Page 67 of Offside

She doesn’t know yet, I thought. She thinks this is something we’re still figuring out. She doesn’t know I decided the second she opened that door wearing my college sweatshirt.

She was going to find out.

I slid my free hand between us and found her clit and felt her whole body jolt.

“Ryan—”

“Look at me,” I said. “Keep your eyes on me. Let go, baby. Come for me. Come around my cock.”

She came apart with her eyes locked on mine—shaking, gasping, my name breaking apart in her mouth, her whole body arching into mine. I worked her through every second of it—my hand and my hips and my mouth at her throat—until she was trembling and boneless and the grip on the headboard had gone slack.

I let myself go moments after. Both hands braced, her name the only coherent thought left in my head, everything else burning off at once. It hit me harder than I expected and I understood with complete clarity, forehead dropped to hers, still breathing hard, that this had never been just want.

It had always been her. I’d been scared enough to walk away from her the first time and I was never doing it again.

After we cleaned up, we lay there in the dark. The city hummed outside, indifferent and lit up and entirely irrelevant.

After a while she stirred, casting a look toward the bedroom door. Her clothes were in the living room. It was a long walk.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked back at me, a satisfied, lazy smile on her face.

I got up, pulled open the top drawer of my dresser, and tossed her a T-shirt. She caught it and held it up—gray, Minnesota Hockey, worn soft—and then she smiled at me.

She pulled it over her head—it hit her mid-thigh—and looked down at herself, then back up at me.

“Just so you know,” she said, completely serious, “I’m keeping this.”

“I know,” I said.

“And the next time you come over,” she continued, “I’m answering the door in it.”

I looked at her sitting in my bed in my shirt with her hair wrecked and her eyes bright and her mouth fighting a real smile she hadn’t decided to give me yet.

“Is that a threat?” I asked.

“It’s a promise.” She tilted her head. “We both know how that ends.”

I reached over and pulled her back down onto the bed and she laughed—bright and startled and completely real—and I kissed her once, slow, with my hand in her hair.

“Then you better keep it,” I said against her mouth.

CHAPTER 14

MAREN

Two weeks later, Dom knocked on my open office door. “Package for you. Courier.”

The box arrived at eleven-fifteen on a Tuesday.

I knew it was from him before I opened it. No return address, my name on the label in clean block letters, and the box itself was matte black with a ribbon the color of burnt orange. Sidewinders orange, which was a statement, and with Ryan Lindqvist I was starting to understand nothing was a coincidence.

“Thanks.” I waited until his footsteps had faded down the hall.

Inside, folded in black tissue, was the most beautiful lingerie I had ever held in my hands. A bralette and matching underwear in dark black silk and lace, simple and expensive, the fabric so good it didn’t need decoration. I turned the bralette over, the weight of it in my hands, and thought about how much he paid attention. Not to what was flashy but to what was good.

There was a card tucked under the tissue. Stark white stock, his handwriting. Clean block letters, the same as the label.