then went back to stripping off his gear like he hadn’t just shaken up my entire fucking world.
Sergei Zolotov was going to be in my arena, watching my game, but we both knew it wasn’t for me.
It never was.
14
London
“Are you sure I’m ready for this?” I asked, squeezing Jansen’s hand as we walked along the sidewalk in downtown Charleston.
“Only you can answer that, London,” he said, slowing us to a stop outside the small brick building. An old, giant clock hung above the double glass doors, and I gripped his arm with my other hand. He turned to face me, pulling us out of the way of foot traffic. “I have complete faith in you,” he said, planting a quick kiss on my lips. “You’ve come so far from that night in the elevator.”
I nodded. Even my therapist was shocked by the results of our little experiment. She’d conducted a series of her own small tests, pushing boundaries in a safe environment much like we’d been doing, just on a smaller scale. She said I’d made huge advances, quite possibly excelling to as far as humanly possible to manage this fear—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous now.
“It’s your choice,” he said, cupping my cheeks. “I’ll never force you to do anything you don’t want to do, that you aren’t comfortable with.” A smirk shaped his lips. “But you know I’ll give you a little push whenever you need me to.”
And he had. He totally, always had. Even when we’d had arguments—like our most recent one about keeping us a secret. And then after, about his biological father coming to a game at Maxim’s request. I’d had to hand him those VIP passes and keep my mouth shut. It had stung every inch of my soul to do, but I couldn’t lay into Maxim about his father when I wasn’t even supposed to know Jansen’s side of the story in the first place.
Even with that. Even with all those heated discussions in the beginning of our relationship when we were tiptoeing around our feelings for each other so much it drove us crazy. Even then, during those moments, he knew when to push me, ignite me, and when to soothe me.
I melted a little more for the man before me. “How are you so damn amazing?”
Seriously, where the hell did he come from? It had been six weeks of fire and heat and mind-blowing bliss with him, and I still couldn’t understand why someone like him had chosen someone like me. Not that I was inferior—I loved who I was and how I looked. But I was proudly awkward, inherently flawed, and tragically driven. And him being him he could have anyone he wanted.
But he’d somehow, incredibly, he’d chosen me.
Jansen laughed, the smile on his lips real and genuine and enough to shake away the fear digging its claws in me, whispering that I couldn’t walk through that door. “I’ve rented out an escape room for my severely claustrophobic girlfriend, and you say I’m amazing?”
I reached up on my tiptoes, crushing my lips against his. He held me against him, slanting his mouth over mine, groaning as I slid my tongue between his lips. I fisted his shirt, my heart fluttering as he didn’t pull away because we were in public, didn’t try to tame what was happening between us.
He. Simply. Let. Me. Be.
And in his arms?
I was a flame, and he was the oxygen that helped me burn.
“If this is you stalling,” he said between kisses. “I can do this all day.”
I laughed, breaking our kiss as I smiled up at him. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
His brows raised, and he waited a few moments, giving me another chance to say no.
So, I did what I’d become very good at. I grabbed his arm and hauled his sexy ass into the building.
Ten minutes later, we were set up in the escape room Jansen had bought out for just the two of us. The guide explained the rules to us, the objective, but I didn’t hear most of it.
Not with the noise in my head—like an old television caught between channels—nothing but crackling white snow. Icy claws crept up my skin, sinking into my lungs.
There were only four walls to the room, the door on the farthest one. No windows. And the guide kept saying lock. And even though Jansen had assured me there was a giant green emergency escape button—one I could clearly see right now—I still shivered