Page 65 of Offside

A blush crept over her cheeks and all it did was spur me on.

“Okay,” she said, from somewhere above me. Her voice was wrecked. “Okay. I need⁠—”

“Bedroom,” I said.

“Yes. Bedroom. Now.”

I picked her up because it was the fastest way to get her there. She wrapped her legs around me and laughed into my shoulder, bright and startled, and I carried her down the hall, leaving all her clothes on the floor by the windows.

The bedroom was dark, city light coming in low through the blinds, and I laid her down and took a moment I hadn’t planned to take—just looking at her. Hair loose across my pillow. Eyes dark and soft, still catching her breath from the window, watching me with an expression that made rational thought difficult.

She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever had in my bed. I was aware of that with a clarity that sat low and certain and didn’t leave any room for pretending otherwise.

I came down over her slowly, bracing my weight on my forearms, and she reached up immediately—both hands, one at my jaw, one sliding into my hair—and pulled my mouth to hers. She kissed me like she’d been thinking about it. Like she had opinions about exactly how this was going to go. I kissed her back and the sound of her exhale against my mouth hit me low and hard—not just want, which I’d been managing since she ran into me, but the clear understanding that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. We were adults now. Whatever had kept us apart before didn’t matter anymore. This was what mattered.

She tugged at my waistband.

“Off,” she said against my mouth.

I got my jeans and boxers off and came back to her and when my weight settled between her thighs she made a sound—low, involuntary, completely unguarded—that went straight through me and landed somewhere I was going to be feeling for days. Her hips lifted slightly, involuntary, chasing a pressure she hadn’t asked for out loud, and I had to press my forehead to her shoulder for a second just to get my bearings.

She felt like everything I’d been not thinking about for nine years.

I ran my hands over her slowly. Her collarbones, the curve of her waist, the soft skin of her stomach. I wanted to know all of it. I pressed my mouth to her throat and felt her pulse jump under my lips and felt my own pulse answer.

“Ryan.” Her voice was lower than usual.

“I’ve got you,” I said against her skin. “Tell me what you want.”

A beat. I felt her pause—the half-second of held breath before she said it—and I didn’t know who had taught her to swallow what she wanted instead of asking for it. But whoever that was had lost her. That was their problem now. She was in my bed. She was mine. And I was going to make sure she never hesitated again.

Then she looked at me directly.

“Don’t be gentle with me,” she said. Her voice was steady. “I don’t want gentle. I want—” She stopped. Started again. “I want you to just take me. I want to not be in charge of anything today.”

The room was very quiet.

She’d said it out loud and she wasn’t flinching and she was waiting to see what I did with it.

Did I want to?

I’d been holding myself in check since the second she walked into the building. Hell, from the second I met her. Measured, careful, letting her set the pace because that was what she’d needed and I’d known it. Underneath that—underneath every quiet moment and every restrained touch—was the version of me that had wanted to press her against every available surface since the first time she looked at me like she knew exactly what I was thinking.

So yes. I wanted to.

“You don’t have to be in charge of anything. You’re mine. And I take care of what’s mine.”

I watched the tension leave her body all at once.

Before settling over her, I grabbed a condom.

I kissed down her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her breast, taking my time even though every nerve I had was telling me to stop taking my time. I took her nipple into my mouth and she arched into it with a sharp inhale and gripped my hair hard and the pull of it went straight through me and I had to breathe through it carefully. I gave her the other side and she made a sound that was low and broken and I filed it away with everything else I was learning about her—what she responded to, what made her grip tighten, what made her say my name like that.

When I finally settled between her thighs she was warm and slick against me and I felt it everywhere. I was so hard it was a physical effort to hold still.

“Look at me,” I said.

She did. Eyes dark, lips parted, chest rising and falling fast. Maren bit her lower lip then a devilish grin graced formed.