The Sexiest Man Alive (18 page)

Play was suspended while a doctor checked Juju.

“I’m fine,” insisted Juju, whose forehead was growing a tennis ball–sized lump. “I need to go back in.”

“No, ma’am. You are out of the game,” pronounced the doctor. “League rules. You bump your noggin, you sit out.”

The Scorchers, who’d gathered around like vultures, squealed in triumph and raced around the rink with upraised fists, celebrating. Without a full complement of players, the Brawlers would be forced to forfeit the game.

Juju grabbed Mazie by the collar and jerked her head down. “You have to go in for me.”

“I can’t!” Mazie protested. “I’ve never played.”

“It’s only a minute. You can do it.”

“For Pete’s sake, Juju—it’s just a game.”

“Just a game—can you hear what you’re
saying
? It’s not a game; it’s a matter of life and
death.”

Right, Mazie thought.
My
death.

Knowing she was going to regret it, Mazie finally agreed to do it. The referee called a five-minute time-out for the replacement and Mazie rushed down to the locker room. Bootsy, who was leaving to get her wrist treated at the emergency room, lent Mazie her uniform. Mazie hauled it on, then grabbed her own skates out of a locker and jammed her feet into them. She was back on the rink just as the time-out ended, so terrified, she could barely stand.

“No pressure,” Jackie O’Sassin told Mazie. “But you need to lap three players in fifty-nine seconds.”

Mazie was familiar with the rink because she took a few cardio-laps around it after the team was done practicing, but she’d never attempted derby skating. The thought of competing against women who looked like they worked out by lifting Volkswagens terrified her.

And now the whistle was blowing and—oh God—she had stepped into one of her nightmares by mistake, only this was a lot worse than the one where she showed up naked to teach her class—and there was only one thing to do now—skate for her life! Forget about scoring; she just wanted to survive.

Up ahead, a clot of Scorchers looked back over their shoulders with sharkish grins, their body language stating:
Go on and try it, we dare ya!
Getting through them would be like trying to slide a bowling ball through a soda straw. Skating up behind, Mazie saw no way to get past.

But wait—a narrow gap had just opened to the left of Roxy Scarmichael. Maybe she could worm through. Putting on a burst of speed, Mazie dove through the hole. Then Roxy veered sideways at her, smirking, while the skater on Mazie’s other side—Pound Anya—squeezed from the other direction. She was caught like a walnut in a nutcracker.

Then Girlzilla roared up behind, boxing her in.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! She’d fallen into a trap!

“Hey, guys—know who this pipsqueak is?” Girlzilla taunted. “Mazie Maguire—offed her hubby and got away with it. Hey, jailbird, let’s see how tough you are.” She shoved Mazie, sending her reeling into Roxy, who bounced her off Pound Anya, and the two of them began knocking her back and forth like a human bobo toy.

Then, a stroke of luck—Wanda Whiplash, the Scorcher in front of Mazie, lost her footing and went down. Suddenly there was a patch of daylight ahead. Mazie lunged toward it, eluding
Roxy and Anya, which meant she’d lapped them. Two points—game tied! The Brawlers fans roared.

Girlzilla caught up with Mazie, face set, teeth clenched, out for revenge. A hard hip thrust sent Mazie sprawling to the floor, her hastily donned knee pads slipping, her knees agonizingly scraping across the rink’s hard surface.

Instant, searing pain. All she wanted to do was crawl off the rink and bawl her eyes out, but after a moment spent checking for broken bones, Mazie hauled herself to her feet and launched back into battle. Her thighs screamed for mercy, her lungs were being skewered, her knees burned as though she’d been walking over hot coals, but she was flying, she was booking, she was the 101st Airborne! Thirty-six seconds left, and the Scorchers thought they’d left her behind, but she was coming up and she was going to bite ’em in their skanky orange asses.

The crowd was making so much noise that Mazie thought her ears would blow out, but above the roar she could hear a man’s voice bellowing her name. “Go, Mazie!”

Ben Labeck’s face registered in the instant Mazie zoomed past—he was plastered against the railing, yelling his lungs out.

Or maybe it was a pain-induced hallucination.

She was back up on the Scorchers pack.
Call me a jailbird, huh?
Mazie threw an elbow at Roxy Scarmichael.
Here’s a cell block 19 special for you, creampuff!
She hip-checked Roxy, who collided with Pound Anya, and they both went down. Mazie made an impossible leap over their rolling bodies, miraculously landed on her feet—and that was two more points, putting the Brawlers in the lead. The crowd noise made it impossible to think—there was just her pumping arms, her thrusting legs, her laboring lungs. Up ahead were two more Scorchers—maybe she could lap them, knock in a couple of cushioning points.

But something was slowing Mazie down—half-turning, she saw Girlzilla, grinning wickedly as she yanked on Mazie’s shirttail, hauling back as hard as she could. Buttons popped, fabric tore, and the shirt nearly ripped off Mazie’s body.

Enough from this cow! She braked suddenly, Girlzilla rear-ended her, and they both tumbled to the floor. Yelling and cursing, they flailed at each other, Girlzilla on top, snatching Mazie’s shirt off, exposing her lacy black brassiere. Giving a convulsive heave, Mazie rolled Girlzilla off, at the same time snatching at the Scorcher’s jersey, ripping it from top to bottom.

“Pink!” Mazie sneered, as the giant breasts in a pink bra exploded. “Real women wear
black. You’re just a girly-girl.”

“More skin!” chanted the men in the crowd, who sounded ready to storm the floor.

Girlzilla spat at Mazie. Good aim. A big gob of spit dribbled down Mazie’s cheek.

Mazie hauled back and smacked her in the mouth.
That’s for us jailbirds!

Then the buzzer sounded.

Scorchers 59. Brawlers 61!

The noise from the lower floor attracted Ben’s attention as he emerged from the Snowplows’ locker room. It sounded like a riot going on down there. The Plows could have used a little of that enthusiasm during their hockey game tonight, a 4–3 loss. One of the reasons they’d lost was that he’d kept watching the audience, hoping Mazie would show up.

He ought to head home. He still had to pack and needed to be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to drive to Illinois. Instead, Ben allowed his curiosity to get the better of him, and he headed downstairs to find out what the commotion was about.

Roller Derby. Milwaukee versus Skokie. He’d always thought Derby was as scripted as pro-wrestling, but after watching a couple of times, he’d realized that the matches were for real. He could understand why it attracted an enthusiastic male following: the skimpy uniforms, the flashes of boobs and ass, women being aggressive with one another—sexy as hell.

The sound nearly bowled him over as he stepped into the gym. The audience was on its feet, screaming and whistling. Glancing at the scoreboard, Ben saw that the Brawlers were down by two with fifty seconds remaining. The Brawlers’ jammer flashed past on the track. Terrific ass, Ben noticed, and great—

Mazie!

She wasn’t even on the team. What was she doing out there, skating like Bobby Orr on wheels, burning up the track? Then he noticed Juju sitting on the sidelines, holding an ice pack to her head. They must have run out of subs and told Mazie to go in. She was fast—skating up on the opposing team’s blockers—but she’d been suckered into a trap; she was boxed in—then one of the Scorchers went down and Mazie somehow broke through her captors, lapping them and tying up the game.

Ben inhaled sharply as the orange-haired Scorcher bodychecked Mazie, flinging her against a railing. She sledded across the floor on her knees. She was hurt! He started toward her, all his protective instincts kicking in, but Mazie was already scrambling to her feet. Now she was mad; no mistaking that body language. He found himself at the railing, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Go, Mazie!”

Five yards to go … two … she was moving up on the Scorchers’ blockers like an avenging fury. Then she was on them. Ouch! Nasty elbowing there—only this time it was Mazie doling out the punishment, knocking a couple of Scorchers to the floor and—holy shit!—leaping over them like she was doing high hurdles, giving the Brawlers a two-point lead with only seconds remaining. That should have been the game, but the orange-haired woman roared up and grabbed Mazie’s shirt, intent on ripping it off her body.

“Flagrant foul!” Ben roared, trying to get the attention of the stupid, blind referee. Then he switched his attention back to Mazie, who’d stopped on a dime, causing a rear-end collision with her pursuer. Both women fell to the floor, biting, kicking, and scratching, their skirts flying up to reveal skimpy panties, the guys in the crowd whooping their approval.

Ben found himself torn. On the one hand, he thought he ought to stop the fight, but on the other hand, he hated to end the erotic spectacle. Women never really hurt each other; usually they just ripped each other’s clothes. Whoever was left with the most exposed skin was the loser. Both women were half-topless now and Ben found himself getting aroused by the sight.

Mazie ended the brawl by smacking her opponent in the nose.

Then the buzzer sounded and the fans poured onto the floor. Ben’s heart was pumping as though his team had just won a hockey playoff game. He glimpsed Mazie limping away, her knees scraped raw and bloody.

She needed him.

It took a while to fight his way through the crowd, but eventually he found the locker room. Oops! The Brawlers were in there, undressing. If he’d been expecting outraged maidenly modesty, he’d been wrong. A chorus of whistles and catcalls erupted. Someone flung a ball of wadded-up panty hose at him. A brassiere hit his head and hung briefly from his ear. A pretty blonde woman flashed tits at him, giggling.

“Hey, good-lookin’—wanna party?” asked another half-dressed woman.

“Leave him alone, you guys—he’s taken.” Juju Danda, who was holding an ice pack to her forehead, came to Ben’s rescue. “Mazie’s in the first-aid room.”

Ben nodded his thanks. He backed out, amid a chorus of
awws
and
party pooper
, then found the first-aid room and went in. Mazie was standing at a sink, dabbing at her knees with a wet paper towel. She looked up when he came in, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“You were amazing,” Ben burst out.

She flashed a smile, the first genuine smile she’d given him in what felt like years.

“I kind of amazed myself.”

“Let me take a look at those knees.” Ben was used to injuries. He mopped up the cuts and bruises on his own team, he’d taken sports medicine courses, and he’d even briefly considered going to med school before it had occurred to him it wouldn’t do his patients any good if he fainted every time he had to give someone a flu booster. Needles were his kryptonite.

Mazie sat down on a chair, attempting to keep her torn blouse closed but failing to conceal the fact that she was wearing a lacy black brassiere. She had exquisite breasts, surprisingly full for someone her size. Ben remembered the exact size and shape of those breasts, the perfect way they fit into his hands, how her nipples hardened at his touch. His heart thudded so violently that it pressed against his lungs and he found it hard to breathe.

“You need to take off those fishnet things,” he croaked, dry-mouthed.

“Turn around.”

He wasn’t capable of taking his eyes off her. “Maybe I should help.”

“I can manage.” She warned him off with a look, scooted her butt up off the chair, reached under for the waistband, and peeled the stockings down her legs. He kept getting flashes of her black panties. Peel,
flash
, peel,
flash …

It was as though he’d never seen a woman undressing before. The slow revelation of sweet, bare thigh flesh was unbearably erotic. Ben thought he might faint because every corpuscle of blood was surging from his brain to his Mr. Happy.

Mazie rolled the stockings down to her ankles but—this was typical Mazie and explained why he always beat her at chess—she hadn’t taken off her skates first.

“Here, let me.” Trying not to let her see that his hands were shaking, taking a mental plunge into the coldest, iciest pond he could conjure out of his Canadian childhood, Ben began working on the skate laces. Finally he had them undone and pulled off the skates, furtively inhaling. Even Mazie’s foot sweat was sexy.

“Okay, now we have to—” Looking up, Ben caught the full blue blaze of her eyes, and lost his train of thought. “Uhh … clean the wounds.”

He walked over to the sink, wondering how obvious the bulge in his jeans was. When his dad had subjected him to the Lecture at age twelve, he’d given a scarlet-faced Ben some advice on hiding inopportune erections: jam your fists in your pockets and press down, carry your
textbooks at crotch level, make it go away by thinking of something gross like a dead skunk.

It was definitely dead skunk time. Maggots crawling over matted fur, glands stinking, ants crawling over eyeballs, intestines spilling out … by the time he’d pictured the dead skunk to the point where he felt sick to his stomach, Ben had ransacked the cupboard, found what he needed, and temporarily subdued the beast.

Crouching in front of Mazie, he unwrapped a packet of antiseptic wipes. He began dabbing at her knees, starting with the right one, which was so badly scraped that serous fluid was seeping out.

“Sorry,” Ben said, risking a look up at Mazie. “This must hurt.”

He’d caught her gazing at him. She quickly looked away. “It’s okay,” she mumbled.

Resisting the ridiculous urge to kiss her knees—and glimpsing the black triangle, which started up the seismic activity all over again—Ben applied gauze pads and taped them down with athletic tape. Finally the job was finished. To prolong the contact, Ben added some clips to stabilize the tape—completely nonessential, but it made the bandaging look professional and might impress Mazie.