She held Mara tighter and said nothing and let the feeling fill her chest until it ached.
Outside the equipment room, the arena was emptying. Cleanup crews and the hum of the ice plant cycling down and the muffled voices of staff drifted in from the far corridors. The fluorescent light buzzed above them. The room carried rubber, disinfectant, sex, and Mara's hair, and Lex breathed it all in and thought about her father, dead for six years, who had brought her to this arena when she was nine and bought her a hot dog and told her she could be anything she wanted. What would he think of her now? Standing in a locker room post game, holding a woman twenty years older than her, having just played the best game of her life in the sport she'd devoted the last two years of her life to.
He would have liked Mara. He would have seen the steel underneath the composure and the warmth underneath the steel, and he would have leaned over to Lex and said, in his quiet Boston accent,That one's a keeper, kid.
Lex pressed her lips to Mara's temple one more time and whispered, "We should go before someone else comes looking."
Mara nodded against her chest but neither of them moved for another full minute, standing together in the bright, ugly light of the equipment room, holding on. The playoffs were three weeks away. Astoria's eyes would be everywhere. And the thing growing in Lex's chest had already outgrown every plan she'd made for keeping this simple.
19
The dream was vivid and slow and warm.
Mara was lying on a beach she didn't recognize, the sand hot beneath her back, the sun pressing down on her bare skin with a weight that was liquid and golden. The ocean was close. She could hear it, the rhythmic pull and retreat of the waves, and the sound matched a rhythm happening lower, between her legs, a mouth moving against her with a patience and focus that made her body arch off the sand.
She moaned. The sound was distant, muffled, belonging to someone asleep. The mouth between her legs was relentless and knowing, tongue tracing patterns she recognized, patterns her body had learned to respond to over the past week, and the pleasure was building in slow, concentric waves that radiated outward from her center through her thighs and her stomach and the backs of her knees.
The beach dissolved. The sand became sheets. The sun became the grey pre-dawn light filtering through her bedroom curtains. The ocean became the sound of her own breathing, ragged and shallow, and the mouth between her legs was real.
Mara surfaced from sleep with a gasp — not from novelty anymore, but from Lex's mouth being exactly as skilled as she'd come to expect. Her bedroom materialized around her in pieces: the ceiling fan turning slowly overhead, the framed coaching certifications on the wall, the nightstand with her reading glasses and the glass of water she'd set there before bed. Her own house. Phoenix Ridge.
And between her thighs, Lex's dark head moving with deliberate, unhurried focus.
Mara's hand found Lex's hair by instinct, fingers sliding into the thick waves, gripping without conscious thought. Lex made a low, approving sound against her and the vibration traveled through Mara's nerve endings like a current. The boundary between sleep and waking was still blurred, her mind foggy and her body sharp, every sensation amplified by the dreamlike transition from unconscious to conscious pleasure.
"Lex." Her voice was hoarse with sleep.
Lex didn't lift her head. Her tongue pressed flat, then circled, then pressed again, the rhythm steady and knowing. One hand was braced against Mara's inner thigh, holding her open. The other traveled lower, fingers tracing along slick skin, and then one finger pressed inside her and curled.
Mara's breath stopped.
The pressure was deep and focused. Lex's finger curved and pressed and the combination of her mouth on Mara's clit and the fullness inside her was overwhelming. Mara's hips bucked and a sound came out of her mouth that was raw and desperate.
"Is this okay?" Lex murmured against her.
"Yes." The word was barely audible. "Don't stop."
Lex didn't stop. Her tongue kept its rhythm and her finger worked in slow, curling strokes, and the dual sensation built fast and enormous, converging somewhere deep in her pelvis. Thepleasure spoke directly to her body in a language older than thought.
Then Lex's hand shifted. Her slick finger traced lower, past where it had been, and pressed gently against Mara's ass.
Mara's whole body went rigid. "Lex?—"
"Trust me." The words were warm against her clit. "Stay with me."
The pressure was slow and careful and nothing Mara had experienced before. Lex's finger eased inside and Mara's mouth fell open and no sound came out. The fullness was different from anything she knew. Deeper, more intimate.
A place no one had touched, and the vulnerability of it, the newness, sent a shockwave through her nervous system that rewired every sensation happening simultaneously. Lex's tongue on her clit. Lex's finger in this new, shocking place. The twin points of pleasure converging into something so intense Mara's vision blurred and her thoughts dissolved into white static.
"Oh God." Her voice didn't sound like hers. "Oh God, Lex."
Her hands twisted in the sheets. Her back arched off the mattress. The ceiling fan turned above her, lazy and indifferent, and from the corner Goldie snored softly, and outside the window a mockingbird was singing its first notes of the morning, and all of it was backdrop to the overwhelming thing happening between her legs. Her toes curled against Lex's shoulders and her thighs trembled and the orgasm hit her with a force that ripped a cry from her throat and left her shaking, her entire body seized, her vision white, her hands fisted in the sheets so hard the fitted corner pulled free from the mattress.
It went on longer than usual. Wave after wave, her body clenching and releasing, the aftershocks rolling through her in diminishing but relentless pulses. Lex's mouth went gentle through the last tremors, easing her down with soft, slow strokes until the trembling subsided and Mara was left bonelessand gasping against the pillows, her body humming with a satisfaction so complete it bordered on stupor.
Lex crawled up the bed and lay beside her, propping herself on one elbow. She was naked, her dark hair mussed and tangled, her mouth wet, her brown eyes warm with satisfaction and tenderness. The expression she wore only in private, only in these moments, when the cockiness and the bravado stripped away and what remained was the real Lex, the one who held Mara while she cried and whispered reassurances into her hair and looked at her like she was the most important thing in the world.
"You looked irresistible sleeping," Lex said. Her fingers drew slow circles on Mara's stomach. "I had to taste you."
