12
Ryan
The words hung in the air between us, a raw, filthy promise finally spoken aloud.
Her eyes widened, her lips parting as shock and desire fought across her expression.
The air in my apartment felt charged, thick with everything we’d spilled between us—my history, her fear, and this desperate want that had been building for months.
I didn’t give her time to hide inside her head. We had done enough waiting.
I closed the distance between us and cupped her face, my thumbs stroking her cheekbones while she looked up at me, breathless.
“You wanted this,” I murmured, my voice low. “Now you get it.”
I kissed her, and there was nothing gentle or sweet about it.
Every frustrated minute on that fucking bus, every lonely hour in that sterile hotel room, and every second of the drive home when all I could think about was having her beneath me came out through my mouth.
My tongue pushed between her lips, tasting her, and she met me with equal hunger, her hands fisting in my T-shirt.
I walked her backward without breaking the kiss until the backs of her legs met the edge of my bed. Tearing my mouth from hers, I hooked my hands beneath my shirt and dragged it over my head before tossing it behind me.
Charm went still. Her eyes dropped immediately, and for once, I didn’t reach for her again.
I let her look.
Most people had seen pieces of me. Ink crawled out of my collar, disappeared beneath my sleeves, and wound over my forearms and hands.
My teammates had seen the rest because locker rooms didn’t leave much room for privacy, but outside hockey, I had spent years making damn sure women only got whatever version of me I decided to give them.
Charm was getting all of it.
Across my lower stomach, my mother’s maiden name, NAVARO, arched from hip to hip in heavy black lettering.
It was one of the oldest pieces on my body, the name belonging to a history most people never bothered asking me about.
Above it, praying hands wrapped around a rosary stretched over my abdomen, Juanita’s name worked beneath them in script I had stared at through more bad nights than I could count.
Higher, ice spread across my chest in black and gray, a hockey player frozen into the landscape over my pecs and upper chest as though the game had been carved directly into me instead of becoming the only place I had ever learned how to breathe.
Charm’s gaze moved slowly over every inch of me. “Ryan…”
“Mírame.”
Her eyes lifted, and I caught her hand before she could reach for me, pressing her palm against my bare chest.
“Really look at me, mi hada.” My voice came rougher now. “See who I am like this.”
Her fingers spread over my skin.
“My real name, where I came from, my mother, hockey, and all the shit that built me are right here.” I covered her hand with mine. “My story is on my body where almost nobody ever gets close enough to read the whole fucking thing.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. I turned slowly and gave her my back.
The cross covered most of it, massive enough that the arms stretched toward my shoulders.
Chicano artwork surrounded it, accumulated across years instead of planned all at once.
Above it were the words from Psalm 23 that had followed me through some of the ugliest parts of my life.
Beneath it sprawled the barrio I had called home for the first eleven years of it—rooftops, wires, narrow streets, old buildings, and pieces of a neighborhood that existed on my skin exactly the way memory had refused to let it disappear.
Roses, script, shadows, religious imagery, and Mexican American art filled nearly every remaining space.
I heard Charm move behind me before her fingertips touched my back. She moved slowly, as though she understood she wasn’t simply touching tattoos.
When I turned again, the look on her face nearly knocked the air from my lungs.
“No woman has seen me like this.”
Her brows drew together. “You mean shirtless?”
I shook my head and stepped between her knees. “I mean knowing what you’re looking at.”
Taking her hand, I pressed it over Juanita’s name. “This version of me.”
She reached for me, but I caught her wrist. “My turn.”
I pulled the hoodie over her head slowly, letting my knuckles graze the soft skin of her stomach and ribs. She shivered beneath my hands. I unhooked her bra and let it fall before lowering myself to my knees in front of her.
My hands settled at the waist of her leggings. I looked up at her as I kissed the skin below her belly button, and her breath hitched when I hooked my fingers into the waistband of her leggings and panties. I peeled them down her legs together, leaving her naked and trembling in front of me.
I sat back on my heels and let myself look. The sight of her pale skin, rose-blonde hair, and slim, tight stomach seared itself into my head.
“Puta madre,” I breathed. “You’re even more beautiful than I dreamed.”
Before she could respond, I leaned forward and pressed an openmouthed kiss against the delicate skin of her inner thigh. She gasped, her fingers tangling in my hair as I kissed higher until my mouth found her pussy.
Her cry filled the room as her knees buckled. I caught her with one arm around her thighs and my other hand splayed against her back, holding her upright while I buried my face between her legs.
I didn’t tease or play. I feasted.
My tongue moved over her, flat and firm, tracing the shape of her before finding her clit. I sucked it into my mouth and flicked it with ruthless precision.
“Ryan!”
Her cry broke into a sob as her hips bucked against my face.
I held her tighter, drinking her in while the taste of her arousal drove me wild.
Sliding two fingers inside her, I curled them until I found the spot that made her scream.
I worked her with my mouth and hand, relentless and driven by the memory of her translating my filthy promise and my need to prove every word of it.
She came apart quickly and violently, her orgasm tearing through her with a ragged shout. Her body clenched around my fingers as her taste flooded my mouth. I rode her through it, gentling my touch only when she went limp and shuddering, supported entirely by my arms.
I stood, lifted her effortlessly, and laid her in the center of my bed. She watched me through dazed eyes while I stripped off my jeans and boxers. My cock sprang free, thick and achingly hard.
Her eyes widened. A flicker of her old apprehension moved through them, but beneath it burned a heat and willingness that matched my own.
I yanked open the nightstand drawer and pulled a condom from the pack. After tearing open the foil with my teeth, I rolled it down my shaft and stroked myself while she watched. We had crossed so many lines tonight that the barrier felt like a fucking mood killer, but it was what it was.
I crawled over her and braced myself on my forearms, caging her beneath me until our faces were inches apart.
“Last chance,” I said, my voice rough as gravel. “Tell me no or tell me to stop, and I will. I’ll hold you all night and want you just as much tomorrow.”
She reached up and cupped my jaw, her thumb tracing my lower lip. Her eyes remained clear and certain when she answered.
“Yes.”
That single word was my undoing.
I positioned myself at her entrance. She was still slick from my mouth and her climax, but she was so fucking tight that I pushed inside slowly, giving her an inch and then another while her body adjusted to the stretch and burn.
Her eyes fluttered closed, and a soft whimper escaped her lips. I kept going until I was buried to the hilt and our bodies were fused. Holding myself there, I shook with the effort of controlling what I wanted to do to her while my forehead pressed against hers.
“Look at me,” I commanded, my voice strained.
Her eyes opened. Pleasure glazed them, along with a hint of pain, but she held my gaze.
“This is what I wanted,” I gritted out as I began to move, withdrawing slowly before driving even deeper. “On the bus, in that hotel shower, and every fucking second between. I wanted this. I wanted you taking all of me.”
I found a rhythm that wasn’t frantic, but powerful and deliberate. Each deep stroke drove home the truth of how badly I had ached for her.
“You feel that?” I groaned, thrusting into her at an angle that made her arch off the bed. “That’s how bad I wanted you. That’s how deep it fucking goes.”
My control began to fray, and the measured pace gave way to something more primal and desperate.
My hips drove harder and faster, rocking the bed until the headboard knocked against the wall in a frantic rhythm.
Hooking her legs over my arms, I spread her wider and opened her for me until I could sink even deeper.
“Esta pussy es mía,” I snarled, the Spanish spilling from me in a dark, possessive growl. “Solo mía. This pussy is mine, Charm. Only mine.”
She sobbed my name, the sound becoming a broken chant beneath the slap of our bodies. Her nails scored my back and shoulders, marking me as hers, and I welcomed every sharp sting.
I leaned down and captured her mouth in a searing kiss, swallowing her cries. “Say it,” I demanded against her lips as my thrusts turned brutal. “Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours!”
“Say it again.”
“I’m yours, Ryan. ?Tuya!”
The Spanish affirmation and the way she surrendered herself to me shattered the last of my restraint.
Her inner muscles began clamping and fluttering around my cock, signaling her second climax.
I redoubled my efforts, fucking her with a frenzy that bordered on violence as I chased my release and fought to take her with me.
“Come with me, mi hada,” I begged, my voice breaking beneath the demand. “Let go for me. I’ve got you.”
Her orgasm tore through her. Her body bowed off the bed, a silent scream etched across her face before a raw, shattered cry ripped from her throat. The intense, rhythmic clenching of her pussy around my cock was too much.