Love and Other Games (27 page)

“Oh.”
Oh!

He strode back, placed his hands on the wall beside her head and lowered his mouth to hers.

Amy woke with a groan. Still blinking open her eyes, she rolled onto her side and reached for the Smartphone she always kept on her bedside table. Her fingertips found something gooey instead. She sat up, wiped her hand on the blanket and frowned at the sticky wooden nightstand. A yogurt had spilled. It was absolutely not hers. Not the yogurt. Not the nightstand. Not the room.

Amy was always groggy when she first awoke and drinking didn’t help. Her memories of the previous night came back in a series of flashes: Her friend, Robin, stopping by and begging her to go out. A party in the athletes’ village. A sexy black dress. An even sexier man. Blue eyes. Big Hands. A deep voice whispering in her ear in a language she didn’t understand. A bag of condoms in red, white and blue foil wraps.

Oh. My. God.
She couldn’t have … could she?

She glanced down at the narrow bed. She was alone, but her lack of clothes made it pretty clear that she hadn’t been that way all night. It was temporary insanity. Olympic fever. It had to be. Amy didn’t do casual hook ups.

“Hey.” A voice coming from across the room startled her and she shrieked, clutching the sheet over her bosom as she searched out the speaker.

A young man with short black hair and a vaguely Celtic-looking tattoo on his upper arm sat cross-legged on the bed across the room, flipping through a magazine. He was definitely not the man she remembered from the night before. That man was tall and had dark blonde hair. “Who … umm—” This was officially the absolute, most mortifying moment of her entire life. It far and away beat out the time she left the girls’ bathroom at school with the back of her skirt tucked into her ugliest granny panties.

He laughed. “I’m Tommy. I came by to see Matias, but they were headed out. Qualification jump.”

Amy nodded. “Right. Because he … skies.” She couldn’t imagine he was any good if he went out partying the night before a competition. She concentrated for a moment and came up with his name: Erik. The guy with the big hands and the sexy voice was named Erik and he was a skier. If the giant flag tacked to the ceiling was any indication he was a Norwegian skier.

He was a Viking. She’d had Viking sex. That certainly explained the soreness in places she didn’t know she had muscles.

“I stuck around to see if you wanted to go get some breakfast.”

Once the ball got rolling, her memories slid into place hard and fast. Still, she had to ask. “Do we know each other?”

“We would by the end of breakfast.”

Was he flirting? One night of insanity and she already had a reputation? “I don’t really do this sort of thing, so if you could leave and let me get dressed … ”

“You don’t eat?”

Her cheeks were burning and unshed tears stung the backs of her eyelids. “I don’t hook up with random strangers. I’m not going to hook up with you, so—please—just leave.”

Tommy laughed. “You misunderstand me. I’m here for Matias. He’s my boyfriend.” He grinned. “Most of the time. These ski jumpers … they’re a little … what’s the word? Diva?”

“Oh.” Amy nodded, unsure of the correct response.

Tommy stretched as he climbed off the bed and walked over to one of the small chest of drawers. He rummaged through the middle drawer and pulled out a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. “Erik said you might need something to wear. Matty’s stuff is a little smaller.”

“I couldn’t.” Amy shook her head. “I’ve never even met him. I … ” She froze as another memory popped into her head. “He ripped my dress.” She said it with a mix of wonder and indignation, though she was pretty sure she’d suggested it herself when the zipper had snagged. Oh yeah, that part was coming in clear. They’d finally made it back to his room. He’d lifted her up, pressed her against the wall and kissed her until she was dizzy. Her stomach fluttered as she remembered the way he curled his tongue around her nipples.

“Nice.”

“What?” Amy blinked, startled out of her reverie.

“Ripping off each other’s clothes. It’s hot.” He placed the clothes on the foot of the bed. “You sure you don’t want to go for breakfast?”

She nodded.

Tommy shrugged and headed towards the door.

“Thanks—for the clothes. I’ll return them.”

He grinned at her over his shoulder. “Please don’t. I hate that shirt on Matty. It makes him look like a girl.”

Amy was left nodding again as she watched him close the door. Finally alone. She lifted a pillow to her face and let loose the shriek she’d been holding back. One. Two. Three seconds of release and it was time to get busy.

She located her clutch first and was glad to find that, unlike her dress, her phone, cash and cards had survived the night unscathed. She found her bra on the floor near the door and her panties under the bed and proceeded to get dressed.

The infamous Matais might be smaller than the Viking she’d gone home with, but he was still clearly much taller than Amy. She cinched the drawstrings at her waist, rolled up the legs of the sweatpants and hoped they would stay on until she made it back to her hotel room. The t-shirt, which featured pink writing that she couldn’t read, was snug across her breasts but covered a lot more than her torn dress would have. Which was good, since she had no idea where her coat was.

Fuck. She must have left it at the party. Stupid hormones. No guy could be hot enough to justify wandering around with no coat in Switzerland during February.

The memory of licking his abs made her knees tremble. Maybe he’d been almost hot enough to warrant coatlessness.

She pulled her phone out and tapped on Robin’s photo.

Her friend answered on the first ring. “Hey, hot mama. How are—“

Amy cut her off. “Please tell me you can come find me. I think I left my coat at that party and now I’m about to march through the athletes’ village wearing last night’s heels and borrowed sweatpants.”

Robin chuckled huskily. “I’ve got your coat. I grabbed it when I got mine. You must have been very distracted when you left.”

“Oh-thank-god.”

“Tell me where you are. I’ll bring your boots and coat. But you owe me details … lots and lots of details.”

Amy groaned and, peeking out the window, helped Robin figure out which dorm she was in. “Just hurry. Please.”

***

“Oh yeah, I’m feeling real sorry for you.” Robin rolled her eyes. “Poor baby, left with the hottest guy at the party to have wild monkey sex.”

“Viking sex.”

“Ooh—even better.” Robin leaned across the table they were sharing in the cafeteria. “Do they circumcise in Norway?”

Amy’s face was on fire. She tried to cool her cheeks with the palms of her hands as she glanced quickly from side to side. “Robin!”

“I’m just curious.” She said with a mischievous smile.

“Can we talk about something else—anything else?”

“No. I want details. Steamy Viking sex details.”

“I was temporarily insane and now I’m eternally embarrassed. That’s it—the whole story.” She frowned. “Oh. And he ditched me this morning. I woke up with an entirely different stranger. There. Now it’s the whole story.”

“In bed with you?” Robin’s eyes looked as though they might burst out of her head, bounce off the table and roll across the room.

“No. He was sitting on the other bed and he was fine. Helpful actually. But who just leaves a woman alone in their room? And who stays up partying all night when they have an event the next day?” Once the absolute mortification she’d woken up to had dulled a bit, she’d been struck by how inconsiderate he’d been. Being ditched stung her pride and her feelings too. It was foolish and she’d never admit it aloud, but she’d thought they’d had a bit more of a connection. Not that they’d done much talking.

Robin frowned. “Maybe he forgot he had the thing in the morning and then didn’t have time to leave a note?”

Amy raised her eyebrows. “Lame.”

“Or maybe—”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s done and I’m going to try really hard to pretend it never happened. I have too much work to do anyway. I’ve got about fifty new requests for time with Lexi in my inbox. I’m only going to be able to make like three of them happy.” Amy wasn’t at the Olympics to party. She was there for Lexi. It’d be best if she focused on that.

“Ah.” Robin gave a sympathetic nod before lifting her coffee and taking a sip. “There’s still something I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?”

“Exactly what happened to your dress last night?”

Amy groaned. “You’re like a dog with a bone.”

Robin choked on a chuckle and bit her lip. Her eyes were wide with mirth.

“What?”

She giggled.

“Oh come on.”

“Something about bone. You’re the dog with the bone or you had a dog with a … ” Robin shook her head apologetically as her shoulders began vibrating from laughter.

“You don’t even have an actual punch line.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “But it’s still funny.”

“You’re enjoying my humiliation way more than a friend is supposed to.”

“No. All your friends would enjoy this. I’m just the only one honest enough to admit it. Besides, there’s no reason for you to be embarrassed. So you let loose a little and had some fun—hot Norwegian fun. I say it’s a good thing. Everybody gets a little crazy at the games.”

“But … ”

“Hold on-you gotta see this.” Robin pulled out her phone. Her thumbs slid and tapped around the screen until she found what she was looking for. “Someone started a site for all the craziest Instagram shots from the Olympics. This one’s my fav.” She held it up screen out.

Amy couldn’t help giggling. “Is that Trouble Madsen?”

“Yeah. He must annoy his teammates as much as he annoys you. A couple nights ago, they tricked him out of his clothes and handcuffed him to a fence or something.” Robin turned the phone back to take another peek herself. “It’s a good look for him.”

“That’s the problem with Ty, pretty much everything is a good look for him and he knows it.”

Robin laughed.

“He’s probably not even embarrassed about the pictures. Whereas pictorial evidence or no, I want to crawl into a hole.” Amy sighed. “I just don’t know what got into me.”

Robin’s grin was enormous. She wriggled her eyebrows like a cad in an old timey cartoon. “I know what got into you.”

It was colder than expected. Erik usually focused on the weather to clear his mind before taking the jump. He’d once heard that ski-jumping was ninety percent muscle memory, but it was the other ten percent that mattered. It was true. But it wasn’t what he thought as much as it was what he didn’t think about. Standing over 100 meters up, looking down the hill and letting go of the bar requires the kind of fearlessness that most people grow out of after their teen years. Allowing fear to get the best of you for even an instant, tensing, delaying … will ruin your jump.

But the extra chill in the air wasn’t enough to wipe away the wanderings in Erik’s mind. He hadn’t wanted to go out the night before, had argued against it even. In the end, he’d followed his teammates to the party in order to keep an eye on them. What a fucking joke that had ended up being. He was supposed to be the responsible one.

At twenty-seven, Erik Andresen was one of the oldest members of the Norwegian Ski Jump team. Folks were only half-joking when they called him the team’s nanny. He was usually the one that pulled his younger friends away from the groupies and handed them a bottle of water when they drank too much. Erik knew he’d be getting ragged on about last night until well after the games.

He gripped the bar behind him and, taking a deep breath, looked out at the clear blue skies and the mountains on the horizon. He should have slept. It was the Olympics. What the hell had he been thinking? Erik couldn’t help grinning. It was the girl. Or woman. She probably preferred being called a woman. Amy, he tried out her name in his head again. Cute name. Cuter girl. Dragging himself out of a bed that had her in it hadn’t been easy. His teammate, Matias, talking about gold hadn’t made it any easier. For a full three seconds, Erik Andresen considered telling everyone to go screw themselves. He wasn’t a contender and everyone knew it. Erik’s score would help his team, but it wouldn’t get him on the podium at one of the individual events.

It’s not that he was bitter about it. He’d had a good run, and ending his career with a final visit to the Olympic Games suited him. He was happy to be a team player.

Or at least he was when it didn’t require leaving the perfectly sexy redhead he’d met the night before. Erik wondered if there was any chance she’d still be in his bed when he got back. It didn’t seem likely, but the thought had him grinning as he let go of the bar. Erik leaned towards his skis as he slid down the hill and a half a second later he was soaring. He kept his arms tight behind his frame and let the laws of physics do their work. If she was still there, his roommate was going to have to find somewhere else to be.

His landing was met with a flurry of shouts. Erik pushed up his goggles to see his coach running towards him.

“What the hell was that?” Felix Bjorn, head coach for the Norwegian ski jumping team, yelled out as he came closer.

What? Erik scowled and glanced around. He was a little off this morning, but certainly the jump had been good enough to clear the qualification round. If anything … it was more than enough. Bjorn and a couple of his teammates tackled him and Erik fell to the ground. Still, it took a moment to process. 135 meters. It was just shy of his personal best on the normal hill. The personal best from before he fell. The personal best that was a world record at the time. It was far and away his best jump in years.

“Where the hell did that come from?” His coach smacked him on the arm.

Erik shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted, before grinning. “I don’t fucking know.”

“Well whatever you did this morning … do it again before the big hill next week.” Bjorn clapped him on the back again and then yanked him up off the ground and into a bear hug.

Bjorn didn’t say it. He didn’t need to. Everyone there knew that another jump like that could give Erik Andresen a shot at the podium. Off to the side, the cameramen who’d barely been paying attention at the start of his jump were elbowing each other in an effort to get the best shot of the unexpected celebration. Erik blinked rapidly as the flurry of flashes glinted off the shiny snow-covered hills surrounding them.