“Night, Havoc.”
“Night,” I murmur, clutching the sheet a little tighter.
His footsteps are heavy down my hallway, and when the front door closes, I blow out a breath of air.
The scariest thing of all this isn’t the mind-blowing sex, or the fact that I just slept with a former patient.
It’s wondering why I feel emptier now than I did before he touched me.
Chapter twelve
Throw me a fucking bone
Reid
Another week, another game I’m not dressed for. Skating drills I can handle. It’s the standing still that fucks with me.
I lean my forearms against the rink boards, watching the last few minutes of warm-up unfold in a blur of navy and burgundy jerseys. The puck snaps from Chase’s stick to Jake’s in a clean tape-to-tape pass. Logan goes five-hole on the backup goalie and grins like he’s just won the Cup.
They’re loose tonight. That’s good.
Coach Benson wants me back for playoffs—assuming we make it to the conference rounds. No fucking pressure or anything.
The knee’s held up so far. I’ve cleared contact, cleared drills, been skating for a few weeks without a setback. But games are adifferent beast, and I’m still benched. I’m now traveling with the team at least, but still sitting with the trainers and watching from the end of the bench like a glorified mascot.
I’ll take skating over nothing. I’ll take drills, tape, physio, late-night icing, even the endless fucking bike. I just want to be back in my crease again, protecting the line.
And sitting here thinking about that, accompanied by the fact that I haven’t heard from Carina since our night together, is driving me nuts.
It’s been a week since I had the best sex of my life, since she pulled me into her bed and told me to ruin her. A week since I did exactly that—and then stayed wrapped around her, holding her while she slept, listening to the quiet drag of her breath against my shoulder and pretending like it didn’t mean anything.
She hasn’t called or texted, not even a goddamn emoji. Nothing.
Unless you count the moment I passed her at the clinic. She was walking one way; I was walking the other. I clocked her before she even saw me—her hair was clipped up, and she had a coffee in one hand, a file in the other.
When she looked up, she didn’t even falter. Just gave me a perfectly polite once-over as though nothing had changed between us.
Except everything had.
“Hey, Reid,” she’d said, like she hadn’t begged me to spank her clit a few days earlier. “How’s the leg?”
I didn’t miss a beat. “Hey, Doc. How’s thestress?”
It landed because she paused for about half a second. Just enough for me to catch the twitch of her mouth and the flicker of something in her eyes before she brushed my arm and kept going.
And I let her go, even though every vessel in my bloodstream was screaming at me to follow her. I would’ve guided her back into her office, closed the door behind us, and reminded her exactly what we both agreed to up against the wall. Exactly how good I can make her feel and why she let go with me in the first place.
But I didn’t, because she hasn’t asked.
We made a deal. No strings, no expectations, just sex when we need some stress relief. Physical release, that’s it.
At the time, I agreed—and I meant it. But now, I’m stuck here on the goddamn bench thinking about it.
I can’t stop picturing the way she sounded when she begged me not to stop, and the way she gasped when I told her she didn’t get to be in charge. The way she let me have her, the way she trusted me enough to give her what she needed. The way her body melted against mine when I pulled her into my chest and told her to sleep, and especially the way she looked at me afterward, when I got up to go.
The silence. The unexplained ache behind her eyes.
And now I’m the one losing sleep, because I’ve told myself not to push. Told myself she’ll reach out when she wants more. And if she doesn’t… well, that was our deal.
