OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 31 - チャプター 40

~ KAI~I crossed the drawing room in six steps.Luka stayed where he was. Smart man.Sloane saw me coming and redirected the knife — at me now — like she had decided this was entirely reasonable."Don't," she said. "Don't you dare come here and be all…" she gestured at me with the knife, "—tall — and — all of that — when I'm in the middle of a very important conversation with Anton.""Give me the knife.""I'm not finished.""You're finished.""I have MORE QUESTIONS."I took the knife from her hand. She let me, which told me exactly how far gone she was. I set it on the table and looked at her. Up close her eyes were very bright and her hair was everywhere."Come," I said. I took her wrist.She pulled back. "Where.""Upstairs.""I don't want to go upstairs.""I know.""I want to stay here and have my conversation.""Anton is retired for the evening.""He cannot just RETIRE…""Sloane.""I'm not done TALKING!"I picked her up.Both arms. One under her knees, one behin

I held my skates the whole walk from the car to the entrance and said nothing. Kai walked beside me and said nothing and the silence had a different weight now because he had just told me I said his name and the mistake and I remembered saying it and I had nowhere to put that memory now.Anya was at the entrance.She looked at my face."Don't," I said.She closed her mouth. Handed me a coffee instead. I took it.We went inside and the cold hit and something in my chest loosened the way it always did. It only happened on ice. Only here.I was lacing up when I saw him.Beside Coach Petrov. Tall. Arms crossed, looking at the ice like it owed him something. I knew that face.The drawing room. Last night. Standing beside Kai watching me scream about documentation while being carried up the stairs.I looked away immediately."Who's that?" Anya asked."Nobody.""He's looking at you.""People look at people. It's a rink.""Gaya—"Coach blew his whistle.Luka stepped forward when Coach said

His office door was open.I didn't knock. I walked straight in and he was at his desk and he looked up and something moved across his face — surprise, quickly gone — and then he just looked at me. In my eyes probably. At whatever my face was doing that I had stopped trying to manage somewhere between Elena's room and the corridor."What do you know about Crew?" I asked.He said nothing."What do you know about Crew Harding?"Still nothing."WHAT THE HELL DO YOU KNOW ABOUT CREW HARDING VOLKOV."My voice hit the walls and came back at me and the office went very quiet afterward. He stood up.Came around the desk slowly. Looked at my face the way he looked at things he was evaluating and I stood my ground even when my eyes were burning and my throat was raw from not crying for three hours."Calm down," he said. "You need to—""You don't tell me what to do," I said. "You tell me what I ask. What do you know about him?""And if I don't want to." He stopped in front of me. "You need to be

MATURE CONTENT INCLUDED!! ~SLOANE~“Kai…”The moment the name left my lips, he pounced. He slammed his mouth against mine with a feral intensity that made my head snap back, his kiss wilder and more desperate than that day on the terrace. I didn’t know why, I didn’t even think—I just reacted, my arms winding around his neck, pulling him closer and kissing him back with a matching hunger that left me… breathless.I was supposed to be asking more… more about Daria, the paper, the—His hands moved with frantic speed, sliding underneath my crop top. He yanked the fabric upward, stripping it over my head and tossing it aside. My fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, ripping them open in my haste to feel his skin against mine. We didn't stop kissing for a second.Kai scooped me up, my legs instinctively locking around his waist as he carried me the short distance to the desk. He set me down on the hard surface, the cool wood a sharp contr

~SLOANE~"I can explain—" I took a step forward. "Wait. Anya—"She didn't wait.She turned and walked and I stood there watching her go and the rink noise swallowed her up and she was gone before I'd finished the sentence.I stood there.Then I kicked the nearest thing — a water bottle someone had left against the boards — and it skidded across the ice and hit the far barrier and the sound of it was deeply unsatisfying."What," I said, to nobody. To the rink. To the specific version of my life that had decided everything should fall apart simultaneously. "What is actually wrong with everything?"Someone passing gave me a look.I walked out. …Elena was in the sitting room with a book when I got back. She looked up when I came in and read my face and closed the book."Hypothetically," I said, sitting across from her, "if a girl called Floane didn't tell her closest friend Sanya about her new living situation. And now Sanya is mad at Floane. What sho