Chapter 18 #2
Mara was still trembling when she opened her eyes. They were glazed and dark and looking at Lex with an expression that was wild and wanting and free of every wall she'd ever built. Without a word, she put her hands on Lex's shoulders and pressed downward.
“Please… I want..” Mara’s voice was raw but Lex knew what she wanted.
Lex's knees hit the concrete floor. The impact barely registered.
She was on the ground looking up at Mara, who was leaning back against the lockers with her pants unzipped and her chest heaving and her blue eyes burning down at Lex with an authority that was different from anything Lex had seen from her before.
Not the coaching authority. Not the professional composure.
Rawer. Authority that belonged to the woman underneath the coach, the woman who had been learning what she wanted and was starting to ask for it.
Lex pulled Mara's pants and underwear down to her thighs and put her mouth on her and Mara's hand came down to grip her hair, hard, and the sound Mara made was a prayer and a command rolled into one.
Lex made Mara come again with her mouth, fast and fierce, Mara's hand fisted in her hair and Mara's body shaking against the lockers.
Then Mara pulled her up and pushed Lex back against the opposite row of lockers and dropped to her own knees and looked up at Lex with those blue eyes and said, "Now you. "
“I’m sweaty as all hell, Mara,” Lex said. Not that she didn’t want Mara’s mouth desperately, she did.
“I don’t care,” Mara said, “ I need to taste you.” Her voice was desperate as she rolled down Lex’s shorts and briefs.
Lex's breath left her body. She braced her hands against the locker tops and looked down at Mara on her knees and the sight alone nearly finished her.
Mara's mouth was warm and eager and what she lacked in recent experience she compensated for with a hunger and intensity of focus that was pure Mara Ellison, the woman who did nothing halfway, who gave everything she had to every task she undertook.
Her tongue found the rhythm Lex needed within seconds, and Lex's hand gripped the locker top until her fingers went numb, as she ground her pussy into Mara’s mouth and she came with a raw, bitten-off groan that echoed off the concrete walls.
They were still catching their breath, still tangled against the lockers in the dim red emergency light, when the door opened.
"Mara? Are you in here? Someone said they saw you come this way."
Astoria's voice. Clear and carrying and exactly six feet from discovering exactly what was going on.
Lex moved on pure instinct. She dropped behind the far row of lockers, crouching low, her heart slamming so hard she was certain it was audible.
She heard Mara straighten, heard the rustle of clothing being adjusted, heard the zip of pants being pulled up, and then Mara's voice, steady and professional and betraying absolutely nothing.
"In here. I was checking the visitor facilities for our home setup notes."
Astoria stepped further into the room. Lex could hear her heels clicking on the concrete floor. "Why are the lights off?"
"I just walked in. Haven't found the switch yet."
A click. The overhead fluorescents snapped on, bathing the room in harsh white light. Lex pressed herself lower behind the locker bank, her pulse pounding in her ears. One step to the left and Astoria would see her crouching with her face flushed and the taste of Mara still on her lips.
"Great win tonight," Astoria said. Her voice was warm with the bright enthusiasm of a billionaire whose investment was paying off.
"The team looked incredible. Lex's chemistry with Camille is electric.
The way they combined on that second goal, the timing, the vision, it's exactly what I hoped for when I signed her. "
"She's learning the system," Mara said. Her voice was the epitome of professional composure. Lex, crouching behind a locker bank with her heart about to explode, marveled at the performance. "Her hockey IQ has developed faster than I anticipated. She's a genuine talent."
"I told you she would be. Now, we need to talk about the playoff push. The win tonight puts us in a strong position. Let's debrief in the morning over breakfast?"
"Of course. I'll have the game analysis ready." Mara's voice didn't waver. Not once. Lex pressed her fist against her own mouth to keep silent.
"Wonderful. Get some rest. You've earned it." Astoria's heels clicked toward the door. "And Mara? Smile. You just won a big game."
The door closed. Footsteps receded down the corridor. Silence.
Lex exhaled. She stood up from behind the lockers on legs that were shaking from adrenaline and suppressed laughter and the residual electricity of the past fifteen minutes.
Mara was standing at the far end of the room with her back against the wall and her hand pressed to her chest and an expression that was equal parts horror and hilarity.
Their eyes met across the empty locker room.
Lex started laughing. The absurdity was too much.
The absurdity of it: crouching behind a locker bank while the billionaire owner of the team discussed playoff chemistry three feet from where Lex had just taken Mara’s orgasm in her mouth.
The laughter was hysterical and infectious and Mara tried to hold it together for about two seconds before she broke, pressing her hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking, her blue eyes streaming with tears of relief and adrenaline and the dizzy, giddy terror of almost getting caught.
"Oh my God," Mara whispered. Her hand was still pressed against her chest, her breath coming fast. "She was right there."
"'Lex's chemistry with Camille is electric,'" Lex quoted, grinning. "If she only knew."
Mara shook her head, still laughing, still trembling. "I need a minute. I need several minutes."
"Take all the time you need." Lex walked over and pulled Mara into her arms and held her against the lockers, and they stood there laughing and shaking and holding each other in the harsh fluorescent light of an empty equipment room in Boston.
"I cannot believe," Mara said, pulling back just enough to look at Lex's face, "that I just had sex in an equipment room. I am a forty-eight-year-old head coach. I have a master's degree."
"And you were magnificent."
"I was reckless and irresponsible and I sounded like a teenager."
"You sounded like a woman who just won a hockey game and celebrated accordingly." Lex grinned. "Very accordingly."
Mara pressed her forehead against Lex's collarbone. "If Astoria had walked in thirty seconds earlier."
"She didn't."
"She could have."
"But she didn't. And instead she complimented your coaching and left.
And you stood there with a straight face and said 'her hockey IQ has developed faster than I anticipated' while I was crouching behind a locker bank trying not to die.
" Lex was grinning so hard her face ached.
"That was the greatest performance of your career.
Forget the coaching. You should be in movies. "
"I hate you," Mara said against Lex's chest, but she was laughing again, and the sound of it filled the room.
Lex pressed her face against Mara's hair and felt the laughter settle into tenderness.
She tightened her arms around the woman she was holding and listened to Mara's heartbeat and felt, with a certainty that was no longer terrifying but simply true, that she was falling in love.
Not the fast, hot, disposable kind of falling she'd done before.
The real kind. The kind that changes you. The kind you don't come back from.
She held Mara tighter and said nothing and let the feeling fill her chest until it ached.
Outside the equipment room, the arena was emptying.
Cleanup crews and the hum of the ice plant cycling down and the muffled voices of staff drifted in from the far corridors.
The fluorescent light buzzed above them.
The room carried rubber, disinfectant, sex, and Mara's hair, and Lex breathed it all in and thought about her father, dead for six years, who had brought her to this arena when she was nine and bought her a hot dog and told her she could be anything she wanted.
What would he think of her now? Standing in a locker room post game, holding a woman twenty years older than her, having just played the best game of her life in the sport she'd devoted the last two years of her life to.
He would have liked Mara. He would have seen the steel underneath the composure and the warmth underneath the steel, and he would have leaned over to Lex and said, in his quiet Boston accent, That one's a keeper, kid.
Lex pressed her lips to Mara's temple one more time and whispered, "We should go before someone else comes looking."
Mara nodded against her chest but neither of them moved for another full minute, standing together in the bright, ugly light of the equipment room, holding on.
The playoffs were three weeks away. Astoria's eyes would be everywhere.
And the thing growing in Lex's chest had already outgrown every plan she'd made for keeping this simple.