The Reporter
The locker room was crowded enough that professionalism required a little physical contact.
That was what I told myself, anyway.
Players occupied nearly every inch of the benches, peeling off equipment while reporters leaned around shoulder pads, hockey bags and one another.
Cameras stood in the middle of the narrow aisle.
Microphones extended over shoulders. Some oblivious radio host behind me kept shifting his freaking backpack into my hip every time he adjusted his stance.
He sat at his stall with his skates planted wide enough to obstruct the entire walkway.
As tall as he was, he just couldn’t help taking up space.
Even seated, even hunched slightly beneath the shelf above his head, he seemed too large for the room built around him.
His dark hair was damp and pushed back from his face, though one piece had already fallen over his forehead.
His jersey clung to the shoulder pads beneath it.
His hockey pants made his thighs look impossibly broad.
His equipment bag lay directly in front of me, blocking where I needed to stand to interview him.
I nudged it with the toe of my boot.
He looked down at the bag, then at the narrow strip of floor between us.
“You can come closer,” he said.
“I don’t want to trip over your bag.”
“Here,” he said.
He spread his knees.
I stepped between his knees.
His padded thighs framed my bare legs. The edge of my skirt stopped well above where his knees nearly touched me. I could feel heat coming off him, trapped beneath layers of damp equipment.
He looked up at me.
His expression was calm.
His eyes were not.
“Good?” he asked.
I blinked. “Good.”
I tucked my notebook under my arm and turned on the recorder before he could say anything else.
“Their power play had been dominant most of the first period,” I said. “What adjustment allowed you to disrupt them more consistently after that?”
“We closed the gap earlier.”
His hands moved to the hem of his jersey.
I kept my eyes on his face.
Mostly.
“We knew they wanted to carry the puck,” he continued. “So we stopped backing in and made them make a decision before they were comfortable.”
He pulled the jersey upward.
There was no reason for him to do it so slowly.
Players did not remove equipment with ceremony.
They dragged jerseys over their heads, threw shoulder pads onto hooks and got on with their evenings.
They did not pause with the fabric gathered beneath their chests.
They did not glance up through dark lashes to make sure one particular reporter was watching.
He did both.
The bottom of his undershirt lifted with the jersey, exposing a hard strip of stomach above his hockey pants.
He held it there for a beat.
Then he lowered the undershirt carefully before pulling the jersey over his head.
His hair fell forward.
He did not immediately fix it.
He dropped the jersey behind him and settled back against the stall, watching me process what I had just seen.
I tightened my grip on the recorder.
“So you forced them to dump it.”
“Yes.”
“And what made you confident you could win those retrievals?”
He reached beneath one arm and released the first strap of his shoulder pads.
“Our forwards came back hard,” he said. “The defense had support.”
The second strap came loose.
He rolled one shoulder, then the other, taking his time freeing each arm.
His elbow passed close to my waist.
Closer than necessary.
The hard curve of it grazed the side of my skirt.
“Sorry,” he said.
“You’re not.”
“No.”
The honesty nearly made my knees buckle.
He lifted the shoulder pads.
Again, deliberately slowly.
The motion pulled his undershirt high over his ribs. Sweat gleamed along the muscles in his stomach. He tilted his head enough to maneuver the equipment around the shelf, his body stretching upward in front of me.
He knew exactly what he was doing. I wasn’t stupid.
It was in the pace of it. The pause. The way he looked at me once the pads were above his head, his face half-shadowed by the bulk of them.
He dropped them behind him, too.
I realized I had stopped speaking.
He leaned back.
“Next question,” he prompted.
I tried to recover.
“You blocked a shot late in the second period that looked like it caught you high. Were you able to get your shoulder in front of it?”
He hooked his fingers under the bottom of his undershirt.
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
His mouth curved as he began pulling the shirt upward.
Unlike the jersey, this fabric clung to him.
It resisted at his chest. Dragged over his shoulders. Turned partly inside out against his arms. Every movement revealed him gradually, first his stomach, then his ribs, then the broad plane of his chest.
He could have ripped it over his head in one motion.
Instead, he made a performance of it. Freeing one arm. Then the other.
He lowered his chin as the shirt passed over his face. When he emerged, his hair was thoroughly disordered and his sweat-slicked skin shone faintly under the fluorescent lights.
He held the shirt in one hand.
Our eyes met.
He tossed the shirt behind him.
Bare-chested now, he rested his forearms on his thighs.
That brought his hands closer to my legs.
I noticed.
He noticed me noticing.
I raised the recorder toward him. “The blocked shot.”
“Yes.”
“Did it catch your shoulder?”
“Yes.”
“Any issue?”
“No.”
“That was useless.”
“Three direct answers.”
“None worth quoting.”
“Maybe you are distracted.”
His index finger touched the side of my calf.
Barely.
I held his gaze.
His finger remained there, resting against my skin as though it had landed accidentally.
Then it moved.
One slow stroke upward.
I breathed in through my nose.
“Distracted by what?” I asked.
He glanced down between us.
When he looked back up, his expression was innocent enough to be insulting.
“It’s loud in here.”
“Right.”
His fingertip reached my knee.
I did not move away.
The recorder captured the surrounding locker room. Voices. Zippers. The slamming of the cabinets on locker stalls.
It could not capture the way his hand made my entire body feel suddenly too warm.
“You’re still recording,” he said quietly.
“I’m still interviewing you.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Ask something.”
His fingers passed above my knee.
Just beneath the hem of my skirt.
I tightened my thighs instinctively.
The movement trapped his hand for half a second.
His eyes darkened.
I relaxed again.
“That was interesting,” he murmured.
Then his hand moved another inch beneath my skirt.
“What did you want to know?”
I had to search for the question.
“The third-period penalty kill,” I said. “They kept looking for the seam pass. What allowed you to take it away?”
“Positioning.”
His fingertips traced the inside of my thigh.
“Details,” I said.
“We kept our sticks inside.”
His hand rose higher.
“And?”
“We did not overcommit.”
His voice stayed calm.
Mine became less dependable.
“You’re overcommitting now.”
“Am I?”
He stopped immediately.
The teasing vanished from his expression.
His hand remained on my thigh, still well below the edge of my panties.
“Tell me,” he said.
The noise around us gave the moment privacy it would never have had in a quiet room.
Players shouted across the locker room. A television reporter laughed. Someone dragged a heavy equipment bag past the end of the aisle.
He waited.
“You’re not overcommitting,” I said, my voice wavering.
His gaze sharpened.
“That sounded uncertain.”
“I’m trying not to announce it to the room.”
A faint smile returned.
“What are you trying not to announce?”
I leaned closer under the pretense of moving the recorder toward him.
“That I want you to keep going.”
His jaw tightened. His thumb resumed its slow movement.
“Better,” he said.
His hand climbed until his fingertips reached the bottom of my panties.
He paused at the thin line of fabric.
I felt the question in the stillness.
The edge of his finger rested beneath the hem of my skirt, touching nothing I had not already permitted. He could have continued. He did not.
I looked down at him.
His face held none of the earlier teasing.
“Still?” he asked.
I nodded, suddenly unable to speak.
He pushed my panties to the side and moved his finger along my slit. No fabric between his skin and mine. Just the slow warmth of his finger against the bare skin at my hip.
My breath faltered.
His eyes stayed fixed on my face.
He drew his finger back and forth, tracing the skin. I parted my legs another inch and felt him against my opening, and the feeling caused my knee to buckle a little.
His other hand rose to my waist.
He steadied me.
From behind, it probably looked courteous.
A player keeping a reporter from stumbling over his skates.
“Still good?” he murmured.
I nodded.
His gaze held mine another second.
Then he continued.
Slowly.
Experimentally.
The tip of his finger circled around my opening, feeling how wet he had made me. He moved only a little at a time, pausing whenever my breathing changed. Testing. Waiting.
Seeing how far I would let him go.
I made myself ask another question.
“What did the bench say during the timeout?”
His eyebrows lifted.
He slipped the tip of his finger inside of me.
“Our coach told us to stay calm.”
“Did it work?”
“For some of us.”
His finger drifted farther inward.
Not far.
Enough.
I had to grip the recorder with both hands to keep it steady.
He noticed.
“You are holding that very tightly.”
“It’s expensive.”
“I wouldn’t want you to drop it.”
His thumb pressed against my clit while his finger inched further inside of me.
The two points of contact made my thoughts scatter.
Someone approached on my right.
His hand stilled.
I turned my head.
Another reporter leaned toward the player in the next stall, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed mine. He asked a question without glancing down.
His hand remained beneath my panties.
His expression shifted seamlessly into something neutral.
He looked past me toward the neighboring interview, as though waiting politely for the other reporter to stop talking.
Only the feeling of his thumb circling my clit betrayed him.