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My stepsister, for her part, had been just as MIA. I wasn’t sure where she was going at night, but I was minding my business… for now. Once the invitational was over and I had more free time I was about to Sherlock Holmes my way through the mystery that was who Penelope Nashtos was fucking.
Because it had to be sex—there was no other reason unless she had somehow turned into a criminal in the past couple of months.
The only problem was I didn’t have any suspects because the woman worked all the time and I’d seen the men in her office. They were definitely not sexy enough to be involved in a kinky affair with my gorgeous stepsister.
“It’ll do,” Eli said, as always reserving his praise for when we skated a perfect set. “You’re still almost an entire second behind on that last move though, Ciara. You need to make sure to get into position or you risk Artie falling, which would be a disaster in front of the two thousand people coming tomorrow.”
While the invitation had been for other winter sports athletes, Colt was ever the entrepreneur and had sold tickets to civilians if they wanted to come and see not only a hockey game, but whatever ice sport their heart desired.
I opened my mouth to respond with some snarky remark to combat our coach’s cynicism, but instead only a massive yawn rippled out of me.
“That’s the tenth time you’ve yawned in the last hour, what the hell is wrong with you?” Eli asked, glancing between Artie and me. “You two keeping each other up at night?”
Definitely not. We’d barely had enough energy after practice to eat and have a quick snuggle before we all piled into Artie’s nest and fell asleep in a tangle of limbs. There was no more awkwardness or shyness between Wiz and the rest of the pack after our little group performance last week and it was nice to fall asleep surrounded by my loves… even if I hadn’t exactly vocalized the words yet.
No, I’d been sleeping like a log through the night, so the exhaustion that had seemed to settle deep into my bones made absolutely no sense. Half of the time I was worried that I was going to fall asleep standing in my skates if I wasn’t careful.
“No time for wild sex when we’ve got an asshole for a coach who’s been trying to kill us for months,” I snorted, changing the subject away from my sleepiness.
“You two were the ones who had the crazy idea to pair up even though you’ve skated solo your entire lives. That takes a lot of practice to get right—bond or not and just for that, go ahead and do it again from the top.”
Artie and I groaned but skated together to the center of the ice again anyway, flipping around so that we were back-to-back.
“He may as well kill us now,” Artie grumbled as he lifted an arm and threaded his fingers through mine over our heads.
The first strains of the music began and we were off.
An hour and going through the routine another three times and we were finally free.
“You two need to be here by nine tomorrow morning for hair and makeup. No staying out late and make sure you eat a good dinner and get a good night’s sleep. By that, I mean keep your mitts off of each other and those other packmates of yours, understand?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I waved him off as I pulled Artie’s foot into my lap and helped him take his skates off, wincing as the omega let out a groan of relief and flopped back onto the bench.
“You’re going to need to take an Epsom salt bath tonight,” I told him softly after Eli left us alone. We had another five minutes before the next hour of figure skaters showed up and I wanted to get us moving before we had to deal with any snippy comments.
“I wish I could sneak into Enzo’s stash of weed cookies,” Artie grumbled, throwing an arm over his eyes as I took the other skate off.
Charm butted his hand with her nose, checking on the omega who seemed to be melting into the wooden surface of the bench.
“You can’t, they’ll be drug testing all of the athletes,” I reminded him. “But maybe after.”
With a grunt, Artie sat back up and gestured for me to put my foot in his lap so he could return the favor with my skates. “Drug testing for an invitational is so stupid. There isn’t even any money involved.”
The immediate relief I felt as soon as the skates were off was insane as we sat back for a minute and let our bodies be still after two hours of non-stop skating.
Artie pulled on the fluffy bunny slippers that Wiz had gotten him and reached for Charm’s harness. “Wanna go shower off and have an evening cuddle on the couch?”
“I would…” I started and then remembered that Aurelia had asked me to pick Tobey up from school and drop him off at the dads’. “But I’ve got to pick Tobey up and you need to go with Leith to pick your costume up from the dry cleaners.”
Mine had been ready yesterday, but Artie’s was taking more time. “I’ll see you tonight and we can spoil ourselves with face masks?”
Kissing Artie’s pout right off of his face, I gave Charm’s head a pat.
“Promise me we’ll have the whole night together?” Artie asked, snagging my hand and tugging me down for a deeper kiss, ignoring the sounds of people approaching just outside.
Smiling against his mouth I nodded. “I’ll be home right after I drop Tobey off.”
Shooting him one last sultry smile, I left the omega behind not knowing that everything was about to change.
