Power Play (Center Ice Book 2)
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Authors: Katherine Stark
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POWER PLAY
a Center Ice novel
Katherine Stark
Dedication
POWER PLAY is © 2015 Katherine Stark/Eventide Press. All rights reserved.
Cover art design © 2015
Maggie Hall Designs
.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
POWER PLAY (Center Ice, #2) by Katherine Stark
MARCUS WRIGHT has a lot to prove to the Washington Eagles: that he deserves to be on the front lines. That he’s no rookie anymore. That hockey isn’t just a white guy’s sport. But he’s also got a lot to prove to himself—that his kinks, his “inclinations,” his desires, don’t make him a monster.
That he can escape what happened at college two years ago.
Fiona Callahan has a lot to prove: that she’s every inch the investigative reporter her mother is. That she doesn’t need a man’s love half as much as she needs his respect. Better to be feared than liked, she always says.
Until Marcus Wright makes her want to be a little bit of both.
Marcus eagerly yields to Fiona’s dominating ways. He’s all too happy to please her—until she goes digging into his past for her latest scoop. But how much is Marcus willing to submit to please Fiona? And who’s really leading who?
ALSO BY KATHERINE STARK
Center Ice
Man Advantage (Center Ice, #3) coming November 2015
Make Him Pay
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Here’s something they don’t teach you in media training: never start an interview with a raging hard-on.
Okay, so maybe “raging” is a bit of an exaggeration. I’m told I have a tendency to do that. (Other things people love to tell Marcus Wright: that I have a problem with authority, that I play hockey “pretty well” for a black guy, that my mother must be so proud of me for overcoming a hard upbringing—which always gives her a laugh as she gestures to our stately craftsman home in northern Virginia and asks, “This?”) But there is definitely some chub occurring in the groin region, and it’s significant enough that I can only see three options:
1. Perform a discreet tuck as I cross my legs and be stuck in a horrifically uncomfortable legs-crossed-at-thighs pose for the duration of the interview.
2. Drag the round green room table currently between us so it’s directly over my crotch, blocking any view of this rapidly worsening tenting action.
3. Think about anything,
anything
other than the hourglass-shaped vision in forest green velvet seated across from me, currently fiddling with the voice recorder app on her phone, her red gel nails clacking against the screen the same way I’d like them to clack against my back while I thrust into her as she’s bound to the bed, writhing beneath me, her blood-red hair spilled across the pillow and oh fuck.
Okay. Now this
definitely
qualifies as raging. Deploying emergency measures. Cold showers. My teammates scratching their sweaty junk in the Washington Eagles locker room. Grandma Beulah’s fake teeth resting on her plate at Thanksgiving dinner. Those ASPCA commercials with Sarah McLachlan singing.
The cold, dead look in Rajani’s gaze the last time I tried to visit her.
Too much, Marcus, too much. I prop one ankle on the opposite knee—no need for thigh-crossing now—and force my phoniest press box smile to my face.
The reporter chick makes a tiny sound—like an “Ah-ha!” but
way,
way sexier—and sets her phone down in her lap. My god, those hips barely fit into her chair, and yet I could practically encircle her waist in my hands. And then that heaving bosom, shoving a faceful of creamy deliciousness in my general direction every time she takes a breath.
She clears her throat and I realize that I have seriously, definitely just been caught staring at her beautifully proportioned boobs. Fuck.
“Up here,” she says, her silky tone brushed with poison.
I force myself to look into her face. But that doesn’t exactly help my problem, you see. Because she’s got clear, dazzling hazel eyes and perpetually arched brows and red lips and even redder hair, perfectly coifed.
Everything about her—her posture, her challenging stare, her tiny little smirk—screams,
high-maintenance.
It screams
ballbreaker
. She is screaming every single one of those names for women you hear the guys warn you against, as if there’s only one kind of woman you’re allowed to like, and it’s the kind that’s slightly more animated than a blow-up doll.
Me personally? I want to hear this goddess screaming my name.
“Marcus Wright.”
She’s not screaming it, but I’ll take it. I lace my hands together and position them strategically in my lap to conceal Boner 2: This Time, It’s Personal.
“Interview with Marcus Wright,” she narrates, to her phone. “Fiona Callahan interviewing. December tenth, 2015.”
“Miss Callahan.” I tilt my head to one side and let that dimple show on my left cheek. “What can I do for you?”
Fiona tips her head to one side, smiling at me like I’m a toddler she’s barely managed to corral. Normally, I wouldn’t put up with anyone’s patronizing bullshit, but I have to admit, it looks pretty sexy on her. Like I’m being scolded by the world’s hottest substitute teacher.
“As we all now know, the Washington Eagles team has been in a bit of an upheaval since the Thanksgiving Classic a few weeks back.” She speaks clearly, in the sort of tone that screams to be featured on the headline news, but there’s a hard edge to it. I can’t quite put my finger on it. “When Sergei Drakonov was abducted in front of a crowd of thousands—”
“Look,” I interrupt, “it’s not my business to discuss what Sergei’s gone through. Even if I
did
know all the details.”
Her nostrils flare wide; her smile evaporates in an instant. “
Don’t
interrupt me, Mister Wright.”
Holy shit. That voice could freeze the tropics. I sit up a little straighter.
“I don’t need to know the details of what happened during the Thanksgiving Classic,” she continues. “It’s been all over the news outlets. The tabloid sites. In the official league investigative files.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry—”
“—So don’t assume you know what I’m going to ask you.” She narrows her eyes into tiny pinpricks of angry green. “Are we clear?”
I blink, dazed. I don’t think I’ve been scolded like this since my mom first found me with a girlie mag in sixth grade. And I really, really like it.
“Perfectly clear, Miss Callahan.” I flash her my dimpled smile again, hoping it’ll distract her long enough for me to cross my legs at the thigh.
Because yeah. I’m even more turned on now than before.
“Thank you.” And just like that, she’s smiling again, like nothing ever happened. “May I continue? Or is there something else you need to get off your . . . chest?”
Her gaze flicks downward, for just the slightest of moments. But I know exactly where it went. And it sure as hell wasn’t my chest.
Busted. Good thing this interview is audio only.
“I’m good,” I manage to say.
Fiona tosses her wavy hair over one shoulder. “Excellent. Now. While the Eagles’ newest left winger, Sergei Drakonov, has been on the injury list, you’ve really stepped up to fill the void on the Eagles’ front line.”
“I’m just trying to do the best I can for my team.” It’s such a Media Training 101 answer, the easiest and simplest bullshit to peddle. But sometimes, it’s the truth. “I have a year under my belt, I’m more comfortable with our lineup and Coach Isaacs’s strategy, and I just really feel like everything’s falling into place. Yeah, it sucks not having Sergei on the ice with us these past few weeks, but we’re doing the best we can to make up for it.”
“Well, it seems to be working out remarkably well.” Fiona smiles. “This is your second year with the Eagles, am I correct?”
I give her a full few seconds before I answer, just to make good and sure she really is done. “Yes, that’s right. I was drafted for the beginning of last year’s season, straight out of college.”
“No time in the farm teams. Very impressive, Mister Wright.”
I grin again, not even bothering to feign modesty. “Thanks.”
Then a tiny crease appears in her brow, marring that otherwise creamy expanse of skin. “Now, you said you were drafted into the Eagles straight out of college.”
I nod, acutely aware of the small tendril of sweat forming at my temple. Where is she going with this?
“Is that a yes?” she asks, tone as crisp as a slap. “I’ll need you to give verbal responses, Mister Wright.”
Right. Never leave a blank space for the spin doctors to fill in on their own. Get it together, Marcus. “Yes, I was.”
She leans closer toward me, and I catch a whiff of her perfume. Something smoky, classic, sensual. A little dangerous. It suits her. “You went to the College of Jefferson and Adams in the Shenandoah Valley. But . . .” Her expression sharpens, like she’s going in for the kill. “You didn’t actually graduate. You went straight into the majors without finishing your degree.”
You know that moment in a dream, when you know you’re about to die, but you’re right on the verge of waking up, so at least you know it’ll be over soon? This moment feels like that. Except without the relief of knowing I can wake up from this. My fingertips start to go numb. Something cold and dark has taken root in me, and it’s all been planted there by this calm, unbelievably controlling, unbearably hot vengeful Valkyrie before me.
This is it. The moment it all comes crashing down. Everything I’ve tried to put behind me, every door I’ve locked and thrown away the key to. I don’t know how, but she knows it. She knows there’s something worth digging for inside of me.
But if she digs deep enough, there won’t be any of me left.
I summon up my most charming smile—the one I use as both a sword and a shield. The panty-dropper, the mask, the one that says,
I can fuck you all night long and you will never know the real me.
“You’re right,” I say, letting just a hint of embarrassment slip into my tone. “I must have misspoken. I wanted to graduate—really, I did—as a point of pride. But the money the Eagles offered me was just too much to turn down.”
Sheepish shrug. Play it up, Marcus. Let her think you’re just another spoiled athlete chasing an easy buck. It’s what everyone thinks of you and boys like you anyway. They call us thugs and ballers, rolling with our homies in black Escalades, white people shaking their heads like their quarterback sons have never done the same.
Look at that brother, burning through his cash.
The stereotype stings, racism and classism and elitism all mixed up in one caustic puree, but it is so much better than letting her know the truth. Anything would be better than that.
But Fiona’s eyes narrow, like she’s locked me in her targeting sights.
“Are you quite sure, Mister Wright?” Her lips move harsh, angular around each word. I’m transfixed by them, even as they pronounce my fate. “Because I have documents to the contrary. That your withdrawal from college is dated three weeks prior to the draft.” She laughs to herself. “I realize you have a deeply inflated sense of self, but only the most foolhardy, cocksure athlete on the planet would take a bet like that on getting picked.”
“It paid off.” My voice is rising; sweat rings the collar of my shirt, but I don’t care. Misdirect, misdirect, misdirect. “I’d been in talks with the Eagles for some time. Mylo and me, we’re like this.” I hold up my index finger and middle finger pressed together in a parallel line.
“Mylo Saukonis,” Fiona says, speaking more to her voice recorder than me. “The Washington Eagles owner.”
“Yeah. I had a good feeling. I was ready. And I was right—look at me now, scoring the winning goals in the Thanksgiving Classic, second only to Drakonov on the Eagles goals scored list. I’m earning my pay.”
“Still seems rash,” Fiona says.
“That’s me. Are you gonna judge me for that? Because unless you and me are like this—” I cross those fingers together—“you don’t get a say in what I do with my life.”
Fiona is smiling again. If there’s anything experience has taught me, it’s that women who smile when they’re angry are terrifying. Eat you up and spit you out terrifying. Tie you to a post and bust out the flogger terrifying. Tan your skin and use it as a designer purse terrifying.
And here’s the real problem with being me: it’s exactly the sort of terrifying I like.
“Maybe you don’t think I have a say, Mister Wright, but I’m going to tell you anyway. No—” She raises one finger, instantly squashing the protest I was about to make. “You shut up and you listen to me.”
Boner 3: The Dark Boner Rises. The grimdark trilogy conclusion, full of explosions, dramatic fight scenes in the rain, and a man all alone with his boner. The boner he didn’t want, but the boner he deserved.
