She tilts her head, eyes flicking pointedly down my body. "Or were you overcompensating?"
Wolf is sitting next to me and does a spit-take, and then moves off the stool next to me as if to say,good luck, buddy, chuckling as he goes.
The puck bunny at my side stiffens. She looks at Natalia, then down at my crotch. I hear the sound of a disappointed sigh, and without a word, she grabs her purse and scurries away.
I lower my glass slowly. This just got interesting. I set my glass down with a clunk on the wooden bar top. Not because I’m calm, but because if I don’t, I might break it.
"I don’t know… would you consider ten inches overcompensating?"
I see the moment her eyes drop to my crotch. She’s wondering if I’m bluffing. I’m not.
Her gaze dips for half a second. Then she meets my eyes again. "Well, that depends. Were you measuring your cock or your ego?"
"If you’re that curious, we can measure it right now." I say, angling my body toward her, my voice low enough that it didn’t carry. "Because, as it turns out, I have all evening since you scared off my entertainment for the night."
She doesn’t even blink.
"What? Her?" Natalia shrugs dismissively, glancing toward the space the woman vacated as if she’s already forgotten her. "Come on. Don’t be such a stereotypical jock. Sleeping with women who flounce around in your jersey just to play hockey-player bingo with their friends?"
The words land how she wanted them to, but I’m not insulted, nor do I care what she thinks. I don’t even know this woman.
I bark out a short laugh. "You act as if that’s some kind of revelation."
"You’re just a name on the board," she continues, unfazed. "One-night bragging rights. A story they tell their friends to feel important."
I lean in, eyes narrowing. "I’ve got my own board."
Her lips pressed together, unimpressed.
"Except," I add, standing up from the stool, and then take a step closer, "I don’t keep track of their names."
I say it like it’s nothing. It doesn’t even register as cruelty.
"How refreshing," she says dryly, unbothered.
The crowd shifts around us, bodies brushing past, music thumping through the floor. For a moment, it feels like we’re standing in the eye of a storm, everything else blurring at the edges.
"Why are you here, Natalia?" I ask.
I said her name slowly this time. Deliberate, letting the Russian weight settle into the vowels. My English is good enough that people forget where I’m from, until moments like this, when I want them to remember that I don’t belong to their neat little categories.
She stiffens for a fraction of a second. Barely perceptible, but I see it… I always do.
She doesn’t want me to know where her mind just went. How she just imagined what it would sound like if I said her name like that, with her naked underneath me, breathless and blaming me for it. But I catch it anyway—the way her eyes slightly dilate, how her lips part and then press together like she can seal the thought back inside.
Her lips pursed, her eyes narrowing with annoyance—more at herself than at me—as if she’s furious her body reacted before her brain could stop it. The moment passes, but it’s already filed away in my head.
She’s not immune to me.
"I’m here because your agent hired me," she says. "And because you don’t get to decide whether this problem exists just by ignoring it."
I scoff. "You’re wasting your time."
"I don’t waste time," she fires back. "I manage it."
I laugh again, but this time there’s no humor in it. "Is that what you think this is? Management?"
"Yes," she says flatly. "Because whether you like it or not, the Olympic Committee does not respond well to being publicly embarrassed by naked centerfolds."
