She slowly sits and pulls her shoes off one by one.“What if I suck at it?”She slips one skate on, then the other.
I kneel down and reach for her skates before she has a chance to tie the laces.“This part can be tricky. Let me do it.”
I take my time lacing her up right. The last thing I want is for her to get hurt because her skates are too loose. Once I’m done, I look up to find a sweet but shy smile on her face. It has my heart pounding in my chest—a feeling I’m not all that accustomed to.“Doesn’t matter if you suck at it. All you have to do is try.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to fall on my ass in front of you.”
I stand and reach for her hand once more, the gesture becoming all too comfortable.“Who said anything about falling?”
“What are you going to do, catch me?”she asks as she bumps into my shoulder while trying to find her bearings on the skates.
“You think I would let you bust your ass out here and risk you never wanting to skate with me again? No way, José.”
She nervously giggles as I lead her out onto the ice. I don’t know why she’s so nervous—I have a feeling she’s going to be a natural. Call it intuition, or maybe it’s just from years of growing up on the ice. You learn how to peg the people who are going to be decent and those who are going to be a disaster.
Millie St. James was born to skate. She just doesn’t know it yet.
Her hand clamps down around mine at the first sign of her right leg pulling away from her body. She pulls her leg in, but as soon as she does, her bottom starts to lean back. Her other hand grabs my forearm to try to correct her balance.
She’s staying upright, but barely. I chuckle again as I pick up my speed a little and start pulling her more toward the center of the ice.
“Where are you going? Shouldn’t we stay by the wall thingies?”she asks in a panic.
“Why, Daredevil, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were being abuk buk buk buk brrr-awk.”I reach up with my free hand, placing it under my armpit and flapping my elbow out over and over in the telltale sign of a chicken.
She laughs, finally pulling herself up into a more upright position.“I am not! I’m out here, aren’t I?”
“I mean, I can’t argue with that, but I’m pretty sure I’m losing blood circulation to my arm with that death grip you’ve got going on.”I raise my eyebrows and pointedly look down at my forearm.
She jolts and suddenly releases her grip. The motion causes her feet to come forward too fast, and before I know it, I’m lunging forward to catch her because she’s dangerously close to busting her ass, just like I said she wouldn’t.
And I would have had her too, if at the same time I lunged forward, she hadn’t kicked her leg out in a last-ditch effort to stay upright.
Her knee connects with my dick. I yelp out in pain, and she grunts in dismay. The next thing I know, we’re both going down. I manage to grab her around the waist and turn her just before we hit the ice so that not all one hundred eighty pounds of me lands squarely on top of her.
“I thought you were going to catch me!”she huffs between spurts of laughter.
I grab my balls and curl onto my side, trying to breathe through the sharp, white-lightning pain that’s currently zipping up and down my spine.“That was before you caused bodily harm. All bets are off then,”I finally manage to squeeze out between deep breaths through my teeth.
She suddenly sits up and rolls over to me.“Oh shit! Did I hurt you?!”
I take it back, I was completely wrong. She’s a disaster on the ice.“Just a little.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have called me a chicken,”she sasses.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have kneed me in my junk,”I sass right back.
She laughs, and I can’t help but chuckle. Once the pain starts to ease, I roll over onto my back. I look over and watch as Millie rolls onto all fours to try to push herself up from the ice.
She manages to get into a half-kneeling position before she brings one hand to her knee and tries to push up. As soon as she shifts her weight, she loses her balance once again. Her hands slam down onto the ice with a hard thud.“Oww.”
She must hear my slight chuckle because her head whips my way.“How do I get up? It’s freezing down here.”
I take pity on her and quickly roll onto my side to push up, much the same way she did, but instead of pushing up on my knee, I use the power in my legs and push up straight from more of a crouched position.
Once I reach her, I reach down and scoop her up from under her arms, pulling her to a standing position. Her chest bumps against mine, and I feel that same flutter of warmth I felt every time I grabbed her hand.
“How did you do that so easily?”she asks, astonished.
