defenseless. I defiantly met his gaze, quickly realizing that the burning desire I felt meant that he was winning this war from the inside out.

  “Jealous?” He rubbed my lower lip, teasing the flesh. I fought to not dart my tongue out and lick it—and maybe him. “Let me remind you, J-bird, you were the one who made your bed and didn’t want me in it.”

  Anger sparked inside of my desire and I countered, “You were the one who asked about Kyle first. Are you jealous?”

  Both of our breaths caught in sync. I stared at him and the hard truth that was quickly launching us down a path from which we couldn’t return. I was vulnerable, but he already knew that. Now, though, I saw a hint of vulnerability in him peeking out through the stress fractures in his persona—fractures caused by forcing himself to be too cold and too harsh for too long.

  I wondered if I had done this to him… if he been like this for eight years.

  That was the thought that scared me the most.

  His response was to crush his lips to mine. And mine fought back.

  This kiss was neither tender nor sweet. Our mouths fought for control—fought for possession—fought to not be the one to lose. This was how it had always been—desperately devouring each other. We fought time. We fought pain. We fought through everything that should tear us apart in order to have one moment together.

  I was fucked.

  First, with his eyes. Now, with his mouth.

  My fingers dug into the wall behind me. There was a thin shred of control keeping us from taking this to the floor. I couldn’t tip the balance. Vaguely, I was still conscious of the fact that I was at work.

  His hand cupped my chin, tilting my head back as he pulled my lip between his teeth.

  “How bad do you want me, J-bird?”

  He knew how badly. Asshole.

  “I don’t.”

  He moved the oceans inside of me and I tried to turn it into a sea of lies. I failed.

  The lie earned me another punishing kiss. We had to stop. Someone was going to see. A strangled moan tore from my lips as he pulled back again.

  “I just got out of the pool, Jessa, but I’d bet every remaining miserable piece of my life that that sweet pussy of yours needs this towel far more than I do.”

  And if it didn’t, it certainly did now. Dammit.

  “Th-this is my work, Chance.” I tripped over my words, glancing at the door. “We need to stop. I have to go.”

  The pad of his thumb teased me, rubbing over the skin along the side of my jaw.

  “Tell me you want me and I’ll make you come before you can count back from five.”

  Double dammit. If there was one thing that Chance was proud of even more so than his snowboarding skills, it was of how he was always able to string my body up like a fucking tightrope and walk right over me.

  Then, Betty’s words came back to me. Chance wanted this; he wanted to touch me. He wanted to give me this just as much as I wanted it.

  And if I was going to have to give up something to get it, so would he.

  “Tell me you were jealous of Kyle,” I whispered, licking my lips, “and I’ll let you.”

  Blue ice fractured in his eyes, cold and hard. I pushed back against his limits—at his idea of how this was going to go. But I always had. And it was why he wanted me.

  “I was jealous of Kyle,” he ground out, his thumb pulling my chin down, opening my mouth so my next words could escape unencumbered.

  “I want you.” The truth came out as a desperate rush from my mouth.

  His lips swallowed
mine, his tongue plunging into my mouth, licking the roof, my teeth, and finally my tongue. The second that I gave in, the wave of shameless need crashed over me and I begged to be drenched. My hands moved from the wall to the firmness of his shoulders—still warm from the water in the pool.

  The drawstring of my scrubs was ripped undone, his large hand worming underneath the waistband. My hips jerked forward as soon as I felt the tips of his fingers beneath my underwear.

  Tearing his mouth from mine, he swore. “What the fuck are you wearing?”

  I whimpered as his hand struggled for a millisecond too long to fit inside my panties. “Underwear.”

  “Wear them again and you’ll fucking regret it.”

  And then, I saw stars in those ice-blue eyes as his fingers found what they were looking for, slipping into my sex and pinching my clit.

  It had been a while since someone, besides myself, had touched there. I’d chalked it up to being busy. Another lie.

  My hot pink nails dug into his skin—adding to the tantric tattoos that scored his flesh—as his fingers slid through my desire.

  “Five.” His lips touched mine again—not as a kiss, but as a brand. “Frost might have tasted your mouth, but he never had this.” His fingers swirled over and dipped into my core at the mention of Nick—and the one meaningless kiss that I’d enacted years ago.

  I should be mad that he was bringing it up now with his fingers soaked in my need for him. Instead, I shivered at the confident possessiveness it fueled in his strokes. I wanted to moan. Loudly. And I wanted to tell him the truth. I wanted to scream it.

  But I held it all back, only fraying my body even further as the pressure began to build.

  Tighter and tighter I was being wound. Some things about our bodies had changed over the years, but not this—not the way his finger knew exactly where and how and how hard to touch to destroy me.

  “Four.”

  Dragging in a breath, I held onto him for dear life as his fingers slipped through my folds. He didn’t push inside me, only teasing me with the tip of his finger as it rubbed violently over my clit.

  “I knew you’d be fucking drenched.” Did I hear him? Or did I just feel the words against my mouth? “Three.”

  I stopped breathing. I didn’t need air for the next two seconds.

  “Two.”

  His fingers worked their dark magic over my core. Coiling me past the point where I could stay safely wound.

  But instead of ‘one,’ he growled, “Mine.”

  The possessively vulgar statement sent me over the edge. And I came. Hard. Moaning his name like I needed him to breathe. Like belly-flopping into a pool; the sting of my orgasm jolted through my body, seizing every muscle on impact, before it swallowed me whole.

  Before I could catch my breath or float my way to the surface, his hand slipped out of my pants. It’s sudden absence was a rude awakening.

  Pool. Work. Client. Boss.

  “Five seconds, J-bird, because your pussy belongs to me.” He pulled his middle finger into his mouth, licking every last drop of me off of him like a giant ‘fuck you’ to any thought of contradicting him.

  Smirk and towel both secured on his person, he turned and made for the door, leaving me to stand there agape and collect the shredded remains of my legs so that I could move.

  My mouth almost lifted into a smile—it took too many more muscles to frown.

  He was the very reason I’d coined the phrase, ‘donut look.’ And my face right now was what you would see if you looked the term up in the dictionary—endorphins mixed with regret.

  Chance Ryder was one hell of an asshole. And he had a damaged ego to match. But I had eyes—the only part of me not completely obliterated by his touch—that saw this asshole wasn’t immune. He wasn’t unaffected by touching me even though that’s how he’d played it off. Let’s just say he held the towel in front of him to hide more than just his bathing suit.

  You may have taken the gold for giving orgasms today, Mr. Ryder, but the only thing you’re going home with is something very, very blue.

  “SO, MIND TELLING ME WHAT the hell happened the other night?” Frost strolled into my room in the guest house—no knock, no warning. Typical. It was the asshole’s house and therefore, technically his prerogative, but still. I held up the towel that had been just about to fall from my waist.

  I hadn’t bothered to shower at the gym, mostly because I saw Monroe eyeing me as I walked towards the lockers, waiting for me to request her presence. Except I didn’t want her. I never wanted her. But especially today, I didn’t want her touch contaminating whatever poisoned pleasure Jessa left on my skin.

  So, I changed and left out the side door, driving like a fucking bat out of hell to get back to Frost’s. Thank fuck I kept a joint in the glove compartment; it held me over—calmed my raging nerves—until I made it into the shower where I jacked off like it was a fucking competition—one where I’d taken the bronze, silver, and gold.

  “What do you mean?” I knew what he meant. Fucking Monroe.

  And fuck this. I began to dry off, not giving a fuck as the towel no longer covered me, letting my dick hang out. Maybe that would encourage the fucker to leave.

  “Well, how about the fucking fact that you tell me there’s this girl who wants to bang both of us—at the same time—and then, I’m halfway down her fucking throat and you can’t get your shit together enough to fuck the pussy that you’ve been exercising all week?” His tone wasn’t angry. It was entertained—which made it all the worse.

  “What? Couldn’t make her come without me?” I stood holding the towel in my hand.

  “That is not the fucking problem.” His eyes glinted as he took another sip of… coconut water? It was after three pm; that bottle should have an alcohol content to it. “The problem is that goddamn pink-haired poison; it’s like you get within five fucking feet of her and all of a sudden your dick won’t work for anyone else. Don’t think I don’t know that that is why we went to that stupid band shit show the other night. Or why you decided to leave like they’d just set the building on fire when you realized that she was there to see Mr. Rockstar.”

  “Watch it, Frost.” I didn’t give a shit that he was right; my tone was still deadly.

  He stalked towards me, stopped just a few inches from my face, those creepy-ass pale blue eyes eating through mine. And then he smirked. “I’m not the one tripping over my dick to get back with the girl who, oh, that’s right, kissed me while she was still dating you. Watch yourself, Pride.” He made for the door again having made his point.

  Hand on the doorframe, he paused, looking back with that same entertained smile on his face. “FYI, by the time I was done with her, that chick couldn’t even remember your name.”

  He pulled his phone from his pocket as he spoke and as soon as he saw the caller-ID, that smile on his face splintered into a seriousness that I’d rarely ever seen—which meant that it had something to do with Lila. He didn’t look at me again as he answered harshly, slamming the door behind him.

  My jaw clenched. That was fucking Frost—he liked to watch quietly from the dark shadows. And maybe he was pissed that I’d bailed on him with the threesome with Monroe. Or maybe he was more pissed that I’d bailed on him for Jessa—the girl who’d almost ruined our friendship.

  It was probably the latter by the way Monroe been swallowing his dick, her thick black mascara streaming down her face as she begged for more.

  My phone began buzzing. Digging in my gym bag, I saw my twin’s name on the screen.

  Sorry, Lil. Not now.

  I didn’t know what the fuck happened the other night which made me all the more pissed off. One minute, I was rolling on a condom about to fuck Monroe like I swore I would for the past few weeks. The next, the sight of her bent over, Frost pounding into her mouth, was no longer appealing. My desire deflated faster than a football in the hands of Tom-fucking-Brady. So, I left before I ended up in the center of my own deflate-gate.


  And it was all Jessa’s fucking fault.

  I yanked open the bottle of whiskey that was sitting on the edge of the dresser in the master bedroom of Frost’s guest house, chugging down enough healthy sips that would bring tears to the eyes of most.

  My phone started buzzing again.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Seriously?” I deserved every ounce of sass in Channing’s voice.

  “Sorry.”

  “No fucking shit. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” Maybe one more sip would have me believe that, too. “Rough day.”

  “How’s PT?” Dammit. How did she know? Ally. Jessa. My brain connected the dots.

  “Enlightening,” I rasped. “What’s up?”

  “Can you come over to Wyatt’s? We want to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “Seriously, Chance? I know you don’t have plans. And if you did, they wouldn’t be until later. Stop bitching. Come over. There will be food.” Click.

  If there was one thing my twin knew, it was how to handle me. Especially when I was being a dick. I should be happy with how things progressed today with Jessa. Instead, I’d left myself with an itch only she could scratch. And that, combined with Frost’s annoyingly opportunistic reminder that I could be fucking myself bigtime with my desire for her—and for revenge—made me into a larger, crankier ass than I normally was.

  Good fucking thing I loved my sisters with every miserable cell in my body. Not that I was worth much at the moment, but if I was worth anything, it would be because of my love for them. I was just shitty at showing it right now.

  “Ryder!” Wyatt Olsen’s gold-medal-winning grin greeted me when he opened the door. Fucking fantastic. Just what I needed, a reminder of all the things I would never accomplish.

  “Olsen.” I nodded and strolled into his and my sister’s half-a-million-dollar condo that they were renting.

  I made it halfway through their living room and towards where the smell of food was coming from before Channing appeared from the kitchen. “Chance!”

  She threw her arms around me like she hadn’t seen me in weeks, instead of at their engagement party… Shit, had it really been that long?