This one hits even harder.
I gasp his name and come apart under him, another gush, another impossible wave of pleasure that leaves me shaking so hard I can barely breathe.
That does it for him. He buries himself deep and comes with a low, wrecked sound that feels dragged out of him against his will, hips jerking once, twice, then stilling as he empties inside me.
For a second neither of us moves.
Then everything collapses. He lowers us down together, still inside me, both of us breathing too hard, skin slick—overheated and wrecked. He doesn’t pull away. He just pulls me closer. One hand at the back of my neck, the other low on my back. Holding me there like there’s nowhere else to be.
I press my face into his chest. Breathe him in. Sweat. Soap. Sex. Him.
I’m trembling. Not delicately either. Full-body, humiliatingly obvious aftershock.
His hand moves once down my spine. Slow. Thoughtless. Like he’s not even aware he’s doing it. Which is somehow worse. Or better.
Probably worse.
I stare at his chest and try to understand the magnitude of what just happened. Two nights, lying in the dark thinking about this. Two nights of acting normal and the fact that every quiet moment in this suite felt loaded enough to catch fire.
And now I’m here, and his hand isn’t moving.
It would be easier if he moved.
He doesn’t.
I am in so much trouble.
Chapter thirteen
Jax
Game1ofRound2.
The Cyclones lose 4-1.
Three goals on me — two of them mine. The ghost showed up in the third period of a playoff game and I let it cost us.
The retaping between every stoppage, more deliberate each time. The ceiling stare between periods. High glove side, third goal, my hand flinches. Barely. Enough.
Nobody else sees it.
I know how to process a bad game.
Film review. Ice. Sleep. Come back. The architecture’s been built in since I was nineteen — same sequence every time, same order,same result. You run it until you understand it. You understand it and you move on.
The net doesn’t carry grudges. Neither do I.
What’s different tonight is the tunnel was empty. I didn’t know that was going to matter until it did.
I sit in the locker room after everyone’s gone.
Pads off. Jersey off. The specific quiet of a loss settling into the room around me like weather. I’ve sat in this quiet before. I know what it weighs.
Tonight it weighs more.
The game first. I run it.
The first goal — their left winger, clean shot, my positioning off by half a step. Correctable. The second — their center, redirected, nothing I could have done. Not mine.