“I’m not sure I can stand yet.”
“I’m not sure I can either,” Niklas chuckled. “I came so hard I think I short-circuited some of my brain.”
I leaned back onto him and smiled. “Good thing you don’t need much of it for hockey, right?”
Niklas bit my neck just hard enough to make me yelp. “What do you know about hockey?”
His hands slid around my ribcage, and he lifted me off him. Slowly, he stood up, wincing as he braced himself on the shower ledge. I frowned, registering his pain.
“You had surgery on your knee,” I said. “I forgot.”
Niklas shook his head.
“I can’t feel a thing in the surgery knee,” he said. “It’s the other one that hurts.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You should be…I don’t know, saving your knee for hockey?”
Niklas snorted. “Are you kidding? I’m thinking I need to quit hockey so I can save my knee for more sex with you.”
I laughed as I stepped into the stream of water one more time. I slicked my hair back with my hands and then leaned against the shower glass to watch. Niklas turned his face into the water and rubbed it, his biceps flexing with each stroke. He grabbed the soap and washed his body, starting from the top down. The muscles in his stomach flexed into relief as he shifted. He stopped washing, mid-stroke, and looked up at me. He smiled, but there was a hint of sadness in it.
“I meant what I said before. I’m yours.” He bent down and kissed my forehead. “All this with Bauer and not knowing what will happen next with us—it’s tearing me up.”
I rested my cheek against his wet, hard chest, still radiating heat.
“Let’s get dressed and find something to eat,” he said before I had a chance to reply.
He left me alone in the bathroom to dry off, and by the time I stepped into the bedroom, he had already headed upstairs. I dressed slowly, trying to make sense of what happened in the shower. The side of Niklas I had seen out on the ice was the same person who wanted me on my knees, under him.
Brad’s words kept coming back to me.If you like to be roughed up a little, you should have said so.
No, Brad hadn’t gotten it right. I wasn’t interested in a relationship where I felt any threat of harm. Niklas’s drive seemed to be about winning, about being the best. And if that drive came out in the bedroom? Well, I certainly didn’t have complaints there. He thrived on those moments of control, but not at my expense. Just the opposite, in fact. The part I struggled with lay in myself, not Niklas. Did I like giving control to him? Everything in my rational brain protested.
I pulled on a t-shirt and headed back into the bathroom. I found my brush and ran it through my long, dark hair, staring at my reflection. I had spent the last winter coming to terms with the idea that I was not content to sit back and let Brad’s life steer my own. Now, six months later, I found myself in the middle of the most intense relationship I had ever had. With a man who had a dominant streak at our most intimate times. What was I looking for?
I put away my brush and left the steamy bathroom. I walked up the stairs and found Niklas in the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge.
“I thought we could make something to eat,” he said, glancing back at me. “I should have everything for burgers and a salad.”
He grabbed a few vegetables and piled them on the counter.
“So how does this work with your housekeeper shopping for you? She just guesses what you’d like to eat?”
Niklas pulled out the burger meat and placed it on the island, along with eggs, butter, an onion and breadcrumbs.
“Sort of,” he said. “She buys food for a couple meals, gives me a menu, and if I don’t use it all, she makes the rest into a meal.”
“Hmm…sounds like a dream girl.”
He paused, glowering at me for a moment, before he turned back to the refrigerator. I picked up the onion from the island counter.
“Want me to do something with this?” I asked.
Niklas picked up his phone and scrolled.
“It says you’re supposed to mince the onion.” He smiled up at me. “Whatever that means.”
My knowledge in the area was more theory than practice, but I nodded. “Got it.”
