Page 1 of Dangle

PROLOGUE

TREY

January

My dick woke up the day I turned thirteen. He’d made his presence known before that, of course. I wasn’t stunted or anything, but that day was the day he stood up and pointed at someone real and said, “That. I want that.”

That turned out to be a mindfuck of epic proportions. Proportions I was nowhere near mature enough to understand when I walked into the arena my father built, supposedly as an engagement present for my mother. My father wasn’t that nice. He just didn’t want to share the arena my grandfather built for my father when he was born. Because that’s what you gave a newborn. A massive hockey rink that loomed over your home, visible from your bedroom window. From your damn bed. As if living in the shadow of a famous NHL star wasn’t difficult enough.

The arena and the ice weren’t my epic mindfuck. No, the mindfuck that screwed up my head came from what I found in my family’s arena. And it wasn’t just the beautiful fourteen-year-old Russian figure skater, Danika Orlova, with her long blonde hair pulled back in a low bun showing off her flushed, radiant face, or the pink lip gloss shining on her lips.

No.

Danika messed with my head, sure. But what really did me in was her pairs partner. At fifteen years old, Sergei Kuznetsov was two years older than me—tall, strong as an ox, all lean lines, and chiseled Slavic features. He was beautiful, and my reaction to him was confusing as hell. He spoke little English. They both did, but they’d been sent to the States to train over the summer with Russia’s figure-skating darling-turned-supermodel, my mama, Oksana Petrova.

That was the day I figured out my dick didn’t care about gender. He liked what he liked. And he especially enjoyed watching?—

“Trey!”

Two voices, one male and one female, blended together and pulled my head from my ass or from the asses on the rink with my mom.

“Sorry, Mom!” I called over my shoulder as I hurried around Mom’s rink toward where my dad stood waiting.

Fudge.

He looked pissed. He was pissed. I knew that look well—birthday or not. Bag skates were in my future.

“You’re late,” Dad said, his hand gripping my shoulder as he pushed me through the door.

“Sorry, Dad.”

He stopped me with a look and said, “What’s the rule?”

I sighed. “Sorry, Coach.”

Yep. A birthday filled with bag skates. So many, many bag skates. It wasn’t the first birthday I spent that way, nor was it the last. Hopefully, this birthday didn’t turn out the same, although I didn’t hold out too much hope. My father had been in a mood since I arrived.

Moonlight streamed through the large bank of windows in my bedroom, bathing the room and me in the soft white light. I pulled on my workout gear, staring out the window. The rinkloomed in the distance—large, imposing, suffocating. The longer I looked at it, the smaller it made me feel. It also reminded me I probably spent more time in hockey rinks, especiallythathockey rink, than I had in any other place in the whole damn world, including my own house.

I came awake this morning as I did every morning—with a huff when the alarm on my phone chirped. I never needed to look to know what time it was. The same time that alarm went off every day for most of my pathetic existence.

Five thirty in the morning.

Did it matter that today was my birthday? Nope. It never mattered. Not even if it were Christmas, or my grandfather’s funeral, or any other important event in my life. Hockey came first. Always.

“Happy birthday to me.”

Time to get to work.

Abso-fucking-lutely not.

Yet another birthday starting the way all the birthdays I remembered living through had: wake up and pull on my workout clothes while staring out the window at my family’s legacy.

My destiny.

My obligation.

I didn’t want to be here. I tried my damnedest to get out of it. Used every excuse I could think of, that my roommates and D-men could think of.