His voice isn’t gentle, exactly. It’s firm, steady. Not angry—just done with the joke.
“I just—” I start.
“Zlata.” The way he says my name makes me go still. It’s a tone I haven’t heard from him before—quiet, unflinching. “I just had the best sex of my life. With a woman who responds to my touch like she was born for it. Please don’t ruin that memory by implying it was some mindless practice run on a fan.”
The word woman lands somewhere deep. My throat tightens.
“It was the best sex of my life, too,” I admit, voice small now that the bravado’s gone.
He slides his hand up, cups my chin, and nudges my face up just enough that I have to meet his eyes. They’re dark, clear, and completely focused on me.
“Then let’s stick to that, shall we?” he says.
I nod. That earns me a soft, lingering kiss—nothing frantic, nothing demanding. Just a seal on the moment, an agreement to call this what it is instead of what my old fears want to label it.
He settles back, pulling me with him until my head finds the hollow of his shoulder. His hand rests warm and heavy at the small of my back.
“I’m leaving for Adelboden tomorrow,” he says into the dim room. “I’ve slept like shit since Alta Badia.” A beat. “I think I’ll sleep okay tonight.”
I close my eyes, feeling his heartbeat under my palm, the slow, honest weight of those words. For once, I don’t argue with them. I just breathe with him, letting the quiet stretch, and somewhere between one breath and the next, the wild thought slips in:
Maybe, just this once, I don’t have to steal the good thing before someone takes it.
Chapter9
The Fan Girl Grows Up
Prague, Czechia
ZLATA
The living room smells like garlic and dill—Sunday lunch remnants—and my dad’s aftershave. The TV is already on mute when I walk in, Adelboden’s Chuenisbärgli slope filling the screen in wide-angle: rolling cow pastures up top, then that infamous final wall dropping away toward a finish corral crammed with Swiss flags and cowbells.
“Second run starts at one,” Dad says without looking away. “Perfect timing.”
Idrop onto the couch, tucking my feet under me. Mum sits in her armchair with her crosswords, pretending not to care but glancing up every time they show a slow-mo. This is our winter ritual, watching races together, though I’m the only one who gives a damn about alpine skiing here. And they have no idea I’ve spent a night with one of the helmets on their screen.
The graphics flash up: top thirty flip, intervals, time gaps. Fabio Baier, bib red, leading by half a second after the first run. Young Thomas Kern is sitting in third, dangerous as ever.
My heart does that stupid little lurch. A week ago, he was my sad, hot Austrian in a chalet bed. Today, he’s half a second up on the hardest GS hill in the world.
Racers start dropping in, going down in reverse order, meaning my sad, hot Austrian will come down last.
The second run set is classic Adelboden cruelty—more turny over the rolls, then tighter into the final pitch, where the slope goes from respectable to ridiculous in about three gates. You can see where the course setter has played on the blind break-over, the delay over the bump that throws them into the wall.
“Look at that drop,” Dad says, reaching for the remote. “They’re mad, all of them.” He turns the volume up, settling deeper into the couch.
I nod, throat a bit dry. Some guys survive; some fight; a few ski out. The camera keeps cutting back to the start area—Fabio on the bench with his jacket zipped, chin tucked into his collar, eyes narrowed as he watches his rivals lose time on the last intervals. He looks focused, not haunted. My chest loosens a little.
By the time Kern clips into the start gate, my pulse is fully in race mode. The commentators are giddy: if he nails this, hecan pressure Baier; if not, Fabio will gain points on him in the standings.
Kern skis like Kern—loose, attacking, tossing his skis over the rolls like he’s in a training run. He comes onto the final wall a hair low, chucks in an emergency check that costs him just enough. The splits tick red, then back to green; he crosses the line two tenths back, good enough for the hot seat but not a real threat to a perfect Baier run if he will do the perfect Baier thing.
In the start area, cameras catch Fabio clipping in his skis in the start tunnel, goggles on, listening to something his coach tells him, some last-minute piece of information.
“That must be hard,” Mum observes, counting letters on the paper. “You know, the nerves, knowing they all wait for you to fail.”
“He’s used to it by now,” I say automatically, and mentally roll my eyes at myself.
