Page 55 of Offside

He pushed inside me slowly, and I exhaled against his throat, my hands gripping his shoulders, and he went still with his forehead pressed to mine. A long moment. His breath came out slow and uneven, and he spoke low against my skin, not to me exactly, more like something that had gotten out before he could stop it.

“Min.” It sounded like mine.

I heard it. Felt it move through me in the ether below thought because I surely couldn’t think at all. I didn’t say anything, just tightened my arms around him and pulled him closer, and then he started to move.

I understood what I’d been waiting for since August.

He hooked my leg over his hip and when the angle shifted I made yet another undignified sound and I did not care at all. He was hard and certain and present, fully, without distraction. The fullness of him, the delicious stretch as he filled me was otherworldly. “Oh, fuck, Ryan.” My eyes rolled to the ceiling as the feel of him inside me took over most of my senses.

“Look at me, baby,” he said, low.

I brought my gaze back to his face and held his as I watched the restraint he usually kept over himself come entirely apart.

“Där är du,” he said. “There you are.” Like he’d been waiting for exactly that.

He thrust into me, our heavy breaths in sync.

“More,” I said. “Don’t stop.”

His voice was rough at the edges. “Tell me how you like it, Maren. Tell me how to fuck you so you never forget this night.”

“More,” I whispered again, using my legs to bring him as deep inside me as I could.

He searched my eyes with his and nodded. One thrust. Harder than before. Then another. So fucking good. I licked his bottom lip as he hovered above me and then it happened.

“Harder,” I said. “Yes! Don’t hold back.”

He gave me everything I asked for and more, and I took it and asked for it again. He moved with that same deliberate focus he had on the ice. Reading me, adjusting, not rushing, not letting the want overtake the attention he was paying to me, and I stopped holding anything back. I told him what I wanted in terms I’d never used with anyone, and his response each time was to give me exactly that, and more.

When I came the third time, it hit differently than the others. Not sharp and sudden but deep and rolling, a slow crest that built until I couldn’t tell where it started and couldn’t find the end of it, my back off the mattress and his arm holding me, his hand between us working me through it, his mouth at my throat saying my name against the thin sheen of sweat between us. He followed me a moment later with his forehead pressed to mine and his breath gone completely and something low in Swedish I couldn’t parse but understood anyway. The tone of it, the roughness, the way it came out like he hadn’t planned to say it all.

I lay with my arms still around him while the room came back into focus. The lamp. The ceiling. The sound of my own breathing slowing down.

The lamp was still on. I had no idea what time it was.

Ryan came back from the bathroom and I went, and when I came back he was lying on his back with his arm out for me and I curled into his shoulder without discussion, like we’d been doing this for years.

He had a purplish mark on his collarbone I was fairly sure I was responsible for and felt no guilt about whatsoever. His hair was completely wrecked. He looked, otherwise, entirely composed, which was objectively unfair and also extremely him.

I reached up and traced the scar through his left eyebrow with my thumb. He went still under the touch.

“High stick,” I said.

“You read my file.”

“I’m thorough.”

He turned his head to look at me, wearing the quiet settled expression I’d been learning to read. “How’s the assessment?”

I considered this. “The tissue mobility is excellent,” I said. “Strength metrics are very strong. Overall prognosis—” I paused. “Very favorable.”

He smiled, brief, real, gone again before I could quite catch it. “Good to hear.”

His hand found my hip and he pulled me closer, his thumb moving slow against my skin.

“You’re addictive,” he said into my hair. Not a compliment. An observation.

I absorbed that for a moment, lying in the warmth of him with the lamp on and the house quiet around us. I thought about the parking lot and the phone call, and the way he’d looked at me at the foot of the bed with the restraint entirely gone, and min said low against my skin.