But my brain wasn't cooperating, and I was too tired and too far gone to keep fighting it.
The anonymous faces dissolved, replaced by dark hair and blue eyes and a mouth that curved like it was deciding how much trouble it wanted to cause.
Not him. Anyone but him.
Except my hand tightened on my cock and my hips rolled forward and it was already too late for that particular argument.
I reached up with my free hand and pinched my nipple, rolling it between my fingers, and a groan escaped before I could stop it. The sensation shot straight to my cock, made my hips jerk forward into my fist.
I thought about what it would feel like to have him this close without the gear between us. Without the rink. Without the fifteen reasons I kept reciting like a prayer. Just Hartley, warm and real.
“Fuck,” I muttered, the word swallowed by steam and running water.
I stroked faster, water beating against my back. My other hand moved from my chest down my body, past my hip, and I reached behind myself, pressing one finger against my hole with slow, deliberate pressure.
The sensation made my breath catch, made my cock throb in my fist. I pressed harder, breaching just slightly, and a low moan tore from my throat that I would've been embarrassed about if there'd been anyone to hear it.
There's not, I told myself.There's just this. Just get through this.
But my brain had stopped accepting instructions.
My finger pushed deeper.
I imagined getting my hands on him without the professional distance between us, without the whistle and the practice plan and the hundred mechanisms I'd built for exactly this reason. Imagined sliding my hands under that soft hoodie and finding warm skin underneath. The way his breath would change. The sounds he'd make when I touched him somewhere that wasn't about hockey.
I groaned, working my finger in and out, the angle desperate and imperfect and not even slightly enough.
I imagined him looking up at me with those eyes. Imagined him saying my name in that voice, notCoachbutGrant,the word stripped of all its professional distance, quiet and wrecked and needing.
My pulse hammered. My hand moved faster on my cock, matching the rhythm of my finger.
I added a second finger, stretching myself, and the burn mixed with pleasure until I couldn't separate them. My hand on my cock was almost frantic, chasing the pressure building at the base of my spine.
“Fuck, fuck—” I panted, forehead dropping against the tile.
I imagined him under me. Imagined the way he'd look at me after. Open in a way he never let himself be. Trusting in a way that cost him something to give.
Mine,some part of me thought, from somewhere past reason or professionalism or any of the good sense I was supposed to have.
The thought sent me over the edge.
I came hard, a guttural sound tearing from my chest as the pleasure slammed through me in waves. My knees buckled and I caught myself against the wall, hand still working my cock, fingers still buried in my ass, riding it out until I was shaking and oversensitive and completely, thoroughly wrecked.
For a few seconds there was nothing but running water and my ragged breathing and the aftershocks moving through my body like pressure releasing from something that had been sealed too long.
I pulled my fingers free and braced both hands against the wall.
This was bad. I couldn't afford to be attracted to him.
He was my player. I was his coach. That line existed for every reason I'd learned the hard way three years ago, and it hadn't moved, and it wasn't going to.
And I'd just gotten myself off to the thought of him saying my name.
I turned off the water and stood there dripping, staring at the tile, trying to locate the version of myself that had professional discipline and clear boundaries and a functional understanding of consequences.
That version of me had apparently taken the morning off along with my self-preservation instincts.
One moment of weakness, I told myself.One mental slip. It doesn't change anything.
