Page 106 of Offside

“Ryan—”

“I know.” I pulled back just enough to look at her. Flushed, her mouth soft, and the want of her culminating into this moment. I took the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. I pressed my palm flat against her heart and felt it beating fast and looked at her in the low lamplight. Standing in nothing but a tiny black thong, she was everything.

“Gud,” I said. Low, Swedish, involuntary.

Her chin came up. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re going to be the death of me.” I pressed my mouth to her collarbone, her throat, the soft skin beneath her ear. “Du är vacker.” Beautiful. I said it against her skin and felt her shiver. “Nine days,” I said. “I thought about you every hour of nine days.”

“Ryan—”

“Tell me what you want, baby.” My mouth moved down her throat. My hands found the waistband of her shorts and worked them down. “Tell me exactly.”

“Your mouth,” she said. Her voice had already gone slightly wrecked. “I want your mouth on me. Your tongue. I’ve been thinking about it since you left.”

I pulled back and watched her. She looked at me with anticipation.

“Anything for you, solsken.” I dropped to my knees, happy to oblige.

She made a sound when my mouth found her center that I felt in my spine. I held her hips against the wall and took my time. Nine days of thinking about tasting every inch of her body gave me both the patience and the focus. Working her panties down, then opening her legs slowly, reading every response, pressing my tongue flat against her center, and then the point of it until she had both hands in my hair and her head tipped back against the wall, groaning.

“Ryan.” My name in her mouth like a command.

I raised my eyes to her. Her eyes were dark and her mouth was open and she looked completely undone and I intended to finish that. “Tell me.”

“Don’t stop.” Her fingers tightened in my hair. “I need—right there, don’t you dare—Fuck!”

I didn’t stop, licking and sucking, coaxing her orgasm.

I slid two fingers inside her and kept my mouth and tongue working and felt her clench around me immediately. She said my name twice more, much louder, and then stopped saying words entirely, her thighs pressing against my shoulders, her whole body tightening. I kept the rhythm steady, pressing my fingers forward, my tongue exactly where she needed it, and when she came apart she did it with her back against the wall and my name on her lips and both hands pulling me into her like she couldn’t let go.

I pressed my lips once to the inside of her thigh, then I stood.

“I could watch you come undone like that every day,” I said as I pressed my body against hers. Moving my hands along her rib cage, I brushed my thumbs against her tight nipples, making my way to her neck so I could kiss her again, and she shuddered.

“Are you good?” I whispered.

She was breathing hard, her cheeks flushed, her eyes heavy-lidded. She got her hands in my shirt and pulled.

“Bedroom,” she said. “Now.”

I walked her there.

In her room I stripped my shirt off and she had her hands on me before it hit the floor, her palms warm and soft, tracing the lines of me in the low light. I felt the pressure of her hands and the dull ache in my right shoulder and the accumulated exhaustion of nine days of road hockey, and none of it mattered. I dropped my pants to the floor and the only thing between us were my boxer briefs.

I laid her down on the bed.

“I missed you,” I said again. I was braced over her with my hands on either side of her face. “The whole trip. Every game. I’d finish and the first thing I’d reach for was my phone.”

She looked up at me. The careful set of her jaw released the way it did when I said something she’d been waiting to hear. She reached up and pulled me down to her.

“I missed you too.”

I reached over to her nightstand where we’d started keeping the condoms, and she gently stopped me. Surprised, I met her eyes and saw a question.

“I know we’ve never—” She stopped. Started again, careful and direct. “I want you with nothing between us. I’m tested. I’m on birth control. I’m just—if you wanted to. We don’t have to, though.”

I’d never had sex without a condom, and for her to trust me this way, to want this with me, was quite possibly the hottest thing she could have ever said. I was stunned.