Chapter 11
The knock on Lou's hotel door the night before the game against New York came at eleven-fifteen.
She'd been expecting it—had been lying in the dark staring at the ceiling, too wired from the day's travel to sleep and too aware of whose room was three doors down to think about anything else.
New York had that effect on her: too bright, too loud, too full of the kind of energy that made her skin feel tight.
Or maybe that was just Camille's proximity. Hard to tell anymore.
Lou opened the door, and there she was. Camille wore silk pajamas in a deep blue that matched her eyes, her hair loose around her shoulders, her feet bare against the hotel carpet. She looked soft in ways Lou had rarely seen—no makeup, no armor, just the woman beneath all the polish.
Lou's pulse kicked hard against her ribs. Three doors down had felt like nothing and everything at once—close enough to imagine, far enough to ache. And now here Camille was, standing in the dim hallway with the ice machine humming somewhere distant and the whole city breathing outside.
"Hi." Camille's voice was quiet, uncertain. "I couldn't sleep."
"Me neither." Lou stepped back, making room. "Come in."
The hotel room was standard business-class: king bed, desk, window overlooking a Manhattan street that glittered with late-night traffic. Lou had left the curtains open, preferring the city's ambient glow to total darkness. Maybe that was a mistake—the light made everything too visible, too real.
Camille crossed to the window, looking out at the city that had been her home until recently. Her reflection in the glass was shadowed, contemplative.
"I used to love this view," she said softly. "When I first moved here, I'd stand at my apartment window and watch the lights and feel like I'd made it. Like all the sacrifice and work had led to exactly where I was supposed to be."
"And now?"
"Now it feels like a cage I didn't know I was building.
" Camille turned to face her, and Lou's breath caught at the vulnerability in her expression.
"Everything I was, everything I thought I wanted, it's all tied up in this city.
Mario. The media. The version of myself I performed for years because I thought that was what success looked like. "
Lou didn't have words for that. She'd never had the kind of visibility Camille described—had never wanted it. Her own invisibility had felt like protection, not prison.
But she understood cages. She understood the walls you built around yourself without realizing you were also trapping yourself inside.
"You're not in New York anymore," Lou said finally. "You're in Phoenix Ridge. With me."
Camille's smile was small, but real. "With you."
She crossed the space between them, and Lou's heart rate spiked as Camille's hands came up to rest on her shoulders.
This close, Lou could smell her perfume—something floral and expensive, layered over the clean scent of hotel soap.
Could feel the warmth of her body through the thin silk of her pajamas.
"I keep thinking about you,” Camille whispered. "About your hands on my body. Your mouth. About the way you make me feel."
Lou's throat went dry. "Camille—"
"I want you to feel that too." Camille's fingers traced up Lou's neck, threading into her hair. "I want to make you feel as good as you make me feel. Will you let me?"
The question hit Lou somewhere deep—in the place where she'd learned to hold herself apart, to give without receiving, to stay in control even in moments of intimacy. She'd spent years being the one who touched, never the one touched. Being needed had felt safer than being wanted.
But Camille was looking at her with eyes full of want. Looking at her like she was something precious, something worth exploring.
"Yes," Lou heard herself say. "Yes."
Camille kissed her.
The first kiss was gentle—exploratory, reverent, nothing like the desperate urgency of before. Camille's lips moved against hers with a tenderness that made Lou's chest ache. Her hands cradled Lou's face, thumbs tracing her cheekbones, holding her like she might break.
Lou wasn't used to being held like this. Wasn't used to gentleness.
She'd learned early that softness was a luxury she couldn't afford. In hockey, in life, in the closeted years of trying to survive in a sport that didn't make room for women like her, hardness had been armor. Tenderness had been weakness.
But Camille was cracking through that armor now, kiss by kiss, touch by touch.
They moved toward the bed in stages, pausing to kiss and breathe and simply look at each other.
Camille's fingers found the buttons of Lou's sleep shirt, working them open with a patience that was almost torturous.
When the fabric parted, revealing Lou's bare skin beneath, Camille made a soft sound of appreciation that sent heat flooding through Lou's body.
"You're beautiful," Camille murmured, her hands tracing Lou's collarbone, her ribs, the small curve of her breasts. "I've wanted to touch you like this since the first day I saw you."
Lou pulled Camille's pajama top over her head in answer, revealing the beautiful body she couldn’t stop thinking about.
Camille's skin was soft, warm, perfect beneath Lou's calloused palms. She mapped the terrain of her—the dip of her waist, the curve of her hips, the small sounds she made when Lou's thumbs brushed her nipples.
They tumbled onto the bed together, a tangle of limbs and sighs and the particular urgency of people who'd been wanting each other for too long. Camille rolled them until she was on top, straddling Lou's hips, her blonde hair falling like a curtain around them both.
"I want to taste you," Camille said, and the directness of it made Lou's stomach clench with want. "Tell me you want that."
"I want that." The words came out rough, broken. "I want you."
Camille smiled—a real smile, full of warmth and mischief—and began kissing down Lou's body.
Her mouth traced a path from Lou's throat to her collarbone, pausing to mark the hollow at the base of her neck.
Lower, to the swell of her breasts, where she spent time Lou hadn't known she needed—tongue circling nipples, teeth grazing sensitive skin, hands stroking and kneading until Lou was arching off the bed.
"Please." The word escaped before Lou could stop it. "Camille, please—"
"I've got you." Camille's voice was honey and heat. "I've got you."
She kissed lower. Past Lou's ribs, across her stomach, along the jut of her hip bones.
Each press of lips left fire in its wake, a trail of sensation that made Lou's skin feel too tight for her body.
When Camille reached the waistband of her shorts, she paused—looking up at Lou with eyes dark with desire.
"Can I?"
Lou could only nod, not trusting her voice.
Camille pulled the shorts down with agonizing slowness, revealing Lou inch by inch.
The cool hotel air hit her overheated skin, and Lou shivered—from cold or anticipation, she couldn't tell.
Camille tossed the shorts aside and settled between Lou's thighs, and the sight of her there—blonde hair spilling across Lou's hips, that intense gaze fixed on the most intimate part of her—was almost too much to bear.
"You're so wet." Camille's voice held wonder. "God, Lou, you're beautiful."
Then her mouth descended, and Lou stopped being able to think at all.
The first touch of Camille's tongue was electric—a bolt of sensation that made Lou cry out and grab fistfuls of the sheets. Camille found her pussy with an instinct that in no way seemed like she hadn’t done it before, licking and sucking with a rhythm that built pleasure in relentless waves.
Her hands gripped Lou's thighs, holding her open, holding her steady.
Lou had been touched by women before. Had experienced pleasure, given and received, in stolen moments and careful encounters.
But nothing—nothing—had ever felt like this.
Camille wasn't just going through motions.
She was learning Lou, paying attention to every gasp and shudder, adjusting her technique based on Lou's responses.
When she slid two fingers inside, Lou's vision went white.
"Oh god—" Lou's voice was ragged, desperate. "Camille, I can't—"
"You can." Camille's mouth never stopped moving, even as her fingers found a rhythm that matched the strokes of her tongue. "Let go, Lou. I want to feel you come for me.”
The orgasm built like a storm—pressure accumulating in Lou's core, tension coiling tighter and tighter until the edge of shattering.
Camille's fingers curled inside her, hitting a spot that made stars explode behind Lou's eyes, and suddenly she was there—falling, flying, crying out Camille's name as pleasure crashed through her in waves.
It went on and on. Every time Lou thought it was fading, Camille would do something with her tongue or her fingers that sent her spiraling again. By the time she finally collapsed against the sheets, her body was trembling and tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes.
Camille crawled up beside her, gathering Lou into her arms with a tenderness that made Lou's heart ache.
"You okay?" Camille's voice was soft, concerned.
"I'm—" Lou's voice cracked. She didn't have words for what she was feeling. Overwhelmed. Seen. Safe in ways she hadn't known she could be.
"That good?" Camille's smile held a hint of pride.
"Better." Lou turned her head, pressing a kiss to Camille's shoulder. She felt more vulnerable than she ever had in Camille’s arms and she felt an overwhelming need to turn the tables again. “My turn,” she said.
She rolled Camille onto her back, drinking in the sight of her—flushed and wanting, pupils blown wide with desire. Lou had given pleasure many times, but this felt different. This felt like worship.