Chapter Sixteen
Remy
By the time practice wraps and the Venom arena starts emptying out around me, I’m running almost entirely on caffeine, stress, and emotional avoidance.
The fluorescent lights in the media office buzz faintly overhead while I stare at my laptop hard enough to blur the spreadsheet in front of me. Sponsorship metrics. Engagement projections. Damage control timelines. All the things I’m supposed to care about.
Meanwhile, my brain keeps replaying the exact sound Owen made against my thigh the other night.
Fantastic.
I press the heels of my palms into my eyes for a second. Professionalism is officially hanging on by a single frayed thread.
The office door opens behind me.
I know it’s him immediately.
Not because I hear him. Owen moves light and sure for someone built so solidly.
But the air changes when he walks into a room.
He brings this strange gravitational pressure with him that my nervous system has apparently decided to respond to like an emotionally unstable houseplant spotting sunlight.
“Coach wants the updated youth outreach numbers before tomorrow,” he says.
His voice is calm. Controlled.
Too controlled.
I turn in my chair and instantly regret it.
He’s still damp from practice, dark hair curling slightly at the ends, gray Venom training shirt stretched tight across his chest. My eyes betray me immediately, dropping to the strong line of his throat before lower-level survival instincts finally kick in and force me to look back up.
Mistake.
His expression is worse.
Guarded. Careful. Like every word coming out of his mouth now has to pass through twelve layers of emotional security clearance first.
I hate it instantly.
Which is ridiculous, considering I’m the one who started this whole disaster by fleeing his condo without a word.
“Great,” I say, because apparently I’ve lost the ability to form complete human thoughts around this man. “I’ll finish them tonight.”
“Okay.”
That’s it.
Just okay.
The silence stretches awkwardly between us.
Before orgasm-gate, silence with Owen had felt sharp. Charged. Like both of us were bracing for impact. Now it feels worse somehow. Softer in all the wrong places.
My body remembers everything.
His mouth.
His hands.
The rough sound he made when I touched his hair.
Heat curls low in my stomach so fast it’s almost infuriating.
I force my attention to the laptop screen. “You looked good out there today.”
God. That sounded painfully sincere.
“Thanks.”
Another quiet beat passes.
Then, carefully, “You looked like you wanted to murder Adler.”
“There may have been a brief moment,” he admits.
A surprised laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
That finally pulls a small smile out of him. And there he is. Not the goalie or the emotionally barricaded version he’s been forcing himself into all day.
Just Owen.
Everything in me clenches painfully at the sight of him because I like him better open. That realization lands hard enough to make my pulse stumble.
His eyes lift fully to mine then, and whatever he sees on my face changes his expression too. The careful distance slips for half a second. Long enough for hurt to show underneath it.
Oh.
Oh, no.
The room suddenly feels too small.
“Owen—”
A loud crash echoes somewhere down the hallway outside the office, followed by Tristan yelling, “THAT WASN’T MY FAULT!”
Neither of us moves.
Neither of us looks away.
And for one terrifying second, I want him to kiss me again more than I want my next professional accomplishment.
“Owen—”
My voice catches halfway through his name. Not because I don’t know what I want to say. Because suddenly I know exactly what I want to say, and every version of it feels dangerous.
The office feels too warm now. Too small. He’s standing only a few feet away from me, but somehow it feels closer than that. Like the air between us shrank while I wasn’t paying attention.
His eyes flick down to my mouth for one tiny second before he looks away again.
That shouldn’t hurt.
It absolutely does.
“Owen,” I say again, more carefully this time, “you’ve barely looked at me all day.”
His jaw flexes once. “You said it was a mistake.”
Straight to the emotional jugular. Cool. Great.
“I know what I said.”
“Then I’m trying to respect it.”
The quiet honesty in his voice knocks the breath out of me a little.
I push away from the desk too quickly, nearly tangling myself in the office chair wheels before I stand. “You don’t get to act like I’m the only one who ran.”
Something flashes across his face at that. Fast enough that I almost miss it.
“I woke up alone, Remy.”
Every defensive thought in my head immediately dissolves into ash. The room goes silent except for the faint hum of the arena ventilation system somewhere overhead.
“I didn’t know what you wanted me to think after that.” There’s strain underneath the calm in his tone.
I cross my arms tightly over my chest. Mostly because I suddenly feel emotionally naked. “I panicked.”
“I noticed.”
I cross my arms tighter over my chest. “Because if I’d stayed, then all of it would’ve followed us into real life. Daylight. Practice. The team. And suddenly, it wouldn’t have been something I could push aside anymore.”
His gaze finds mine. “I get it, Remy. Every time I looked at you today, I remembered your legs around my head and nearly lost my mind during practice.”
The words hit me like a physical shove, and heat floods straight through my body so fast my knees almost lock.
Owen’s expression shifts immediately, like he regrets saying it out loud, but honestly?
The damage is already done. My entire nervous system is now fully focused on the image he just dropped directly into my brain.
“You can’t just say things like that,” I whisper.
His eyes drag over my face slowly. “Apparently, I can.”
The tension between us snaps taut. Neither of us moves. Neither of us breathes normally.
This whole day has felt wrong because we’ve both been pretending not to want each other, even though the truth has been sitting between us the entire time.
“You really thought I regretted you?” I ask softly.
Something vulnerable flickers across his face again. Barely there. But enough.
“You left before I woke up,” he says quietly. “I figured that was a pretty solid clue.”
Well, when he says it that way, I sound awful. Guilt twists low in my stomach immediately. Not because of what he did to me. Never because of that.
Because of him.
Because that night, for the first time in longer than I care to examine too closely, someone touched me like my pleasure mattered. Like I mattered. And my response was to flee the scene.
“Owen,” I say softly.
I step toward him before I can rethink it. His entire body stills. My hand settles against the center of his chest carefully, right over the steady thud of his heartbeat beneath the damp fabric of his training shirt.
The second I touch him, his eyes close briefly. The reaction hits me low and hard.
“You make me crazy, too,” I admit quietly.
His eyes open immediately. I press my lips to his.
Owen kisses me back instantly. The force of it drives me backward a step until the edge of the desk bumps against my thighs.
His hands land on my waist hard enough to make me gasp into his mouth, and the sound he makes in response is deep and rough and absolutely catastrophic to my ability to think.
This is a terrible idea.
I only kiss him harder.
Apparently, my survival instincts died somewhere around the first orgasm.
Owen’s mouth moves against mine like he’s been holding himself back all day and finally snapped.
There’s still restraint there somehow, which honestly might be the hottest part.
Even now, with his grip tightening on my hips and his breathing turning rough against my mouth, he feels controlled in the places that matter.
God, I’m in trouble.
My fingers slide into the damp hair at the nape of his neck, and his entire body reacts immediately. His grip flexes hard enough to pull me flush against him while a low sound catches in his throat.
That reaction sends me sailing. So I do it again deliberately this time, nails lightly scraping his scalp.
“O-kay,” I whisper against his mouth when his eyes close briefly. “That’s useful information.”
His forehead drops against mine while he exhales shakily. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“You make it very easy.”
The corner of his mouth twitches for half a second before he kisses me again, deeper this time. I can feel how badly he wants me now. The hard length of his cock presses against my stomach through our clothes, and heat curls low between my thighs immediately in response.
“Owen,” I say.
His hands slide slowly up my sides like he’s relearning me through touch. The movement is so gentle, and that tenderness hits me harder than aggression would have.
That’s the real problem with him. It’s the fact that underneath all of his on-ice bluster, he’s softer than he’d ever let on.
My brain really should’ve kept that discovery to itself.
His mouth drags along my jaw, then lower to my throat, and I physically shiver. “Fuck,” he says softly against my skin.
I tilt my head automatically, giving him more access before I can stop myself. “Owen.”
“Tell me to stop.”
The callback nearly destroys me on the spot. Not because the words themselves are particularly filthy, but because he means them. Even now, half-hard against me and breathing hard, he’s still giving me an out.
I think that’s the exact moment my last functional defense mechanism quietly packs its bags and leaves the building.
Instead of stopping him, I grab the front of his shirt and pull him closer.
His eyes lift to mine immediately, pupils blown wide enough to nearly swallow the gray. “Remy,” he says carefully.
“I don’t want you to stop.”