Chapter 31 #2
We kiss until my lips ache, until my jaw hurts, until my head is spinning. Every time I think we’re about to crest and come down, we find another angle, another way to wind each other tighter.
I trail my mouth down her throat, over the pulse fluttering madly at the base of her neck, lower. Her skin tastes like salt and sweetness. Her hands are in my hair, gripping tight, not pushing me away but holding me there.
When my mouth finds her breast, she arches off the mattress with a sharp gasp.
“Declan,” she breathes, my name broken into syllables.
I worship her. Inch by inch. Rib by rib. My hands span her waist, thumbing the soft skin there, marveling at the fact that she’s letting me touch her like this. That she wants this.
I move lower, kissing the curve of her stomach, the dip of her hipbone. Her muscles jump under my mouth.
“I want to taste you,” I murmur against her skin, the words vibrating through her. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
Her fingers tighten in my hair. “It’s not too much.”
I settle between her legs, hooking her knees over my shoulders. Her pussy is open to me. Exposed. Beautiful. I press a kiss to the inside of her thigh, feeling the tremor running through her, and then I find her clit.
She tastes like heat and want.
Her hips buck, a startled, needy movement. I hold her steady, hands firm on her thighs—not pinning, just anchoring. Grounding her while I unravel her. My cock is so hard it aches, throbbing with the need to be inside her, but this is for her.
“Yes,” she chokes out, head falling back into the pillow. “Declan, yes.”
I take my time. I use my tongue, my lips, listening to the way her breath catches, learning the rhythm of her pleasure. Every sound she makes feeds the hunger in my blood, but I keep it leashed. This isn't about taking. It’s about giving her everything I have.
She unravels beautifully, shattering against my mouth with a cry she tries to muffle with her hand. I gently pull her wrist away, lacing our fingers together, letting her scream my name into the quiet room.
When she finally stills, boneless and panting, I crawl back up her body. Her eyes are glassy, her lips swollen. She looks wrecked in the best possible way.
“My turn,” she whispers, hand sliding down my chest, bold and shaking.
I groan, forehead dropping to hers. “Talia.”
“I want you inside me,” she says. Clear. Certain.
I roll off long enough to yank open the drawer of my nightstand.
Her laughter is breathless. “Prepared, are we?”
“Have you seen you?” I mutter, tearing open the wrapper. “Of course I’m prepared.”
Her hand closes over mine, stopping me for a beat. Thumb brushing my wrist. “Thank you,” she says quietly.
It’s not about the latex. It’s about the care. The choice.
I kiss her knuckles, then take care of the rest.
I settle back between her legs. She reaches for me, hand wrapping around my cock, guiding me. The touch nearly ends me right there.
“Look at me,” I rasp.
Her eyes lock on mine.
I push into her. Slow. Controlled. Watching her face for any sign of hesitation, any shadow of the past.
There is none. Only heat. Only her.
She gasps as I fill her completely, body stretching to accommodate the full length of me, tight and perfect, a sweet, unbearable pressure.
“You feel…” I can’t even finish the sentence, the raw sensation is too overwhelming, too much after all this time.
“Home,” she finishes for me, breath hitching, her fingers already kneading the muscles in my back.
I set a rhythm—slow, deep, relentless, driving in until the headboard taps a quiet beat against the wall.
My hands slide under her, cupping her ass and lifting her hips to meet me, forcing the contact to be absolute.
Every thrust is a claim. Every slide is a promise. I am here. I am yours. We survived.
“Declan…” she breathes, nails digging crescent moons into my shoulders.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper, my hips rolling deeper, grinding our bodies together. “I’ve got you.”
The friction builds, hot and sharp, igniting a need that has been banked for too long.
I watch her come undone again, her face flushed crimson, her body arching and tightening around me, the powerful muscles clenching, milking me until I can’t hold back anymore.
I let go, groaning her name like a desperate prayer, pouring myself into her, emptying every last drop, burying myself in the only place that has ever felt safe.
We collapse together, our chests heaving, hearts hammering against each other’s ribs like they’re trying to sync up permanently.
I manage to extract myself just enough to grab the condom, tying a quick knot before tossing it across the room and into the waste bin near the dresser.
Then I roll fully to the side, taking her weight with me, keeping our bodies tangled and slick with sweat. I press a kiss to her damp temple, then her cheek, then her mouth, a slow, possessive claiming.
“You okay?” I murmur.
She turns toward me, pressing her forehead to mine.
“I’m perfect,” she whispers.
From there, time stops making sense.
We doze. We wake up. We talk about everything and nothing.
She tells me about a stupid childhood superstition she had about the rink lights.
I tell her about the time Adrian dragged me out of bed at three a.m. because he was convinced he’d cursed the team with a bad playlist. We talk about her dad’s laugh, the way it sounded different today.
We talk about the next game, and the fact that for once, the only thing I care about on the line is the chance to skate out there with her in the stands.
Every time the conversation lulls, it shifts—back to mouths, to hands, to heat.
The second time, she surprises me. She rolls me onto my back and swings a leg over my hips, settling on top with a slow, deliberate confidence that knocks the air out of me.
She's a dark silhouette against the ceiling light, her muscles flexing beautifully as she adjusts to straddle me.
Her hair falls forward, a curtain around our faces, and the subtle scent of her shampoo and skin fills the small space.
She braces her hands on my chest, a triumphant weight, and then sinks down, watching my face the whole time, her eyes dark and possessive.
She's magnificent above me, a goddess claiming her territory, and I feel a primal, overwhelming need to claim her back.
“Bossy,” I manage, fingers digging into her hips, loving the view of her above me, powerful and free.
“Learning from the best,” she pants, moving in a rhythm that’s going to spoil me for the rest of my life. “You said I’m not somebody’s damage report, remember?” She leans down until our noses brush. “Let me be yours.”
“You already are,” I say, and whatever she hears in my voice makes her shiver.
My hands leave her hips and slide up her sides, tracing the curve of her ribs until my fingers brush against the soft underside of her breasts.
The moan she lets out is sharp, a caught breath that tells me exactly what she wants.
I cup her fully, my thumbs sweeping over the hard points of her nipples.
The feeling is electric, a jolt of pure, raw desire that makes her pace quicken.
When the tension becomes too much, an agonizing coil in my lower abdomen, I pull my hands away from her chest, my fingers digging hard into the soft flesh of her hips to anchor her.
"Enough," I manage, the word a choked plea. I shift, a small, violent motion that raises me an inch, and begin to thrust up into her, matching her demanding rhythm with a fierce urgency that makes her head fall back in a silent scream.
If I believed in religion, this would be the part where I lose it.
Somewhere between the dark of night and the gray of morning, the urgency bleeds out, leaving something softer in its place. We don’t even fully undress again, just end up tangled and half-dressed and full of each other, the room smelling like sweat and soap and us.
By the time we finally stop, my muscles are heavy with the good kind of exhaustion. The static in my head is gone. The only thing humming is the steady, slow beat of her heart under my palm.
She’s tucked into my side, one leg thrown over mine, fingers absentmindedly tracing the scar along my rib. The sheet is a disaster. The clock on the nightstand is just a blur of red numbers I’m not interested in reading.
“You know this is insane,” she mumbles into my chest. “We’re going to be useless tomorrow.”
“Worth it,” I say.
She huffs a quiet laugh. “You say that now. Wait until Zoe decides we all need to ‘process’ and shows up with a Google doc and a whiteboard.”
I groan. “I’ll just never leave this bed.”
Her fingers still. Then they slide higher, resting flat over my heart.
“Promise?” she asks.
It’s half joke, half serious. I treat it like the second half.
“Promise,” I say. “You’re stuck with me, Addison.”
“Good,” she whispers. “Because I love you, too, and I am way too tired to break in another goalie.”
I laugh, the sound scraping out of me, raw and ridiculous. It feels like the first real laugh I’ve had in months.
“Terrible,” I say. “Your taste is terrible.”
She tilts her head back to look up at me, eyes heavy, mouth soft. “My taste is perfect,” she says. “I picked you, didn’t I?”
I don’t have anything better than that.
So I kiss her instead.
She falls asleep first, her breathing evening out, her body going comfortably heavy against mine. I lie there and memorize the weight, the heat, the way her hand curls loosely at my side even in sleep, like she’s holding on without thinking about it.
For the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I’m guarding something that could shatter any second.
I just feel like I’m home.
Eventually, the habit drilled into my bones nudges me toward sleep—the knowledge that dawn will come, that my body will wake up before the sun whether I want it to or not.
When it does, and I blink up at the faint gray light slicing through the blinds, my left arm numb from her weight, my first thought isn’t about practice or film or the next opponent.
It’s about the girl asleep on my chest and the fact that I get to spend another morning figuring out how many ways I can make her say my name.
The war is over.
This—her breathing in my arms, her “I love you” still echoing in my chest—is what I won for.
And I’m not wasting a second of it.