taylor

Under your impatience, you were furious. You had been furious since last night, when you and Logan argued over something so miniscule that you couldn’t even remember what it was about. While you don’t remember the cause of it, you do remember that you’re furious about it.

It didn’t help that the two of you hadn’t spoken to one another from since he had said, “I love you, but I’m not doing this right now.” and walked out of your dorm, slamming the door on his way out. Okay, he hadn’t actually slammed the door but, to you, he basically did. And that made you furious.

Despite your stubborn vow to ignore him until he came crawling back to you, you still found yourself sitting in the stands with Hannah and Allie to watch the game. You had, childishly, planned to look unbothered and uninterested in the game. You had even practised your yawn. But, from the moment that Logan took to the ice to the time he got off it, you were on the edge of your seat.

He played like a man possessed. Obviously, he was just as furious as you were and he had channelled all of that into the game. He was checking the Harvard guys into the plexiglass with such a force that you swear you saw it wobble. He threw his head back and roared when he scored, it took all of your dignity to not start moaning right there and then.

Every time he skated past your section, chest heaving under the padding, you became a little less angry with him. And, somehow, a whole lot more furious with him.

And this wait was making it worse.

The double doors of the locker room finally clicked open; the team flooding out in chaotic chatter. You watched as the partners gravitated towards their boyfriends. That should be you and Logan, but it’s not because you’re ‘fighting’. You stayed with your back against the wall, waiting for the hallway to clear. You knew that Logan wouldn’t be coming out with them.

Once the hallway cleared and the voices faded, you pushed open the door and stepped into the way-too-brightly lit locker room.

Logan was sitting in his stall, his forearms resting heavily on his knees as he stared blankly at the Hawks logo on the carpeted floor. His thick, dark curls fell over his eyes, soaked with sweat. He was still in his uniform, only his skates and helmet were off, discarded somewhere on the floor.

Even from across the room, you could feel the pent-up aggression vibrating off of him in waves.

When the door clicked shut behind you, his head snapped up. You leant back against the it, refusing to come in any further. You’d already taken the first step towards him. Now he had to come to you. His eyes narrowed on you, dark and intense.

“You’re still here,” he rasped. It wasn’t a question, but you answered it anyway.

“Yes,” you said, crossing your arms tightly over your chest. And, because you were being petty, added, “and, I’m still mad at you.”

Logan snorted, running a tense hand through his damp hair. He slowly stood up and walked over to you, stopping inches away from you.  

Without his skates, he didn’t tower over like he would have done on the ice, but he was tall enough and wide enough to make you feel surrounded as you stood up straighter against the door.

His jaw clenched as he looked down at you and you felt a sudden heat pooling between your legs.

“I’m still mad at you,” he fired back.

“Mhm,” you murmured.

Your eyes greedily looked over him. The way his brow was furrowed. The sharpness of his jawline. The way he watched you looking all dark and serious. He looked rugged, undone, and it was so attractive to you that it made your heart ache and pussy clench.

His jaw clenched under your scrutiny, his gaze dropping to your lips as his breathing became shallower, more uneven.

“Have you come to pick another fight?” Logan asked.

“Maybe,” you countered, your voice steady despite your racing pulse. “Why? Do you want me to?”

“No.”

“Well, then I’m not here for that.”

“Then why are you here?”

He knew why you were here, the asshole. He could see your eyes travelling his body. He could see you watching the sweat roll down his neck. There’s no way he didn’t notice your chest rising or the way your eyes had dilated. He just wanted to hear you say it.

He leant forward slightly, hands slamming against the wall on either side of your head, trapping you there.

God, the smell of him. From this close, it was overwhelming. The smell of his sweat shouldn’t have pulled you in the way it did. But there was something so him and so masculine about the way he smelt.

That’s how you knew you were down bad.

You looked up at him, your stubbornness and pride pushed aside by the unadulterated need. “Are you going to kiss me or what?”

He didn’t answer and worse, he didn’t kiss you. Instead, the motherfucker smirked at you. He slipped his hands under your thighs, grabbing a hold of your ass and effortlessly lifted you up. He pressed you back against the door and you instinctively wrapped your legs around him.

The padding under his jersey prevented you from being chest to chest, forcing him to lean forward and tilt his face towards yours.

He hovered there, his lips a fraction away from yours, so close that you could feel the rapid puff of his warm breath on you, but he still wouldn’t kiss you. He stared down at your lips, then looked back up at you. You looked into his eyes, seeing the intensity of last night’s anger, tonight’s victory, and his raw desire for you. It was one of the things you loved most about him, he couldn’t hide anything in his eyes.

You felt a vein in your neck throb. You tilted your chin up, expecting him to crash his lips against yours now that you’ve made the first move. But Logan deliberately pulled his head back just an inch further. Teasing you. Letting you ache for it.

“Asshole,” you muttered, your fingers digging tightly into the damp fabric of his padded shoulders.

“Say that again.”

Instead of answering, you tried to pull his head down, but he held his ground. Keeping his eyes locked on yours, he shifted his weight, deliberately grinding his hips forward to press the hardness in his pants right against you.

“Ass. Hole.” You punctuate each syllable, if that’s what he wanted, you would give it to him.

His eyes flared as heat ran through his body. He ground into you again, making your breath hitch.

Lifting you higher in his arms, he pressed himself against you. His dick was twitching in his pants, and he so desperately needed relief.

“What am I going to do with you?” He let out an exasperated laugh as he tilted his head and leant into you.

The first touch of his lips was just a soft brush, but it still sent a ripple down your spine. You hadn’t expected him to be so delicate after the way he’d been looking at you and teasing you. He lingered there, brushing his lips across yours.

He brushed his lips against yours once more, before capturing your lower lip between his teeth, biting and tugging slightly.

You moaned.

The second the sound left your throat; Logan released your lip and kissed you for real. It was bruising and desperate and exactly what you needed to get out the frustrations of the last 24 hours. His hands were suddenly all over you in a frantic blue, sliding up the hem of your shirt, cupping your ass to lift you higher, caressing your face to tilt your mouth deeper into his.

Clinging to his neck, you were only faintly aware that he had begun moving. He kept his lips on yours, carrying you across the room as he stumbled to his locker.

He didn’t break the kiss until he was in front of his locker. As his hands slid from your ass, to your waist, he pulled back, eyes locking onto yours as his chest heaved.

“Pants off,” he said, voice gruff.

The moment you unwrapped your legs from him and stood up, he was there to help you with your jeans. His fingers were trembling as he frantically tried to undo the button.

Once your jeans slid down, you sat back on the black cushion of his locker bench, looking up at him with your heart hammering in your chest.

Logan dropped to his knees, settling right between your legs. His hands gripped your knees, spreading your legs open to look at the wet patch on your panties.

He stayed there for a beat, thinking about exactly how he wanted to devour you first. He settled on your thighs first.

His hands stayed gripped on your knees as he leant forward, pressing kisses and sucking on the sensitive skin along your inner thigh, travelling up. He got unbearably close to where you were waiting for him, already soaked, before trailing back down again.

You let out a frustrated whimper, your fingers clawing at his scalp.

On his third journey up, a heavy hand came to your stomach as he gently guided you to lean back against the wooden cubby. At the same time, his other hand slid around your lower back.

With an effortless tug, he pulled you forward until your ass was right at the edge of the bench. You rested one leg over his shoulder, completely opening you up to him.

It had only been a day and a half since he last had his face buried between your legs, but to him, it might as well have been an eternity.

“Fuck, baby, I missed this,” he said as he buried his face between your legs, inhaling you in.

With one hand, he slid your panties to the side and parted one of your folds so he could lick a fat stripe up your pussy. He did it again, and again, and again, lapping up the juices there before moving to focus on your clit.

Your hips bucked into his mouth as he flicked his tongue against you. He had no more intentions to tease you; he wanted you to cum on his face.

He used his nose to rub against your clit and you shamelessly rolled your hips over it. The friction feeling so good.

A whine caught in your throat as he dove back in with his tongue, flicking from left to right.

“Logan~~.”

He looked up at you, spit and arousal shining on the lower half of his face. “Feel good, baby?”

“So, good, you always make me feel so good.” You curled your fingers in his dark curls, pushing him back between your legs.  

Chuckling at your impatience, he went right back to work. His hand slipped under the hem of your top again so he could squeeze and knead your breast, the other still holding your panties so he could get at you.  

You tugged at his hair as he pressed his tongue against you and swirled it in uncontrolled circles.

When he was between your legs, all he cared about was giving you exactly what you wanted. What your body needed. You needed, he obliged, tongue continuing to flick and swirl against you.

“Don’t stop– I’ll...”  Your thought died on a moan.

The locker room was filled with the wet sounds of him moving his mouth against you, and the loud lewd moans that you freely let out. You didn’t care if anybody was around to hear you. In fact, you wanted them to hear just how good Logan was to you.

He could feel himself getting drunk off of the taste of you, his body was warm and buzzing. He was starting to feel delirious as your hips rolled on him.

The pressure of his tongue on you was perfect, you could feel the pleasure build steadily within you.

“Your tongue feels so good, Loge,” you praised. You were close. So close.

“Then come for me,” he said as he slid two fingers inside of you, curving and caressing your walls.

Shockwaves of pleasure ran over you as you came, clenching on his fingers. He kept his mouth on you through it, humming and moaning at the taste of you.

When your body finally settled, he sat back on his knees, panting heavily as his lips glistened in the harsh fluorescent blue lighting. You reached over, pulling him in for another kiss, tasting yourself on his lips.

“Wanna ride you, Loge,” you mumbled against his lips.

Logan didn’t need to be told twice; he was already thumbling with his pants when you pulled back to take your panties off.

The pants were barely down past his knees when you gently pushed him to lie flat on the carpet and straddled him.

“Just lay back, let me take care of you now,” you soothed as you ground against him, leaving a trail of slick arousal on his aching dick.

He practically whimpered as you continued to slide over him.

“B-baby.” His hands came to your waist, thumbs digging into your skin through your top. “Let me fuck you.”

Looking down at him, his eyes were half-lidded as they pleaded you. Who were you to argue with those beautiful brown eyes.

Lifting your hips up slightly, you held his dick to guide it into your pussy.

As your hole stretched around his tip, he let out a strangled moan. You watched him as you slowly lowered yourself onto him, coming to a full seat.

He throbbed and twitched within you, his thick head leaking pre-cum. You circled your hips, relishing in the feeling of him rubbing against your walls.

You hadn’t even really moved yet and he already looked wrecked. His mouth was hung slightly open, eyes squeezed shut. You craved more, to see him absolutely shattered by you.

Bracing your hands on his on the still damp fabric of his Briar U jersey, you began to move. You don’t raise your hips high, choosing smaller bounces and grinds of your hips.

For a few minutes of bounces, he let you set your pace, grunting and groaning as you sensually moved over him.

Each bounce brought him to the brink of desperation, his restraint wearing thin.

The hands on your waist tightened as he helped guide your rhythm in desperation. He needed you faster, he needed you to slam back down onto him harder.

“You were so hot out there.” Your voice was breathy, bouncing on him the way you were had you exhausted. “I wanted to touch myself just watching you play.”

The praise made him grip you impossibly tighter, made him slam you back down even harder.

His dick curved just the right way to hit your g-spot, causing you to see stars as you clenched around him. You moaned in tandem, his head thrown back as a result of your vice grip.

You didn’t care that if anyone opened the door right now, they’d come face to face with you bouncing on it. He didn’t care that the carpet rubbed at his ass as he tried to thrust up into you, limited by his pants around his ankles.

All you both cared about was the way you were wrapped around him, and the sounds that tumbled from his mouth as he got close.

It took a few more harsh bounces from you for him to unload into you. The hands on your waist held you in place as he filled you up. You purposely clenched, milking him for all he had.

“Fucking hell.”

You collapsed against his padded chest, your forehead resting against his shoulder as your breathing slowed. You turned to inhale the fresh sweat on his neck. “You need a shower.”

Logan wrapped his arms around you, pulling you tighter against him. An exhausted smirk tugging at his lips. “So do you, coach is going to be pissed if you drip cum onto his floor.”

You were still furious with him, and his stupidly hot face. You knew the fight wasn’t actually over. But, if this is what being angry with Logan brought you, then you were more than happy to pick another fight tomorrow.

You hadn’t actually been introduced to him yet, but you’d felt his suffocating vibe the moment he walked through the door. He looked like absolute thunder. Briar had dropped a frustrating, tight game that evening, and while Garrett was channeling his nervous energy into playing the charismatic host, Logan was wearing his irritation like armor. Leaning against the kitchen counter with a dark scowl that practically screamed at people to stay away, his knuckles were white around his glass, his eyes scanning the room as if looking for a reason to snap.

​Navigating that crowded, chaotic kitchen with a brim-filled, sticky mixed drink was your first mistake. Your second was catching the rubber toe of your sneaker on the lifting edge of a rogue anti-fatigue mat near the sink.

​You stumbled forward, your arms flailing wildly in a desperate, ungraceful bid for balance. You didn’t fall, but your cup did a violent, mid-air flip, slipping from your fingers. A torrential wave of sticky, dark rum and cola splashed directly across the pristine gray fabric of Logan’s Henley shirt, soaking through the chest, darkening the material instantly and dripping down the front of his dark jeans.

​​Logan froze. His head snapped down slowly, looking at the huge, dark stain spreading across his clothes, and then his gaze lifted to yours. His eyes were blazing, a dangerous brown, entirely unamused and dripping with venom. "Oh, fuck!" he snapped, his voice cutting right through the ambient noise like a knife. He pulled the wet, heavy fabric away from his skin with two fingers, a look of pure annoyance twisting his features. "Are you serious right now? Watch where the hell you're going."

​The sheer aggression in his tone caught you completely off guard, instantly sparking your own deeply ingrained, stubborn nature. You had been about to apologize profusely, the words of remorse already forming on your tongue, but the bite in his words choked them right out of your throat. You squared your shoulders, refusing to back down under his glare. "It was an accident," you retorted, pulling a few crumpled, napkins from the counter and shoving them toward his chest. "You don't have to be a complete dick about it. It’s just a shirt, I'm pretty sure you'll survive."

​"It's a wet, sticky shirt at the end of a terrible, exhausting fucking day," he growled, his voice dropping an octave as he batted your hand away with a harsh flick of his wrist. He didn't take the napkins; they fluttered uselessly to the floor. Instead, he leaned down slightly, giving you a long, icy glare that made you feel about two inches tall, his jaw clenching so hard you could see the muscle tick. "Next time, look up from your feet." Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heel and storming down the hallway toward the stairs, muttering curses under his breath.

​You stood there rooted to the spot, your cheeks burning with a toxic mixture of intense embarrassment and sudden, deep-seated dislike. Garrett materialized at your side a split second later, a sympathetic, slightly apologetic grimace on his face as he patted your shoulder gently. "Hey, don't sweat it," Garrett reassured you quietly, glancing warily toward the stairs where Logan had disappeared. "Logan’s just in a brutal mood because of the game, and he hates losing more than anyone. He's usually a great guy, I swear. He’ll have forgotten all about it by tomorrow morning."

​You forced a tight, fake smile and nodded, but as you looked down at your empty, sticky hands, a bitter taste lingered in your mouth. Spoiler alert: he wouldn't forget. and neither would you.

Two — "Fuck you"

A few weeks later, the initial friction hadn’t dissolved; it had hardened into a permanent, icy chill. You tried your best to play nice for the sake of Hannah and Allie, but Logan made it incredibly difficult. You saw how he was with the rest of their circle—fiercely loyal, easygoing, and warm. He was the kind of guy who quietly made sure Allie and Hannah got home safe from their late shifts and spent his free afternoons helping Jules with media stuff. He was patient with the entire world. But the exact millisecond you walked into a room, his posture stiffened and his jaw set. You hated being the sole exception to his good nature, so you simply stayed out of his way.

​The breaking point came on a gray, rainy Tuesday afternoon. You and Hannah had walked over to the hockey house to help Tucker untangle a massive, soul-crushing history assignment he was drowning in. The three of you were spread across the dining table, surrounded by a chaotic mess of highlighters, laptop cords, and heavy library textbooks.

​The back door clicked open, and Logan walked in. He was wearing his Briar athletic gear, a damp towel slung over his shoulders from a post-practice shower, his hair messy and wet. He looked exhausted, his shoulders tense, carrying the unmistakable hangover of a brutal morning practice. Instead of walking past to the kitchen, he paused by the table, leaning over Tucker’s shoulder to scan the open pages. He let out a heavy, deliberate sigh. ​"You’re using the wrong primary sources for that era, Tuck," Logan said, his voice dropping into that effortless, uninvited authority. "You need the economic logs from the eastern front, not these political manifestos. You’re going to tank your thesis statement with those."

​Tucker blinked up, looking miserable. "Wait, really? I thought—"

​"We checked those, Logan," you interrupted, keeping your voice level and calm as you kept your eyes on your notebook. "We've got it handled," you smiled, trying to remain polite.

​Logan didn't move. His eyes slid slowly down to the side of your face, unamused. "Right. Because you're an expert on 20th-century economic trade?"

​"No," you said, your pen pausing on the page. "But I can read a syllabus. If you're so worried about Tucker's academic results, you could have sat down and helped him yourself already."

​Logan’s jaw tightened, a sharp spike of tension instantly replacing his usual easygoing demeanor. He took his hands out of his pockets and leaned forward, bracing his palms on the edge of the table, firmly invading your space. Tucker shot Hannah a wide-eyed, panicked look across the textbooks, both of them suddenly bracing for impact.

​"I gave him my old notes weeks ago," Logan shot back, his voice dropping into something smaller, tighter. "But sure, ignore the guy who actually passed the class because you're too stubborn to take a note from me."

​"I'm not being stubborn, you're just being a patronizing prick," you retorted, leaning back in your chair. "You’ve been hovering over this table for five minutes just looking for a problem because you had a bad day and want to take it out on someone."

​Logan let out a harsh, dry laugh, though there was a flicker of genuine frustration in his eyes—the look of a good guy who couldn't understand why he kept letting you bait him. "Take it out on someone? Trust me, if I wanted to take anything out on someone, I wouldn't waste my time on you. I'm trying to keep my friend from bombing a midterm because he made the mistake of letting you organize his thoughts."

​"My thoughts are perfectly fine, Logan," Tucker muttered quietly under his breath, his eyes glued to his laptop screen, desperately trying to dissolve into the background.

​"They're fine when you're left alone, Tuck," Logan said, keeping his eyes locked onto yours, completely ignoring his teammate's plea. "Not when you're letting someone drag their own contrarian agenda into your coursework."

​"A contrarian agenda?" You stood up, your chair scraping loudly against the hardwood floor. Hannah flinched at the sharp noise, withdrawing her hands from the table and motioning for Tucker to leave the potential future crime scene. They both complied quickly, knowing you both well enough to understand that trying to reason with you in that moment would be pointless. "Are you actually insane? I'm sorry that anyone else having a brain in this house threatens your need to micromanage every single thing that happens under this roof."

​"It doesn't threaten me at all," Logan said, standing up straight and towering over you, using his height to crowd your space until his shadow completely blocked out the light from the window. The sheer, uncharacteristic anger rolling off him was suffocating; Tucker actually slid his chair back a few inches, completely done with trying to intervene at this point. "It annoys me. You annoy me, actually. I'm not going to walk on eggshells in my own dining room because you can't handle a basic correction."

​"I can handle a correction if it's respectful," you shot back, your heart hammering against your ribs, but you refused to take a step away from him. "You don't want to help Tucker. You just want to feel like the smartest guy in the room and that is annoying."

​"I dont—," Logan started, a nervous scoff escaping his lips. "You don't know anything about me. Please let's keep it this way, since you clearly can't stand me anyway."

​"You're the one who treats me like an absolute inconvenience the second I breathe in your direction!" you yelled, the weeks of being ignored, brushed off, and glared at finally boiling over into raw, unadulterated anger. "If you hate me being here so much, just say it. But stop acting like I'm the one bringing the venom into this house when you're the one dripping it."

​The air between you turned completely volatile, thick enough to choke on. A strange, angry electricity snapped between you, the argument completely detached from history or homework now, exposed and raw. Logan stared down at you, his breathing heavy and uneven as he tried to swallow down the sheer frustration rolling off him in waves. ​He leaned down slightly, bringing his face inches from yours, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle violently ticked in his cheek.

"Fuck you," he whispered.

​The words hit with a cold, deliberate weight that vibrated in the dead-silent room. ​Before you could fire back, Tucker's voice boomed from the kitchen archway, stern and completely done with both of you. "Enough! Both of you, cut it the hell out."

​But the damage was done. The look in Logan's eyes made something tight and painful twist in your chest. You refused to sit there and breathe the same air as him for another second. Blindly turning around, you grabbed your laptop and notebook, shoving them into your backpack with rigid, uncooperative hands.

​"I'm leaving," you muttered, keeping your eyes glued firmly to the floor as you pushed past Hannah’s reaching hand on the way out. You grabbed your jacket from the hook and left through the front door, slamming it hard enough to rattle the frame, stepping out into the pouring, cold rain with the echo of his voice looping in your head like a curse.

Three — "Fuck off"

​For the next month, you became an absolute expert at avoiding John Logan. You turned it into an art form. If he was at a crowded house party, you stayed firmly in the kitchen or on the opposite porch. If the entire group gathered at Malone's, you ensured you sat on the exact opposite end of the long table, hidden behind Dean's loud gestures.

Because of this, you never saw the way his eyes silently followed you when you entered a room, or the almost guilty look that crossed his face whenever your name came up in conversation. He knew he'd crossed a line by cursing at you like that—but your unbreakable silence gave him absolutely no room to apologize, and his own stubborn pride kept him from forcing the issue.

​There were small signs of his guilt, though. One random Thursday afternoon, he showed up at the place you shared with Hannah and Allie, claiming he was just dropping off a spare hockey hoodie Garrett had left in his truck. You had stayed in your room with the door cracked just an inch, watching through the tiny gap as he lingered by the entrance, his eyes constantly drifting toward your door,  silently checking to see if you'd come out. You hadn't moved an inch, holding your breath until he finally left.

​Eventually, Hannah and Allie staged a full-blown intervention. A brand-new club had opened downtown, and they absolutely refused to let you stay home and rot in your room, even though they openly admitted the boys were all coming along. You finally relented, numbing your spiking anxiety by pouring yourself two heavy pre-game vodka crans before leaving the house.

​The club was a massive sensory overload—flashing neon lights, artificial fog, and heavy, chest-thumping bass that made communication impossible. By midnight, everyone was comfortably, heavily drunk. You were leaning your back against the sticky mahogany bar, sipping a gin and tonic, when you finally caught sight of him through the pulsing crowd.

​Logan was laughing at something Beau said, a dark red bandana tied tightly around his messy hair, looking effortlessly, devastatingly handsome in a black fitted t-shirt. As if sensing the weight of your gaze, his head turned. His dark eyes locked directly onto yours across the smoky crowded room. He didn’t look away. He held your stare for a second, then two, then three — a strange, intense, unreadable heat settling over his features before a group of dancers blocked your view.

A few minutes later, a guy from one of the campus fraternities slithered up next to you on the edge of the dance floor. He was loud, sweaty, and smelled entirely too much like cheap cologne and whiskey — but a little bit of dancing could help taking your mind off of a certain hockey player, you thought. You enjoyed it at first, moving along, focusing on the music, the stranger getting closer and closer as the playlist progressed. But then, just as you started to feel good - just the right amount of alcohol in your veins to feel lighter and relaxed - he tried to grind his hips against yours. You tried to step back, laughing it off politely at first, pushing his hands away, but he didn't take the hint. His hands came down on your waist, his fingers digging into your hips, pulling you flush against him with a grip that was far too tight and aggressive.

​Before you could even raise your hands to shove his chest, a massive shadow loomed over both of you.

​A now familiar hand gripped the frat guy’s shoulder, spinning him around with enough force to make his sneakers squeak on the floor.

​"Fuck off," Logan snarled, his voice a low, lethal vibration that cut right through the heavy bass of the music. He leaned in until he was nose-to-nose with the guy. "Get your fucking hands off her and fuck off right now."

​The guy looked at Logan and wisely raised his hands in surrender, backing away rapidly into the foggy crowd without throwing a single punch.

​Logan’s breathing was heavy, his chest heaving, his fists still clenched tightly at his sides as his eyes scanned the immediate area like a wild animal looking for another threat. He looked ready to tear the entire club apart with his bare hands. Anxious that he might actually chase the guy down for a fight, you stepped directly into his line of sight, capturing his attention.

​"Logan," you breathed, your voice soft and entirely stripped of its usual sarcasm. Without thinking about the consequences, you reached out, your bare fingers wrapping around his forearm.

​The exact millisecond your skin met the warm, rock-hard muscle of his arm, Logan froze entirely. It was the first time the two of you had ever willingly, gently touched, and the effect was instantaneous. The blinding anger seemed to drain out of him in a single breath, replaced by a sudden, sharp intake of air. He looked down at your small hand resting on his arm, his skin tingling where you touched him, and then he slowly, deliberately lifted his gaze to your eyes.

​The noisy club, the flashing strobe lights, the roaring bass, the alcohol—it all faded into irrelevant background noise. You stood face-to-face on the crowded dance floor, completely motionless, just looking into each other's eyes. Your heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs, not from fear of the frat guy, but from a sudden, dizzying, terrifying realization. Looking into his wide, intensely focused eyes, you realized you didn't hate him. Not even close. And from the soft, almost vulnerable parting of his lips, he didn't hate you either. You weren't close to being friends yet, but the ice had officially shattered into a million pieces. 

Four — "What the fuck"

The shift between you was subtle, but it was absolutely undeniable. The sharp hostility was gone, completely replaced by a quiet, lingering, heavy awareness that neither of you knew quite what to do with.

​A week later, you were sitting in a sunlit corner booth at Malone’s. You were completely, entirely absorbed in a brutal, multi-chapter study session for your finals, a pair of heavy over-ear headphones clamped securely over your ears. The sweet, nostalgic melody of American Pie was playing through the speakers, and without even realizing it, you were softly humming along to the chorus, tapping the cap of your yellow highlighter rhythmically against the open pages of your textbook.

​You were so deeply focused on your notes that you didn't hear the diner's front door chime, nor did you see Logan walk in. He was there to finalize the last-minute details for the upcoming Hockey Fundraiser with Hannah and Della. But the exact moment his eyes scanned the room and spotted you sitting alone in the corner booth, he stopped dead in his tracks.

​He didn’t approach right away. He just stood near the counter, watching you. A soft, genuine smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he listened to your faint, slightly off-key humming.

​Prickled by the sudden, distinct sensation of eyes on you, you blinked and lifted your head from your textbook. Logan instantly wiped the smile from his face, clearing his throat roughly and pretending to read a missing cat flyer on the bulletin board.

​You pulled your headphones down, a small smirk playing on your lips. "You know, if you stare any harder, you're going to burn a hole right through my skull, Logan."

​Instead of snapping back with a sarcastic, biting retort like he used to, Logan let out a soft chuckle. He walked over to your booth and, to your surprise, slid into the bench by your side, his knee almost touching yours.

​"Just making sure you weren't torturing the rest of the innocent customers with your singing," he teased gently, his shoulder brushing against yours in the tight space.

​You rolled your eyes, but there was no spite left in your expression. "I happen to have the voice of a literal angel, thank you very much. You're just jealous."

​The playful banter slowly subsided into a comfortable silence. Logan looked at you, his expression turning a little more serious, his eyes softening as his voice dropped to a much quieter register. "Hey… are you doing okay?" Since what happened the other night, obviously implied by the way he looked at you right now, concern written all over his face.

You felt a warm flush creep up your neck and settle into your cheeks. "I'm okay, thank you" you smiled and he nodded, both silently agreeing not to discuss this unpleasant event anymore. You paused, looking down at his large hands resting on the table before forcing yourself to look back up. "How are you doing ? With the fundraiser and everything, I mean. You look like you haven't slept in a week."

​He seemed genuinely surprised that you were asking about him. Really, truly asking. He leaned back against the vinyl booth, a soft sigh escaping his lips as he completely opened up to you. He talked about the immense stress of managing the team's high expectations, his constant worries about Jules’ upcoming exams, and the suffocating pressure of the NHL scouts attending the next three games. You listened intently, never interrupting, offering gentle encouragement and a few dry, sarcastic jokes that had him laughing quietly into his palms. For a full hour, the two most stubborn, argumentative people at Briar University just… talked.

​"Well," you finally said, checking the diner clock and reluctantly packing your laptop into your bag. "I have to get to my shift at the library. Don't let Della bully you into paying extra for the tableware."

​"I won't," Logan said, his eyes tracking your every movement, lingering on your face. "See you around?"

​"See you around." You gave him a small, genuine smile—the first real one he'd ever received from you—and walked out into the crisp afternoon air, your heart feeling lighter than it had in weeks.

​Inside the booth, Logan sat completely still for a long, agonizing moment. He watched your retreating figure through the glass window until you turned the corner and disappeared from view. Slowly, he let out a shaky exhale, burying his face entirely in his hands. He rubbed his palms over his eyes, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

​"What the fuck," he whispered into the empty diner booth, his voice laced with a mixture of absolute awe and sheer, unadulterated panic. He was screwed. He was completely, utterly, hopelessly screwed, and he knew there was no turning back.

Five — "Well, fuck"

​The night of the Briar Hockey Fundraiser at Malone’s was a chaotic, high-energy, glittering success. The entire diner had been completely transformed for the evening—the regular tables had been pushed to the far perimeter to create a makeshift dance floor, strings of warm fairy lights hung across the ceiling, and a massive turnout of wealthy alumni, boosters, and students kept the bar utterly slammed.

​You had dressed up significantly for the occasion, wearing a form-fitting, emerald green silk dress that Allie let you borrow from her closet - of course. You spent the first half of the night talking to Hannah near the punch bowl, but your eyes kept unconsciously tracking a certain someone across the room.

Logan was entirely in his element—charming the older donors, laughing easily with his teammates, and looking entirely too edible for your own good.

​Around midnight, the formal event finally dissolved into a proper, rowdy college party. The DJ cranked up a heavy, slow, rhythmic pop song, the bass echoing through the floor, and the dance floor filled up with couples. You were navigating the edge of the sweaty crowd, trying to find Allie when a sudden, firm, yet gentle pull on your wrist guided you backward.

​You spun around on your heels, your chest bumping right into Logan’s broad torso. "You've been actively dodging me all night," he murmured, his deep voice vibrating right against your skin as his large hand settled naturally around yours. The casual, unhesitating intimacy of the gesture sent a fierce, blinding jolt of electricity straight down your spine.

​"I wasn't dodging you, I was letting you do your official host duties," you shot back, a wicked, playful smile spreading across your lips. The alcohol gave you a surge of confidence, and you looped your arms slowly around his neck, stepping closer into his personal space until there was absolutely no air left between you. "Besides, I didn't think you could actually handle me dancing with you."

​Logan’s dark eyes lit up instantly, a dangerous, competitive challenge flaring in his pupils. He pulled you a fraction of an inch closer. "Oh, really? Try me, sweetheart."

​You didn't hesitate. As the heavy beat of the music dropped, you shifted your weight, rolling your hips slowly, deliberately, and sinfully against his. You leaned in close, your lips brushing the warm shell of his ear as you whispered, "You're all talk, John Logan. Let's see if you can actually keep up with me."

​You pulled back just enough to look at him, your hands sliding down his chest to grip the crisp fabric of his shirt, tugging him rhythmically, tightly against your body. The friction was immediate, heavy, and intoxicating. Logan’s breath hitched audibly in his throat. A dark, intense flush crept up his neck, coloring his sharp cheekbones as his hands settled on your waist, his fingers digging firmly into your skin through the thin fabric of your dress. He swallowed hard, his eyes dropping helplessly to your parted lips, entirely overwhelmed and undone by the sudden confidence of your movements. He could feel exactly how much you were affecting him, his body reacting instantly to the touch of your hips.

A breathless, desperate laugh escaped him. He jerked his head back for a split second, fighting a losing battle for self-control. "Well, fuck," he muttered, his voice raw, completely devoid of its usual composure.

​"Did I break the big, tough hockey player already?" you cooed, tilting your chin up tauntingly, your noses almost touching as you continued to sway against him.

​"You wish," he groaned, his thumbs stroking the bare skin of your lower back where your dress dipped low. He didn't pull away. Instead, he pulled you even tighter against his lower body, matching your sinful rhythm perfectly, his dark eyes locked onto yours with a burning intensity that made it very clear the playful teasing was rapidly turning into something much more dangerous and inevitable. When the night finally forced you apart, it didn't feel like a goodbye — it was a promise.

Six — "Fuck"

Some things are bound to reach a breaking point, and the agonizing tension building between you for months was no exception. Three nights later, Briar won a massive game and the ensuing after-party at the boys' house was pure chaotic madness. The house was packed to maximum capacity, a sweaty, pulsing mass of drunken celebration, loud music, and screaming students.

​But you and Logan weren't paying any attention to the party. For the past two hours, you had been moving around the house like two high-powered magnets — constantly drawing closer, stealing long, heated glances across the crowded rooms, the unspoken, heavy weight of the fundraiser hanging between you.

​Seeking a brief moment of quiet to cool down your flushed skin, you headed down the dark back hallway toward the upstairs bathroom. Just as you reached out for the brass doorknob, the door swung open from the inside.

​Logan stepped out.

You nearly crashed straight into his chest, cutting your breath short as you ground to a halt mere inches from him. The hallway was swallowed by shadows, save for the frantic strobe lights bleeding in from the living room. Logan stared down at you, wide-eyed, his chest rising and falling in sync with the thick, suffocating heat pulsing through the house.

​Neither of you said a single word. The months of toxic banter, the vicious, screaming arguments, the desperate avoidance, and the agonizing teasing all converged into a single, breathless, breaking second.

​Logan reached out with lightning speed, his large hand wrapping around your waist, and shoved you backward into the bathroom, slamming the heavy wooden door shut behind you and twisting the lock with a sharp, echoing click.

​Before the sound of the lock could even fade, his mouth crashed onto yours.

​It was an absolute explosion. The kiss was passionate, borderline feral, a violent release of pure, pent-up, crazy frustration. You let out a muffled gasp against his lips, your hands flying up to rip into his dark hair, pulling him down toward you out of sheer desperation. He groaned deep in his throat, a sound of pure hunger, pinning your body flat against the heavy wooden door, his thick thighs crowding tightly between yours. His hands were absolutely everywhere—clutching your face, tracing the line of your throat, gripping your hips with a bruising, desperate force that felt incredibly, entirely right.

​"Logan," you whimpered against his mouth as he tore his lips away to kiss your jawline, your neck - his hands sliding down to frantically bunch up the silk fabric of your dress.

​With a sudden burst of strengh, he hooked his large hands under your thighs and lifted you effortlessly into the air. You wrapped your legs tightly around his waist as he deposited you onto the cold marble edge of the bathroom sink counter. He didn't waste a single second. His hands slid all the way up the bare, warm skin of your thighs, finding the edge of your underwear. His fingers quickly found your slick, burning, over-sensitized core, rubbing against you through the damp fabric with a rhythm that made your head tilt back and earned a large grin from him.

​You arched your back off the counter, a loud sob escaping your lips, your fingers digging deep into his shoulders.

​"You like that?" Logan growled against your neck, his voice dripping with lust. His fingers moved faster, driving you up a steep, agonizing cliff. "Tell me you want it."

​"Logan," you breathed out, "please," you cried out, your head tossing back against the large bathroom mirror. Your hands flew down to his waist, frantically, blindly fumbling with the button of his jeans. You shoved the denim down his hips until his length snapped free—thick, heavy, and pulsing with heat. The moment your fingers wrapped tightly around him, moving in a fast, desperate stroke, Logan’s eyes rolled back.

His jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked violently in his neck. He couldn't endure the exquisite torture for long, his quiet moans matching your own, before his large hand clamped over yours, freezing your movement. "Stop, stop," he panted, his chest wild, his forehead pressing against yours. "I'm going to come right now if you keep doing that. I need to feel you, right now."

With trembling, frantic hands, he reached into the small drawer next to the sink—Dean’s emergency stash—and ripped open a foil condom wrapper, spitting the plastic away and rolling it onto himself in one fluid, desperate motion.

Then he stepped back between your open thighs. His hands gripped your hips with an iron hold, dragging you to the very edge of the marble counter. He aligned himself against you, waiting just long enough for your frantic nod of approval. With one heavy, unyielding, possessive thrust, he buried himself completely inside you.

The sheer, overwhelming pleasure of that sudden fullness hit you both at once, fracturing the quiet of the bathroom with a sharp, mutual gasp. Instead of slowing down, the friction only stoked the fire, drawing a long, ragged, shattered exhale from deep in Logan's chest. His pupils were completely dilated, dark and wild with pure lust as his forehead dropped heavily against your shoulder.

"Fuck," he groaned into the crook of your neck, his voice a raw, visceral prayer vibrating against your collarbone.

His hands tightened on your hips, his fingers digging into your skin like an anchor as he immediately established a rhythm. The restraint dissolved into pure instinct. He pulled you flush against him, his thrusts becoming powerful, deep, and utterly relentless from the very start. Every heavy drive forced a breathless cry from your lips, the sound echoing off the tiled walls. You rocked together on the cold edge of the marble sink, your bodies generating a feverish heat that defied the chilly stone beneath you.

The bass from the after-party still thudded through the floorboards, a distant, muffled reminder of the chaotic world outside, but within the locked walls of the bathroom, that world was entirely forgotten. There was only the slick, friction-heavy slide of skin against skin, the frantic tangle of your fingers in his hair, and the hot, primal rhythm consuming you both.

The friction was dizzying, driving you both toward a precipice that neither of you could fight anymore. Logan’s pace turned frantic, his breath coming in harsh, ragged stabs against your ear as his hips slammed against yours with an undoing, desperate urgency. Every stroke sent a white-hot wave of pleasure straight to your core, tightening the coil inside you until it was agonizing.

You choked out a breathless, broken sound, your hands clamping onto his biceps as your head thrashed back against the mirror once more.

He didn't need words to know you were right there. He buried his face in your hair, his teeth grazing your shoulder as he delivered three more devastatingly deep, relentless thrusts.

That was the final breaking point. Your walls clamped down around him tight and pulsing, fracturing your breath into a loud, ruined cry as your entire body shattered into a blinding, head-to-toe release.

Hearing you break completely ruined him. Logan let out a guttural, unhinged groan that vibrated deep in his chest. His jaw locked, his body rigid and trembling as he gave one last, deeply possessive shove, throwing his weight into you as he came violently inside the condom. He held himself deep within you, his hips shuddering against yours as he rode out the waves of his own release, the two of you panting heavily in the quiet aftermath, entirely spent.

Seven — "Fuck it"

Roughly thirty minutes later, the two of you finally emerged from the bathroom. You had tried your absolute best to fix your chaotic appearance in the mirror—re-applying a bit of smudge-proof lip gloss, smoothing down the wrinkled fabric of your dress, and trying to tame your wildly tangled hair with your fingers—but the physical evidence of what had just occurred was written all over your faces. Your skin was flushed a deep unmistakable pink, your lips were incredibly swollen and red, and Logan was walking with a loose, stupidly contented, proud stride, his hair completely disheveled and sticking up in directions where your fingers had repeatedly torn through it.

​The exact moment you stepped back onto the floor of the crowded living room, a loud, piercing whistle cut through the air.

Dean was leaning against the back of the sofa, a beer dangling from his fingers and a knowing smirk plastered across his face. His eyes darted from you to Logan, zeroing in instantly on the faint trace of your lip gloss smeared along Logan’s jawline.

​"Well, well, well," he said, loud enough to be heard over the music. "Must have been a pretty intense plumbing emergency in there. Either that, or you two just went ten rounds with a blender. You might want to wipe your face, Logan."

Your cheeks instantly burned. You took a step back. "Dean, shut up, we were just—"

But Logan didn't let you finish the lie. He looked down at you, catching the slight panic in your eyes, and then looked over at Dean, who was practically vibrating with smug satisfaction.

Instead of getting defensive, Logan just let out a short, quiet laugh. The stubbornness, the secrecy, the remnants of your old feud—it all suddenly felt completely irrelevant. He was tired of hiding it.

"You know what? Fuck it," Logan muttered.

Before you could process the words, his hand slid around the back of your neck, his thumb resting against your jaw as he pulled you flush against his chest. Right there by the sofa, he leaned down and kissed you.

Dean threw his arms up in a dramatic, sweeping gesture. "About damn fucking time! Graham, you owe me twenty bucks!"

When Logan finally pulled back, his eyes were bright, a relaxed, genuinely happy smile playing on his lips as his thumb brushed your cheek. You looked up at him, the noise of the party fading into the background, finally realizing that the long, argumentative journey of seven dirty words had brought you exactly where you were supposed to be.

just posted a new John Logan fic <3

The idea was ridiculous. Allie was ridiculous. She was sitting in front of you in your dorm, holding up a packet of honey. A packet of honey that supposedly made you horny. You were calling bullshit.

"It's not supposed to work unless you're attracted to the person, but still. Fun!"

You giggled slightly, shaking your head. "So, you and Dean gonna try it?"

She shrugged. "Or you could." She had a twinkle of mischief in her eye. You furrowed your brows.

"With who? Casper?"

Allie rolled her eyes playfully. "Logan, silly."

Your mouth fell open, and you sputtered out some incoherent words, before getting your shit together. "John and I are friends. Friends."

Allie gave you a knowing look. "Mhm." She held the packet closer to you. "I have another one. You should do it with him. Find out if it's all really what it seems."

You rolled your eyes, crossing your arms. "That's ridiculous. We're friends, and- and even then, those stupid honeys don't work."  

Allie smiled, standing up. She went over to her purse, pulling out another packet and putting both on your desk. "Just in case."

You huffed.

Yeah, right.

  ++

  The honey packets were in your bag. Why? You had no idea. Not really. You knew it was stupid, and the chance of them actually working—whether that be because you weren't attracted to each other or because they were just straight bogus—was low.

Still, they were there, and you were on John's bed, scrolling through your phone as he did some sort of homework that he clearly didn't want to do. Eventually, he huffed, tossing his pen on the desk. "Okay, I give up. What should we do before my head explodes?"

He turned around in his chair, staring at you. You looked up, shrugging. "I dunno."

He gave you an unimpressed look. "There's not one thing in that chaotic mind of yours that has your interest?"

There was one thing. One stupid, ridiculously dumb thing. But it was there, and you couldn't get rid of it. John picked up on it before you could even deny anything. "What is it?"

You huffed, rolling your eyes. "Honey."

"Honey?"

"Honey."

He chuckled, shaking his head confusedly. "What?"

"Allie gave me some stupid honey packets. Told me to test them out and give her the results."

The pieces clicked quickly. He'd heard of them before. Of course he had, he was a college hockey player after all. His throat worked. "Oh." A pause, before he shrugged. "Do you have them?"

You almost laughed. Straight up cackled at the mere idea of him entertaining this. "You're serious?"

"Why not? What's the worst that could happen? I doubt they work."

"That's what I said. Allie insists otherwise."

"Well, let's find out."

You swallowed. This was not happening. You were not about to take horny honey with John Logan. Except, you were. He was willing. He was more than willing. You were dizzy from it. You let out a breathy laugh, leaning down and grabbing your purse off the floor.

You reached inside, searching until you found them. You pulled them out, tossing one to John. "This is stupid," you commented, but still, you were opening your packet. The honey was sweet on your tongue with some sort of bitter taste involved, but it wasn't overpowering.

John did the same thing until both of your packets were empty. You tossed your purse on the floor, standing up and throwing the trash away in his mini-trashcan by his desk.

He looked up at you from his seat. "Now we wait."

"Now we wait," you repeated, going back over to his bed.

John followed, plopping down next to you and pulling out his phone. Both of you stayed silent, a little too anxious over what may happen, but still willing to do it. You scrolled aimlessly on your phone for about thirty minutes before you started to feel weird.

Not a bad weird, but you were hyperaware. Hyperaware of every time he shifted next to you, every breath that was a little too deep. Your thighs squished together a bit because you were feeling a little tingle in your core.

Fuck.

Oh, fuck.

The realization that the honey packets were working made you swallow. You slowly looked at John, and he was already staring at you. "Oh," he said softly.

You swallowed. "Yeah."

The room was silent. Still. Waiting for your next move. Did you leave? Did you run away from the situation and deal with your problem alone?

Part of you wanted to. Hell, you really wanted to.

But the bigger part, the hornier part, just wanted him. You swallowed again, head snapping forward to look at his closed door. It was locked, too. He'd done that after Dean walked in twice for stupid shit and caused him to lose focus.

Now, it felt different. There were no interruptions. Nothing to stop this.

You swore you heard him whine, but the sound was so quiet and caught in his throat that you couldn't be sure. "What do we—"

"C'mere," he interrupted, his voice deep and strained like he was holding himself back from something. You looked at him again. His jaw was tight.

You put your phone down, scooting closer. He shook his head. "Come here."

He grabbed your arms, yanking you onto his lap in one swift motion. You gasped, biting your lip at the feeling of him under you. Hard and aching and, fuck — he was big.

You could feel it.

His hands fell to your hips, gripping you tightly as he stared directly into your soul. His eyes were dark, pupils blown and gaze determined. "I feel like I'm going to explode," he grumbled, head falling back as your hands gently grazed over his shoulders. "Fuck."

"Yeah," you whispered.

"Do you want this?"

You nodded. He shook his head, jaw working as he held himself back. "Not the sex. I know you want the sex. That's the point. Do you want it with me?"

You sucked in a breath. "I wouldn't have taken that stupid thing if I didn't."

You barely got the words out before he was on you, his tongue deep in your mouth as he forced your hips to move against his. He whined into your mouth, the kiss messy and deep as you moaned, grasping his shoulders properly.

You could feel how soaked you were, and every grind against his hard cock made you wetter. It made everything more difficult to control. You weren't high, but you felt like it. Not because of what you took but because you were grinding against John Logan's dick.

He pulled you into his chest, holding you against him as you continued rocking your hips over his. He moaned lowly, teeth grazing your shoulder blade. "Oh, fuck," you whined, hand slipping into his hair and tugging softly.

He groaned, teeth sinking a little deeper. Suddenly, he pulled back, flipping you over so that you were on your back and he was hovering over you. He panted as he looked down at you. You'd never seen him so hungry for something before.

It caused your panties to be even wetter. He rested back on his knees, quickly shedding his shirt. His hands went to your shorts, undoing the button and zipper quickly, before yanking them down. You gasped as you felt the cool air over your soaked panties, and he groaned at the sight.

"Fucking hell," he murmured, immediately leaning down and pressing kisses to your thighs. Rough and desperate ones, like he was trying to devour you. He yanked your panties down, wasting no time as he pressed his tongue flat against your clit, moaning.

You whined, back bowing slightly as your hands flew to his hair. His movements were rushed, but experienced. He knew what he was doing. His tongue flicked over your clit before his lips sealed around it, sucking roughly. "Oh — fuck!"

He hummed, gripping your thigh and rubbing his thumb across the sensitive skin. His other hand came down, two fingers teasing your entrance. He pulled back slightly, blowing air over your clit. "Fuck, look at this pretty pussy," he murmured, shoving two fingers into you slowly.

You gasped, gripping his hair tighter. Everything felt more intense than it ever had, and you weren't sure how you were going to handle this. But you wanted it. You wanted it so bad.

"So fucking tight. So fucking perfect." Then his mouth was on you again, his fingers working in time with his tongue to bring you closer and closer to climax.

You moaned his name, tugging on his hair and trying to get him closer as your hips bucked into him. And then he was pulling away and you were whining, eyes opening to look at him as you panted. His face was slick with your wetness and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

He moved up, thumb coming up to your lip and forcing your mouth open. He slid his fingers that were inside you moments ago into your mouth. You whined, sealing your lips around them and sucking them clean. He groaned. "Atta girl."

He pulled his fingers out, leaning down and capturing your lips in a heated kiss as he pressed into you, gently rolling his hips over yours, your slick coating his sweatpants. You gasped into his lips, pulling him closer and pushing your tongue deeper into his mouth.

"John —"

"I know, baby," he murmured, pulling back long enough to pull down his sweatpants and boxers. Then he was back on you, kissing you as he grabbed his cock, rubbing the tip up and down your slit. "Shit, you're so wet."

"Mhm," you moaned, brain blanking as you felt his cock on you. You wrapped your legs around his waist, crying out softly as he pushed the tip in you. "Oh —"

"Fuckkk, mhm," he murmured into your lips, rolling his hips and pushing in deeper. "Holy shit, baby."

"John, I — fuck, you're so —" You moaned out, words becoming incoherent as he bottomed out, pressing so deep inside you that you couldn't breathe in the best way.

"Shh, you're taking it so well for me. Such a good girl." He dragged his hand down, pulling your shirt up to press his hand over the bulge in your tummy. "Feel that? Fuck, I'm so deep, hm?"

You nodded frantically, head falling back against the pillow. He hadn't moved yet, and fuck, it was torture waiting. You needed him to move. "Please," you whimpered.

He hummed, hand slipping down further, thumb pressing to your clit, forcing a moan from deep in your throat. You knew he was just as desperate, but somehow, he was far more in control. "Please what?"

"Please fuck me. Move."

He rolled his hips once. Twice. And then stopped. You cried out, feeling his chain around his neck brushing against your skin as he leaned down. His breath brushed past your ear as he whispered, "I've been thinking 'bout this for a long time, baby."

You moaned, pulling him back enough to see his face. "Me too." And then you were kissing him, softer but still desperate. You needed this, and clearly, so did he.

He groaned, his hips starting to move fluidly now. Deep, slow thrusts that had your toes curling and your back bowing at the feel of him dragging against your walls over and over. "Fuck — so fucking good."

He grabbed your legs, tossing them over his shoulders and practically bending you in half as he did so. You cried out, loud enough that you were sure the guys heard. Right now, you didn't care. "That's it, baby. Let me hear you."

He was moving faster now. Deeper, if that were possible. Your legs were shaking and tears were forming in your eyes from the overwhelming pleasure of it all. John's lips were all over your legs, teeth nipping at skin as he held them in place, fucking into you with a force you weren't sure you've ever had before.

Moans and whimpers were escaping you at an increasing rate as you felt your orgasm closing in. You tried to warn him but everything was coming out in sputters as your brain melted into a pile of nothing because of him.

"Oh, fuck, you're squeezing me so tight," he groaned, hips jerking forward harder. You sobbed softly, hands gripping the sheets as your orgasm started.

Wave after wave of pleasure hit you so hard you were seeing stars, but he didn't stop. No, he fucked you through it, even as you pulsed around him and even as tears fell down your face. He was right there, working you through it all.

"Fuck — fuck!" He moaned, hips stuttering as he twitched. Neither of you were really worried in the moment about him coming inside of you. It just happened. You moaned as he filled you up, his hips slowing but not stopping as he dropped your legs, leaning down and kissing you as he worked himself through his orgasm.

You moaned, cupping his jaw as your legs twitched from his continuous thrusts. He wasn't stopping, even as you'd both came and everything felt insanely intense, he wasn't stopping. You didn't want him to.

His tongue slipped into your mouth, his body shaky from overstimulating himself. "Fuck — you feel too good," he moaned softly, lips trailing down to your neck. "Too fucking perfect."

You whimpered, nodding as tears slipping down your cheeks from the amount of pleasure coursing through you. "We're gonna be here a while," he murmured.

You let out a breathy laugh that turned into a moan as he picked up his pace. "Mhm," you hummed.

Garrett doesn't look at him. Garrett is busy being mature. Calm. Supportive. A boyfriend who understands that his girlfriend is a collegiate athlete with a partner and a routine and years of training that existed before him and will continue to exist regardless of whether or not Garrett Graham’s lower intestine has decided to twist itself into a knot every time another man puts both hands on her waist.

“Yeah,” he says, flatly. “She’s good.”

Dean snorts from the other side of Tucker. “She’s good,” he repeats. “That’s what you’re going with?”

Garrett’s jaw works once. Out on the ice, she pushes backward into a clean, sweeping curve, one arm extended, the other caught in Avery’s hand.

Avery. Stupid fucking name.

Garrett has nothing against the guy as a person, technically, except for the obvious crimes of being tall, male, decent on skates, and currently in possession of his girlfriend’s hand while she looks like that.

He's probably fine. He'd introduced himself with a friendly enough smile, had called Garrett man in the harmless athlete way, had been polite to her, had checked the lift timing twice, hadn't done a single thing wrong besides existing in a category Garrett has recently decided is aggressive.

“She’s better than good,” Tucker says, because Tucker is nice and honest and willing to throw gasoline onto a very controlled, very internal fire. “That edge thing she did before? That was wild.”

“It’s called a bracket,” Garrett says automatically.

All three of them turn to look at him.

He keeps staring forward. “What?”

Dean’s grin arrives slowly, the way bad weather rolls in. “Sorry, Professor Blades. Didn’t know we were dealing with a scholar.”

“She tells me stuff.”

“Oh, I bet she does.”

Garrett finally cuts his eyes over. “You wanna finish that thought?”

Dean lifts both hands, delighted. “Nope. Not at all.”

Logan leans forward a little more, squinting through the glass. “Is this the guy you hate?”

“I don’t hate him.”

“You called him Pairs Boy for, like, two weeks.”

“That’s not hate. That’s identification.”

Tucker makes a low sound that is either agreement or an attempt not to laugh directly in his captain’s face. “He seems okay.”

“He’s fine,” Garrett says, and because the universe is committed to ruining him, this is the exact moment Avery’s hands settle firmly at her waist.

It's choreography. It's positioning. It's the same neutral athletic contact Garrett himself has done a thousand times on the ice, shoulder checks and glove taps and hands braced briefly on teammates during drills, bodies moving in proximity because sports are, unfortunately, made of bodies.

Avery’s fingers spread at her ribs and Garrett’s brain, which has survived championship pressure, Phil Graham, playoff overtime, and Dean Di Laurentis explaining the plot of a reality show with no women wearing full shirts, immediately becomes a smoking hole in the ground.

Dean sees his face and actually laughs. “Oh my God,” he says. “You’re gonna chip a tooth.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you’re about to challenge him to a duel.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You know he has to touch her, right?” Logan asks, which is such an obviously Logan thing to say that Garrett considers shoving him off the bench on principle. “Like, that’s the sport.”

Garrett turns his head very slowly. “Thank you, John. I had no idea.”

Logan grins. “Just checking.”

On the ice, she and Avery pick up speed.

That shuts them all up for a few seconds. Even Dean stops being Dean long enough to watch properly, because the room changes when she moves like this.

It isn’t the careful, slow, rehab-framed skating Garrett first learned with her, those early mornings when every lap felt like something fragile being carried across a room full of sharp corners.

This is different. This is closer to what she must have been before the injury took a bite out of her life and made her body something she had to negotiate with instead of command.

She’s still not reckless. Garrett can see the slight caution in her landings if he looks for it, the tiny guarded shift in the knee, the way she checks her weight for half a breath before trusting it fully.

He knows her well enough now to read the places other people would only call graceful. But she’s fast. Controlled. Her face has gone focused in that quiet, inward way that makes everyone else on the rink feel briefly less important.

Her hair is twisted back, pieces coming loose at the sides from exertion, cheeks pink from cold and work, mouth parted around her breath. The skirt moves around her thighs, pale against the black of her tights, and every time she extends a leg behind her the line of her body looks so clean it makes Garrett’s chest do something weird and unpleasantly sincere.

She's incredible. That's the other problem. The bigger one, maybe. Jealousy is stupid, and he knows it. The part underneath is worse.

The part where he watches her fly across the ice with another person’s timing stitched into hers and feels, not excluded, but confronted by the fact that there are whole languages of her body he's only just beginning to learn.

Avery lifts one arm. She takes it. They turn together, close enough now that their shoulders almost brush, her hand sliding to his forearm, his other hand at the back of her waist as he guides her through the entry into a spin.

Garrett’s fingers curl against the edge of the bench.

Dean, of course, whispers, “Thoughts and prayers.”

“I will bench you.”

“We’re not even playing.”

“I’ll find a way.”

Tucker’s mouth twitches. “You know she can see you through the glass, and you keep making that face.”

That, unfortunately, makes Garrett straighten his expression through sheer force of will. It's one thing to be jealous in the privacy of his own horrible little skull. It's another to have her look over and catch him visibly sulking because her skating partner is doing skating partner things during skating partner practice.

She would get that soft, amused little crease between her brows. She would try not to laugh because she’s nice, and then she would laugh anyway because she's less nice when she feels safe, which is one of his favourite things about her.

Out on the ice, the music shifts. Avery says something too low to hear, and she nods once.

Garrett recognises the setup before he knows the name of it. The lift is one they've been talking about all week. In careful little fragments she gives him when they’re lying in his bed or sitting in the dining hall with her knee tucked against his under the table.

Avery keeps rushing the entry. My timing feels off. It’s fine, it’s just annoying. Cam said I’m cleared for it, so don’t do your face. No, not that face. Garrett.

He does his face now without meaning to.

Avery’s hands settle. She bends her knees slightly, finding the rhythm. She looks tiny beside him for one ridiculous second, which Garrett knows isn't fair because she's not fragile, she's made of muscle and skill and sharp, quiet stubbornness, but then Avery’s hands are around her waist and she’s stepping into the lift and Garrett’s entire body goes tense in immediate, full-system objection.

“Jesus,” Logan mutters, not joking now.

For one second, it works. Avery lifts her cleanly, and she rises above the ice in this stunning, impossible line, one leg extended, arms reaching like the whole cold room has opened under her.

Even Garrett, in the middle of hating every single element of this, feels the breath leave him. She looks unreal up there, like every hard thing she's ever done to herself has learned how to look effortless for four seconds at a time.

Then the timing goes wrong.

It's fast enough that Garrett almost doesn’t understand it until his body has already moved. Avery’s grip shifts. Her hip drops half an inch. One blade catches air wrong, then ice, then panic flickers across Avery’s face in a way Garrett sees with awful clarity through the boards.

He tries to save it. Garrett will give him that later, maybe. The guy tries. His arms clamp, one hand catching at her side, but the lift has already fallen out of itself.

She hits the ice hard. Her shoulder takes too much of it, then her hip, the sound of her body striking the surface sharp enough to cut through the rink, and she slides several feet before stopping near the circle with one leg bent under her and one arm curled instinctively against her chest.

For half a second nobody moves, then Avery's on his knees beside her, white-faced. “Oh my God. Shit. Shit, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

Garrett's already over the boards.

He doesn't remember deciding to move. One second he's sitting with the boys, the next his skates hit the ice, and he's crossing the rink with the kind of speed that makes somebody behind him swear. The cold air tears at his face. His stomach has dropped so far through the floor it feels like it’s somewhere under the zamboni bay.

She's moving by the time he reaches her, which helps and also doesn't help at all. She’s rolled slightly onto her back, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open around a low, annoyed groan that's very much alive and very much in pain.

“Fuck,” she says, small and furious. “Ow.”

Garrett drops beside her so fast his knees bite cold through the fabric of his sweats. “Hey. Hey, baby.” His hands hover for one tight second because everything in him wants to touch and check and gather, and the athlete in him knows better than to start hauling someone up after a fall like that just because his heart has decided to behave like an idiot. “Look at me. You good?”

Her eyes open. They find him, which helps more than anything else has so far. The first breath she takes after that is shaky, but it comes with a little grimace that's nearly a smile if someone is generous and afraid enough.

“Hi,” she says, like this is a normal location for him to appear.

His laugh comes out once, breathless and not remotely amused. “Hi. You scared the shit out of me.”

“Yeah.” She blinks hard and shifts her shoulder, immediately regretting it if the way her face pinches means anything. “Same.”

Avery's still crouched on the other side of her, hands hovering with the horror of a man who's just dropped another human being and may never psychologically recover. “Dude, I’m so sorry. I had it and then I– I don’t know, my grip slipped or the entry was–”

She turns her head toward him, eyes sharpening through the pain. “You told me you had it.”

“I thought I did,” Avery says, miserable. “I swear to God, I thought I did. I’m so sorry.”

Garrett hates him. Garrett also, unfortunately, believes him.

This is a deeply inconvenient combination and he has no interest in processing it while his girlfriend is still on the ice looking small and pissed off and hurt enough that her fingers have curled tight against the front of her own practice jacket.

“Can you move everything?” Garrett asks, voice lower now, controlled in the way it gets when it has no other choice.

She gives him a look, faintly offended even from the ice. “Everything?”

“Don’t be cute.”

“I’m not being cute. I’m on the floor.”

“You’re on the ice.”

She rolls her eyes. “That feels like a technicality.”

Behind him, there's the scrape and scatter of hockey skates as the boys come closer but not too close. Tucker’s voice arrives first, careful in a way Garrett appreciates even while wanting everyone to shut up. “She good?”

“Give her a sec,” Garrett says without looking back.

“I’m good,” she calls, and then winces immediately because calling anything anywhere has apparently pulled at her shoulder. “Ow. Okay. Medium good.”

Logan makes a strangled sound from near the boards. “Medium good is not good.”

She lifts her uninjured hand in a weak thumbs-up anyway, because she would rather die than have a group of hockey players start treating her like a tragic little rink casualty. “All good.”

Dean, quietly but with feeling, says, “That was a fucking wipeout.”

Garrett shoots him a look over his shoulder.

Dean lifts both hands.

Garrett turns back to her. His palm has found her knee by then, not the bad one, not the one with all the old history in it, the other knee through the smooth chill of her tights. “Can you sit up?”

She nods once. “Yeah. Just… slow.”

“Okay.” He slides one hand behind her upper back, careful to avoid the shoulder she landed on, the other catching her hand. “Use me.”

Avery shifts like he wants to help too, and Garrett feels something ugly and immediate move through him before he can civilise it. She must feel it too, because her fingers tighten around Garrett’s and she says, softly but clearly, “I've got Garrett.”

It shouldn't feel as good as it does, considering the circumstances. Garrett doesn't smile, because he's not a monster. But something in his chest unlocks by one hot, stupid notch anyway.

Avery sits back at once, nodding too fast. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

Garrett helps her upright with as little jostling as possible. Even so, her breath catches when her body comes vertical, a sharp little inhale through her teeth that goes straight under his ribs and turns his voice gentler by force.

“I know,” he murmurs, close enough that only she gets it. “I know. Easy.”

Her forehead nearly touches his shoulder for half a second. Not fully leaning, because they're still in the middle of the rink and there are people watching and she has pride in places that don't always serve her. But her weight tips toward him, just enough for his hand to firm at her back.

“Grazed,” she says after a second. “Hip and shoulder, I think. Maybe elbow. Nothing dramatic.”

Garrett looks at the angry red scrape already showing near the edge of her sleeve where the fabric has ridden up. “That looks dramatic.”

“It’s not.”

“You say that about everything.”

“I’m very brave.”

“You’re very concussed if you think I’m not taking you to the medic.”

“I’m not concussed.” She blinks up at him, and there's enough irritation in her face now that some of the worst fear unclenches in his spine. “My head didn’t hit.”

“Good. Great. Love that. Still getting checked.”

She exhales, then nods, giving in faster than he expected, which tells him it hurts more than she wants to say. “Yeah. Okay. Fuck, it hurts. What the hell.”

Avery makes a wounded sound. “I’m so sorry.”

She looks back at him, and the edge in her face softens slightly, not enough to let him off the hook completely but enough to keep him alive. “I know. I know you didn’t mean to.”

“I didn’t. I swear. I just–”

“But don’t tell me you have it if you don’t have it,” she says, quieter now. “I would’ve bailed out sooner.”

Avery’s face goes worse. “Yeah. No, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

Garrett’s hand has settled more securely at her waist now, partly because she's upright and partly because his body has decided that if Avery’s hands can be there for choreography then Garrett’s hands can be there for literally all other reasons, including medical evacuation and personal sanity.

“Can you stand?” he asks.

She nods. “Yeah.”

“Use me,” he says again.

This time, she does. Fully. One hand grips his forearm, the other hooks around the back of his shoulder, and Garrett rises with her slowly, keeping his stance solid beneath them both.

Her skates scrape once, finding balance. Pain flashes across her face and disappears fast, tucked away with the efficient misery of someone who has been trained too well in performing fine.

He doesn’t call her on it in front of everyone. He only bends his head close to hers and murmurs, “Don’t do that.”

Her eyes flick to him. “Do what?”

“Act fine for my idiot friends.”

That gets the smallest laugh out of her. It costs her. He sees that too.

“I’m fine-ish,” she says.

“Fine-ish gets you benched.”

“I already hate this relationship.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No,” she agrees, and the smile, tiny as it is, makes his chest hurt. “I don’t.”

They start toward the boards slowly, her weight tucked carefully into his side. Garrett matches her pace without making a production of it, one arm around her waist, his other hand ready in front of her in case she wobbles.

It's the slowest he's ever crossed this rink while this angry. Somewhere behind them, Avery's still apologising to the coach who's come over with a clipboard and the pinched expression of a woman already mentally rewriting half a practice schedule.

The hockey boys part like they're witnessing royalty or an injured woodland creature with blades strapped to its feet.

“You okay?” Tucker asks when they get near enough, his face open and genuinely concerned.

She nods, giving them another thumbs-up that is less convincing now but still valiant. “All good.”

Logan’s eyes drop to her shoulder and back up, wince already forming. “That was insane.”

“Very helpful review,” she says, breath catching at the end but her mouth quirking anyway.

Dean points at her, solemn. “I would like to say, from the bottom of my heart, that I did not know your sport was trying to murder you guys like that.”

She looks at him for half a second, then actually laughs, soft and pained. “What did you think was happening?”

“I don’t know,” Dean says. “Sparkles. Vibes.”

Garrett would laugh if he weren’t currently busy hating the fact that she's leaning heavier against him with every inch they get off the ice. Instead he hooks his arm more firmly around her and guides her through the little gate to the bench area.

The second she sits, the composure slips by a degree. Her shoulders drop first, then her jaw loosens, then her eyes shut for one breath too long as if sitting down has given the pain permission to arrive properly.

“Yeah,” he says, already crouching in front of her. “Okay. Skates off.”

Her eyes open. “You don’t have to.”

“Baby.”

“I can do it.”

“I know you can.” He looks up at her from where he’s already reaching for the laces. “I’m doing it anyway.”

She stares at him for a second, then her face gives in first, softening around the mouth in a way that still seems to surprise her when it happens in public. “Okay.”

Garrett unties her skates carefully, working the damp laces loose with fingers that are still colder than he expected them to be. Her tights are scraped at one hip, a pale line of ice burn visible beneath the torn fabric, and the sight makes his jaw tighten all over again.

From somewhere above them, Dean says, “G, buddy, you look like you’re about to commit a rink crime.”

“I’m fine.”

“You keep saying that today.”

Logan leans one hip against the boards, trying and failing not to grin now that the immediate terror has passed. “You know, for a guy who doesn’t hate Avery, you did kind of look like you were about to bodycheck a figure skater.”

“I still might.”

She snorts, then immediately presses her lips together and lifts one hand to her shoulder. “Ow. Don’t make me laugh.”

Garrett looks up fast. “Stop moving.”

“I laughed, Garrett. I didn’t run a marathon.”

Garrett slides one skate off and sets it beside the bench, then starts on the other.

His hands are gentle, but his mood isn’t, and she clearly knows it because she nudges his stomach lightly with the toe of her sock. “Don’t be mad.”

He glances up. “At you?”

“No.” Her eyes flick briefly toward the ice, where Avery's still standing with both hands on top of his head, looking like guilt has physically aged him. “At him.”

Garrett follows her gaze, then looks back down at the laces because his face has not yet been cleared for public use. “I hate that guy.”

She giggles, quick and helpless, then winces so sharply his hands stop. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” he says, standing at once. “Okay. No more giggling. Sit still.”

“You’re so bossy.”

He can't bite back his smirk. “You like it when I’m bossy.”

Dean makes a choking sound. Tucker immediately says, “Nope. We’re all walking away.”

“We’re in skates,” Logan says.

“Then glide away, bro.”

Her cheeks have gone pink, partly from pain and partly, Garrett suspects with a grim little flicker of satisfaction, from him. “You’re not funny.”

“I’m a little funny.”

“You’re jealous and annoying.”

“I’m emotionally injured.”

That gets her again, a tiny laugh she tries to swallow and mostly fails, one hand going carefully to her ribs as if holding herself still will make humour less dangerous. Garrett shakes his head, but his mouth betrays him.

“Seriously,” she says, quieter now, once the boys have drifted a few feet away under the very weak pretence of giving them privacy. “He didn’t mean to drop me.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“I can know something and still want to punch it.”

Her eyes warm at the edges. “Very evolved.”

“I’m working on it.”

“You were watching like you wanted to climb through the glass even before I fell.”

Garrett peels off her second skate and sets it beside the first. “Was not.”

“Garrett.”

He looks up at her. She’s sitting there with one socked foot slightly tucked under the bench, practice jacket unzipped at the throat, hair escaping its bun in soft, sweaty pieces.

Her face is still a little pale under the pink of exertion, and there's a scrape blooming angry at her elbow now, and somehow she's looking at him with this small, fond amusement like his jealousy is ridiculous and known and maybe, God help him, a little liked.

He sighs. “Fine. Maybe I wasn't enjoying the... artistic integrity of the waist-grabbing.”

Her mouth curves. “The artistic integrity?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s part of the choreography.”

“I’m aware.”

“You know that?”

“I can understand waist contact.”

“Can you?”

“No,” he says. “But I’m being brave.”

Her laugh comes out softer this time, careful, and she reaches with her good hand to brush the back of her fingers over his cheek. It’s small. Barely anything. But doing it here, in front of the rink and the boys and Avery still looking like he might throw himself into traffic, makes something stupid and warm move under his ribs.

“My brave hockey boy,” she says, very quietly, almost teasing but not only.

Garrett catches her hand before she can pull it away and presses his mouth to her knuckles. “Don’t be cute. I’m mad at you.”

She blinks, amused. “At me?”

“For getting dropped.”

“I’ll try not to be so inconsiderate next time.”

“Good.”

“Maybe I’ll schedule the fall.”

“That’d help.”

She smiles, then it fades when she shifts her shoulder again, pain moving through her face in a duller, heavier wave. Garrett’s body reacts before his thoughts do. He straightens, one hand going carefully to the back of her head, thumb near her temple.

“Hey,” he says, softer. “No more jokes. Where’s it hurt worst?”

She exhales through her nose. “Shoulder. Hip. Elbow’s just gross.”

“Head?”

“No.”

“Neck?”

“Nope.”

“Knee?”

She pauses, and his stomach drops. Then she shakes her head. “No. Scared it for a second, but no. It’s okay.”

He believes her because she knows that part of her body too well to lie casually about it. Still, his thumb moves once near her hairline, and her eyes flicker as if the touch has landed somewhere bigger than the question.

“Okay,” he says. “We’re going to the medic.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. You think I’m sending you with Pairs Boy?”

Her mouth twitches. “He has a name.”

“I’ve chosen not to use it.”

“It’s Avery.”

“Mm.”

“Garrett.”

“What?”

“Say his name.”

He looks at her for one long second. “Fine. We’re not sending you with Avocado.”

She stares at him, then has to press her lips together so hard it nearly ruins him. “That's not his name.”

He shrugs. “Agree to disagree.”

Tucker steps forward at once, practical as ever. “Want me to grab your bag?”

She looks up at him, surprised by the immediate offer, then nods. “Please. It’s the black one near the far bench.”

“Got it.”

Dean points vaguely toward the hallway. “You want, like, ice? Not rink ice. Regular ice. Medical ice.”

She gives him a small, pained smile. “That would actually be good.”

Dean nods with great seriousness, thrilled to have been assigned a useful task instead of just standing there making jokes around mild trauma. “I can do that.”

Logan looks between them all. “What do I do?”

Garrett says, “Nothing.”

She says, at the same time, “Maybe tell Avery I’m not dead.”

Logan points at her. “On it.”

Garrett helps her stand, this time in sneakers because Tucker has reappeared with her bag and Garrett has made quick work of getting her feet into something that doesn’t involve blades.

She leans into him more openly now, one arm around his waist, her head tipping for one second against his shoulder when she thinks the boys aren't looking. Garrett doesn't tell her they definitely are. He only tightens his arm around her and lets her have the illusion.

As they start toward the hall, Avery calls her name from the ice, still pale, still stricken. “Seriously, I’m sorry. I’ll– I’ll text you later, okay? Or call. Whatever. Just… I’m sorry.”

She turns as much as her shoulder allows, Garrett’s arm still keeping her close. “It’s okay,” she says, then amends with a wince and a little honesty, “It’s not okay, actually, but we’ll talk later.”

Avery nods fast. “Yeah. Yeah, totally.”

Garrett feels her hand press once into his side, a warning without looking at him. Behave.

He looks at Avery and gives the tightest nod known to man. Avery, wisely, accepts that as mercy.

“You’re really jealous,” she says, softly enough that it isn’t quite an accusation.

Garrett lets out a breath and looks down at his hand. “Yeah.”

“It’s kind of stupid.”

“I know.”

“You know I have to do partner work.”

“I know that too.”

“And Avery isn’t–”

“I know,” he says again, then looks up at her properly because she deserves that much, even if it is embarrassing and he would rather be hit by a slow-moving Zamboni than have Dean hear any of it. “I know. It’s not about him. Not really.”

Her expression shifts, the teasing thinning into something gentler.

Garrett drags a hand through his hair. “I just hate watching somebody else be the one who catches you.” His mouth twists because that sounds bigger than he meant it to, but it's out now. “And then he didn’t.”

Her face goes very still.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “That was–”

“No,” she says. “No, I get it.”

“You do?”

She nods once, slow. “I like that you want to be the one who catches me.”

Garrett stares at her.

Her cheeks colour almost immediately, but she holds his gaze anyway, shy and sore and sitting in terrible fluorescent lighting with a scraped elbow and ice melt dampening one side of her tights, and somehow she has the nerve to look at him like that. Like he's something she trusts even when the day has literally dropped her onto a rink.

Then, because she clearly cannot survive sincerity for more than seven seconds without offering herself an exit, she adds, “Even if you’re being a psycho about waist contact.”

Garrett laughs, low and helpless. “I’m not being a psycho.”

“You called him Avocado.”

“Yeah, well.” He lifts his head, mouth curving despite himself. “He dropped my girlfriend.”

She softens again at the word. My girlfriend still does that to her sometimes, which Garrett has noticed and absolutely files away like a criminal. Her fingers squeeze his.

“Your girlfriend is okay,” she says.

“Your boyfriend is not.”

“Poor thing.”

“Thank you.”

“You should get him looked at.”

“Too late.”

She smiles then, small and lovely and a little wincing at the edges, and Garrett ducks his head just enough to kiss her. It’s careful because of the shoulder, because of the hallway, because the boys could come back any second with ice and concern and eleven jokes between them.

But it’s still enough. His mouth presses to hers once, warm and grounding, and she exhales into it like the day has finally found a softer place to land.

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He spends Wednesday night in the hockey-house kitchen complaining that she’s been suspiciously affectionate since the weekend, as though her sitting sideways across his lap is evidence of organised crime. He pulls her closer each time she tries to stand, mouth finding the side of her neck while Dean watches from across the island with the hollow expression of a man being punished for sins committed in a previous life.

“What’re you hiding?” Garrett murmurs against her skin.

“Nothing.”

“You said that too fast.”

“You ask stupid questions.”

His hand slides under the back of her sweatshirt, warm palm settling over the curve of her waist less than an inch above the tattoo. She goes still for one sharp second, then catches his wrist and drags his hand around to her stomach before his fingers can wander lower.

Garrett narrows his eyes. She kisses him before the investigation can advance.

By Friday, the secret has begun to feel hot, because it’s his. A tiny private mark resting beneath her clothes while Garrett walks beside her across campus with one hand hooked through the strap of her bag, completely unaware that forty-four is inked into her skin. 

He complains about practice. She complains about an exam question that used the phrase most appropriate intervention despite three answers being clinically reasonable. His thumb finds the bare strip of her wrist where her sleeve has ridden up. All the while, his number is sitting just above the waistband of her jeans.

The thought stays with her when he arrives at her dorm that night.

Her roommate has gone to visit her parents for the weekend, and Garrett appears just after nine in grey sweats and a black hoodie and cheeks pink from the cold. He has a backpack over one shoulder, though she doubts it contains a single item remotely connected to studying. The last time he brought a textbook to her room, it remained unopened beneath her desk for three days while Garrett insisted proximity counted as academic effort.

“Hi, baby,” he says when she opens the door.

She barely gets the lock turned before his hands are on her. It begins with one kiss, which is how most of their poor decisions begin now. Garrett catches her waist and pulls her into him with the deep, satisfied exhale of someone who’s spent the whole walk across campus anticipating exactly this. 

His mouth is cold from outside and warm beneath it, lips moving over hers slowly while she hooks both hands into the front of his hoodie and walks him backward toward the bed.

“You missed me,” he murmurs.

“I saw you this morning.”

“Exactly.”

“You slept in my bed.”

He shakes his head. “Not long enough.”

The backs of his knees hit the mattress. Garrett sits and draws her down with him before she can pretend she intended anything else, her legs opening around his hips as she settles over his lap.

The first press of him beneath her is enough to strip whatever remained of the evening’s patience. He’s already half hard through the soft fabric of his sweats, heat and shape caught between them when she rolls her hips forward. 

Garrett’s head tips back slightly. The smile that moves across his mouth is slow and knowing, his hands spreading over her hips beneath the oversized hoodie she’s stolen from him so many times it’s practically transferred ownership.

“There she is,” he murmurs.

She catches his curls at the back of his head and brings his mouth to hers before he can become any more pleased with himself. The kiss turns wet and deep almost immediately, Garrett’s tongue sliding over hers while she grinds down again, a little harder, friction catching warm between her thighs through the thin cotton of her sleep shorts and underwear.

He groans against her mouth. His fingers tighten. “Fuck, baby.”

Her hoodie is too warm suddenly. The dorm room is too small, too dim, the little lamp beside her bed throwing everything into soft amber while rain ticks faintly against the window. Garrett’s shoulders fill the space beneath her hands. His thighs flex under hers every time she moves, and she can feel him becoming fully hard beneath her, thick and insistent and still separated from her by several deeply unnecessary layers of clothing.

He kisses across the corner of her mouth, along her jaw, down the side of her neck with the greedy familiarity of someone returning to a favourite argument. His teeth scrape lightly beneath her ear. 

She inhales and tightens her fingers in his hair. “Garrett.”

“Mm?”

“That feels good,” she breathes.

“I know.” His mouth drags lower. “You’re humping me like you’re trying to start a fire.”

She rolls her hips again because Garrett’s smugness has always been more effective encouragement than he understands. His hands guide the movement, pulling her forward over the hard line of him and then back, slower on the return so the pressure catches exactly where her body has already become embarrassingly sensitive.

Her next breath breaks against his cheek. Garrett smiles into her throat. “Yeah?”

“Don’t.”

“Wasn’t saying anything.”

She tugs hard enough on his curls to lift his mouth back to hers. Garrett laughs into the kiss, low and rough, then grips her beneath the thighs and stands. The movement steals a startled sound from her. Her legs tighten around his waist on instinct, arms locking behind his neck while Garrett takes one step, turns and lowers her onto the mattress. The bed gives beneath their combined weight, springs creaking a small complaint that neither of them acknowledges.

He comes down over her immediately. Their mouths meet badly at first, teeth knocking, her laugh caught between them while Garrett braces one hand beside her head and uses the other to drag her higher beneath him. Then the angle settles and everything goes hot again. His body fits heavily between her thighs, hips pressing down until she can feel the full hard length of him through his sweats.

She arches into it. Garrett’s breath catches. “Jesus.”

His hoodie becomes an obstacle. He sits back just long enough to grab the hem and strip it over his head, hair coming up with it in a dark, disordered mess. The shirt underneath follows, both pieces dropped somewhere near the foot of the bed while she pushes herself onto her elbows to watch.

Garrett catches her looking. His grin flashes. “See something you like?”

“Not especially,” she grins.

“Liar.”

He climbs back over her before she can improve the insult, one hand sliding beneath her hoodie and over her stomach. His palm is hot against her skin, callused fingers spreading over her ribs while he kisses her again and starts working the fabric upward.

She lifts her arms. The hoodie catches briefly around one wrist. Garrett frees it with a sharp tug and tosses it toward the chair, where it lands halfway over a clean pile of scrubs.

The air moves cool over her bare stomach and the little green lace bra she chose that morning with absolutely no ulterior motive. Garrett stills above her. His gaze drops. His eyes travel slowly over the lace, the soft rise of her breasts above the cups, the way her nipples have tightened beneath the fabric from cold air and attention.

“Fuck,” he says.

Her face warms. “You’ve seen this bra.”

“Don’t remember.”

She tilts her head. “You took it off with your teeth.”

“Must’ve been distracted.”

He bends before she can answer, mouth closing over one breast through the lace. Her head drops back. The thin fabric turns damp and warm under his tongue as he mouths her through it, one hand slipping beneath the other breast to lift it while his thumb presses over the sensitive peak. He sucks harder. Pleasure catches bright and immediate low in her stomach, dragging a helpless sound from her throat.

Garrett hums against her, he likes this part too much. Seeing the change in her breathing. Feeling her thighs shift more restlessly around his hips. Learning which pressure makes her voice climb and then repeating it with the focused persistence he brings to anything he has decided matters.

“You’re so fucking pretty,” he murmurs, mouth moving across the centre of her chest. “Know what you looked like all week?”

She swallows. “What?”

“Like you were thinking about me.”

“I was doing other things.”

“Mm.” He slips one finger beneath the edge of the bra and drags it slowly along the skin there. “Didn’t say you weren’t.”

His mouth finds the other breast. One hand reaches behind her, and the clasp opens with the efficient little flick he’s far too proud of having mastered. Garrett pulls the straps down her arms, drops the bra beside them and immediately puts his mouth back on her.

His lips closing around one nipple while his hand covers the other, squeezing and rolling it between two fingers until her whole body pulls tight beneath him. She grabs at his curls. “Oh, fuck.”

Garrett looks up at her without lifting his mouth, dark eyes warm and wicked beneath the hair falling over his forehead. He gives one slow suck, then releases her with a wet little sound. “Sensitive tonight.”

“It’s been days,” she whines.

“Four.”

“That’s days.”

“My poor baby.” His voice drops into false sympathy while his thumb circles the damp nipple he has left behind. “Been walking around all needy because her boyfriend had practice?”

“I’ve had exams.”

“Those are over.”

“Exactly.”

His grin presses against the skin beneath her breast. “So now you’re mine.”

The words send a hot, liquid pull through the centre of her body.

Garrett feels the way she shifts against him. His hand slides down her stomach, fingers hooking into the waistband of her shorts. “These off?”

She lifts her hips. He drags the shorts and underwear down together, impatient once they catch around her thighs, his mouth following the movement over her stomach and hip. The clothing disappears over one ankle and lands somewhere beyond the bed.

Garrett spreads her knees. The air touches her first. Then his eyes, and his face changes.

There’s something shamelessly gratifying about Garrett looking at her like this, the same boy who can stand beneath arena lights in front of thousands of people without blinking now visibly losing the thread of his own breathing because she is naked on a dorm bed. He presses one palm against the inside of her thigh and opens her wider. “Baby.”

She covers her face with one arm. “Don’t make it weird.”

“Make what weird?” His thumb skims along the crease where her thigh meets her body, close enough that her hips lift toward it. “How wet you are?”

Her entire face heats behind her arm.

Garrett laughs softly, then kisses the inside of her knee. “That’s not weird. That’s hot.”

“Garrett.”

“Been like this since I got here?”

She lowers her arm just enough to glare at him.

His mouth curves. “Longer?”

“Come here,” she groans.

“I am here.”

“Higher.”

“No.” He presses another kiss farther up her thigh, then another, slow enough to make every inch between his mouth and where she needs it feel deliberate. “Like it down here.”

She knows that. Everyone in a three-mile radius may know that.

Garrett Graham treats getting his mouth between her thighs less like foreplay and more like a personal calling. He’s arrived late to parties because he refused to stop. He’s missed the beginning of a movie, let Tucker’s dinner go cold and once remained there long enough that she had to pull him up by the hair and remind him she possessed other body parts.

Now he settles onto his stomach like this is where he intended to spend the evening, one arm hooking firmly around her thigh while the other hand spreads her open.

His first lick is slow. It moves from low to high with the flat of his tongue, collecting the wetness already gathered there before pressing deliberately over her clit. Her hips lift from the mattress. Garrett keeps her there with his forearm and does it again.

“Fuck,” she breathes.

His mouth closes over her. There’s nothing tentative about the way Garrett eats her out. He licks like he’s hungry and has never been embarrassed by appetite, tongue circling and flattening and flicking until her legs are tense around his shoulders and the fitted sheet has begun to twist beneath her hands. He kisses her between strokes, wet open-mouthed presses that feel obscene in the quiet room, then drags his tongue lower and pushes it inside her.

Her breath punches out. Garrett groans into her. The sound vibrates through her body, low and rough, while he fucks his tongue into her with one hand still holding her open. She reaches down blindly, finds his curls and pulls, to keep him exactly there.

He understands. His fingers tighten around her thigh. “Missed this,” he murmurs against her, the words broken by another slow lick.

“You saw me yesterday.”

“Didn’t do this yesterday.”

His mouth closes over her clit again before she can argue, sucking with enough pressure to make her legs jump. She gasps his name. Garrett answers by pressing two fingers against her entrance.

He pushes one in first, slow only because her body is already clenching around the intrusion. The second follows quickly, stretching her with the familiar pressure that makes her thighs fall wider even as the rest of her pulls tight.

His fingers curl. Pleasure strikes deep and sharp, the angle exact enough that her back arches from the mattress.

“There,” Garrett murmurs.

She makes a sound that has no language left in it. His fingers begin moving properly, pumping into her while his mouth stays fixed on her clit, the rhythm deliberately uneven at first as he listens to her breathing and watches the twitch of her stomach. Then he finds it. The pace that makes her hips start chasing him, makes her fingers clench in his hair and her other hand grab uselessly at the pillow beside her head.

The room has narrowed to wet heat, the sound of Garrett’s mouth and the steady drag of his fingers and rain brushing softly at the window like the whole campus has agreed to look away.

“Oh my God,” she whimpers. “Baby, I’m–”

Garrett moans against her, his fingers curling harder. He knows. The fact that he knows makes it worse. She comes with her thighs clamping around his head and his name breaking high out of her throat. Pleasure rolls through her in hard, pulsing waves, stomach tightening beneath the drag of his forearm while Garrett keeps licking her through it, slower only when her body begins jerking away from the sensitivity.

By the time he lifts his mouth, she’s breathing like she’s run somewhere.

Garrett wipes the lower half of his face against the inside of her thigh with no dignity whatsoever and starts kissing his way back up her body. Her skin feels loose and over-warm beneath him, every place his mouth touches sparking faintly in the aftermath.

He kisses her stomach, between her breasts, the base of her throat. Then he comes over her and catches her mouth.

She tastes herself immediately. Garrett doesn’t ease her into it, tongue sliding between her lips while one hand wraps around the side of her neck, thumb resting beneath her jaw and fingers spread gently along her pulse.

The hold is firm without pressure. Familiar. Enough to keep her face angled exactly where he wants it while he kisses her slow and filthy, swallowing the little post-orgasm sound she makes when his hips settle between her thighs again.

He pulls back by half an inch. “Hi,” he murmurs.

Her mouth curves before she can stop it. Her body is still humming, muscles heavy against the mattress. “Hi.”

Garrett kisses her once more, quick this time, then brushes his nose over hers. “Roll over.”

His eyes are dark, cheeks flushed and mouth still wet from her. Whatever version of Garrett arrived smiling at her door has disappeared beneath something rougher and hungrier, the easy confidence sharpened now that he has her naked and loose beneath him.

She turns. The movement exposes the tattoo before she remembers it exists.

For the last twenty minutes, she’s been too occupied by Garrett’s mouth to think about anything except Garrett’s mouth. Now she settles onto her stomach, forearms folding near the headboard while the cool air brushes over her back.

Behind her, the mattress shifts. Garrett stands long enough to shove his sweats and boxers down, fabric dragging over his thighs before landing somewhere near the edge of the bed. 

Then his hand slides over the back of her thigh. He lifts one knee onto the mattress, catches the pillow near her head and says, “Up a little, baby.”

She raises her hips obediently. Garrett tucks the pillow beneath them, adjusts her with both hands and goes completely still. Every muscle in her body remembers at once.

Her eyes widen into the pillow. “Baby–”

Garrett’s hands close over her hips before she can turn. Firm enough that the message is immediate. Stay.

She swallows. The room is silent behind her.

Garrett’s thumbs rest on either side of her lower back, just beneath the small square of skin where the tattoo sits. She can feel him looking at it. The attention is almost physical, a line of heat dragging across the freshly settled numbers.

“Fuuuck,” he says eventually.

The word leaves him slowly, low enough to move through the mattress. She tries to glance back over one shoulder. His grip stops her from twisting too far.

“Is that real?”

The disbelief in his voice makes her want to laugh, though her stomach has gone tight beneath the pillow. “Mhm.”

“Is that…” He trails off. His thumb moves closer, hovering beside the tattoo without touching the healing skin. “That’s forty-four.”

She presses her face into her forearm. “Yeah.”

“When?”

“The other night.”

“What other night?”

“The girls’ night.” She bites her lip. “When we went out to the bar.”

Garrett says nothing. The silence stretches long enough that the heat in her body begins rearranging itself around nerves. She had imagined Garrett shocked. She had imagined him smug, turned on, maybe insufferable enough that she would have to threaten to remove his number with a vegetable peeler.

She hadn’t imagined silence.

She pushes herself onto one elbow. “Baby, are you… are you mad?”

“Mad?” His hands tighten and release against her hips. “I mean– shit. It’s…” He breathes out hard through his nose. “Baby, that’s a tattoo.”

“Yes.”

“That shit’s permanent.”

“I know how tattoos work,” she breathes.

“I’m just saying.” He sounds dazed. “You put my number on you.”

She turns her face enough that she can see part of him over her shoulder: broad chest, flushed skin, curls fallen over his forehead, eyes fixed helplessly on the tiny forty-four as though it's altered the known structure of the universe.

“Well,” she says, and the laugh caught in her voice makes it softer than she intended. “I love you.”

Garrett’s gaze lifts to her face.

She shrugs carefully beneath his hands. “And I think it’s hot.”

His mouth opens. Closes. Then his hand slides over her ass. The touch is slow, almost absent at first, his palm following the curve of one cheek while he continues staring at the tattoo. His thumb presses into the soft flesh. His fingers spread wider.

“Hot,” he repeats.

“Mhm.”

“You think this is hot.”

“I did when I got it,” she nods.

Garrett bends. His mouth lands on the curve of her ass, one open kiss followed by another. She gasps softly when his teeth catch the lower edge of one cheek, biting just enough to sting before his tongue smooths over the mark.

“Garrett.”

He kisses higher, across the small of her back, careful when he reaches the tattoo. His mouth stops just beneath it, breath warm over the healing skin without touching.

“No liquids on this yet, right?” he asks, voice rough.

A giggle slips out of her before she can stop it. “Not yet.”

Garrett closes his eyes. She feels the exhale against her lower back. “Fuck.”

His hands move suddenly. One catches beneath her hip and pulls her higher over the pillow. The other spreads firmly between her shoulder blades, pressing her chest down as Garrett shifts closer behind her.

She feels the blunt heat of him at her entrance. “Baby–”

He pushes in. The first thrust is controlled only in the technical sense that Garrett doesn’t injure either of them. He fills her in one hard, steady drive, stretching her around him so quickly that her mouth falls open and the sound tears out before she can soften it.

“Oh, fuck, Garrett.” His fingers dig into her hip. “Holy shit.”

He withdraws nearly to the tip and drives back into her. The force sends her forward against the pillow, breasts dragging over the sheets while pleasure catches deep and hot through her body. She reaches blindly for the headboard. Garrett catches her other hip and sets a rhythm before she has finished taking the second breath.

Hard. Fast. No adjustment period because her body is already wet and open from his mouth, already clenching around him with every rough stroke. The bed knocks softly against the wall. Her dorm mattress squeaks beneath them with increasing distress.

Garrett’s breathing turns ragged behind her. “This is…” Another thrust drives the sentence out of him. “Shit. This is the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

She whimpers into the pillow. His palm comes down against the side of her ass – a sharp, hot smack that makes her body jerk and tighten around him.

Garrett groans. “Fuck, baby.”

Her hands lose their grip on the headboard. One slips back toward him, finding nothing but his thigh for half a second before Garrett catches her wrist and pins it against the centre of her back. The position lifts her shoulder slightly and arches her deeper over the pillow. Garrett looks down at the curve of her ass. His cock disappearing into her. His number sitting neat and dark above all of it.

Something in him breaks. He fucks her harder. There’s no uncertainty left in the movement now. Garrett’s hips slam against her with enough force that the bed shifts beneath them, one hand holding her wrist while the other grips her hip and drags her back to meet every thrust. 

The room fills with the wet slap of their bodies, her broken moans and the low, filthy things Garrett keeps saying every time the sight of the tattoo seems to hit him again.

“My fucking number.” She nods into the pillow, though he cannot see it. “On this ass.” His hand tightens around her hip. “Jesus Christ. You’re insane.”

The laugh that tries to leave her turns into a cry when he changes the angle, lifting her slightly higher and driving in deeper. “Oh God!”

“That it?” Garrett’s voice is rough and breathless now, all the usual smug control fraying at the edges. “Right there?”

“Yes.” She twists her pinned hand beneath his palm. “Baby, yes.”

He gives it to her again. Same angle, harder. Her whole body pulls tight. The pleasure is building too quickly, dragged out of the soft aftershocks of the first orgasm and sharpened by every deep stroke. Her thighs have begun to shake against the mattress, knees slipping wider while Garrett keeps her exactly where he wants her.

“Look at you,” he murmurs. “Pretty girl can’t even hold herself up.”

She presses her forehead harder into the pillow, voice breaking. “You’re fucking me too hard.”

“You want me to stop?”

She shakes her head so fast her cheek drags against the pillowcase. 

Garrett’s hand leaves her wrist only so he can reach around and catch her jaw, turning her face enough that he can see it over her shoulder. “Use your words.”

“Don’t stop.” Her eyes meet his badly from the angle, vision already blurred at the edges. “Please, baby. Fuck me.”

His expression goes wrecked. “Good girl.”

He pushes her hand back to the mattress and drives into her hard enough that the next sound comes out of her as a sob. The orgasm hits before she has time to announce it. Her body clamps around him, hard pulsing contractions that make Garrett swear and lose the rhythm for one brutal second. Then he keeps going, fucking her through it while her legs tremble and her fingers claw at the sheets.

“Garrett,” she cries.

“I know.” His hand spreads over the side of her ass, holding her open. “I know, baby. Give it to me.”

She comes apart around him, hips jerking beneath his grip. Pleasure rolls through her so hard that her ears ring faintly, body suspended in the bright, breathless place where everything hurts in exactly the right way.

Garrett doesn’t stop. He slows for perhaps two strokes, just enough to let her breathe, then pulls her hips higher again.

“Baby,” she gasps, oversensitive and loose beneath him.

His palm slides gently along her spine, avoiding the tattoo, while his hips continue moving. “You good?”

“Yes.”

“Still want me?”

“Yes,” she breathes, the answer comes without hesitation.

Garrett bends and kisses between her shoulder blades. “Then take it.”

His pace builds again. The third climb is different. Messier. Her body is already shaken open, every nerve sparking too close to the surface while Garrett keeps driving into her with the relentless focus of somebody who has discovered a new reason to lose his mind and intends to study it thoroughly.

He reaches beneath her, a two fingers find her clit. She squeals.

Garrett laughs once, breathless and filthy against her shoulder. “There she is.”

“I can’t,” she whines.

“Yeah, you can.”

His fingers circle faster while his hips maintain the same punishing rhythm. She tries to close her legs, but Garrett’s knees are between hers, keeping her open. The pressure builds with nowhere to go, every thrust feeding it higher while his number burns invisibly at the base of her spine under his fixed attention.

“My girl,” Garrett says. “Look so fucking good with my number on you.”

She nods helplessly.

“Whose good girl, huh?”

Her mouth opens. Nothing useful comes out. Garrett’s fingers slow. The loss is immediate. She whines and pushes back against him.

He catches her hip. “Asked you something.”

“I am,” she gasps.

“Yeah?”

“I’m your good girl.”

The words hit him like contact. Garrett groans and drives into her, his fingers returning to the exact pressure she needs. “That’s right.”

Her third orgasm catches at the edge for one impossible second, body stretched between too much and not enough. Then Garrett’s thumb presses harder.

She comes with a sharp little cry that turns into a squeal halfway through, legs shaking so violently the mattress trembles beneath her. Her arms give out completely. Garrett catches her by the waist before she collapses awkwardly, holding her up while he keeps moving through the contractions with short, desperate strokes.

“Fuck.” His forehead drops between her shoulder blades. “Fuck, baby.”

She’s barely inside her own body now. Everything feels warm, loose and distant, Garrett’s hands the only clear edges left. He slows. His breathing is rough against her skin. His cock is still hard inside her, every small movement enough to make her twitch.

She swallows, trying to rebuild language. “Lemme…”

Garrett stills. “What?”

She turns her head toward him, cheek against the sheet. “Want you to finish… in my mouth.”

The words come soft and dazed. She tries to roll. Her body responds in pieces, thighs trembling beneath her and arms gone soft enough that Garrett takes over almost immediately, pulling out with a low, wrecked groan before catching her hip and turning her carefully onto her back. 

He snatches the pillow away before it can drag across the tender skin at her lower spine, tosses it somewhere toward the wall and hooks both hands beneath her arms to draw her upright.

For a second, she only sits there between his knees, naked and thoroughly ruined, hair tangled around her flushed face and lips parted around breaths that still haven’t found a sensible rhythm. 

Her thighs keep giving tiny, involuntary tremors against his, the room blurred pleasantly at the edges while Garrett kneels in front of her with his chest heaving and his cock hard, wet and flushed between them.

He looks at her like she’s done something genuinely dangerous. The tattoo. His number sitting permanently above her ass, still hidden from this angle and branded into the centre of his brain now that he knows it exists.

His hand comes to her face, thumb dragging slowly over her swollen bottom lip. “Look at you.”

She turns her mouth into his palm and kisses it, then reaches for him. Garrett’s breath catches when her fingers wrap around his cock. He’s slick from her and from himself, hot and heavy against her palm, and the first slow stroke makes the muscle jump visibly beneath his stomach.

“Baby,” he groans.

She looks up at him through lashes still damp from everything he has already done to her. Her body feels boneless, loose and warm enough that even lifting her chin requires concentration, but wanting him is simple. Wanting to give something back after he has spent the last hour pulling pleasure out of her until she could barely remember her own name feels simpler still.

She loves him. Stupidly. Completely. Enough to put his number into her skin and kneel there afterward with her legs shaking, wanting to watch his face when she makes him lose whatever control he has left.

Garrett cups the back of her head. His fingers sink into the tangled hair there, holding without directing her, his thumb moving once near the base of her skull. “You don’t have to, baby.”

“I want to.” The answer comes quiet and a little hoarse.

Something in his face shifts. His jaw tightens, eyes dropping briefly to her mouth before finding hers again. “Yeah?”

She nods and leans forward. The first drag of her tongue along the underside of him tears a rough sound from Garrett’s chest. She feels it more than hears it, low and helpless above her while she kisses the tip, lips closing softly around him before taking him into her mouth.

Garrett’s head falls back. “Fuck.”

His hand tightens in her hair as she works him deeper, tongue flattened beneath the hot weight of him while her fingers curl around the base. She’s sloppy from exhaustion and want, mouth already wet, movements slower than they usually are because her whole body is still recovering from him. 

Garrett seems to like that more. The soft mess of it. The way she has to pause for breath with her lips still brushing him. The way she looks up at him like there’s nowhere else in the world she has any interest in being.

“That’s my girl,” he breathes. “Fuck, you’re so good to me.”

The praise moves warmly through her, settling somewhere lower than the soreness and higher than her ribs. She takes him again, deeper this time, cheeks hollowing as her hand follows the rhythm her mouth sets. Garrett looks down, and his expression breaks open.

She can see the tattoo still living behind his eyes, the disbelief of it layered into every filthy, affected look he gives her. His girlfriend kneeling between his thighs with his cock in her mouth and his number newly inked above her ass. The thought appears to have stripped away the final useful part of his brain.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, voice catching when she swirls her tongue around the head. “You put my number on your fucking body and now you’re looking at me like that.”

She hums around him. Garrett’s stomach jerks. His hips push forward on instinct, not enough to take over, only enough to slide him deeper across her tongue. Her eyes water faintly. She keeps looking up at him through the blur, one hand braced against his thigh and the other stroking what she cannot fit.

His thumb brushes gently beneath one of her eyes, catching the dampness there. “So fucking pretty.”

Her thighs tighten beneath her. She takes him again, eager despite how tired she is, mouth moving wetly over him while Garrett praises every little thing she does as though he cannot stop the words now that they have started.

“Good girl. Just like that.” She sucks harder. “Fuck, baby, your mouth.” Her nails catch lightly against his thigh. “Love when you look at me.”

She does. She watches every part of it: the tension sharpening his jaw, the rise and fall of his chest, the way his curls cling slightly at his temples, the hard flex of his stomach each time she takes him deep enough to make his breathing fail.

Garrett’s fingers spread more securely over the back of her head. “You know how fucking crazy you make me?”

She pulls back just far enough to breathe, her hand continuing its slow movement over him. A thin line of saliva connects her bottom lip to the flushed head before breaking, and Garrett watches it disappear with an expression bordering on pain.

She kisses him there once. “How crazy?”

He gives a breathless laugh that contains no real humour. “You tattooed forty-four above your ass.”

“Mhm.”

“Then let me fuck you until your legs stopped working.”

She smiles, dazed and soft. “They still work.”

“Barely.”

His thumb passes over her cheek. She turns and kisses it, then takes him into her mouth again before he can say anything else. Garrett groans her name.

The sound makes her try harder, because she loves hearing him come apart for her. Loves that Garrett, who carries entire games on his shoulders and makes confidence look effortless, cannot hide a single thing when her mouth is on him. Every rough breath belongs to her. Every flex of his hand in her hair. Every broken piece of praise dragged out of him while she strokes and sucks and watches him lose control.

“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Fuck, baby. Don’t stop.”

She doesn’t. Her hand slides lower, fingers tightening around the base as she takes him deeply enough that her throat works around him. Garrett’s hips jerk once. His free hand braces hard against the wall beside her bed, forearm flexing while he tries to hold himself still.

“Gonna come,” he warns, voice wrecked.

She looks up at him and keeps moving. Garrett says her name again, rougher this time, but she only tightens her lips around him and strokes faster, wanting it. Wanting all of him. Wanting the moment his face finally loses every trace of control because of her.

His eyes drop to hers. That does it.

Garrett comes with a deep, broken groan, hips pushing forward once as his hand tightens helplessly in her hair. She takes him, swallowing around the first hot pulse while his whole body shudders above her.

“Good girl,” he breathes. “Fuck– such a good fucking girl.”

The praise turns even rougher as she keeps her mouth around him through every pulse, swallowing everything he gives her while his fingers stroke shakily through her hair. She doesn’t pull away until he has gone sensitive, easing him gently from between her lips before pressing one last kiss to the tip.

For several seconds, neither of them speaks. Garrett stands over her panting, one hand still cradling the back of her head while she kneels between his thighs with flushed cheeks, wet lips and the loose, pleased smile of someone who has been fucked far too thoroughly to experience shame.

His eyes move over her face. Then past her shoulder, toward the lower half of her body as though he can somehow see through her.

“Fuck,” he says again, apparently the only word left available to him. “Roll over. I need to see it again.”

She starts laughing. “Garrett.”

“Please.”

“You’ve seen it.”

“Not enough.”

Her legs are not especially reliable, so Garrett handles most of the repositioning. He lowers her carefully onto her stomach, makes sure the sheet beneath her is smooth and then shifts down the bed until his face is level with her lower back.

He doesn’t touch the tattoo itself. He only rests one hand across the top of her ass and stares at the little forty-four with the solemn concentration of somebody studying an artefact behind museum glass.

She folds her arms beneath her head. “You’re being weird,” she mumbles.

“I’m having a moment.”

“You’ve been having a moment for, like, an hour.”

“Yeah, because my girlfriend got my number tattooed above her ass.”

“Lower back.”

Garrett looks up. “Baby.”

She presses her smile into her forearm.

His thumb strokes the skin beside the tattoo. “You really did this.”

“I really did.”

“For me,” he murmurs.

He kisses one cheek, then the other, his mouth soft now, all the feral heat of ten minutes ago settling into something heavier. His chin rests briefly near her hip.

“You won’t regret it?” he asks.

The question is quiet enough that she turns her face toward him. Garrett’s still looking at the tattoo, but the thought behind his expression has moved farther than the bed. Farther than tonight. Permanent isn’t an easy word for him, no matter how hot the evidence looks above her underwear. Permanent has always carried too many promises made by people who didn’t know how to keep them.

“I might regret letting Paige choose the bar,” she says. “I might regret wearing jeans to get it done. I’m almost definitely going to regret whatever you tell Dean tomorrow.”

Garrett’s mouth twitches.

“But not the tattoo.” Her fingertips move gently along her own forearms. “Even if something changed one day– and I’m not saying it will– I’d remember how I felt when I got it. I was happy. I love you. You’re my favourite thing in my life right now.”

“Right now?” he asks, because he’s still Garrett.

She groans. “Don’t ruin it.”

His laugh presses warm against the side of her hip. Then he kisses the skin just below the tattoo again, careful, lingering there without touching the ink. “My girl,” he murmurs.

She closes her eyes. Garrett stays behind her for another minute, one hand moving lazily over her ass while he continues looking at the number like he expects it to disappear if he blinks incorrectly.

Then he says, “Can I take a picture?”

Her eyes open. “Absolutely not.”

“For me.”

“No.”

“Baby,” he argues.

“You’ll show the boys.”

Garrett starts laughing, forehead dropping against her lower back. She can feel the effort he makes to avoid the tattoo.

“Fine,” he says. “No picture.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m memorising it.”

“You’ve been staring for ten minutes,” she giggles.

“Need another ten.”

She sighs into the pillow, but her body goes softer beneath his hand. Garrett kisses her hip once more, then crawls back up the bed and folds himself around her without asking her to move again. His chest settles against her back, one arm sliding beneath the pillow and the other wrapping around her waist.

His mouth finds the back of her neck. “You’re the sexiest person alive,” he says.

“Mm.”

“Objectively.”

“Garrett.”

“And fucking insane.”

She smiles into the pillow. “Yeah, well, you match my freak.”

His arm tightens around her. “Yeah,” he murmurs, laughter warm against her skin. “Definitely.”

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The air in the truck was tense. Logan hadn't moved. Hadn't started the truck. Hadn't looked at you. The silence was crushing everything around you. Everyone had left by now, leaving you and him in his truck, alone in the arena parking lot.

He'd had a bad practice. A really, really shitty practice. All he wanted to do was take you home after that. But then he saw some douchebag flirting with you in the hallway. He dragged you away as quickly as he could, jaw clenched tight.

For a while, you didn't speak. You knew he needed time to cool down. But eventually it got too quiet for too long. "Baby—"

Logan inhaled sharply, eyes closing. You cut yourself off. He opened the door, getting out. You furrowed your brows, watching as he rounded the truck, opening your door. "Scoot," he said, his voice deep and rough and full of emotion.

You did as told, watching as he climbed in, slamming the door. Silently, he pulled you to him until you were on his lap, his hands gripping your hips tightly as he rested his head back against the back window.

He breathed out, eyes dark as they looked at you. You swallowed, feeling the arousal creeping up on you. You knew you shouldn't feel so turned on by him being like this, but you couldn't help it.

He yanked you closer, grinding your hips against his as he pulled you against him, burying his face in your neck. You moaned softly, clenching around nothing. He groaned at the feeling. His teeth nipped at your sensitive skin, his hands forcing your hips to grind against his once more.

He was hardening quickly under you.

Your hands dragged up his arms and into his hair, holding him close as you let him do what he wanted. "Fuck, you're so fuckin' good f'me," he groaned, sucking on your neck. Not soft and sensual like usual, but rough. Like he was trying to devour you.

He was.

His fingers slid inward, roughly squeezing your inner thighs, massaging them. You moaned softly, kissing his jaw, his stubble tickling your lips. He breathed out, relaxing slightly against the seat, continuing with your thighs.

He reached up, unbuttoning your shorts, slipping his fingers inside. "Mm, fuck," he breathed out as he felt you over your wet panties. He didn't move, just cupped your mound. Your hips jerked against his hand, trying to create friction.

He grabbed your hip with his other hand, stilling you. "No," he said. "Be a good girl and listen to me tonight, hmm?"

You bit your lip, burying your face in his neck. "Mhm," you hummed, licking over his pulse point. 

He took his hand out of your pants, and you whined slightly from the loss of contact. He gripped your hips, manhandling you until you were beside him, lying down against the seats, your legs on his. He maneuvered so that he was facing you, his hands tugging your shorts down.

Your panties came next, then his sweats and boxers. It was slightly difficult in the confines of his truck, but neither of you cared.

He moved so he was hovering over you, leaning down and finally capturing your lips in his. His kiss wasn't sweet. It wasn't kind and soft. It was rough and hungry. His teeth nipped at your lip and his tongue invaded your mouth as he tried to devour you whole.

You moaned into the kiss, grasping his face as he ground his hips into yours, his cock rubbing up and down your slit.

"So fucking wet," he murmured into the kiss. He pulled back, resting on his knees as he looked down at you. His fingers slid through your slit, teasing your entrance, before two fingers slipped inside.

He wasn't patient. He was rough and fast like he needed this to ground himself. He groaned at the feel of you clenching around his fingers, and you gasped, a whimper leaving your lips as you tossed your head back.

His thumb pressed against your clit, rubbing tight, fast circles as he fingered you. His eyes never left you, watching as your chest rose and fell and your back arched, hips bucking into his hand. He removed his hand from you quickly, forcing a whine from your lips.

"John," you whimpered, looking up at him.

His eyes were still dark, his jaw still tight. He moved back to hover over you, taking his cock in his hand and rubbing the tip over your clit. "You're mine, baby. I don't share," he told you, pushing the tip inside of you.

You moaned, eyes closing as he grabbed your legs and pushed them toward your chest. "I know," you whined out, nodding.

He smirked, shaking his head with a low chuckle. "Yeah?" He pushed in deeper, hard but not fast, giving you the time you needed to adjust to him. You bit your lip, and he groaned. He kissed your calf, teeth scraping skin gently. "So tight, baby."

His hips rocked forward more, until he was so deep you were already shaking, crying out softly. "F-fuck," you moaned.

"This pussy is mine, hm?" He started thrusting, deep and slow at first, letting you feel every drag of his cock against your walls. You moaned in response, but that wasn't enough for him. He grabbed your jaw, not hard, but with command. "Answer me, pretty girl."

You nodded. "Fuck- yes!" You cried out a little louder as his thrusts got faster, hitting that deep spot perfectly.

He hummed, leaning forward and resting his hand against the door to hold himself up as he started pounding into you. "All of you is mine. Got it? I'm not fucking playing. I will mark every part of your perfect body if I have to."

You whined, grasping at his hair and tugging to try and ground yourself. He groaned, kissing you deeply. "Fuck, fuck, do it," you sputtered into his mouth, your lips parting in loud moans as he continued to fuck you.

He thrust harder, head moving so that he could suck on your jaw. "Yeah?" he murmured into your skin. "Wanna show everyone that you're mine?"

You nodded frantically, feeling so full of him that you could barely think. He growled softly, teeth sinking into your jaw just enough to make you cry out as he fucked you with abandon. He pushed your legs further into your chest, forcing you to take more of him as he sucked on your neck.

The marks were deep and visible and he fucking loved knowing he was doing that to you. That you wanted him to do that to you. His hand came down, fingers rubbing your puffy clit roughly. "Squeezing me so good, baby. Fuck, you were made for me."

Every slide of his cock had you moaning, your legs shaking from the pressure. Every rub of your clit had you crying out, your back arched into him as you got closer. He hummed, feeling you start to pulse around him.

"There ya go, pretty girl. Let me feel you." He sucked harder on your neck, keeping his pace on your clit and in your pussy as you cried out, orgasm taking over.

Your hands grasped at his hair and shirt, legs shaking as you pulsed around him. He moaned, teeth nipping at skin as he continued fucking you. "O-oh, fuck. John, I can't—"

"You can. You will. Be my good girl."

You whimpered, overstimulation quickly starting to take over as he continued fucking you, his fingers never stopping on your clit. He was getting closer, his thrusts a little sloppier as he felt you continuing to squeeze his cock so good.

Your toes curled as your legs shook, another orgasm crashing over you much more powerfully than the last. Tears welled up in your eyes as you cried out, and that's all it took for him. Two more deep thrusts and he was spilling inside you, cock twitching as your pussy pulsed.

Slowly, he stopped, not pulling out but pulling his fingers away from your clit. He panted in time with your pants, kissing from your neck to your lips. "So good. You're so fucking good for me," he murmured into your lips.

You moaned, kissing him back deeply. "F-feel better?" you whined out, still sensitive.

He chuckled. "I don't know, maybe I need to do that again."

Garrett chuckles, the vibration rumbling through your back. "Morning," he rasps, pressing a soft kiss to your shoulder. "And yeah, someone is." He nuzzles your neck, his stubble scraping deliciously against your skin. "I was dreaming about you, but it doesn't even come close to the real thing."

Your heart swells at his words, even as a different kind of warmth pools low in your belly. You shift to face him slightly, but he pulls you back against his chest, wanting to maintain the spooning position. "No, stay like this," he murmurs. "I want to stay wrapped around you forever."

His hands begin their slow exploration, stroking your sides, tracing the curve of your hips, down to your thighs where he lingers, thumbs stroking the sensitive skin. You sigh contentedly, melting into his touch. His hands settle on your inner thighs, gripping slightly and you can't help but wiggle your ass against him.

"Tease," he whispers, though there's amusement in his voice. His fingers dance higher, toying with the little bow on the front of your panties. "You're just so warm here. Perfect."

You try to keep still, to maintain this peaceful morning moment, but his touch is igniting something in you. Each stroke of his fingers, each press of his lips against your neck sends jolts of pleasure through your body. You're becoming increasingly aware of the wetness pooling between your thighs, the ache beginning to build.

"Garrett," you breathe out. "You have to leave for practice soon."

He groans against your neck, pulling you impossibly closer. "Don't remind me. I'd rather stay here with you all day." His hips rock against you again, more deliberately this time. The friction sends a shiver through you and you can feel just how hard he is for you.

Your response is immediate, more wetness soaking your panties, a fresh wave of arousal washing over you. Garrett notices, his fingers dipping slightly higher to brush against the damp fabric.

"Well now," he murmurs, voice dropping to that low, husky tone that never fails to undo you. "Looks like we have a little problem here." His fingers press more firmly against your clit through your panties, making you gasp. "Should I help you with that?"

Heat floods your cheeks as you try to close your legs, but Garrett's strong thighs prevent it. "No, no, don't hide from me," he whispers, his fingers continuing their teasing assault. "Let me take care of you."

His fingers circle your clit, applying just enough pressure to make your toes curl. "Imagine how good I'd feel inside you right now," he breathes against your ear. "Stretching you, filling you up perfectly. Fucking you just the way you like." His other hand slides up to cup your breast, thumb brushing over your nipple. "Worshipping every inch of you."

He finds that spot on your neck, the one that makes you weak and sucks gently. That's all it takes to break your resolve. "Garrett," you gasp, "Please."

With a soft growl of satisfaction, Garrett hooks his fingers in the waistband of your panties and slides them down your legs. He shifts slightly, positioning himself and then two fingers are sliding into you, slow and deep. You arch against him as he stretches you, his fingers curling to find that spot that makes you see stars.

"Feel that?" he murmurs, scissoring his fingers slightly. "That's just a taste of what's coming." He pumps his fingers slowly, deliberately, until you're writhing against him, desperate for more.

Finally, he withdraws his fingers and you feel the blunt head of his cock pressing against your entrance. He enters you slowly, inch by inch, giving you time to adjust to his size. The stretch is exquisite, a perfect fullness that has you sighing in contentment.

"Fuck," he breathes against your neck once he's fully seated inside you. "You feel like home. Always so perfect for me."

He begins to move, establishing a slow, lazy rhythm that's perfect for a sleepy morning. Each thrust is deep, his hips rolling against yours in a way that sends pleasure coursing through your veins. His hands roam your body, one stroking your thigh, the other coming up to wrap loosely around your throat, his thumb stroking your pulse point.

"Look at you," he murmurs, his lips finding that sensitive spot on your neck again. "So beautiful taking my cock like this. Made for me."

His other hand moves to your breast, thumb and forefinger rolling your nipple between them. The dual stimulation has you gasping, your inner walls clenching around him.

"Garrett," you moan, reaching back to tangle your fingers in his hair.

"I know, baby," he whispers, increasing his pace slightly. "I feel it too." His thrusts become more purposeful, hitting that spot inside you that makes your toes curl. "You're so wet for me. Always so ready for my cock."

His words are filthy but loving, each one sending you higher. "Love how you feel around me," he continues, his voice thick with emotion. "Like you were made just for me. So tight, so perfect."

He shifts slightly, changing the angle and suddenly he's hitting your G-spot with every thrust. You cry out, your back arching as pleasure overwhelms you.

"Right there, huh?" he murmurs, his hand tightening slightly around your throat. "Right there where you need it." His other hand slides down to your clit, fingers circling in time with his thrusts. "Come on, baby. Let go for me. Want to feel you come around my cock."

The combination of his deep thrusts, his fingers on your clit and his dirty praise is too much. Your orgasm crashes over you, waves of pleasure so intense you're gasping his name. Your inner walls clench around him, milking his cock as you ride out your release.

"Fuck, yes," he groans, his thrusts becoming erratic as he chases his own release. "That's it, baby. So fucking good for me."

With a final, deep thrust, he buries himself inside you, his cock pulsing as he fills you with his release. He collapses against you, both of you breathing heavily, his weight a comforting presence.

For a long moment, you just lie there, basking in the afterglow. Garrett presses soft kisses to your neck and shoulders, his hands stroking your sides soothingly.

"I love you," he murmurs, his voice thick with emotion. "So much."

You turn in his arms, capturing his lips in a soft, sweet kiss. "I love you too," you whisper against his mouth.

He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "Best way to start the day." Then he glances at the clock and groans. "But I really do have to go to practice."

You laugh, tracing patterns on his chest. "Go on, then. The team's waiting for their captain."

He sighs dramatically but starts to disentangle himself. "Fine. But only because I have to come back to you later." He presses one last, lingering kiss to your lips before getting out of bed. "Think about me while I'm gone?"