19. Ryan
RYAN
The charter landed at Sky Harbor at eleven-fifteen at night.
Nine days. Seven games. Four wins, two losses, one overtime that had gone the wrong way in San Jose but still counted as progress because the team had played sixty minutes of real hockey before losing it, which was a different thing than losing it in forty.
I had logged forty-three minutes of ice time in the final three games. My shoulder had held.
I was in a car by eleven-forty, bags in the trunk, my phone already in my hand.
Ryan: Just landed
The response came before I’d cleared the airport.
Maren: I know. I’ve been tracking the flight.
I read her text twice and smiled.
Ryan: Have you now
Maren: Don’t make it weird
Ryan: I’m not making it weird
Maren: You’re making it weird with your ellipses
Ryan: I don’t use ellipses
Maren: There were three dots
Ryan: Those are thinking dots
Maren: That’s being very pleased with the fact I was tracking your flight
I was grinning at my phone in the back of a car at eleven forty-five at night, and I couldn’t help myself. I fucking missed her so much.
Ryan: Are you home
Maren: Yes
Ryan: I’ll be there in twenty minutes
She took longer than usual to respond.
Maren: Okay
I pocketed my phone and watched the Phoenix lights slide past the window.
The wide flat grid of the valley at night, the mountains dark against a darker sky, the quality of desert air I’d stopped fighting somewhere around month two and started to like.
The city looked different than it had in September.
Either it had changed or I had. Probably both.
The drive was twenty-two minutes, accounting for traffic.
I let myself in.
She’d been waiting. She hadn’t tried to look like she hadn’t been waiting, which undid me every time, the way she didn’t perform anything.
She was in the T-shirt she’d worn on the FaceTime call last night, the one that was technically mine, her hair loose, her feet bare on the hardwood.
The lamp behind her was on low and the house smelled like her.
Warm and faintly citrus, the smell of a space that was lived-in and cared for, and after nine days of hotel rooms and recycled charter air and the antiseptic smell of visiting locker rooms, it landed somewhere in my fucking utopia.
My right shoulder was carrying the dull familiar ache of too many minutes in the final stretch.
My lower back had logged seven games in nine days and was making its displeasure known.
I was tired in the way that wasn’t about sleep.
The accumulated weight of nine days of being on, being captain, being the person the younger guys looked to when things went sideways.
I stepped inside and she practically fell into my chest. I got my arms around her before the door had finished closing and pressed my mouth into her hair and breathed her in.
The warmth of her, the beachy scent, the way she fit against me like the nine days hadn’t happened.
Her arms came around my waist and she exhaled against me, slow and complete, the release of a held breath.
“Hi,” she said, into my shoulder.
“Hi.” I pulled back enough to see her face.
She was open and steady and a little undone, the careful management she wore most of the time gone from her face entirely. I let myself feel that for one full second. Then I kissed her.
It started slow. Or started to. She had her hands in my shirt before five seconds were out and I walked her backward and she went, her hands moving up to the back of my neck, pulling me down to her.
I got her shoulders against the wall and she made a sound against my mouth that burned through whatever was left of my patience after nine days of wanting her across two thousand miles.
“Ryan—”
“I know.” I pulled back just enough to look at her.
Flushed, her mouth soft, and the want of her culminating into this moment.
I took the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head.
She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. I pressed my palm flat against her heart and felt it beating fast and looked at her in the low lamplight.
Standing in nothing but a tiny black thong, she was everything.
“Gud,” I said. Low, Swedish, involuntary.
Her chin came up. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’re going to be the death of me.” I pressed my mouth to her collarbone, her throat, the soft skin beneath her ear. “Du ?r vacker.” Beautiful. I said it against her skin and felt her shiver. “Nine days,” I said. “I thought about you every hour of nine days.”
“Ryan—”
“Tell me what you want, baby.” My mouth moved down her throat. My hands found the waistband of her shorts and worked them down. “Tell me exactly.”
“Your mouth,” she said. Her voice had already gone slightly wrecked. “I want your mouth on me. Your tongue. I’ve been thinking about it since you left.”
I pulled back and watched her. She looked at me with anticipation.
“Anything for you, solsken.” I dropped to my knees, happy to oblige.
She made a sound when my mouth found her center that I felt in my spine.
I held her hips against the wall and took my time.
Nine days of thinking about tasting every inch of her body gave me both the patience and the focus.
Working her panties down, then opening her legs slowly, reading every response, pressing my tongue flat against her center, and then the point of it until she had both hands in my hair and her head tipped back against the wall, groaning.
“Ryan.” My name in her mouth like a command.
I raised my eyes to her. Her eyes were dark and her mouth was open and she looked completely undone and I intended to finish that. “Tell me.”
“Don’t stop.” Her fingers tightened in my hair. “I need—right there, don’t you dare—Fuck!”
I didn’t stop, licking and sucking, coaxing her orgasm.
I slid two fingers inside her and kept my mouth and tongue working and felt her clench around me immediately.
She said my name twice more, much louder, and then stopped saying words entirely, her thighs pressing against my shoulders, her whole body tightening.
I kept the rhythm steady, pressing my fingers forward, my tongue exactly where she needed it, and when she came apart she did it with her back against the wall and my name on her lips and both hands pulling me into her like she couldn’t let go.
I pressed my lips once to the inside of her thigh, then I stood.
“I could watch you come undone like that every day,” I said as I pressed my body against hers. Moving my hands along her rib cage, I brushed my thumbs against her tight nipples, making my way to her neck so I could kiss her again, and she shuddered.
“Are you good?” I whispered.
She was breathing hard, her cheeks flushed, her eyes heavy-lidded. She got her hands in my shirt and pulled.
“Bedroom,” she said. “Now.”
I walked her there.
In her room I stripped my shirt off and she had her hands on me before it hit the floor, her palms warm and soft, tracing the lines of me in the low light.
I felt the pressure of her hands and the dull ache in my right shoulder and the accumulated exhaustion of nine days of road hockey, and none of it mattered.
I dropped my pants to the floor and the only thing between us were my boxer briefs.
I laid her down on the bed.
“I missed you,” I said again. I was braced over her with my hands on either side of her face. “The whole trip. Every game. I’d finish and the first thing I’d reach for was my phone.”
She looked up at me. The careful set of her jaw released the way it did when I said something she’d been waiting to hear. She reached up and pulled me down to her.
“I missed you too.”
I reached over to her nightstand where we’d started keeping the condoms, and she gently stopped me. Surprised, I met her eyes and saw a question.
“I know we’ve never—” She stopped. Started again, careful and direct. “I want you with nothing between us. I’m tested. I’m on birth control. I’m just—if you wanted to. We don’t have to, though.”
I’d never had sex without a condom, and for her to trust me this way, to want this with me, was quite possibly the hottest thing she could have ever said. I was stunned.
She was studying my face, not expectantly, just asking it. Fuck. I loved her. She was it for me and probably always had been, and fuck, I need to tell her soon.
I reached for her hand. Brought it up and pressed my mouth to her palm. “Are you sure?” I asked.
She nodded, and pulled me closer, flush against her, to kiss me. “I want this. I’m sure.” Her eyes sparkled, and she whispered, “Fuck me, Ryan. Fuck me like you missed me for nine god damn days. Show me.”
I got out of my boxer briefs and pressed my hips between her thighs and she wrapped around me, her ankles crossing at my back.
Bringing my finger through her folds, I spread her wetness around the tip of my cock, then I pushed inside her slowly, until I was all the way in.
The breath left my body. The heat of her, the relief of being inside her, a sound low in my chest that wasn’t quite a word coming out.
I stilled for a moment, fully inside her, recognizing the weight of the moment.
Her warmth enveloping around my cock was almost more than I could handle.
“Gud,” I said again, against her throat. “Jesus Christ, Maren. You feel so fucking good.” I had to grit out the words. If I didn’t exercise some restraint this would be over far too soon.
“Ryan.” Her hands flew into my hair and she grabbed the strands. “Fuck.” Her hips were bucking slightly, trying to get the friction we both wanted, and I took in a deep breath.