Christmas Tsar (Blood and Thunder 1)

~o0o~

The next day, the team trained all day, giving Amber plenty of time to speak to the quartermaster in charge of armaments to arrange a special little surprise for the boys in the event they played up the next evening. When they trooped into supper on time, she began to wonder if she was guilty of overreacting. But no. They had a special little surprise for her, she noticed as they dropped a quantity of expensive tack on the table. There was a rich assortment of saddles and bridles and stirrups and straps and bits, all of which they proceeded to clean.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked. “I mean, cleaning your tack on the table where you’re going to eat?” She raised a brow when Alexei turned around. “Don’t you think those noxious-smelling lotions and potions might possibly spoil the flavor of a nice roast chicken dinner?”

He turned his back on her, so she went to collect her little surprise. Bringing it back to the table on a plate beneath a cloche, she swept the tack aside and made her offering the centerpiece of the table. Removing the cloche with a flourish, she stood back.

“Are you fucking mad?” Alexei exclaimed, leaping for the grenade as everyone else leapt back.

Amber couldn’t reply. She’d never seen grown men move so quickly and was laughing too much to answer him.

“A dud?” Alexei said softly, examining the grenade more closely. He raised his chin and glared at Amber. “You put a dud on the table?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, clutching her sides with laughter. “I’ll ask for a live one next time.”

Tossing the grenade up and down in his hand. Alexei fixed her with an icy stare. “Someone will pay for this.”

“Well, not your quartermaster, I hope,” Amber said quickly. “Because this was my idea. I talked him into supplying me with the shell of a grenade.” She had to bite back a grin. “It worked, didn’t it? It got your attention.”

The other men watched with interest, while Alexei’s stare remained long and hard.

“I wasn’t thinking of punishing the quartermaster,” he murmured.

Is it wrong to find that incredibly arousing?

When Alexei placed the dummy grenade on the table, the men laughed, and before they settled down in their seats again, they not only cleared the table, they wiped the table, and even helped Amber to set the table, which she chalked up as a small but significant victory.

~o0o~

“She’s certainly unusual,” Cesar commented the next day as they were preparing to mount up for the match. “Not at all like the type of woman you usually go for.”

“Not shallow and brittle, do you mean?”

“And not a drip,” Cesar remarked.

“Thanks a lot,” Alexei said dryly. He had been expecting one of his friends to make a comment about Amber and the episode with the grenade, but not Cesar. “Do you mean you like her?”

“I mean she appears to be a match for you, Alexei.”

“Which is why I have to send her away.”

“You’ll regret it,” Cesar remarked as he swung into the saddle.

“Maybe,” Alexei agreed. “But, rather that than she lives to regret it.”

They rode out four abreast to play a team from mainland Spain. The Agusta brothers were trialing a new eight-goal-handicap player from Scotland, affectionately known on the circuit as Hard Robert. This match between Blood and Thunder and the Agusta team was supposed to be friendly, but no one expected it to be either friendly or easy. Every player at this level played to win. To say they were competitive would be understating it. Knowing this, polo fans had arrived on the island from all over the world. The new security measures had been installed around the pitch first, which now boasted state-of-the-art security, and they were expecting a sell-out crowd. The bleachers were packed as they rode in to deafening cheers, but he noticed Amber right away and relaxed. He’d made sure she got a VIP ticket. She was hanging over the fence at the far end of the field in front of the stables and gave him an additional reason to annihilate the opposition.

The ideal would be to find Amber waiting for him at the end of the match—unfortunately, he couldn’t guarantee that. Too bad he’d sworn off complicated red-hot redheads with a fondness for gallows humor. He had tried to keep his distance since they’d arrived on the island, with some vague hope that he could wean them off each other, but thoughts of that shining red hair spread out on his pillows and those pale, slender limbs wrapped around him had kept him awake last night. His threat to punish Amber for her joke with the grenade had acquired countless new scenes in the early hours of this morning, which had played out to an imagined soundtrack of soft moans and whimpers.

And now, at the eleventh hour with the match about to start, he decided that with January seventh only days away, one last Christmas with Amber was going to happen, but then he would definitely send her home.

~o0o~

The whistle blew. The match began. Amber clenched her hands tightly. She was in an agony of concern for Alexei. There was no more exciting sight than eight men racing flat-out on galloping horses, mallets swinging at a hard ball that flew like a missile between them, but there was no sight more terrifying either than tons of fiercely competitive, hyped-up horseflesh jockeying for position within a hairsbreadth of collision. She knew Alexei’s riding by reputation only, having never seen him play a match, and was almost over the fence at one point, ready to take on the big Scot playing for the Spanish team when he tried to ride Alexei off the ball. No need, thank goodness, as Alexei’s horse could turn on a sixpence and Alexei rode like a Cossack. Keeping the ball, he raced down the field and scored the first goal. Alexei wasn’t just an e

xpert on horseback, he was the king of the field. He had never looked more powerful or potent to Amber as he steered his horse without appearing to move at all. But then he was an expert at control, she remembered, breathing deeply as she passed a few pleasurable moments reminiscing. But daydreams could easily be shattered, and hers had just been rudely interrupted.

She gasped as a collision between Alexei and another player seemed inevitable, and looked away for a moment. When she opened her eyes again, she breathed a sigh of relief to see that Alexei was okay—not only okay, he was in possession of the ball. But then something else caught her attention—a shadow darting inside the stable block. It was a kid, she realized with surprise, pulling back from the fence. A youth she didn’t recognize had slipped inside the door. Walking swiftly, she went to check him out.