“Yeah?” Austin gritted his teeth and forced a smile. “I gotta go.”
“Again? You’re not coming to the bar later?” Kyle punched his shoulder. “We need you.”
“No you don’t,” he muttered. “Happy hunting.”
He turned to stalk his own prey.
She was waiting on his floor but he beckoned her towards him. “Not my room tonight.”
“No?” She frowned.
“Yours.” He headed towards the stairwell to walk up to the next level. He wasn’t in the mood for chat right now.
“Why?”
“Because you’re the one who has to go fast down the mountain a million times a day. You can fall asleep in your own bed and not have to move again ’till morning.” Because it wasn’t going to be only a couple of hours tonight, he needed a whole lot longer to get this craving out of his system.
Her eyebrows lifted. “Isn’t treating patients more important than skiing?”
“I’m not doing brain surgery. I’m putting on plasters and doling out painkiller to hung-over party-goers.”
“You’re playing it down.” She bristled. “You’re doing heaps of conditioning work with the snowboarders. You get concussions and bone breaks all the time.”
And he looked after the locals too, including a couple of cancer patients. Yeah, he had plenty to need his concentration for. But so did she.
“I don’t care.” She wasn’t sneaking out of his room at some horrendous hour again. He was having her. Then leaving her. “Don’t argue with me on this.” He took the stairs two at a time.
“Or what?”
He didn’t answer until they were safely locked in her room. “Or I won’t give you what you want.”
She had no answer to that. He chuckled as he pulled her into his arms. He liked this side of Nicoletta—the hungry, passionate woman who wanted him. The woman who cried out his name. Who turned him on so hard he couldn’t think for wanting her.
So he had her. Fast the first time. Then he went for the slow torture.
A couple hours later he went to her kitchenette to get them some water. He noticed the room service meal receipts on the table next to her laptop and the day’s newspaper.
“You usually eat alone?” he asked, when she appeared, wearing just a thin tee that skimmed the tops of her thighs.
“Its no fun being seen dining alone in a restaurant.” She sipped from the glass he handed her.
Being seen. Alone. “Why don’t you dine with others in the squad?” He put his glass down.
“And see them assessing the nutritional value of everything I eat? Wondering if it’s the extra serving of kale that’s giving me the edge?”
He turned at the edge undermining her joking tone. “You’re not that friendly with them?”
“I’m not unfriendly.” She tried to move out of his path but he had a hold of her waist already.
“But you don’t consider them your friends?” he asked.
“We’ve been on tour together since we were kids. Practically grew up together. But we’re still competitors. They want to beat me. I want to beat them. It can’t be the best friendship when you have all that in the way.” She shrugged.
“All that being the sponsorship and the modeling and the publicity that you get. They must be jealous.”
“They envy NV?” She screwed up her face as she twisted her hair into a messy topknot that somehow stayed up without any pins. “I hate that nickname.”
“It’s on your helmet. You can’t hate it that much.”
“Marketing. Publicity. All part of the machine.”
And she felt trapped in it? She was making serious changes if she’d ditched her social media accounts. And with the new coach taking over from her dad? “So you’re better friends with the guys?” He couldn’t help wondering about some of those athletes, felt a hit of envy himself.
“They make good training companions. But sometimes one might want something more.”
“And you don’t.”
“It’s a very simple rule.” She looked up at him earnestly. “You never mess around within the squad. Never ever. Remember the fall out from Logan’s affair a few years ago?”
He remembered. Connor Hughes’s wayward brother Logan Hughes had been the ultimate player—sex tape and everything—and he’d paid a hefty price more than once. But Austin was more interested in Nicoletta’s motivations right now. “What other rules are there?” he asked curiously. She was big on rules—for this liaison, and her whole life.
“No getting serious. No serious distractions.” She looked serious with it.
“Your parents taught you that rule?”
“Of course. You can’t expect to get anywhere without sacrifices.”
And all that mattered was getting to the top.
“So that means dinner on your own. With the newspaper.” He glanced at the evidence sitting next to the room service receipts—the half-completed puzzle page from that day’s edition.
“So sue me for being a loner.” She folded her arms and glared at him. “Whereas you dine with a different woman every night?”
He smothered a grin at the jealousy in her voice—glad he wasn’t alone in feeling it. “Sometimes I eat by myself. Sometimes with the guys from the field. Sometimes Connor.” He wasn’t the man-slut she seemed to want to believe.
“Options huh? Go you.” She tried to wriggle out of his hold.
“Don’t get mad,” he soothed.
“Then don’t get judgmental.”
“I’m not. I was concerned.”
“I don’t need pity, thanks Doc,” she scoffed. “I’m quite good at entertaining myself.” She suddenly froze and held up a hand, her face washing beet red. “Don’t say it. Don’t say a thing.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “You watch porn in your hotel room?”
“I told you not to say anything,” she grumbled at him. “And no. I don’t.”
He glanced back at the paper folded on the table. “The word you’re missing there is ‘RENAISSANCE’.”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the gap in the ‘code cracker’ that he’d supplied. “How’d you get that so quick?”
“I didn’t. I worked on it at lunchtime.” When he’d been trying to distract himself from filthy thoughts of what he was going to do to her tonight.
Her eyes widened. “You do the code cracker?”
“We have the paper in the clinic for the patients. I race the receptionist for it.”
She chuckled.
Good. He liked her best when she laughed, she lit up from within and was all the more gorgeous for it.
He understood that her isolation was self-protection. She perceived her teammates as threats and maybe they were. Everyone on that squad wanted gold. They’d all made sacrifices, all put in years of hard work.
“Who was your first lover?” He couldn’t hold back his curiosity. If she’d spent most of her life totally focused on winning, when had she found time for the other kinds of fun?
“You’re asking me this right now?”
“Yeah. I am.” He laughed ruefully and rubbed her back. “Mine was a girl at school. She was a senior. Since then there’s been a few flings. Not as many as you seem to think—hard to meet people when you’re busy studying and then travelling. Now you. First time?”
She rolled her eyes. “It was at a ski camp a few years ago. There was a party.”
“Of course there was.” He groaned. “First times at parties aren’t generally a good idea.”
“Hindsight.” She rolled her eyes. “I was curious. He was good-looking.”
“But crap in bed?” he guessed.
“Marginally more experienced that me. So yeah, not so good.”
“And since then?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard to meet people who aren’t in the squads. And hard to meet people who don’t know who I am and who just want something from me. Because it’s not really me they want.”
No, they want
ed the publicity or kudos for ‘scoring’ NV. Was that part of why she’d wanted to keep this secret? “You feel pressure to perform?” he asked carefully.
“In every way,” she confessed. “And I can’t always be what they all expect me to be. I’m not that good.” Her cheeks flushed.
He had the horrible feeling she was thinking of the actor loser who’d cheated on her.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” she said.