Exiting the precinct half an hour later, Maxim was still glowering, but I couldn’t help my giggles. “I can’t believe you took that many pictures with the staff.”

  Maxim shrugged. “I would have made those balloon figures if that’s what it took to get them to take your security seriously.”

  “Do you know how?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I laughed harder, but I also stopped on the bottom step. It took a second for him to realize I wasn’t beside him anymore. He strolled back toward me, concern in his light blue eyes.

  “Thank you,” I said. I leaned in and wrapped my arms around him, settling my head against his chest. He held me close, his cheek against my hair.

  “You matter to me, Fists,” he said, his voice a little garbled.

  “Yeah. Same goes, Maxim.”

  When his lips brushed my temple, I relaxed against him, letting him accept not just my weight but some of my worries. After all, a problem shared was a problem halved—at least that’s what my mama always told me.

  “Let’s get you home,” he said.

  I thrilled at the sound of that, though I knew he didn’t mean it as he’d said.

  After a few minutes, we were back in the neighborhood we’d left, and soon, Maxim pressed a button near his rearview window and the wrought-iron gate in front of a stately home swung open.

  “Nice digs,” I said. His house was even more upscale than Millie’s apartment—beautiful in that understated way only the wealthy can pull off.

  “That means house?” At my nod, he said, “Thank you. I like this place. It’s the first house I’ve ever owned.”

  “I plan to buy a house in about twenty years, when I can afford a down payment.”

  He shook his head even as he chuckled. “I’m lucky, I know, but that’s because I’ve worked hard for my success.”

  “You are lucky, to some degree, but I don’t know everything about your situation, so no judgment. Unless you have weird stuff inside. Do you? Have weird stuff inside? Like a pain dungeon?”

  His eyes danced as his lips quirked. “Indeed, I do.”

  “Ooh…” My heart pounded a little too fast. “For sex?” I could imagine that—Maxim’s red room of pain where he forced orgasm after orgasm from his partner…

  His guffaw burst my fantasy. “No. For exercise. But I like your idea better. Maybe I’ll wall off a section and add toys.”

  My entire body zinged at the thought of Maxim’s powerful body directing mine in a sex dungeon. Huh, that was a first. I’d never been into kink before. I shot Maxim a side-eye. This man brought out the vixen in me. Millie would be so proud. He was still chuckling at his joke as we walked into his house.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Actually, I am. I didn’t eat much at Naese’s place—”

  “I know.”

  I stepped into the house behind him and gawked at the kitchen. It was nicer than the one I shared with Millie.

  The space was larger than my bedroom and flowed into the living area. While the counters were a muted gray, the cabinets were a rich espresso. The appliances were the expected high-quality stainless steel, but I noted the slight scratches on the six-burner range’s surface and the faint sheen from a recent spill that slid down the front of the refrigerator below the water dispenser. This wasn’t a showpiece kitchen—Maxim used it. Overall, Maxim was tidy. Precise, even. No pots or glasses sat out, and the space had few knickknacks. But I appreciated the four, sturdy, well-padded bar chairs on the peninsula that led into the living space. There, Maxim had what my brothers dreamed of: deep, long couches surrounding an enormous television. I raised my eyes when I noted the lack of gaming equipment. So, not my brothers’ full paradise. Those boys could spend hours on some sports game, seeming to find the digital competition as stimulating as real life.

  I’d never been caught by the bug. But then, I’d always been more interested in our farm animals and my colored pencils than pixels and sports.

  Overall, the place had a warmer vibe than Naese’s well-appointed bachelor pad.

  “You live here alone?” I asked. My gaze settled on the wax warmers stacked by the laundry room door.

  “I do,” came Maxim’s deep, rumbling reply. “Oh! Those are from our self-care night.”

  “What?” I asked, eyes rounding.

  “Keelie got us hooked. We wax our hands, elbows.” He shrugged, seemingly unaware that my idea about self-care and his hadn’t been the same. I’d still been stuck on Maxim’s potential sex dungeon. “The ice cracks the skin.”

  “Why does that one say ‘Cruz’?” I asked, pointing in an effort to keep Maxim from noting my flaming cheeks. It was written on pretty much every surface, bold and large.

  “Because the rude bastard stuck his feet in it, and no one will share with him now.”

  I giggled. “He figured out a way to get his own. Like licking a cookie to own it.”

  I raised my gaze to Maxim’s, shocked by the heat in his expression. Well, I guess I had brought up a kinky sex room and licking. I fanned my face. Think, Ida Jane…

  “Um, this is a lot of space,” I blurted.

  Maxim’s lids lowered and his nostrils flared before he refocused on his home. My shoulders relaxed.

  “Too much, but I wanted to be near my teammates. They are my family.” He shrugged. I wondered why he’d do that—why he considered these men his family and not the one he’d left behind in Saint Petersburg. There went my therapist’s brain, trying to uncover and unpack someone else’s pain points so I didn’t have to focus on my own.

  Not that I had many. My parents loved me. They’d showered me with affection, teaching me to understand right from wrong, mostly through the natural consequences of my actions.

  But I’d never felt I fit in my family of large, lumbering football players; instead, I’d sought attention through flouncing and dramatics. I winced. Millie had been more correct than I wanted to admit.

  Maxim had moved to the fridge and started to pull out food: grapes, some wedges of cheese, high-end sparkling water.

  “How’d you know I didn’t eat much?”

  His ears turned red as he glanced at me. “I paid attention.”

  My pleased smile burst across my face. “To me.”

  “There was another tiny blond at the party?” he teased. “Maybe it was her I talked and laughed with all evening.”

  “Shove it, Dolov.” I enjoyed his chuckle. “Now, I’m pretty good in the kitchen. Since you’re letting me stay here, I’m happy to cook for you.”

  He turned back toward me, his posture a bit stiff, but his eyes filled with a fierce yearning. “Marry me.”

  I caught my breath—from the words, yes, but also from that penetrating look. He was serious. “W-what?” I squeaked.

  “You cook. You’re beautiful. You like my sense of humor. You might be the only person.”

  “You’re joking.” But my palms began to sweat. My first marriage proposal and it was for a laugh…in the fanciest kitchen I’d ever been in, made by a professional hockey player.

  Part of me wanted to cry and part wanted to scream.

  He scratched the side of his head. “If I wasn’t?” he asked.

  I stared at him, open-mouthed for another long minute before I broke the spell by reaching into my purse that still dangled from my arm and grabbing my phone.

  “I…I need to get home. Thanks for going to the police with me, and I appreciate you checking in and all, but this…I can’t…that’s crazy talk, Maxim.”

  I pulled out my phone and opened the rideshare app. Maxim’s larger hand engulfed both my hand and the phone. His skin was warm, callused, his fingers thick. He didn’t have any of those weird hairs on his knuckles or hands, so I watched the play of tendons as he flipped my hand over and took the phone from me.

  I gave it to him. Willingly, too enthralled by the zinging in my chest and belly to fight further. His touch electrified me. Desire bubbled from my fluttering belly into my chest, a warm feeling—like settling into a hot bath.

  I loved it. I hated it. I reverted to my behavior with my brothers and lunged for my phone, snarling, intent on proving my independence—from Maxim’s dominating presence but, more so, from my emotional response to him.

  Maxim held it above my head and peered at me. When I continued to lunge, he bent his knees and used his free hand to lower my chin from the phone-prize to his face.

  I picked up one of the grapes he’d gotten out and tossed it at him. It pinged off of his cheek as he flinched back and rolled to the ground.

  “You’re a pain in the ass,” he muttered.

  “Older. Brothers,” I sang, grabbing another grape.

  Instead of picking me up like my brothers would have done, Maxim slid between me and the counter, effectively blocking me from my ammunition.

  “Look at me, Ida Jane.”

  Once I did, I stilled, shocked by the need shining from his expression. It wasn’t sexual—not the same desire that had stirred so brazenly through my veins since our first meeting. Maybe that lust I could have fought against. But no—his need was visceral from his soul, and as filled with concern as it was awareness.

  We stood in his kitchen, my chest heaving, his gaze burning into my soul, and I knew—even then, I felt it—the realization that my life would never be the same.

  “Please, don’t go. Don’t make me worry about you again tonight, as I have since we met.” He touched my cheek, despondency seeping into his expression. He returned his gaze to meet mine.

  “Please.”

  Chapter 6

  Maxim

  Ida Jane stilled, much like a wildcat pondering its next move. Except, this was more. The moment expanded, need permeating the very air. So many things I needed: her safety, her acceptance, her lips brushing mine, her body quivering under me.

  I must stop thinking about sex. If Ida Jane agreed to my plan, she’d be so much more than a quick lay to me. Actually, she already was. I had those in Detroit, and they meant nothing—left me feeling ashamed.

  Ida Jane mattered. I had to show her how much—that she wasn’t interchangeable with some other woman. I’d shattered her trust when I blurted out my request.

  Heavy-handed and awkward, I’d destroyed what we’d been building and her eyes, so expressive and full of passion, were filled more so with the shadows of wariness. She expected me to laugh off my proposal. I’d never been more serious about anything.

  And I had no one to blame but myself.

  I wasn’t sure how to explain to her what she meant to me because I’d never needed to make that point before—not to anyone, even Nadia. With her, life had been simple. She’d understood me because we were siblings. We’d loved each other, and we’d failed each other.

  But with Ida Jane, my emotions were so big they felt like they were bursting the seams of my very body: tenderness, concern, desire.

  I didn’t let people into my home, into my life, or into my heart. But Ida Jane was already there. In all of them. She’d plunked down in my heart that first night when she battled her ex without me knowing or understanding the depth of our fragile bond.

  She was still here, and she was softening toward me. Thank all the hockey saints. Her expression, when unguarded, was just as yearning as mine. Her eyes burned with desire even as her gaze beckoned me to treat her softly, gently—lovingly.

  I wanted to. More than anything. So much that my throat ached, and my hands trembled. I trailed my fingers down her neck before sliding my palm around to cradle her nape. Her skin was as silky as her thick mass of spun-gold strands. I rubbed my thumb there, unable to stop the compulsion to touch her. I drew her a little closer, inhaling the fruity tang of her shampoo. Her lashes were long and light, her eyes held flecks of amber and green deep in the brown—like the kaleidoscope I’d loved to look through as a child.

  We continued to stare at each other—the moment growing in both meaning and time.

  “Please,” I murmured again. It was more than the word, more than a request. I wasn’t sure what I was asking for, but I held my breath, unable to tear my gaze from hers.

  She studied me for so long, I became lightheaded. “I’ll stay and hear you out on one condition.” Her soft, sweet voice crackled over my nerve endings, making need simmer in my belly.

  “What’s that?”

  “You call me krasivaya.” She shivered a little at the term even as she tilted her head. “That meant something to you, and if you want me here, I need to know I mean something to you.”

  Whatever flashed across my face caused her eyes to widen.

  “Never mind,” she said, pulling away from me. The moment crashed, all the emotion bursting around us in a froth of discomfort and awkwardness.

  “You are my krasivaya. Always. But you are also Ida Jane. Fists.” I lifted her bruised hand and kissed each knuckle. She inhaled and the moment turned heavier, filled with a promise of what could be.

  She’s my future.

  And I was beginning to suspect not just because she could help me stay here, in this country.

  Ida Jane

  Maxim stared at me as if I had the answers to the deepest questions of the universe. Wouldn’t that be a treat…if it were true.

  “I’d like for you to stay here. I’d like to feed you. I’d like…” He blew out a breath. “I want you at ease with me.”

  “What do you mean, Maxim?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “How about we talk some more tomorrow, when it isn’t late, and when we’re both in a better frame of mind?”

  My head ached, so I nodded.

  “Do you want to eat?” He waved his hand at the food he’d set out.

  I shook my head. “No. Thank you.” My stomach remained tied up in knots, and there was no way I’d be able to keep anything down. Exhaustion weighed on me. Millie would get on a plane soon. My bestie would be a world away from me. I blinked back tears.

  “Will you be okay?” Maxim asked.

  “Yes. Once I sleep.” I offered him a tremulous smile. Worry tugged at his eyebrows.

  “I’ll get you something to wear to sleep in.”

  “Okay.”

  He turned down a hall off the back of his living room. I meandered into his living space, touching his dining table that was the same gleaming dark wood as his cabinets.

  Maxim’s space was uncluttered—some would say sparsely furnished—but the pieces he had were high quality, built to last. I loved the rug sitting beneath his large cube-shaped coffee table. It was a thick, soft material—maybe wool—and set with various colored blue and green dyes in a honeycomb pattern. I’d never seen another like it, just as I’d never seen a cube for a coffee table.

  Maxim remained distinct among the men in my life, intriguing. I couldn’t say that about many people. While my father was a lawyer, he would always be a rancher first, and he’d married an even better rancher in my mother. My parents were salt-of-the-earth: hard workers who told it like they saw it. My brothers were similar; in Amos’s case, so focused on football, nothing else fit into his life.

  But Maxim read, listened, understood the concepts I wanted to discuss. He was a big bruiser of a hockey player with the knowledge of an ancient philosopher. He was also distinctly an alpha male who preferred to growl than produce erudite commentary on his teammates or the state of the world. No wonder I found him so intriguing.

  Marry me.

  He hadn’t meant to propose. He couldn’t have. No man asked a woman he barely knew to marry him outside of Vegas.

  That was shenanigans-level ridiculous. And Maxim was not into shenanigans. Heavy weightlifting, skating, glaring, grunting—sure. In fact, come to think of it, he’d fit in pretty well with the men in my family…minus the skating.

  I’d have to make sure he ate steak. My daddy always said he could tell a real man from a poser by how he took his meat.

  “The redder, the more of a man,” Daddy said with a wink.

  That always made my mama scoff and me giggle. Why? No idea. Just…a happy memory, I supposed.

  I wandered over to the mantel that held a few framed photos. All of them were of a much younger Maxim with a woman in her early twenties. His girlfriend?

  “My sister. Nadia.”

  I turned around, my heart pounding. He stood close behind me, holding a shirt in his hand. With a slight frown, he straightened one of the photos.

  “Is she still in Saint Petersburg?”

  He dropped his gaze from the photos to me. “Yes.”

  “She didn’t want to move here?” I asked. He seemed close to her—the pictures of the two of them were the only ones in the room except for a photo of Maxim with his teammates, still in their gear, on the ice, celebrating some win.

  Maxim sucked his lower lip into his mouth, his eyes darkening. I didn’t think he would answer me.

  “I think she would have, yes, but she didn’t get the chance. Nadia’s dead.”

  Maxim

  “Oh…” she murmured, her eyes soft and filled with sympathy.

  I scrubbed my hand up and down my neck. I couldn’t spell woo. Ida Jane didn’t want more to do with me. She’d shut down as soon as I asked her to marry me.

  I got it; I really did. I got Nadia killed, so I didn’t deserve the happiness Coach Whittaker had with Paloma, or Cormac seemed to find with Keelie.

  The brittle silence stretched between us. I didn’t know how to cross the crumbling bridge. How could I get her to hear me?

  “Um…where should I go? I mean, tonight.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  As I tromped up the stairs, part of me wanted to insist she stay with me, but I’d flubbed the proposal too badly for that.

  I continued to ponder the situation even as I pushed open the door to the guest room and waved her in, feeling off-kilter. Ida Jane was the first female overnight guest I’d hosted. Sure, the guys liked to come over and do their self-care stuff. We’d all discovered a love for warm waxes and massage.

  “This is where you can stay. I’m downstairs.”