~~ * ~~
I wandered into our private training rink about an hour later, still feeling wrung out and wobbly. Ty was there already, skating and practicing his outside edge, arms extended. A cameraman was there, filming him.
As the door shut behind me, he looked up and skated to the edge of the ice, eyeing me. “Damn, girl. You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” I said dryly, clutching an enormous bottle of water to my chest. “I feel like hell, too.” I thumped down heavily on the bench, dropped my water, and began to put on my skates, ignoring that the cameraman had circled back to filming me. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I tried to.” He grinned at me from the ice. “But you were sleeping so heavily that it seemed a shame to wake you up.”
He’d been in my room to check on me? Why had I not noticed this? I jerked on my laces. “We’ve lost half the day, though. We need every minute for training.”
“We’ll make it up,” he told me easily. “We can just work late if we need to.”
I didn’t answer. I focused on my skates instead, lacing them tightly and then touching my talismans on the bottom of my skates. I hadn’t had time to add something from the skate two nights ago, but I did have a scrap of material tucked into the toe of one shoe, so that would have to do. Satisfied, I removed my blade guards and headed toward the ice and knelt to kiss it.
Ty was watching me as I got back to my feet again and skated onto the ice. I didn’t make eye contact, feeling a little weird about last night. He’d asked me to go back to his room, but was that only the sake talking? A post victory high? I felt…weird about the whole situation.
Just imagine how much weirder it’d be if you had slept with him, I told myself, and began to skate the edges of the ice, warming up. Except, that thought didn’t make me feel better. Because if I’d slept with him, at least I’d have something to regret. Right now I had nothing but a bunch of heebie jeebie feelings and a lot of uncertainty.
After I’d warmed up, Ty skated toward me. “This week’s classical music,” he told me. “Classical music and something called a dance lift. You know what that is?”
“Yeah, but those shouldn’t be a problem. You already lift me all the time.” I tapped my chin, thinking. “The classical part will be the tricky part.”
“Cause it’s boring?”
“Pretty much. We’ll have to think of something awesome this week after last week. We can’t go big and then pull back. Audiences hate that.”
Ty put a hand to my waist and pulled me close, holding his hand out for me to grasp. “You should know by now that I never pull back.”
So many dirty ways to take that. I blushed and gave an awkward laugh. “You know what I mean. We have to make them fall in love with us again. Do you have any particular favorite classical music pieces?” I put my hand in his, and we began to skate, our motions easy after weeks of performing together.
He thought for a minute, and then shook his head. “Only stuff I know is that song they always play at weddings.”
“‘Pachelbel’s Canon in D?’” I loved that song. “Great idea.”
“I guess? Whatever it’s called. You know, dun dun dundun,” he said, and then hummed the wedding march.
I laughed, shaking my head. “That’s not Pachelbel.”
But an idea was forming in my mind. We were dancing on the ice. Throw on some Pachelbel. Put Ty in a tux and me in a bridal gown with a veil…I gave him an assessing look. “Would you object if we went ultra romancey with this next one?”
He shrugged. “I guess not. I feel like I already checked my man card at the door.”
“You’re definitely all man,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t. God, that was embarrassing. Me and my big mouth.
He flashed a grin over at me and dipped me low. “Speaking of me being a man and you a woman….we okay after last night?”
I wanted to straighten my clothes after he righted me, but that would require pulling my hand from his tight grasp, and it’d show just how nervous I was at that question. “You and I are fine,” I told him. “We made the right decision.”
We did. We totally did. As long as I kept telling myself that, I figured I’d believe it at some point, too.
“I know,” he agreed. “Last thing we want is sex fucking up a good competitive pairing.”
I said nothing.
“So yeah. Do I think it was the right move? You bet.” A pause, and then, “Can’t say I don’t regret it, though.”
“Me either,” I told him with a shy smile.
“Well, let’s win this thing, then,” he told me. “Cause I’d hate to go through weeks of blue balls for nothing.”
I laughed.
~~ * ~~
I nervously adjusted my short bridal veil and crown of flowers, and then looked over at Ty. He stood at my side in his skates, tall and handsome, the long tails of his tuxedo fluttering as he shifted from foot to foot, He tugged at his bowtie nervously.
You’d think the man was getting married for real.
I grinned and put a hand on his shoulder, turning him toward me so I could adjust the bowtie that he’d just twisted off kilter. “Quit fidgeting.”
“This is just so…freaking girly.” He gave me a sour look. “You realize that every time I get in the cage now, guys are going to give me so much shit for this?”
“Of course it’s girly,” I told him. “Who do you think’s watching this show? And just tell them you got laid a lot after the fact because it made chicks so hot.” I smoothed a hand down the seam of his jacket, admiring the way it hung. The man sure did have nice shoulders.
“You think that’ll happen?”
“Oh yeah,” I teased. “Panties dropping everywhere.”
“Yours are staying up,” he challenged.
“Only because they’re sewn into my dress,” I told him, and gave him a flash of the pale pink undergarment that was, indeed, sewn into the lacy froth of my costume.
We’d realized right away that while a tuxedo would work perfectly for Ty, getting me kitted up into an authentic wedding dress would be less easy. For starters, a real veil would just get in the way, so I’d worked with the prop department to come up with a fake lace veil that sat back on a floral crown and fell in a stiff waterfall to my shoulders. It wouldn’t move and flutter as we skated, and that was the important part. My dress was a bead-crusted bodice at the top, but the skirt was cut away to the thigh at the front and swept to mid-calf in back. I even had a lacy white garter to complete the image, and I noticed Ty kept staring at it, over and over again.
That made me feel good, despite our vow of chastity.
Of course, now that chastity was on the table, it was difficult to put the cat back in the bag, so to speak. Sexual tension was smoldering between us. It was there in every sultry look he sent my way, every teasing laugh, every joking innuendo. Not that I was innocent, either. I found myself holding onto his hands a little longer when we clasped, or when he’d put his hands on my waist, I’d get turned on. We’d added an overhead lift to the routine, and every time Ty held me in the air, I’d get an erotic charge from the fact that his hands were at the vee of my thighs and from noticing how big and strong he was.
