I’ve always been a chest guy, and nice pecs are just as sexy to me as breasts. Ant’s chest couldn’t be any more perfect if it were lifted from my fantasies and transplanted onto him.
Thank fuck I manage to return my gaze to his face before he catches me creeping on him again.
“I take it you survived?” he asks teasingly.
“Barely,” I say, my tone grave. “I swear the only reason I’m still alive is that I managed to ski right into a massive pile of super fluffy snow near the chairlift. Of course I hit it so fast I went halfway through it and needed three grown-ass men to pull me out before I suffocated, but I survived.”
Anthony lets out another loud belly laugh. “Oh my god,” he says when he can talk again. “I wish I’d been there to see that.”
“And I wish my date wasn’t there to see that,” I say with a grimace.
“I’m assuming your next date wasn’t on the slopes.”
“Didn’t get another date,” I say ruefully. “And didn’t really get to have that date, either, considering I spent the day in the lodge waiting for her and her friends to finish. Then she ended up catching a ride home with one of her roommate’s friends, and I drove the almost two hours home by myself.”
“Ouch. That’s cold.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t fun. And did I mention her roommate’s friend was a guy, and they’re getting married this summer?”
“Ouch,” he repeats. “Were you guys serious?”
I shake my head. “We’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks. So, do you hit the slopes or whatever ski people say, a lot?” I ask, time to take the subject off me before I overshare even more than I already have.
“Not nearly as much now, but yeah.” He picks up a pencil off the coffee table and absently spins it around his fingers. “It used to be pretty much every weekend and most holidays, but now it’s really only holidays.”
“Every weekend?” I ask.
He nods. “Our high school had its own slopes and lodges.”
A folded navy-blue sweater on the loveseat catches my eye, and I tilt my head to read what’s written on it in small white print. It’s the name of one of the most exclusive boarding schools in Europe.
“Did you go there?” I ask, pointing at the sweater.
The school is known not only for its high academic standards, but also their winter sports programs, especially skiing and hockey.
He nods and stops spinning the pencil. “We all did.”
“We?”
“Me, the twins, and Rath.”
“Were you part of one of the sports programs?”
From what I know, they’re ridiculously hard to get into, and a lot of their graduates go on to either play professional hockey or compete in the Winter Olympics.
He nods and switches to spinning the pencil with his other hand. “But not for skiing or boarding.”
I shoot him a confused look.
“Hockey,” he clarifies. “We were in the hockey program. Skiing and boarding were a bonus, but not why we were there.”
“You played on their hockey team?” I ask like a dumbass.
For some reason, I can’t picture any of the Royalty playing hockey. It’s weird because all four of them are in incredible shape, and it’s obvious they’re all extremely athletic, but I just can’t see them kitted up and zooming around a rink, or the boy aquarium, as a lot of the girls at school call it.
He nods again.
“What position?” I ask.
