4. Jessica
JESSICA
I wake up in a bed I didn't earn.
The sheets are soft—like, actually soft, not the thin scratchy kind from Target that pill after three washes. The mattress doesn't creak when I shift. The pillow smells clean.
Morning light filters through sheer curtains I didn't hang, warming the hardwood floor I didn't pay for, in a penthouse I have no right to be sleeping in.
And I don't feel guilty.
That's the thing sitting in my chest right now, heavier than gratitude or shame or any of the emotions I'm supposed to be feeling.
I'm lying here in Jordan Scott's guest bedroom—my bedroom, he called it last night, like the declaration made it mine—and instead of spiraling about what this means or how I got here or what happens when the charity runs out, I'm thinking about his hands.
The way they fit around my ribcage in the shower. The way his thumbs pressed into my hips like he was marking territory. The way he said "baby girl" with his mouth against my skin, the endearment rough and possessive and tender all at once, like he'd been calling me that for years instead of hours.
My body remembers. The sensitized ache in my breasts where his mouth was. The warmth between my legs that has nothing to do with pain and everything to do with want.
I'm not sore—I didn't have sex, despite what every nerve ending in my body was screaming for by the end. He touched me. He made me come. He tasted me and praised me and called me his good girl while I shattered in his hands.
But we stopped.
And now I'm lying here, fully awake, staring at the ceiling, testing the shape of a decision that formed somewhere in my sleep and woke up with me.
I want him.
Not his money. Not the penthouse or the safety or the way he showed up at my apartment like some billionaire hockey legend fairy godmother with better bone structure.
I want him. Jordan. The man who looked at my wet shirt and asked who got me pregnant with zero judgment in his voice, just that flat, protective fury that made my stomach flip.
The man who behaved like caring for me was a choice he made instead of an obligation he inherited when he married my mother for five minutes and never told anyone.
My mother.
I sit up, the sheets pooling around my waist. Erin Hamilton—well, Erin Scott for a hot second, apparently—who got married to a man seventeen years my senior and didn't mention it.
Who's currently in Europe doing whatever Erin does when she's not forgetting she has a daughter.
Who would lose her mind if she knew what I did in that shower last night.
What I'm about to do today.
The thought doesn't slow me down. It should.
I should be spiraling right now, running through every possible disaster scenario, every headline, every judgy look from every person who would call this wrong.
Inappropriate. Predatory, even, though that word sits so awkwardly against the reality of what happened I almost laugh.
Jordan didn't manipulate me. He showed up. He offered help. When I said no, he respected it. When I said yes, he delivered. And when his mouth was on my body and I was coming so hard I forgot my own name, the only thing he took from me was the orgasm I was already giving him.
I test the forbidden like pressing on a bruise.
Stepfather. Technically. Legally, maybe, depending on whether the marriage was annulled or dissolved or whatever rich people do when they decide a spouse was a bad investment.
He was married to my mother. That makes him my stepfather.
Society has a whole list of words for what we did last night, and none of them are sweet.
Then there's the age gap. Seventeen years. He's thirty-eight. I'm twenty-one. When I was in kindergarten, he was already in the NHL. The math is bad. The optics are worse.
And of course, the speed. I've known him for approximately twenty-four hours.
Less than a day. Yesterday morning I woke up in an apartment with a broken lock and zero dollars in my bank account.
Last night I fell asleep in a penthouse with a man who milked me in his guest bedroom and called me baby girl while I came on his tongue.
The world would call this a disaster.
I test that, too. Try it on. Disaster. Scandal. Mistake.
None of them fit.
What fits is the way he looked at me when I opened the door yesterday—raw and wrecked and present, like he wasn't thinking about optics or scandal or what anyone would say.
He was thinking about me. The way I was shaking.
The way my shirt was soaked through. The way I needed help and was too proud to ask for it.
What fits is the way he said "I want to" and meant it.
I've needed people before. I've needed landlords who held my security deposit over my head like a weapon.
Bosses who controlled my paycheck. My mother, who offered help I couldn't accept because accepting it meant admitting I failed.
Needing people feels like debt. Like owing something you can't pay back.
Like swallowing glass every time you open your mouth to ask.
This doesn't feel like debt.
This feels like his hands on my waist and the word mine in the way he touched me. It feels like the certainty—irrational, impossible, too fast to be real—that if I walked out of this penthouse right now, I'd turn around and come back.
Not because I need the bed or the safety or the money.
Because I'd miss him.
I press my palms against my face and let the absurdity of it sit there.
I met this man yesterday. Yesterday. I don't know his favorite food or his middle name or whether he's a morning person.
I know he's a professional hockey player with seven Stanley Cups and a net worth that could buy a small country.
I know he was married to my mother and I had no idea until he showed up at my door wearing a surgical mask like he was sneaking into enemy territory.
And I know—with the kind of certainty that lives in my body—that I want to give him something no one else has ever had.
My virginity.
The word sounds clinical in my head. Cold.
But the reality isn't cold. The reality is that I'm twenty-one years old and I've never had sex because I've never trusted anyone enough to let them that close.
I've never met someone and thought yes, you, I want you inside me without a list of conditions and escape routes running in the background.
I don't have a list right now.
I have Jordan's voice in my head—that's my good girl—and the memory of his mouth on my breast and the knowledge that when he comes to my door this morning, I'm going to ask for more.
Not because I'm grateful. Not because I'm confused or desperate or swept up in some forbidden fantasy I'll regret when reality crashes back in.
Because I chose him.
The forbidden isn't a brake. It's fuel.
I test that, too, pressing harder on the bruise.
Society can call this whatever it wants.
Inappropriate. Scandalous. A disaster waiting to implode.
The press would have a field day if they found out—HOCKEY LEGEND FUCKS STEPDAUGHTER would trend for weeks.
My old coworkers would whisper. My college friends would ask if I was okay in that concerned voice that really means are you being coerced.
And I'd look them in the eye and say: No. I'm not being coerced. I'm being fucked by a man who shows up when I need him and doesn't flinch when I fall apart, and if you have a problem with that, it's yours, not mine.
I don't live in society's bed.
I live in this one.
A knock at the door pulls me out of my head.
My heart kicks. I swing my legs over the side of the mattress, bare feet hitting cool hardwood, and pad across the room in the oversized T-shirt I slept in—one of his, grabbed from a drawer last night because all my clothes were dirty or sad or both.
It smells like laundry detergent and something underneath that's just him. Clean and warm and male.
I open the door.
Jordan stands in the hallway, dressed for practice—black athletic pants, a fitted training shirt that clings to his shoulders and chest, his hair damp like he just showered. No cap. No mask. Just him, six-six and broad and looking at me like I'm the only thing on his schedule this morning.
Gray eyes. Stubble along his jaw. Hands that could palm a basketball but last night were gentle enough to coax an orgasm out of me without making me beg.
I look at him with the new clarity of the decision I made thirty seconds ago—not as a complication, not as a problem to manage, not as my mother's ex-husband or a stepfather I never knew I had.
As the man I'm going to give my virginity to.
"Morning," he says. His voice is rough, like maybe he didn't sleep as well as I did.
"Morning." I lean against the doorframe, arms crossed, and raise an eyebrow. "Shouldn't you be at practice?"
"I have practice. Back by lunch." His gaze drops to my chest, lingering for half a second before flicking back to my face. "But I want to take care of you first."
Heat pools low in my stomach. I know what he means.
The fullness is there—the overnight buildup, the dull ache that's part discomfort and part something else now, something that makes me hyperaware of my body and his proximity and the fact that he's offering to put his hands on me before he leaves for work like it's the most normal thing in the world.
"You don't have to," I say, testing.
His jaw tightens. "I want to."
I step back, opening the door wider. "Okay."
He steps inside.
I sit on the edge of the bed, the oversized T-shirt pooled around my thighs. Jordan kneels in front of me—kneels, this six-foot-six professional athlete in his practice gear, settling between my legs like this is where he belongs—and his hands go to the hem of my shirt.
"Arms up, baby girl."
I lift them. He pulls the shirt over my head in one smooth motion, tossing it onto the floor, and the cool air hits my bare skin. My nipples tighten immediately, the ache sharpening, and I suck in a breath.
His gaze drops. Darkens.