Chapter Twenty #2
I get her shirt off in one motion and step back far enough to look at her, hair wild from my hands, lips swollen, chest rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths, the tattoo on her shoulder catching the light.
My gaze moves over her with the same attention I give a pitch sequence.
It’s thorough, deliberate, and nothing missed.
“Reece.” My name in her mouth sounds like a demand.
“I’m looking.”
“Look faster.”
I laugh, low and rough, and pull her back in.
My mouth moves down her throat, teeth grazing the pulse point, feeling it spike under my lips.
She tilts her head back automatically, giving me access, and I take every inch of it, dragging my mouth along her collarbone and shoulder, biting softly at the curve of her neck until she makes a sound that tightens every muscle in my body.
Her bra goes—I don’t remember unclasping it—and I cup her in both hands and drag my thumbs over her slowly, watching her face, cataloging every flicker. Her breath breaks on the third pass. Her hands come up to grip my forearms, and her nails press in.
“More,” she says.
I lower my head and give her more.
By the time I work my way down her stomach, she’s stopped trying to stay still, hips shifting with a restlessness she isn’t hiding, fingers threading through my hair. I get her panties down and off with less patience than I intended. No apologies.
I hold her thighs apart and look at her.
Really look.
Flushed, open eyes, dark and completely unguarded, watching me with an intensity that matches everything I feel.
She trusts me with all of it. Every wall she owns, and there are many, and I know every single one by now, all of them down. All of them gone.
Something slow and certain moves through my chest. Not ego, not the particular heat of winning something, it’s deeper than that—the feeling of being chosen by someone who is extremely careful about who she chooses.
Mine because she decides.
I lower my head and take my time.
Deliberately slow. Primal doesn’t mean careless, it means focused and chosen.
I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t rush it.
My tongue moves against Ava in long, unhurried strokes, learning the rhythm of her responses, adjusting with each sound she makes.
She’s extraordinarily responsive, and I am paying attention, the way I pay attention to nothing else on earth.
Her thighs tighten around my head.
Her hands grip my hair.
“Reece.”
I slide two fingers inside her without stopping what my mouth is doing, feeling her arch sharply off the counter. She’s warm, tight, absolutely perfect, and the sound she makes at the intrusion goes straight through me.
I curl my fingers.
“God …” The word dissolves into something wordless.
I work her with both hands and my mouth, building pressure in steady increments, pulling reactions from her body with the patience of someone who has nowhere else to be and nothing else worth doing.
Her breathing turns ragged. Her hips are rolling against my face with an abandon she isn’t managing anymore.
“Don’t stop,” she breathes out.
I have no intention of stopping.
I add a third finger, slow and careful, feeling her stretch around them, feeling the change in her sounds when I do. Her back arches fully off the counter. My free hand presses flat against her stomach, holding her in place, and she trembles under the pressure of it.
“Reece, I’m…”
“I know.” I lift my head just enough to speak against her skin. “Let go.”
She breaks on a sharp cry, clenching around my fingers, hips bucking hard against my hand.
I keep working her through it, drawing out every wave, watching her come apart with the focused satisfaction of a man who has wanted this specific sight for a long time and is not rushing past a single second of it.
She’s still trembling when I rise back over her.
Her eyes find mine—dark, dazed, blown wide.
“I need you,” I admit, and my voice comes out tight with the effort of holding back while every part of me is done holding anything.
Her legs wrap around my waist in answer. “Then stop holding back.”
The last thread snaps.
I push forward in one deep, claiming stroke and bury myself inside her completely. The connection hits me like a physical blow, heat, pressure, and a rightness so overwhelming I stop moving for a full second, forehead dropping to hers, breathing through it.
She gasps. Her legs lock tighter. “Move,” she says against my mouth.
I move.
Hard. Purposeful. Nothing held in reserve.
Every thrust drives forward with the weight of everything I’ve been carrying for months—the restraint, the distance, the careful management of how much I let myself want her.
No management now. No performance. Every movement is raw, honest, and says plainly what I haven’t managed to say in words yet.
No more hiding.
No more waiting.
Her teeth find my shoulder, sharp enough to make me hiss, sharp enough to leave a mark, and the small violence of it feeds something urgent under my skin. I grip her hips tighter and drive into her with steady force, feeling her rise to meet me, feeling the counter flex under the pressure of us.
“You feel that?” I ask, voice rough against her ear.
“Yes.” That single word is breathless.
“Every time I walk away from this building and think I’m fine.” I thrust forward, deep and deliberate. “I’m not fine.”
She makes a sound that isn’t words.
“Haven’t been fine since the first time you told me no.”
Her nails rake down my back.
I slide my hand between us, fingers finding the spot I mapped thoroughly sixty seconds ago, and feel her whole body jerk in response. I work her with my thumb in slow, precise circles and watch her face come undone, mouth dropping open, eyes losing focus, breaths arriving in short, choppy bursts.
“Look at me,” I say.
Her eyes find mine with visible effort.
I hold her gaze while I push her back over the edge, watching the exact moment she loses it, watching pleasure move through her features in a wave I put there, watching her completely unguarded, completely present, and completely mine in the only way that matters.
It breaks something open in my chest. I follow Ava over without any attempt at control, driving deep one final time and holding there as release tears through me, fierce, consuming, and obliterating every thought I’ve had in the last four hours that wasn’t her name.
My forehead drops to her shoulder.
The world shrinks to breath.
The weight of her arms comes around me and pulls me close.
When the edges return, I don’t move. I stay inside Ava, one hand splayed flat against her back, breathing her in, feeling her chest rise and fall against mine in a gradual slowing rhythm.
“You’re not a secret,” I say into the curve of her neck, low, but steady.
Her hand cups the back of my head. Her thumb traces a slow arc.
“Good,” she says.
That one word lands everywhere at once.
Afterward, we stay tangled together on the kitchen floor, which is not how I expected the evening to end up geographically, but neither of us has had any interest in moving, and the floor is hardwood and warm, and Ava’s head is on my chest, so I have no complaints.
Her legs are hooked over mine. Her heartbeat is slowing steadily against my ribs, matching mine beat by beat, settling toward something comfortable and easy.
The speaker is still going in the background. She never turned it off.
“I take it the game went well,” she says eventually. Her voice is soft and slightly rough, the way it gets when she’s been quiet for a while.
“We won.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She props herself up on one elbow and looks at me with the particular expression she gets when she’s choosing her words deliberately. “I mean the other game. The one you’ve been pitching for the past three months.”
I look at her. The kitchen light is dim from here, casting everything in warm amber. Her hair is loose around her face, she has ink on her forearm, and she’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
“I found it again,” I say.
“I know. I watched the whole thing.” Her eyes search mine. “The first pitch was off.”
“Yes.”
“You stepped off the mound.”
“Yes.”
“And then you looked up,” she says it quietly, like she’s still processing what it meant to be the thing someone looked for.
“You were there.” I brush a strand of hair from her face. “You were in the seat, sure you had your cap on but no disguise, no contingency plan. You put your name on the list, Ava.”
She holds my gaze. “I did.”
“That was the loudest thing anyone has ever said to me from the stands. And I’ve had fifty-two thousand people chanting my name.”
The corner of her mouth curves. Not the polished, controlled smile she uses in public. The real one. “You’re saying I outperformed fifty-two thousand fans?”
“By a significant margin.”
She laughs, and the sound moves through her chest and into mine. I pull her closer, and she comes without resistance, settling her cheek back over my heartbeat.
We’re quiet for a moment. The speaker shifts to something with a slower tempo.
“What are you going to say tomorrow?” she asks.
I’ve been thinking about this since Coach Bishop walked away from my locker. I’m done rehearsing anything, but will think through the architecture, what it needs to contain, and what it doesn’t.
“The truth.”
“All of it?”
“Enough of it. Your name. That we’re together, that it’s not a rumor, and it’s not going away.” I feel her inhale slowly against my chest. “Nothing more than that. The rest is ours.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “And if they don’t like it?”
“Then they’ll learn to.”
“Reece.” My name comes out as a gentle warning. “Your contract negotiations are in three months. Management already has opinions. My dad is going to be sitting three feet away from you.”
“I know.”
“You’re not worried?”