29. Ryan #3
She came apart on top of me with both hands flat against my chest, and I felt every part of it, and it took me straight over with her.
I emptied into her with my hand locked on her hip and her name coming out of me in pieces, and something underneath it in Swedish that I did not choose and could not have translated.
“Ryan!” she cried out as she spasmed around me.
“Fuck yes, baby. Take all of it,” I roared as I thrust one, then two more times, completely empty.
She collapsed onto my chest. Neither of us moved for a long time.
The room came back slowly. The climate control. The seam of hallway light under the door. Her heartbeat going hard against my ribs and then slowing, and her breath damp at my throat, and my hand moving up and down her spine without any instruction from me at all.
"You're shaking," she said, into my neck.
"Yeah."
"Good."
I laughed. It came out as almost nothing. She lifted her head and I could feel her looking at me.
"Where did that come from," I asked, not complaining at all.
She was quiet a moment. When she answered, the pleased edge had gone out of her voice and it was just her.
"I've been thinking about it for a while." Her fingers moved on my chest. "I didn't know how to ask."
"You don’t have to ask for anything you want. You can have it all."
"I know that now." A breath. “I’m glad you liked it.”
I put my hand over hers and held it flat against my heart so she could feel what she'd done to the rhythm underneath. “Baby, feel what you’ve done to me. I fucking loved it.”
She settled against me and I lay in the sealed dark of that room with her weight on my chest and no working thoughts at all for quite some time.
Later, still awake, but relaxed and calm, we talked. “Tell me something,” she said.
“What.”
“Anything. Something I don’t know about you yet.”
I thought about it. “In Malmo when I was a kid, my grandfather used to take me to watch the local team play. Little rink, smelled like diesel and wet wool. I thought it was the greatest place on earth.”
“Did he know?” she asked. “How much it meant to you.”
“He knew.” I paused. “Same rink, twenty years earlier. It’s where he fell in love with the game.”
She stilled for a moment. Her fingers found the bracelet on her wrist. Alltid din. And traced the engraving with her thumb, back and forth, over and over.
“I want to go to Sweden with you someday,” she said. “See the rink.”
I pressed my lips to her hair. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Simple. Certain. No room for argument.
I held her a little tighter and stared at the ceiling and thought about Malmo in July, the light that didn’t fully go dark, my grandfather’s voice, the smell of the ice in summer.
I thought about what it would be like to take Maren there.
To show her the rink and the city and the beauty that existed at the top of the world in midsummer, and to watch her turn it into something she’d never forget and would associate with me.
I knew someday we were going to do it.
“Alltid din,” I said quietly.
I woke at two in the morning to the deep darkness of a hotel room. The blackout curtains, the thin line of light under the door, the unfamiliar hum of climate control, and Maren warm against my side, her breathing slow and even.
I lay still for a moment, taking stock. The road trip, the games, the locker room, Griffin sitting in the chair across from my laptop at midnight talking defensive coverage like it was September again.
The table at the bar with all of us. Theo arguing, Cole fabricating, Eli saying almost nothing and meaning all of it.
Maren’s hand on my thigh, my hand on hers, two people not hiding anything in front of thirty people who were all, as it turned out, entirely fine with it.
I thought about Maren saying “I want to go to Sweden with you someday” like it was a settled thing, like our future was a place she’d started planning visits to, and I didn’t have a Swedish word or an English one to describe how it made me feel.
Just the warmth of a thing that was mine and that I was not going to be careless with.
I turned toward her.
She rolled to face me in her sleep. Just that—her face finding my shoulder, her hand settling against my chest without her knowing she’d done it—and that was the end of lying still.
“Hey,” I said quietly, against her hair.
She stirred when my hand moved along her jaw. “Mm. S’late.” Her voice was thick with sleep.
“I know.” I pressed my mouth to her temple. Her cheek. The soft skin at the corner of her jaw. “You can go back to sleep if you’d rather.”
“Ryan—” My name came out blurred and soft. “What are you doing.”
“Nothing.” I kissed her throat, slow, and felt her exhale shift. “Shh.”
She made a sound that was not an objection. “Mmm.”
I moved down. Took my time getting there—her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder—and when I closed my mouth over her nipple she came awake fast, her breath catching sharp, her hand finding my hair.
“Oh—” Not a word. Just that sound—her body ahead of her brain, entirely out of her control.
I stayed there, soaking in what made her grip tighten and what made her hips shift and what made her say my name in the register that went straight through me.
She was warm from sleep, her skin softer than usual, and she tasted like something I was going to spend a long time thinking about.
I moved to the other side and felt her arch up and I pressed my palm flat against her stomach to hold her still, because I wasn’t done yet and I wanted her to know it.
“Ryan.” Breathless now. Awake.
I moved down further and pressed my mouth to the inside of her wrist, right over the bracelet. Alltid din.
“Come here,” she said. Her fingers pulled at my hair. “Please.”
The please did something to me. It always did. I obeyed.
She was soaking wet when I dipped my fingers into her—slick and warm and ready, and my jaw tightened with the effort of not rushing this—and she made a low sound when I touched her, her thighs falling open, her head tipping back into the pillow.
“Please,” she said again, smaller this time.
I moved over her and she wrapped around me immediately, her legs pulling me close, and I pushed inside her slowly and felt the breath leave my body at the heat of her, the ease of it, the way she fit around me like something that had always been exactly this way.
My heart was pounding hard against my ribs.
I could feel hers too, her chest pressed to mine, both of us breathing differently now.
I dipped low to kiss her, tasting her, our tongues tangling together as I thrust slow, and deep.
I set an unhurried rhythm, like I needed it to last forever.
She matched it. Her hands moved on my back—not urgent, just holding on and stroking my skin—and I pressed my forehead to hers and stayed there.
No performance, no distance between us, just the dark and the hum of the hotel room and the city sounds of Vancouver bleeding through the curtains and the warmth of her around me, tighter every time I moved, pulling me deeper.
I felt everything. The soft sounds she was making against my throat.
The way she shifted to take me at a better angle and then made a quiet, involuntary sound when she found it.
The moment her whole body went taut and she said my name—just that, just once—I felt her come apart around me, her arms pulling me closer, her face pressed against my neck.
I followed her, my face in her hair, alltid din against her skin because it was the only true thing I had.
Afterward, breathless, she pressed her face against my chest.
“That was amazing,” she said quietly.
“It always is,” I agreed. I pressed my lips to hers. “Jag ?r din,” I said quietly, holding her. “Always.” We stayed there, wrapped in each other, until I felt her drift off.
I lay awake for a while longer, listening to her breathe, and thought about playoff hockey and Eli’s daughter and a small diesel-scented rink in Malmo and the woman asleep on my chest who wanted to see it someday.
Phoenix was waiting for us at the end of the week.
I was ready to go home. With my girl.