19. Ryan #2
No condom, nothing between us, just her, gripping me—I had to press my forehead to hers and take a moment before I completely lost control and fucked her into the mattress with every bit of pent-up sexual energy I’d felt for her since the day we met.
I’d never done this before, and I hadn’t understood until this exact second what it meant for us.
Joining completely, bare, raw, was incredible, and I had to stop myself from saying everything I was feeling.
I moved.
I set a rhythm slower than the urgency of the hallway, deliberate, my weight on my forearms so I could see her face. She was watching me with her lips parted and her eyes dark and her hair spread across the pillow and I said her name because I couldn’t help it, and she said mine back the same way.
I dropped my mouth to her ear, ready to talk to her the way I knew she loved. My girl loved when I said filthy things to her in bed. When I let her fantasy come true, telling her how good her pussy felt. It was not fucking hardship, that’s for damn sure.
“You have no idea,” I said, low, “how many times I thought about fucking you like this. Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver. Every game, every hotel room, every time I picked up my phone.” I pulled back and drove forward hard and deep, and she gasped.
“I thought about your beautiful mouth.” Thrust. “How wet your pussy is, and how it grips me perfectly.” Thrust. “I thought about these perfect nipples and how I couldn’t wait to suck on them.
” Thrust. Then I took one into my mouth, circling my tongue around the peak.
She moaned, and I could feel her pussy clench me tighter.
Fuck. I wasn’t going to last. “I thought about how you sound when you’re close.
” Another thrust and her breath caught. “I thought about exactly this. You underneath me, making those sounds, taking everything I give you.”
“Ryan—” My name came out wrecked and I knew she was close.
“Yeah.” I fucked into her deeper but kept the steady rhythm.
“That’s it. You are perfect, solsken. You feel like—Gud—I can’t—” The Swedish came up without warning, three words I wasn’t saying yet in English, said against her throat in the one language I didn’t have to think in.
I pressed my forehead to hers and kept moving.
“You were made for me. You’re mine,” I said. “Tell me.”
“I’m yours, Ryan.” No hesitation. “I’ve been yours since September, you have no idea—”
“Ja.” I pressed my thumb to her clit and she exploded around me. “Come for me.”
She came apart with her face turned into my shoulder and my name in her mouth and her whole body pulling me deeper, and I followed her over it.
My forehead pressed to hers, my breath gone, endearments in Swedish and then in English and then just her name, over and over until I was coming so hard inside her I saw stars.
“Jesus Christ, Maren,” I huffed into her hair.
“Did it feel good for you too?” she asked.
Uh, how could she even ask? Whoever gave her this insecurity was a real piece of shit.
“Baby. I’ve never come so hard in my life. You are incredible,” I said before dropping my lips to hers. “Everything you fucking do is amazing.”
I got us both cleaned up, then pulled her close to me.
The ceiling fan turned. Outside, the desert held the deep stillness of two in the morning.
I rolled to my side and she came with me, her head finding my chest, my hand settling in her hair. The lamp was still on low. The jersey hung on the hanger in the open closet, number 17, my name across the shoulders. The bracelet on her wrist caught the light.
She traced the scar through my left eyebrow. She always did that.
The first time I’d had this problem in Swedish she’d been eighteen and standing at the edge of a frozen pond in the dark and I’d said, “nothing appropriate” and she’d given it back to me like she knew exactly what I meant.
She had. We’d both held the line that night.
I’d been holding it for nine years in various forms. Lying here with her hand on my chest in the low light, I wondered how much longer I could hold it in English.
“You need to come in first thing tomorrow morning,” she said. “That shoulder isn’t going to fix itself.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious, Ryan.”
“I know, solsken.”
A beat. Then her fingers found the scar again, gentler this time.
“You played well in Vancouver,” she said. “The second period especially. You were reading their defensemen before they knew what they were doing.”
I dropped my eyes to her. “You saw?”
“All seven games.” She said it plainly, without apology, then added, “Griffin used to make me watch film with him in high school. It stuck. And you also took a hit in the third period in Calgary I didn’t like.”
“That was nothing.”
“It was your left shoulder.”
“My right shoulder is the one with the issue.”
“I know which shoulder has the issue,” she said, dryly. “I also know what a hard hit to the left side looks like when the right side is already compensating.”
I was quiet. She was right. I’d felt it in Calgary and had ignored it and she’d apparently watched it happen from her couch in Scottsdale and had been sitting on it for four days.
“Come in at eight,” she said.
“Fine.”
She shifted closer against me. A beat of quiet passed.
“I watched one of the games last week with my mom,” she said. She said it quietly, like she was still deciding what to do with it. “At my parents’ house. She called me that afternoon, said she hated watching alone when my dad was out and asked if I wanted to come over.”
I went still.
“I sat on their couch for three hours.” Her voice was even, not accusing.
“My mom kept grabbing my arm when you made a play. She talked about you the whole night. How good you’ve been for Griffin, how much the team has changed him for the better, how glad she is he has someone like you.
” Her voice dropped. “She has no idea. She was sitting right next to me and she has absolutely no idea. She’s my mother and I sat there for hours and let her think I was just—” She stopped. “She has no idea, Ryan.”
I stared at the ceiling. I’d been carrying a version of this for months myself.
Sitting at her parents’ table every Sunday, eating Linda’s food and talking about brisket and power play strategy with Tom while Maren passed me things across the table like we were just old friends.
They were generous with me, and I’d been sitting in the middle of it knowing exactly what I was withholding.
Tom passing the bread. Linda asking about my shoulder.
Both of them treating me like I was their son’s college buddy and teammate and nothing more.
I’d told myself it was temporary. That once I’d talked to Griffin, it would stop feeling like something borrowed.
Nine days on the road and it had only gotten heavier.
“I know,” I said.