Then I saw it. ‘Earned It’ by The Weeknd, slow, controlled, intimate, with that heavy pulse underneath restraint.
Perfect.
I clicked on it, then returned to Luka, held out my hand to him, and led him onto the ice.
Luka
Dean’s handsettled against my waist to guide the rotation, and the contact felt instantly dangerous. Not because of the skating, but because of how naturally my body answered him.
We had spent days touching each other. In his room, in his bed, half asleep beneath tangled sheets while the rest of the Olympic Village carried on around us.
None of that should have made this difficult, and yet the second his hand found me, the ice stopped being the thing I was paying attention to.
His palm spread against the curve of my hip through the thin fabric of my training shirt, warm even in the cold air of the rink, his fingers firm enough to control the turn without force. I felt every adjustment he made: the subtle pressure of his thumb, the drag of his fingertips as our momentum shifted together.
My breath caught badly enough to throw off the timing, and Dean noticed.
His eyes flicked toward me for half a second, dark beneath the dim lights, before he pulled me smoothly into the next sequence as if nothing had happened, the music rolling slow and low through the empty rink.
No cameras. No judges. No federation officials pretending not to watch us too closely.
There was only the music, the sound of blades carving ice, and our breathing slipping out of sync.
We crossed into backward crossovers, our bodies moving close enough that Dean’s forearm brushed along my ribs every time he drove through a push. Our thighs touched briefly on the step sequence, accidental at first, then not entirely accidentalafter that.
By the third sequence I was actively avoiding looking at him.
Every turn seemed to bring us together again.
Every correction left Dean’s hand on my waist a second longer than necessary.
Then his hand slid lower, enough that I felt it everywhere, and my pulse slammed against my throat.
I missed an edge.
My blade skidded sideways with a violent scrape, my balance disappearing instantly beneath me, but Dean reacted before panic could fully hit. One arm locked around my waist, pulling me hard against him while the other caught my wrist.
Momentum spun us together. Our skates carved a rough arc across center ice before we stopped chest to chest, breathing hard.
Too close. Far too close.
My hands were flattened against his shoulders now, my fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. I could feel his heartbeat through it, fast, uneven, matching mine almost exactly.
Dean stared at me. “You have to stop doing that,” he said in a low voice.
“What?”
“Losing focus when I touch you.”
The words sent heat straight through me.
“This was your idea,” I murmured.
Dean’s gaze dropped to my mouth before returning to my eyes.
“Yeah. I didn’t think it would feel like this.”
Neither of us moved.
