On Thin Ice

by Susan Andersen

  He’d followed Sasha to the Coliseum yesterday. Karen knew—she rented a car as a matter of course in every new city they played and seeing him leave the hotel, thinking to surprise him, she had followed his cab to the east side of the river.

  Some surprise. It had been on her, not him; and it certainly hadn’t been a pleasant one. Drat him, anyhow. It didn’t take a lot of guesswork to figure out why he was at the Coliseum; everyone knew who had a standing arrangement to test the ice in every arena they played. As soon as Karen had realized where his destination was taking them and just whom it was he was chasing after, she’d peeled off in the opposite direction in a cloud of burning rubber.

  Why on earth was he pursuing Sasha Miller? What could he possibly see in her? For all her vulgar, spurious displays of sexuality on the ice the woman was actually rather dull.

  And spurious was exactly what those displays were, too. The truth was, little Sasha Miller didn’t have any appreciation for what a judicious use of sex could accomplish, an ignorance Karen found incomprehensible.

  And inexcusable. She failed to understand anyone who exhibited such total disregard for the game. Life, when it came right down to the nuts and bolts that made it interesting, was simply one ongoing quest for power. Personally, Karen had no use for anyone who failed to take full advantage of their potential.

  Flaunting a beautiful body just for the sake of it certainly had no worth in itself. Heavens above, it was just plain common, and it gained a woman nothing. A gorgeous face and spectacular figure were assets to be utilized in order to achieve one’s desires. Determining an aspiration and then manipulating events until you realized it, that was the only thing that counted.

  But apparently no one had ever bothered to tell Sasha Miller. As far as Karen could determine, Miller had never attempted to wile so much as the teensiest favor from a man by using the promise of her body. Aside from that one young man back in the amateur circuit days—what was his name again, Tim Something-or-other?—Sasha never seemed to indulge in sexual activities, period.

  There had to be a story behind her failure to do so, but that was the one secret Karen had never been able to pry out of Lon Morrison. To her eternal annoyance.

  Karen liked learning secrets; it was yet another rich source of power. Apparently, however, Sasha had never shared that particular confidence with Lon or with Tim What’s-his-name either, because while Tim, during the aftermath of sex with Karen, had been more than willing to denigrate Sasha’s capabilities in bed, he hadn’t been able to answer her cautiously worded queries.

  Karen hadn’t been interested in hearing how superior her sexual performance was to Miller’s. That had never been in question. She’d wanted the dirt, but unfortunately it was not to be.

  Which of course was neither here nor there. What she really wanted to know was why Mick Vinicor was wasting his time with Sasha when Karen had given him innumerable opportunities to take his best shot at her?

  That man was turning out to be the preeminent challenge and luckily for all concerned, Karen loved a good challenge. The more difficult it was to capture his interest now, the more absolute would be the rush of power when she ultimately did.

  So, let him flirt with Miller. When that cloying sexual shyness of hers cranked his frustration level up to an unbearable degree, Karen Corselli knew that Mick Vinicor would be darn grateful to turn to a real woman for relief.

  “Give us a kiss then, luv.” Mick crowded in close to Sasha. He’d caught up with her in the lobby and hustled her over to the corner. It provided a feeling of privacy as people came and went, even if they were actually only half hidden from casual view by the dusty fronds of a huge palm. He flashed his white, white teeth at her in what his mother used to call “Micky’s charm-the birds-outta-the-trees grin.”

  Sasha refused to be charmed. “Mick, for heaven’s sake,” she said in exasperation, “will you back off?”

  “Sure . . . just as soon as you give me a kiss.”

  “I’m not going to kiss you, Vinicor, so get used to it. And I’m sorry if I gave you a different impression yesterday, but I’m not going to go to bed with you either.”

  He rubbed the side of his thumb over her cheekbone and down the softness of her cheek to the full swell of her lower lip. Sasha had to concentrate hard to keep herself from squirming beneath his touch.

  “Ah, now, that’s where you’re wrong, Miller,” he was retorting smoothly when she dragged her focus away from the rough feel of his skin against hers. “I am going to be lover number three.” He thumbed her lip down and rubbed the callused pad along its slick interior membrane. “Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But it will happen.”

  “You think so, huh?” Sasha batted his hand away. “Well, that just makes you sound pretty damn cocky, if you ask me.” And not without good reason. “Saying so doesn’t make it so,” she insisted.

  Mick shrugged and gave her a gentle smile. “C’mon. You know you think I’m a handsome devil.”

  She snorted. “You’re not even close to handsome, Vinicor.”

  “Cuter’n a bug’s ear, then.”

  “If you want to do animal analogies,” she said with a sweet smile, “try ‘rat’s ass.’ ”

  That big self-assured grin was back. Propping his hands on the wall behind her, he brought his face down to her level. His chest brushing the front of her shirt, his lips at her ear, he breathed, “Sexy, then,” and his hot breath traveled the whorls of her ear to leave a rash of cold goose bumps in its wake. “I betcha think I’m sexy.”

  Her eyes began to close. “Yes,” she agreed helplessly.

  Mick’s entire body jerked and the easy grin fell apart. “Oh, Gawd, Sasha. Let’s go up to my . . .”

  Before he could finish articulating his demand, he found himself being shoved back and she was sliding out of the corner he’d backed her into. She turned to face him, her hands curled at her side.

  “You don’t get it, Mick,” she said earnestly. “Yes, you’re a sexy guy—that’s been apparent from the first night we met. But I’m not a sexy woman.” She slicked her hair back off her forehead and stared up at him intently. Racking her brain for the right words, she finally gave up, shrugged one shoulder, and simply came out with it. “Don’t let my performance on ice fool you,” she urged. “I’m actually not all that big on sex, if you wanna know the truth.”

  There. It was out. It hurt to say it, but she didn’t ever want to see the disappointment in this man’s eyes that she’d seen in the eyes of her other two lovers. They’d both made it pretty damn clear that she should have come with a truth-in-advertising guarantee, because as far as they were concerned she might be one hot number on the ice but she was a bust in bed. And they were right. She hadn’t had any experience with the tricks they’d expected her to perform for their pleasure; she’d been stiff and self-conscious, and it hadn’t been very good. Still, their assessment of her abilities had hurt terribly.

  It would kill her if Mick thought the same.

  “Oh, yeah,” he was agreeing with easy amusement, “I could tell by the way your skate blades were digging holes in the back of my knees out at the Coliseum yesterday that you were just humoring me.” He took a step closer and his voice dropped. “I could see you weren’t big on sex by the way you wrapped your arms round my neck and tried to climb up onto my dick.”

  “That’s enough, Mick! ”

  “Sorry,” he promptly apologized. “I’ve been hanging out with the wrong kind of people the last couple of years and I guess I can be pretty crude sometimes.” He reached out to cup her flushed face in his hard-skinned hands. Leaning down he kissed her gently, briefly, then pulled back and looked her straight in the eye. “But get used to the basic premise here, darlin’,” he advised peremptorily. “Because I am gonna be number three. Count on it.”

  For the second night in a row, Sasha cautiously stepped into her skimpy costume, pulled it up, and had beads start clattering onto the floor. “Dammit!” she snarled.

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sp; Two times now that her costume had threatened to fall apart for no apparent reason? My God, if she didn’t know better, she’d think someone was trying to sabotage her, but that, of course, was patently absurd. More likely it was a bad spool of defective thread or something. Still, she didn’t look forward to taking it to the wardrobe mistress. The woman was overworked as it was, and counting the one Sasha had snagged on the locker door, this made three extra jobs she’d created for the woman in much too short a period of time. She gingerly removed the costume and bundled it together, blowing out an aggrieved breath. This was simply one more instance of how her life seemed to be escaping her control these days.

  She’d had her ducks all in a row for the first time in her chaotic life, and now it felt as if the little beggars were slip-sliding all over the damn place.

  Perhaps she’d never be accused of being overly conventional. Sasha freely if somewhat despairingly admitted that her life to date had been anything but. But did she have to pay for it forever? It wasn’t as if it had been a conscious decision on her part to begin with—the circumstances had been more or less thrust upon her.

  And, dammit, for the past several years her lifestyle had been pretty ordinary. Maybe it wasn’t exactly traditional, but big deal. She liked it; it suited her—at least being different wasn’t a punishable offense and her emotions weren’t bombarded on a daily basis, as they’d been under the good old mill-town mentality that ruled back home. She’d overcome Kells Crossing. She’d overcome the stigma of being the ex-partner of a convicted heroin dealer. She’d made a few good friends and had a job she loved. Comparatively speaking, life had been almost mundane.

  Yes, all right, she had a few little sexual hang-ups. It didn’t take a psychotherapist to figure out why. But she was young; shed deal with them all in her own good time.

  Or so she’d always thought . . . until the advent of Mick Vinicor into her life.

  The way he made her feel—all crazed and scared and itching for something she’d never had—made her confront the realization that she’d been lying to herself. She hadn’t been dealing with it at all—she’d been ignoring the problem. And if she had her choice, she’d just as soon continue to ignore it.

  That was the thing, though. The choice seemed to have been removed from her hands. Mick had determined a course and no two ways about it, the man’s will was formidable. She could feel the two of them, like newspaper-crafted sailboats in a fast current, heading pell-mell toward the destination he’d ordained.

  She, too, had free will of course. She tried to keep that in mind; but it was difficult when the damn thing seemed to go flying out the window every time he got within touching distance.

  “It’s one thing to joke about it,” she admitted to Connie the last night of their Portland run. “But the truth is, the outcome really does scare me silly.”

  Connie was still reeling from Sasha’s confession of life in a small town. She couldn’t conceive of the type of harassment her friend had undergone . . . and couldn’t imagine keeping it to herself for all these years if something of that nature had ever happened to her. “I’ve known you, what, Sasha, almost three years?” she finally said and then demanded incredulously, “Why the hell didn’t you ever tell me any of this stuff before?”

  Sasha didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I don’t know,” she said and then added with stark simplicity. “I was ashamed, I guess.”

  “Oh, Saush, no!” Connie inspected her friend’s expression carefully. “Please, tell me you didn’t blame yourself for the actions of a bunch of jerk-off rednecks.”

  “No, no, it wasn’t like that . . . exactly. I’m not entirely neurotic.” Sasha kicked off her shoes, pulled her heels up on Connie’s bed, and hugged her thighs to her chest. Resting her chin in the little divot where her kneecaps pressed together, she gazed at her friend solemnly. “For over two years on practically a daily basis I had some ham-fisted yahoo putting his hands on me. And most of the time I could honestly just divorce myself from it, pretend it didn’t bother me to be felt up by boys and their damn fathers. I thought I was okay with it, Con, but I don’t think I was, really, not way down deep inside. It left me . . . I don’t know—scarred. Maybe if I could have talked it over with Mama . . .” Her shoulder inched up in a helpless shrug. “But I was afraid to, afraid it would throw her right in the middle of the whole darn mess. The people in my part of town apparently kept the way they felt about me separate from the way they felt about my mom, and I was terrified of upsetting the balance. So I buried what I felt. But it’s prevented me from having a normal, healthy sex life and I’m ashamed of that.”

  “Have you ever had a sexual experience that was positive?”

  “Well, . . . not really.” Her lips curled up in a forlorn little smile. “Isn’t that pathetic? I mean, I’ve had sex and everything, several times with two separate guys, but I can’t say that I liked it much. It sure wasn’t the stuff you read about in books. Not awful or traumatic or anything—just something I sorta wanted to get over.”

  Connie quit prowling the room and sat down next to her. “So if you’ve decided it’s inevitable with Vinicor, why does the thought of doin’ the deed with our good manager scare you so much? I mean, it’s gotta be an improvement that he turns you on, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Sasha turned her head to look her friend in the eyes, resting her cheek against her updrawn knees. “But I’ve got this need to be good at the things I do, and I’m not good at this. It’s not even a matter of being kind of not good; I’m really lousy. I mean, Connie, here’s this guy, he looks like he invented this stuff and it terrifies me when I think of the way he’s going to look at me once the shoutin’s all over. I’ve seen this look and believe me, it hurts. And jeez, Connie, if that isn’t enough to send me into a spin, then there’s Lon.” Her bark of laughter was tinged with hysteria. “Two more days and I’m going to be seeing him face-to-face for the first time in over five years. I still don’t have the foggiest idea what my reaction to that is gonna be.”

  She remained uncertain of her response right up until the moment she opened he door to her hotel room and saw Lonnie standing in the hallway. Then it was as if the five-year separation, the constant vacillation between feelings of hostility and remembered good times, had never been. Fingers pressed to her lips, all she had time to say was a trembly, “Oh,” before he hauled her out in the hall and into his arms to give her the granddaddy of all bear hugs.

  “Hey ya, sweet thing,” he whispered into her hair. “Miss me?”

  “Lon.” Sasha clutched him tightly for several moments. His hug, his scent, took her back, was a reassurance of things familiar. Finally pushing away, she held him off at arm’s length. “Let me look at you,” she demanded.

  Lonnie held his arms out from his sides, presenting himself. As she inspected him he inspected her in return, slow and thorough, looking for changes, noting things that had stayed the same. “Well, you’re sure a sight for sore eyes,” he said with a grin. “Prettier’n ever, I see.”

  “And you’re still as full of sh . . .”

  “Now, now.” Lonnie slung an arm over her shoulders. “Aren’tcha gonna ask me in?”

  “Oh. Yes. Please, c’mon in.” They stepped into her hotel room and she closed the door behind them. Turning back to him, she was quick to assure, “No, really, Lon, you’re lookin’ good. I was half afraid you’d be all pale and skinny.”

  “Nah. I got a little weather in the exercise yard. And I kept in shape with regular workouts—weights and stuff. Prison life does come with a few amenities.”

  There it was, said out loud, the bald reminder that Lonnie’s long absence from her life hadn’t been the result of something simple or easy . . . like living in another state. Sasha looked away.

  “Hey.” Lon reached out and pulled her chin back around with his fingertips. When their eyes met once again, he asked, “Is my incarceration gonna be a problem between us, Saush?”

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nbsp; “No, of course not,” she assured him quickly . . . too quickly. Her eyes slid away. Then she forced herself to meet his gaze once again and her chin tipped up fractionally as she shrugged. “Maybe. It’s not the imprisonment so much; it’s all the stuff that went into putting you there.” She hesitated and then admitted, “I’ve still got a lot of hard feelings, Lon.”

  “Yeah, I s’pose you do. And I suppose you’ve got a right to them. But I’ll tell you something, Sasha.” His eyes held a hardness she’d never seen in him before. “Things are never gonna be one hundred percent the same again, so you might as well get used to it. I just spent the last five years of my life locked away—that’s a fact we can’t tiptoe around.”

  “I never suggested that we should,” she replied stiffly.

  “No, you didn’t. You’d just like me to avoid saying the word out loud instead, so you’ll feel more comfortable.”

  “Comfort be damned,” she snapped, furious that he should choose to put that interpretation on it. “Every time I’m reminded of where you’ve been, Lonnie, and why, my comfort zone’s not the first thing that pops into my head.”

  “Yeah? So, what is?”

  Feelings she’d been suppressing for years surged to the fore. “You really want to know?” she demanded. “I’ll tell you what the first thing is.” Then she drew herself up, tamped those feeling down. She shook her head, taking a small step backward, as if to remove herself from the conflict. “No,” she said through tight lips. “No. I’m not going to do this. I am not going to fight with you.”

  Lon ground his teeth in frustration. “Dammit, Saush, I hate it when you do that! I hate it when you get all prissy and controlled on me, like Sasha Miller’s just too goddam angelic to brawl with the rest of us sinners.” He stuck his face close to hers. “Tell me what the first frigging thing that comes to mind is.”