Chapter 16
The hotel lobby in Boston was overheated and stale, air that had been breathed too many times.
The Valkyries shuffled through check-in at eleven thirty at night after a red-eye from Phoenix Ridge and a charter bus that had spent forty minutes not moving on the expressway, then stalled again for a tire pressure warning that turned out to be a faulty sensor.
Everyone was tired, stiff, and irritable in the way athletes got when they'd been sitting too long in seats designed for shorter people.
Frankie was rubbing her knee. Dani had her headphones on and her eyes closed, navigating the lobby by memory or instinct.
Lou was at the front desk getting room assignments, her captain's efficiency cutting through the hotel staff's midnight confusion with the quiet authority she brought to everything.
Lex stood near the elevator bank with her duffel over one shoulder and watched the front desk transaction with half her attention. The other half was tracking Mara.
Mara was standing by the concierge desk with her laptop bag and Goldie's travel crate, talking to an assistant coach about tomorrow's game-day schedule.
She was in travel clothes: dark jeans, a fitted black sweater, boots.
Her hair was in its usual ponytail, a few strands loose around her face from the long bus ride.
She looked tired and professional and composed and achingly beautiful, and Lex hadn't been alone with her since the gym.
Four days. Four days since she'd pressed Mara against the gym wall and fucked her until she came apart.
Four days of practice and game prep and bus rides and team meals where they'd sat across the aisle from each other and maintained professional distance with a discipline that was slowly killing them both.
The tension between them was a taut wire running from her chest to Mara's, vibrating at a frequency only the two of them could hear.
The desk clerk handed Mara a keycard. Room 412. She filed the number away.
Lou distributed room assignments. Lex was with Elise, as usual.
Room 308. They took the elevator up in silence, Lex's duffel bag bumping against her thigh with each floor.
The corridor was beige and anonymous, the carpet patterned in a way designed to hide stains.
Their room was standard: two queen beds, a desk, a window overlooking the hotel parking lot and, beyond it, the lights of Boston's skyline.
Elise set her bag on the bed closest to the window and stretched. "I'm going to shower and crash. Game day tomorrow."
"I'm going for a walk," Lex said.
Elise looked at her. The look lasted approximately two seconds and contained an entire conversation. Elise's eyebrows rose. Her mouth pressed into a line that was fighting very hard not to be a smile. She said nothing. The nothing was louder than words.
"Don't," Lex said, pointing a finger at Elise as she kicked off her shoes.
"I didn't say anything."
"Your face said everything."
"My face wishes you good luck on your walk. My face also reminds you that we have a ten a.m. skate tomorrow and your face needs sleep."
"Noted." Lex dropped her duffel on her bed, ran her fingers through her hair, checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
She looked road-worn and slightly wild, dark circles under her eyes from the bus ride, hair tangled from leaning against the window for six hours.
She splashed water on her face, finger-combed her hair into a shape that would pass, brushed her teeth, and changed into a fresh black t-shirt.
She paused at the door. Elise was already in bed, blanket pulled up, but her eyes were open.
"Be careful," Elise said. Not judgmental. Concerned. The voice of someone who cared about both people involved.
"Always." Lex opened the door and left.
The corridor was quiet. She took the stairs to the fourth floor, her boots soft on the carpeted steps. Room 412 was at the end of the hall. She stood outside the door for ten seconds, her heart beating in her ears, and knocked.
The door opened. Mara stood in the doorway in a white hotel bathrobe, her hair loose and damp around her shoulders, her feet bare on the carpeted floor.
Steam drifted from the bathroom behind her.
She smelled like hotel soap, generic and floral, a scent that somehow smelled specific and intoxicating on her.
Her face was scrubbed clean of the minimal makeup she wore during the day, and without it she looked younger, more vulnerable, more real.
She didn't look surprised.
"Lex."
"Can I come in?"
Mara held the door open wider without a word.
Lex stepped inside. The room was identical to hers: two beds, though only one was being used.
Mara's laptop was open on the desk, a game film paused on screen.
Goldie's travel crate sat in the corner, empty, and Goldie herself was curled on the unused bed, tail wagging at Lex's arrival.
Lex gave the dog a quick scratch behind the ears, then turned to Mara. The door clicked shut behind them. The room was quiet except for the hum of the air conditioning and the distant sounds of the city filtering through the window.
"This is the first time we've been alone since the gym," Lex said.
Mara stood near the desk with her arms crossed over the robe, holding it closed, a gesture that was half modesty and half defense. "I know."
"Have you been avoiding me?" Lex stayed by the door, giving Mara the space of the room between them.
"I've been being professional."
"That's a yes." Lex's mouth curved, but her eyes stayed flat.
A pause. Mara's blue eyes met hers, and in them the war was visible.
The push and pull that had been defining their relationship since the day Lex arrived: the desire fighting the discipline, the want fighting the walls.
But the balance had shifted since the gym.
The walls were thinner now. The discipline was less certain.
And the look in Mara's eyes was not the rigid professional composure of a woman in control.
It was the look of a woman who had tasted what she'd been denying herself for twenty years and couldn't pretend she didn't want more.
"Did you enjoy it?" Lex asked. Direct. No softening. "The gym. Did you enjoy what happened between us?"
Color flooded Mara's face. The flush started at her chest, visible in the V of the robe, and climbed her neck to her cheekbones. Her jaw tightened. Her fingers gripped the robe tighter.
"You know damn well I did."
The words hit Lex's stomach like a match dropped in gasoline. Heat spread through her from the center outward, fast and consuming.
"Do you want to do it again?"
Mara closed her eyes. She stood there in her hotel bathrobe with her wet hair and her bare feet and her eyes shut, and the internal battle played out across her face. The coach versus the woman. The discipline versus the desire. The years of walls versus the one night when they'd all come down.
"Lex, this is messy. You know how messy it could get.
If anyone on this team finds out, if ownership finds out, if the league finds out.
My career. Your career. Everything we've both worked for.
I'm your coach. The power imbalance alone makes this reckless.
And I swore to myself after the last time that I would never, never do this again. "
"The last time," Lex said quietly. "Sara?" She took a step closer.
Mara's eyes widened. “Yes.”
"It was a long time ago. She broke my heart. And it nearly ended my career."
"I'm not Sara. This is not that. And you're not the same person you were then.”
Mara looked at her with those blue eyes that held every year of discipline and sacrifice and loneliness she'd accumulated, and Lex saw the moment the fight went out of her. Not surrender. Decision. Mara choosing, for once, to want more than she feared the consequences.
"I don't care about the mess," Lex said.
She closed the distance between them. Two steps.
She stood in front of Mara, close enough to feel the warmth radiating through the thin robe.
Her hands found the belt of the robe, the knotted terrycloth, and she loosened it slowly, giving Mara every chance to stop her.
"You are worth more to me than the mess.
Whatever happens, whatever it costs, I want you.
I've wanted you since I walked into your office and Goldie was the only one happy to see me. "
Despite everything, Mara's mouth twitched.
Lex pulled the robe open. She slid it off Mara's shoulders, slowly, her fingers trailing along Mara's collarbones, over the curves of her shoulders, down her upper arms. The robe fell to the floor in a soft pool of white fabric.
Mara stood before her naked, and the sight of her stole the breath from Lex's lungs.
Mara was beautiful. Not the polished, controlled beauty she projected in her coaching gear.
This was raw. Real. The body of a woman who'd been an athlete her entire life, who'd maintained herself with the same discipline she brought to everything, who was forty-eight and looked like a living argument against the idea that beauty had an expiration date.
Strong shoulders. Defined arms. The flat plane of her stomach.
The curve of her waist. Breasts that were full and natural, rising with each rapid breath.
The pale blonde hair between her legs. All of it illuminated by the yellow lamplight of a Boston hotel room, and Lex wanted to put her mouth on every inch of it.
"You're beautiful," Lex said. Her voice was rough. "You're so beautiful, Mara. I need you to know that."