“His hands found the laces of her gown, fingers working with practiced skill. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he murmured against her throat. ‘So perfect.’”
The professional control in her voice makes it worse somehow. She’s reading every word of pure sin, articulated to perfection. Clinical precision wrapped around absolute filth.
My hand wraps around my cock, water streaming down my back as I close my eyes and pretend those words are meant for me.
“She arched into his touch, a soft moan escaping her lips as he traced his fingers along her collarbone, memorizing the silk of her skin.”
Christ. She actually moaned while she was saying that and I throb in painful response.
“‘I’ve wanted this since the moment I saw you,’ he confessed, his breath hot against her ear. ‘Every conversation, every stolen glance... you’ve been driving me mad.’”
The words hit too close to home. Way too close. Because that’s exactly what she’s done to me—every careful conversation, every time she looked away when I got too close, every polite rejection that just made me want her more.
“‘Show me,’ she whispered back. ‘Show me how much.’”
My grip tightens as her voice turns gravelly. Professional but breathless, like she knows exactly what effect she has.
“He pressed her harder against the door, his mouth claiming hers with desperate hunger. She tasted like wine and promises, like everything he’d been denied for so long.”
I’m moving faster now, thighs locked tight, water cascading over my shoulders as Golda’s voice fills every corner of my bathroom and my breath comes in harsh pants. Imagining it’s her pressed against my shower wall instead of some fictional lady. Her copper hair dark with steam, her hands fisted in my hair instead of some duke’s shirt.
“‘Please,’ she gasped against his lips. ‘I need?—’”
“‘I know what you need,’ he growled, and his voice was pure possession, pure male satisfaction at having her finally surrender.”
That’s it. I come harder than I have with any other woman recently, Golda’s voice washing over me as I imagine her saying those words to me, for me, because of me instead of strangers buying romance novels.
The aftermath hits immediately. I’m standing in my marble shower, having just gotten off to an audiobook narrated by awoman who won’t even have coffee with me. A woman who probably reads bedtime stories to her kids in that same voice.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
5
GOLDA
The drive homefrom the charity game feels endless. Tyson chatters excitedly from the backseat about sitting on the player bench, how cool the professional equipment looked, how the firefighters were “actually pretty good for guys who aren’t real hockey players.”
“Did you see Coach Dex’s face when they scored the first goal?” he asks. “He looked so surprised!”
Surprised. That’s one way to put it.
“I saw,” I manage, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter.
“Why do you think they lost so bad?” Blythe chimes in. “I thought professional players were supposed to be really good.”
“Sometimes people have off days,” I say carefully, the same explanation I’ve been giving myself for the past hour.
But it wasn’t just an off day, was it? It was something else entirely. The way Dex looked at me after I sang, like I’d surprised him somehow. The way he played afterward—distracted, unfocused, like his mind was somewhere else entirely.
Like maybe what I did had affected him.
The thought makes my stomach churn with guilt.
“Can we get ice cream?” Tyson asks as we pull into our driveway. “To celebrate me sitting with the real team?”
“It’s almost dinnertime,” I start, then catch sight of his hopeful face in the rearview mirror. After everything today, ice cream seems like the least I can do. “You know what? Sure. But just small ones.”
Their cheers fill the car, and for a moment I can pretend this is just a normal Saturday. That I didn’t just sing in front of hundreds of people. That a professional hockey player didn’t have some kind of breakdown that might have been related to me.
