“You okay?” I murmur.
She turns toward me, pressing her forehead to mine.
“I’m perfect,” she whispers.
From there, time stops making sense.
We doze. We wake up. We talk about everything and nothing.
She tells me about a stupid childhood superstition she had about the rink lights. I tell her about the time Adrian dragged me out of bed at three a.m. because he was convinced he’d cursed the team with a bad playlist. We talk about her dad’s laugh, the way it sounded different today. We talk about the next game, and the fact that for once, the only thing I care about on the line is the chance to skate out there with her in the stands.
Every time the conversation lulls, it shifts—back to mouths, to hands, to heat.
The second time, she surprises me. She rolls me onto my back and swings a leg over my hips, settling on top with a slow, deliberate confidence that knocks the air out of me. She's a dark silhouette against the ceiling light, her muscles flexing beautifully as she adjusts to straddle me. Her hair falls forward, a curtain around our faces, and the subtle scent of her shampoo and skin fills the small space. She braces her hands on my chest, a triumphant weight, and then sinks down, watching my face the whole time, her eyes dark and possessive. She's magnificent above me, a goddess claiming her territory, and I feel a primal, overwhelming need to claim her back.
“Bossy,” I manage, fingers digging into her hips, loving the view of her above me, powerful and free.
“Learning from the best,” she pants, moving in a rhythm that’s going to spoil me for the rest of my life. “You said I’m not somebody’s damage report, remember?” She leans down until our noses brush. “Let me be yours.”
“You already are,” I say, and whatever she hears in my voice makes her shiver.
My hands leave her hips and slide up her sides, tracing the curve of her ribs until my fingers brush against the soft underside of her breasts. The moan she lets out is sharp, a caught breath that tells me exactly what she wants. I cup her fully, my thumbs sweeping over the hard points of her nipples. The feeling is electric, a jolt of pure, raw desire that makes her pace quicken. When the tension becomes too much, an agonizing coil in my lower abdomen, I pull my hands away from her chest, my fingers digging hard into the soft flesh of her hips to anchor her.
"Enough," I manage, the word a choked plea. I shift, a small, violent motion that raises me an inch, and begin to thrust up into her, matching her demanding rhythm with a fierce urgency that makes her head fall back in a silent scream.
If I believed in religion, this would be the part where I lose it.
Somewhere between the dark of night and the gray of morning, the urgency bleeds out, leaving something softer in its place. We don’t even fully undress again, just end up tangled and half-dressed and full of each other, the room smelling like sweat and soap and us.
By the time we finally stop, my muscles are heavy with the good kind of exhaustion. The static in my head is gone. The only thing humming is the steady, slow beat of her heart under my palm.
She’s tucked into my side, one leg thrown over mine, fingers absentmindedly tracing the scar along my rib. The sheet is a disaster. The clock on the nightstand is just a blur of red numbers I’m not interested in reading.
“You know this is insane,” she mumbles into my chest. “We’re going to be useless tomorrow.”
“Worth it,” I say.
She huffs a quiet laugh. “You say that now. Wait until Zoë decides we all need to ‘process’ and shows up with a Google doc and a whiteboard.”
I groan. “I’ll just never leave this bed.”
Her fingers still. Then they slide higher, resting flat over my heart.
“Promise?” she asks.
It’s half joke, half serious. I treat it like the second half.
“Promise,” I say. “You’re stuck with me, Addison.”
“Good,” she whispers. “Because I love you, too, and I am way too tired to break in another goalie.”
I laugh, the sound scraping out of me, raw and ridiculous. It feels like the first real laugh I’ve had in months.
“Terrible,” I say. “Your taste is terrible.”
She tilts her head back to look up at me, eyes heavy, mouth soft. “My taste is perfect,” she says. “I picked you, didn’t I?”
I don’t have anything better than that.
