Chapter 30
thirty
MIKE
I tip my head back, water streaming into my eyes.
The place echoes with that particular late-night emptiness—just me, the night janitor who’s definitely asleep in his office by now, and whatever tortured souls haunt D-I facilities.
Probably some poor freshman who died doing his five-hundredth burpee.
Great. A ghost who’ll critique my form.
The locker room door creaks open, hinges protesting.
“Holy fuck,” I whisper. Maybe it really is Burpee Boy coming for revenge.
Silence stretches. I snort at my own paranoia and grab the shampoo, but then I hear those footsteps again. The bottle fumbles through my fingers, bouncing off the tile with a crack that echoes. I’m bending to retrieve it when my stall door swings wide.
Sophie.
Wearing nothing but determination and a towel.
“What are you?—”
She hangs the towel on the door hook with the same focus she brings to clinical rotation, then steps into the spray.
Water darkens her blonde hair instantly, creating rivulets that trace her collarbone, the valley between her breasts, the gentle curve of her hip. My exhausted brain fires back online.
“Hi,” she says, casual as a Sunday morning coffee run.
“Sophie—” The word comes out strangled as she wraps her arms around me.
“You texted that you’d be at the gym late.” Her fingertips find my abs. “So…”
“Consider me surprised.” My voice drops an octave. “How did you even?—”
“I have my ways.” She rises onto her toes and kisses me. “Any complaints?”
Instead of answering, I walk her backward until tile meets shoulder blades. The kiss tastes of her cherry chapstick mixed with steam and something electric that sparks between us whenever we collide. She hums approval against my mouth, arms circling my neck, pulling herself higher against me.
“Missed you,” I murmur into her mouth.
“You literally saw me six hours ago.”
“Six hours too many.”
Her laugh bounces off the walls, amplified. “Ridiculous man.”
“Says the woman committing misdemeanor trespassing.”
“The door was unlocked. I?—”
I silence her legal defense with another kiss, fingers threading through wet strands while my other hand grips her hip. She catches my bottom lip between her teeth, applies just enough pressure to make me groan, then soothes the sting with her tongue.
This woman will be my complete undoing—before she can totally dominate me, I drop to my knees on unforgiving tile, hooking her leg over my shoulder in one smooth motion. I start slow, learning her with my tongue while she struggles for purchase on slick walls.
“Oh God—” Her hand flies to cover her mouth.
“Quiet, baby. Unless you want company.”
I focus on driving her higher and higher, reading every twitch and gasp. When I slide two fingers inside, her whole body bows—I curl them just right, finding that spot that makes her thighs shake while my tongue maintains steady pressure on her clit.
“Mike, please, I?—”
Her muscles lock, release, lock again as the orgasm rolls through her. I work her through each wave, adjusting pressure as she rides out the aftershocks. When I stand, knees protesting, she immediately crushes her mouth to mine. The hunger in her kiss makes my cock throb almost painfully.
“Inside me,” she pants against my lips. “Need you inside me now.”
“Sophie, I don’t have anything with me.”
Her hands frame my face, forcing eye contact. “Birth control. Tested. You?”
“Right before our first night. No one since.”
“Then I want to feel you.” Her smile turns tender. “Just you.”
Whoa.
“You’re sure?” I say.
To answer, she guides me to her entrance, already slick and ready. And the moment of first contact with nothing between us sends electricity racing up my spine, every nerve ending firing at once.
“Fuck.” The word escapes on an exhale.
“That’s the idea,” she says, but her voice wavers, betraying how affected she is.
I push forward slowly, watching emotions play across her face—pleasure, vulnerability, complete trust— and without barriers, every sensation multiplies. For the first time, I feel her heat, the perfect grip of her muscles, the way she pulses around me. I pause halfway, breathing hard, overwhelmed.
“OK?” she whispers, nails tracing my shoulders.
“You feel incredible. Give me a second or I’ll?—”
She deliberately clenches around me.
“Sophie.” Warning in my voice.
“Please move. Need you to move.”
I withdraw and thrust home. We both groan, too loud for discretion but beyond caring, and the angle has her gasping with each stroke. I lift her other leg, taking her full weight as I pin her to the wall. The new position draws a cry she barely muffles against my shoulder, and I drive deeper.
“Shh, Soph. Can’t get caught now.”
“Can’t—right there—oh?—”
She tightens around me, close already. I wedge a hand between us to circle her clit and that does it, her body locking around mine as pleasure wracks through her.
The sensation of her pulsing bare around me, the intimacy of nothing between us, sends me over.
I bury my face in her neck as I fill her.
Her breathless laugh vibrates against my chest.
“What?” I carefully lower her legs.
“Just thinking we’ve really redefined ‘gym recovery.’”
“Most effective cool-down I’ve ever had.”
“Your physical therapist might disagree.”
“Worth the lecture.” I brush wet hair from her face. “Another first for us.”
“I liked it.”
She reaches for body wash but surprises me by working it into a lather between her palms, then starting on my chest. No one’s ever washed me after sex, and the intimacy of it catches me off guard. Her hands work methodically, massaging sore muscles as she goes.
“I can do that,” I protest weakly.
“I know.” Her hands drift lower, ghosting over my spent cock. “I want to.”
She takes her time with each muscle group, fingers finding every knot. I groan as she works a particularly tight spot in my back, and when she finishes, arousal stirs again despite our recent activities.
“Sophie—”
“Mike.” She smiles, water sluicing around us. “I need to tell you something.”
My stomach drops. Those words are the preview to heartbreak. “OK…”
“I’ve been thinking. About us. About what this is.”
I shut off the water, grabbing towels. “And?”
“And I—” She stops, squares her shoulders. “Why is this so hard?”
“Hey.” I cup her face, tilting it up. “Whatever it is, tell me. Even if you’ve realized this was a mistake, or you need space, or?—”
“I love you.”
The words hang between us, almost visible in the steam. My brain stutters, processes, confirms she didn’t just end us after mind-blowing shower sex but delivered the opposite. The very opposite.
“Sophie—”
“I love you. Complete, terrifying, can’t-stop-thinking-about-you love.”
My chest feels too small, ribs threatening to crack from how hard my heart pounds. These words have lived in my throat for days, and here she stands, brave enough to speak them first in a locker room that smells of chlorine and old sweat.
“Say something,” she whispers. “You’re looking at me like I ran over your dog.”
I kiss her instead—not urgent like before but soft, reverent, trying to pour everything I feel through the connection. And when I pull back, we’re both shaking.
“I love you too,” I tell her. “Have for a while now. Been trying to figure out the perfect way to tell you.”
Her whole face transforms. “Really?”
“Really. I had this whole plan. Candles, actual food I cooked myself, maybe some music.”
“You can’t cook.”
“I was going to practice.” I pull her against me. “Now my very romantic plan has been completely derailed by you.”
She laughs into my chest. “In a men’s locker room that probably hasn’t been deep-cleaned in years.”
“Decades,” I retort.
We stand there wrapped in towels and each other while fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Somewhere in the building, a pipe clanks morse code. It’s the least romantic setting possible, and absolutely perfect.
“We should probably flee the scene,” she murmurs against my chest.
“Probably.”
By now, wet hair and goosebumps force action. We dress quickly—me in gym clothes, Sophie in jeans and my Pine Barren Hockey hoodie that she definitely stole last week. But I don’t mind, because on her it’s sexier than any lingerie.
“This is different now,” she says as I shoulder my bag. “Saying it out loud.”
“Different how?”
“More real? More terrifying?”
I think about it as we head for the exit. “I think it was already real.”
She laces our fingers together in the empty hallway. “When did you know?”
“That I loved you?” The memory surfaces easily. “The batting cages.”
“Your therapeutic technique of ‘violence against inanimate objects.’”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Your stubborn refusal to let me spiral worked.” She squeezes my hand. “Also your ass in those baseball pants.”
“My stellar personality means nothing?”
“That too, I suppose.”
“Stay over?” The thought of separating now feels wrong. “I’ll set an alarm, make coffee, pretend I know how to scramble eggs.”
“I have clinical at six…”
“I’ll set three alarms. And I have those protein bars you pretend you don’t eat half my stash of.”
“The chocolate-chip ones are barely protein bars.” She snorts. “They’re candy in disguise.”
“Which is why you’ve demolished my supply?”
She studies her car intently. “Someone’s got to save you from yourself.”
I crowd her against the driver’s door. “How generous.”
“I’m very generous.” The words come out breathy, promising.
“Careful. Security definitely has cameras out here.”
She glances around the empty lot, then back at me. “Everywhere?”
“Sophie. No.”
“I wasn’t suggesting anything…”
But her grin says otherwise, and I know I’m completely gone for this woman. This brilliant, stubborn, surprising woman who makes me want to be more than just the guy whose entire life used to be hockey.
“Get in the car,” I tell her. “Before I do something that’ll get us both expelled.”
“Promises, promises.”
She kisses me once more—quick but thorough—then slides into her car. As I watch her drive away, I realize everything feels sharper now, more real. The risk of it all terrifies me, but not enough to make me run.
Not from her. Never from her.