Page 128 of Offside

“The team will be fine.” I said it with the same certainty I used on the ice. The captain’s voice, the one that didn’t leave room for catastrophizing. “Griffin and I are going to have a hard few weeks and then we’re going to fix it, because that’s who he is and that’s who I am, and what I’m going to do. The locker room will follow whatever the two of us put on the ice. That’s how it works.” I held her gaze. “That part is mine to handle. Not yours.”

She exhaled slowly. “You can’t just decide it’s going to be fine.”

“I’m not deciding it’s going to be fine. I’m deciding I’m going to make it fine. There’s a difference.” I squeezed her hand once. “I’ve skated toward harder plays than this.” I didn’t tell her I was pretty sure Griffin was going to make me suffer for this longer than I’d hope, but that I’d take whatever he had to dish out so long as it meant I got to be with her. That I didn’t lose her. I should have talked to him sooner. I should have owned up and told him how I felt about her.

Outside, the city moved through its ordinary Friday night. Distant traffic, the pulse of it, the wide indifferent hum of Phoenix at eleven o’clock. Inside, the two of us on my couch with the lights still on and the evening around us in pieces.

“Maybe I should go back to my place,” she said. “Give you some space to⁠—”

“No.” I said it before she’d finished the sentence. Quiet, firm, no argument in it.

She met my eyes.

“Don’t shut me out.” The steadiness in my voice had something underneath it now. Not desperation but want. Real want, the kind that had nothing to do with the physical. “Not tonight. Not after that.”

She opened her mouth.

“Maren.” I turned toward her on the couch and took both her hands in mine. “I know what you’re doing. You’re pulling back because it’s easier than staying in the middle of something hard. I know that move.” My thumb traced over her knuckles. “I’m asking you not to make it tonight. Not with me.”

She sat with my words for a long moment. I could feel her working through it, the pull between the instinct to retreat and the part of her that didn’t want to. I waited. I’d learned to wait for her.

“Okay,” she said finally. Soft, a little rough around the edges.

I brought her hand up and pressed my mouth to her knuckles. “Stay.”

She leaned sideways and put her head on my shoulder. I brought my arm around her and we sat like that for a while, the kitchen light still on, neither of us moving. I felt her breathing slow and even out against me. Not asleep. Just present, letting herself be held without managing it.

After a while she lifted her head and our eyes met. Hers tired and honest and full of something she hadn’t said yet. I knew the shape of it. I was carrying the same thing.

I kissed her.

Not urgently. This was slow and deliberate and quiet. My hand coming up to her jaw, my thumb at her cheekbone, the soft unhurried press of it. She made a small sound against my mouth and leaned into me, her hand finding my chest, and I kissed her like she was something I was allowed to have. Like we had all the time we needed.

“Come to bed,” I said against her mouth before pulling her up with me.

Leaving the dishes, the pasta, the wine all for tomorrow, we went to my bedroom.

It was different than it had ever been.

Not desperate, not urgent. No frustration underneath it, no nine days of distance driving it. Just the two of us in the low light of my room, taking our time with each other because the time was ours, and how we felt about each other was out there. Well, almost. I undressed her slowly, my hands slowly pushing up her T-shirt, every inch of her revealed like a gift. She did the same to me. Her palms flat against my chest, my shoulders, tracing me in a quiet way she’d never quite spent as much time on.

I laid her down and stayed over her, taking my time. I kissed her throat until she tilted her head back and made a soft sound into the dark. Then, her collarbone where the skate necklace sat, the curve of her shoulder, the inside of her wrist where the bracelet glistened in the low light. I pressed my mouth there too, felt her pulse against my lips, steady and quick. She had her hands in my hair, fingers gripping at my scalp, and her eyes closed and her whole body open to me. Not urgent, trusting, warm…and mine.

I worked my way down her body without rushing any of it. Her ribs, the soft skin of her stomach, the inside of her thighs. I felt her breath change as I moved lower, felt her fingers tighten in my hair.

“Ryan.” Not a command. Just my name, on a breath, broken in the middle, and it stirred up my need for her even more and my cock was now painfully hard.

I settled between her thighs and took my time there too, reading her the way I had learned to over the last several months. I used my mouth on her, taking in how delicious she smelled, reading every sound she made, every shift of her hips, the way her breath caught when I found the spot that made her go tight and quiet. I worked her with my tongue and then with my fingers, two of them, curling into her while I kept my mouth on her clit, unhurried, drawing it out because we had the time and I wanted to feel her come apart against my mouth. When she did, it was quiet, the way everything was tonight—her whole body arching up off the bed, one hand pressing the back of my head and holding me there, the other fisting in the sheets, her thighs trembling around me. I stayed with her through all of it, gentled her down, and didn’t stop until she was pulling me up the length of her body to her mouth where I kissed her with all the feelings I’d been holding back. The ones she deserved to hear.

I settled over her and met her eyes. Steady and open and dark, full of the thing neither of us had said yet. I could feel it between us like a held breath but I didn’t let it out.

Then I moved slowly. Her legs open for me, she wrapped around me and met me the same way. I entered her and she gasped, pulling me closer and as I rocked into her, we found a rhythm equally unhurried, feeling each other fully. No pace to chase, no edge to find. Just the warmth of her, the softness of her skin against mine, her hands moving over my back like she was trying to memorize me. My forehead dropped to hers. Her legs pulled me deeper. I said her name once, low and quiet, not as a command, just because it was all I could think of.

She turned her face into my jaw. “Don’t stop,” she breathed. “Don’t stop, don’t stop⁠—”

I held her tighter, one hand sliding up to fist in her hair, and she went pliant the second I did it, her whole body giving itself over the moment I took hold of her, breath going shallow, like it was a relief to stop being in charge of anything. I used it. Pulled her head back just enough to get at her throat, set my teeth against the spot under her jaw that made her gasp, and drove into her slow and deep and deliberate until she was shaking with it.

“You’re so wet, baby,” I growled in her ear. “You take me so good.” Her pussy clenched as I praised her, and I kept my pace, slow, deep, driving into her. “You like it when I pull your hair and fuck your tight pussy, don’t you?” She loved when I said filthy things to her and it spurred us both on