Power Play (Center Ice Book 2) (3 page)

She sighs. “All right, darling. Promise me you’ll work hard.”

“I promise.” I hold up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“You were a terrible Girl Scout, as I recall.” She shakes her head. “I’ll call you when we reach the next village, provided the satellite link is still functioning then. Cheers.”

End Call.

The waiter deposits the next martini on my table, and I take a big gulp of vodka-olive juice goodness. “Cheers,” I whisper to myself.

Then it’s back to work, and distracting myself from thoughts of Marcus Wright and that dimple in his grin.
What are you hiding, Marcus?
I ask, as I type up my notes from the interview.
What don’t you want me to find?

What I can’t bring myself to ask, though, is what I most want to know. The thing that sets him apart from all the other men I’ve ever met:
Why didn’t you run from me the minute I showed my claws?

My skin is on fire with an itch I can’t scratch. All season long, I feel like I’ve been chasing a high that never delivers. I’m scoring goals, I’m making plays, I’m even giving Drakonov a run for his money in the rankings, but it’s not enough. Nothing is ever enough for me.

What I really need is to hit up Brimstone. It’s my night off—one home game tomorrow afternoon, then a couple games on the road. If I truly need to get my Brimstone fix, tonight would be the night to do it. But instead, I’ve got Fiona Callahan. Fiona, of the long legs and red hair and cruel streak that I’m so desperately hoping carries over to the bedroom.

It has to. Right? Surely I didn’t misread that. But maybe I’m losing my touch. Maybe I’m more out of the loop than I thought. Please don’t let her crumple like a wilting daisy the minute I get her clothes off.

If
I can get her clothes off. I grin. I do so love a challenge.

“Wright. Hey.” Brian Osbourne, our main goalie, catches me in the locker room. I’m still grinning to myself about my date with Fiona, but the long look on Brian’s face gives me pause. “Coach wants to see you.”

I’d been considering suiting up and lacing up my skates, hitting the ice again to burn off some of this restless energy. Now, though, my heart plummets. Coach Isaacs had plenty of time to talk to me at this morning’s free skate, or while I was working with the shooting coach. But the ice, out in the open, is for good news. Meetings in his office, not so much.

“Yeah.” I rehang my skates and shut my locker. “Thanks.”

Coach Isaacs’s office is on the top floor of the business wing of the Eagles Arena. An impressive corner office, to be sure, though nothing like the sprawling temple to himself that the team owner, Mylo Saukonis, uses. Not that he spends any time there—he’s got too many other businesses to run. Frank Isaacs, on the other hand, is
always
in his office, reviewing footage, poring over spreadsheets, drafting up plays. I’m not even sure if he has a family, or a house that he goes home to at night. He lives, breathes, and eats Eagles hockey, and has little patience for people who don’t do the same.

I take a deep breath and poke my head inside the door. “Coach? You wanted to see me?”

He pauses the footage he’d been watching on one of the numerous flat-screen monitors that line one entire wall of the office. With a glance, I see it’s from the Thanksgiving Classic, after Drakonov got carried off the ice and I started racking up the shots. I played my ass off that game, and it paid off. I should feel comforted that of all the games he could be reviewing, it’s that one. But I can’t get rid of this sick feeling in my gut.

“Hey, Marcus. Come on in.”

Jim Isaacs is a tall, lanky white Canadian; his wire-rim glasses and salt-and-pepper hair make him look more like a professor than a sports coach. But I’ve seen the old clips of how he played, back in the day. The man moves, talks, and acts like a machine. I follow him to a set of double chairs around a coffee table, and he settles in and laces his hands over one knee.

“Coffee?” he asks.

I shake my head. Let’s get this over with, Coach.

“First of all . . .” Jim takes a deep breath. “I want to tell you how pleased the whole staff is with your play lately. This is exactly the kind of performance I knew we could get out of you with a little discipline.”

I let out my breath. “Thank you, Coach.” Oh, man, I think I’m sweating. What a hell of a stressful day. I unleash a little laugh. “Man, I gotta say, when you called me in, I thought . . .”

“Well,” Jim says. “There’s more.”

I sink back in the chair.

“You’re improving your discipline. But you’re not improving your consistency.” Jim gestures to the screen where he’s paused the Thanksgiving Classic game. “Some days, you follow the plan, and it pays off huge. Others . . . not so much.”

I know exactly what he’s talking about. Last week, in Miami. Magnussen, Owens, Ryckert, and I had been following our power play strategy to the letter, but when Ryckert dumped the puck in my stick for an easy slide-in, I choked. The puck went flying. The Miami guys pounced. And ended up scoring a short-handed goal on us. Coach sat me for the rest of the game. No one ever brought it up, but I could see it in their faces at the next practice. I could see that split second of hesitation when the puck came my way again.

“But I’m following the plan.” I glance up at Jim. “You told me, when I came on board, that the number one thing you wanted me to focus on was my discipline. No hot-shotting. No risky business.”

“You’re right, I did. But now that you’ve got your discipline down . . . I’m starting to see that your fundamentals are shaky. There’s no way you can’t be making goals like this . . .” He gestures to the screen again. “Every time you get a perfect setup.”

My face is burning up. My fundamentals? What the hell is wrong with my fundamentals? And how the fuck does he want me to fix them?

Oh, no. Then it hits me. “Coach.” My voice trembles as I say it. “Please tell me you’re not . . .”

“The front office is divided on what to do with you.” Jim grimaces. “But I’m not gonna sugar coat it, Marcus. There are some people who think you’d be better off going to the farm team for a couple months to shore up your fundamentals.”

Some people.
My body is tingling, like he’s slapped me all over; the heat of shame prickles my skin. Some people like Coach himself? The owner? The GM, Kevin Malhotra, who never seems impressed with anything I do? God, it’s not the shooting coach, is it? Was he seriously looking me in the eye this morning, all smiles and good-natured ribbing, knowing full well he’d recommended I get shipped down to the farm?

I shift my weight in the chair. Part of me wants to cry foul. That I get placed under a lot more scrutiny than my other teammates. That I get triple the shit talking on the ice—even Coach wouldn’t believe the vile, racist garbage other players spew at me, even if it is just to get under my skin. And the fans do it, too. If I score a winning goal, the other team’s fans storm social media with a bunch of racist epithets. If I lose the game for us, like in Miami, our own fans think nothing of tossing out shit like “lynch him” and yell at me to go back to basketball. I guarantee Drakonov’s and Magnussen’s fundamentals would be just as shaky if they had to put up with that every fucking game.

But that’s the way it is. Mom and Dad always say:
You have to be better, faster, stronger, smarter, and calmer than everyone else to get half of what they do. Never let yourself slip. Hold your head high and fight on.

But I have slipped before. Like I did two years ago. My only relief is that we locked that shit up and threw away the key.

“So.” I swallow, hard, trying to work past the lump in my throat. “That’s it, then? I‘m headed to the farm team?”

Jim adjusts his glasses and takes his sweet-ass time in answering. “Marcus . . . I’ve asked them to give you until the All-Stars break to see if we can’t shore you up here, at home.”

I nod, trying not to feel too relieved. The All-Stars are only six weeks away—mid-January. That’s hardly any time at all.

But I can do it. Concentrate on the game. On the fundamentals. I know I flub some plays, make some bad calls. But I’m a good player. I’m trying so hard to earn this, to be what everyone expects—

“Are we understood?” Jim asks, already standing up.

Before I even understand what I’m doing, I’m sticking my hand out to shake. Like I’m
grateful
to Coach. Like I should be thanking him for the opportunity. “Loud and clear, Coach.”

“Thanks, Marcus. You’re a real team player.” Coach looks at my hand, then shakes. “A lot of people had their doubts, you know, about how well you’d work with us. But you fit in just fine.”

I bristle inside at that as I see myself out of Coach’s office. Like those are the only two things I can be. I’m the young thug with an authority problem—something I was often accused of, in the
before
days—or I’m the yes-sir, right-away-sir boy, all too eager to please. No one ever sees Marcus when they look at me, it seems. All they see are their prejudices reflected back at them.

Am I in control, or all too happy to be controlled?

Rajani used to tease me.
Which Marcus are you today? The submissive or the dom?
And maybe it was true that every day, I felt a little like I’d pulled on someone else’s skin. Was warping myself to someone else’s expectations.

But now I know what happens when I let the real Marcus out.

I’m not about to risk it again.

I leave the Eagles Arena, and make it half a block before I realize my feet are carrying me toward Brimstone. No. Get a grip, Marcus. You can’t keep leaning on the same crutch. I guess there are worse addictions a guy could have. But I can’t feed mine tonight.

Or if I do, I’d much rather it be at the mercy of one Fiona Callahan, and her glorious tits and dazzling, poisonous words.

Fiona walks into Sakura fifteen minutes after eight, too calm for it to be an accident that she’s late. She’s wearing knee-high heeled boots and a trench coat, and, god, is it too much to hope she’s got on nothing underneath? But then she peels the trench off and hands it to the hostess, and I suck in my breath. Black leather pencil skirt and a white button-down blouse. I’m dying to see how her ass looks bent over in that skirt. Preferably bent over my kitchen counter.

“Hi.” She walks up toward me, tucking a wisp of red behind one ear. She’s moving stiffly, like she’s nervous, but her tone says she couldn’t care less about impressing me. I’m thinking it’s a little bit of both.

I extend one arm to Fiona, flash her my best dimpled grin, and signal to the hostess. “Is a private room okay?”

Fiona studies my arm like it might bite her, and keeps her hands to herself. “If we must.”

The hostess bows low to us both. “Right this way.”

Fiona takes in the décor at Sakura, which is a funky mix of traditional Japanese rice paper walls and grungy street art and pop elements. Her full lips are pursed as we pass the kawaii anime dick girl mural. “Well,” she says. “This is different.”

“You’ll love it.”

Fiona shoots me a withering glare.

“Please leave your shoes out here,” the hostess says, gesturing to a low shelf outside the door to our private room.

Fiona arches one eyebrow, but bends down and slowly, achingly unzips her boots. I clench my jaw, savoring each moment. She frees her feet—toenails painted the same blood red as her fingers and lips—and pads into the private room, lined in dark tatami mats.

“Drinks?” the hostess asks, as she places our menus on the low table at the room’s center. I sit cross-legged and motion for Fiona to do the same.

“Vodka martini,” Fiona says. “Dirty. Very, very dirty.”

Yes, you are, Miss Callahan.
I smile at the hostess. “What’s your favorite sake?”

The hostess’s cheeks flush. “I recommend the Sho Chiku Bai.”

“A bottle of that. And two cups.”

“I don’t drink sake,” Fiona says.

I bat my eyes at her. “You have to at least try.”

She crosses her arms. “I don’t have to do anything, Mister Wright.”

The hostess looks from Fiona to me. Fiona folds her arms across her chest, squashing those perfect tits. I hold up two fingers to the hostess. “Just bring two.”

“Yes, sir.” She bows and backs away.

As the hostess slides the panel closed to our private room, Fiona saunters over to her side of the table and sinks to the ground. She sits with her legs together, tucked underneath her. The scowl on her face only deepens as she snatches up the menu and holds it like a barrier in front of her face.

I already know what I’m ordering—the chef’s choice sushi tray and a steaming bowl of the best ramen on the East Coast. After a few minutes, though, Fiona is still scrutinizing the menu. “Uhh, want some suggestions?” I ask.

“Why, do you come here often? On . . .
dates
?” She says the last word like something vile dangled between her fingertips.

“And with friends.” I drum my fingers on the edge of the table. “I’m not big on dating.”

“Well, I’m sure you don’t have to exert much effort.” Fiona sighs from behind the menu. “Snap your fingers, flash a few thousand dollar bills, and the clothes just melt away. Is that right?”

“There’s more to it than that.” I can feel the heat spreading along the back of my neck. Trouble is, I can’t tell if I’m turned on or offended. Maybe a little bit of both. “Sure, there are always a few puck bunnies throwing themselves at us, wherever we go. But my tastes lie elsewhere.”

Fiona thwacks her menu down on the table. “Is this the part where you tell me you have a very particular set of desires, Mister Wright? Where I sign some sex slave contract?”

I laugh nervously. “Um. Not exactly.” She’s staring at me with those hazel eyes aflame. “I just meant . . . the puck bunnies always seem so eager to please me, y’know? Like I’m giving them a gift by being in their presence. And that’s not what I’m interested in. I like . . .”

To be dominated.
Just say it, Marcus. Beg her to bind your wrists and drag you through the streets. Ask her to press those incredible stiletto heels into your throat. Tell her to make you plead and plead for just one taste of her. To find that narrow space that lives between the cold darkness of pain and the warm flush of delight.

“I like a challenge,” is all I say.

Fiona stares at me for a minute longer, then picks up her menu with a
hmm
.

Shit. I’m losing her. I wrack my brain, trying to think of something witty, and come up blank. “I’m guessing . . .” My tongue feels so useless in my mouth, like I’m trying to steer pudding. “That you don’t go on too many dates, either.”

She drops the menu again. “Good evening, Mister Wright.”

“Wait. Fiona, no.”

She stands up and throws the panel to our room open, just as our waitress arrives with our drinks. The waitress eyes us both warily as she sets them down on the table and disappears. Fiona reaches outside and drags her boots into the room, and starts trying to wriggle one foot inside.

“I wasn’t trying to offend you. I didn’t mean that at all.” I’m still seated on the floor, so I knee-walk over to her. “All I meant was that—there probably aren’t a lot of guys who can appreciate you.”

“No, there are not.” She zips up the first boot with a noise like gunfire in the small room. “And I don’t think you’re any better.”

“Please. Just give me a chance.”

I clamp my hand around her bare ankle without even thinking about what I’m doing. That beautiful, warm flesh, so soft under my palm. Our eyes meet, and I smile, sheepish, dimpled.

Her face contorts with rage as her whole body starts to shake.

“What . . . the . . .
hell
,” she manages to spit out, “do you think . . . you are doing?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “Be angry. I deserve it.”

The furrow in her brow only deepens. “Get your hand off of me. Right this instant. Or I will scream.”

A faint shiver runs through me. A sensation I’d long thought dormant. The unbelievable rush I’ve missed and missed.

With a sly grin, I pry my fingers from her ankle and rock back.

“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” I say, as she reaches down for her second boot.

Fiona freezes, one boot on and one boot off. Slowly, she lowers the boot to the floor. “Anything I want?”

“Yes.”

Careful, Marcus. This is one hell of a dangerous game. But I have to make her stay. Maybe, just maybe, I can convince her so thoroughly that she forgets about her stupid crusade.

“And what’s the catch?” she asks. “And no—don’t you
dare
say I have to sleep with you.”

I roll my eyes. “No. Just finish having dinner with me.” My grin widens. “If you want to sleep with me afterward, though, that’s your choice.”

He cannot be serious.

Implying I don’t date much, begging me, grabbing my ankle like that—he’s got to be out of his goddamned mind. A glutton for punishment. Isn’t that what Pierce said, the last time we hooked up? That he was a glutton for the kind of punishment that only I knew how to dish out.

But no man wants a woman like me for long. And the bigger their estimation of their dick, the more power they wield themselves, then the less they want anything but the most pliant, submissive female on the planet to dangle from their arm.

So why is Marcus Wright, who may not be the Eagles’ top earner but is by no measure poorly paid, begging me to stick around, knowing full well I’m not going to take one ounce of his bullshit?

I unzip my boot with a sigh and toss them back outside our private room. The waitress brought our drinks during Marcus’s little show, thankfully; as soon as I’m seated, I pick my martini up and take a big swig.

“All right. I’ll stay.” I swallow—let the vodka and olive juice burn bitter and harsh down my throat. “But it doesn’t have to be pleasant.”

“I think you’ll enjoy yourself more than you expect.” Marcus gives me that shit-eating grin, the one I’m sure he thinks is so cute, and raises his sake glass. “
Kampai.
”

“
Slainte.
” I don’t clink his glass.

Marcus sips his sake, watching me over the lip of his cup. I can’t lie—there
is
something mesmerizing about the way he’s watching me, like no one else exists in all of the world. His eyes are warm brown, sun-baked, a few shades lighter than his skin, and they have a quality that—
if
I were to describe them for a narrative essay, which I
wouldn’t
—I would call magnetic.

Oh. I’m still staring at him. And he’s smiling. And it’s making me smile, too.

He laughs, ruining the moment. “What?” I retort. “What’s so damn funny?”

“Oh, nothing.” He picks up his cup of sake again. “It’s just that for a minute there . . . you almost looked human.”

I take another swig of martini.

“C’mon. Fiona. Fi. Can I call you Fi? How about Fifi?” he asks.

I glare at him as hard as I can, like maybe the force of my stare alone can make his head ekplode. “
Don’t
. Ever. Call me Fifi.”

His eyes widen, gleaming with delight. “Why?” He drops his tone, conspiratorial. “What’ll you do to me?”

“Leave,” I say flatly.

But there’s something in his tone. A crooked finger beckoning me down a dark hallway. A promise that’s never been kept. As I look at him again, I see it: something like awe on his face. He’s not running from me. I’m being my coldest self, donning my thickest armor, and he hasn’t budged an inch.

If anything, it’s lured him in.

Maybe that’s worth something. A man who respects me when I pull no punches. A man who respects me, period.

Especially one as wickedly handsome as Marcus Wright.

A flush raises on my cheeks; I try to force it away through sheer willpower. “What’s your game, Marcus?” I ask. “Playing a hotshot on the ice, the cool playboy, but then begging me to stay. What is it you’re angling for?”