Page 195 of Power Play

I set her phone on the island and tightened my hold around her waist. “I’m home now, mi bebé.”

Her fingers curled into my shirt as I lowered my mouth close to hers and gave her the updated version in Spanish first.

“Ya estoy en casa, mi bebé, y voy a cogerte tan duro que vas a sentirme toda la semana.”

Her eyes widened, and I smiled against her mouth.

“You want me to translate that one too?”

She swallowed. “I think I understood the important part.”

“Good.” I pulled her flush against me and let my mouth hover beside her ear. “Because I’m home now, baby, and I’m about to fuck you so hard you’ll feel me for a week.”

12

Ryan

The words hung in the air between us, a raw, filthy promise finally spoken aloud. Her eyes widened, her lips parting as shock and desire fought across her expression. The air in my apartment felt charged, thick with everything we’d spilled between us—my history, her fear, and this desperate want that had been building for months.

I didn’t give her time to hide inside her head. We had done enough waiting.

I closed the distance between us and cupped her face, my thumbs stroking her cheekbones while she looked up at me, breathless.

“You wanted this,” I murmured, my voice low. “Now you get it.”

I kissed her, and there was nothing gentle or sweet about it. Every frustrated minute on that fucking bus, every lonely hour in that sterile hotel room, and every second of the drive home when all I could think about was having her beneath me came out through my mouth. My tongue pushed between her lips, tasting her, and she met me with equal hunger, her hands fisting in my T-shirt.

I walked her backward without breaking the kiss until the backs of her legs met the edge of my bed. Tearing my mouth from hers, I hooked my hands beneath my shirt and dragged it over my head before tossing it behind me.

Charm went still. Her eyes dropped immediately, and for once, I didn’t reach for her again.

I let her look.

Most people had seen pieces of me. Ink crawled out of my collar, disappeared beneath my sleeves, and wound over my forearms and hands. My teammates had seen the rest because locker rooms didn’t leave much room for privacy, but outside hockey, I had spent years making damn sure women only got whatever version of me I decided to give them.

Charm was getting all of it.

Across my lower stomach, my mother’s maiden name, NAVARO, arched from hip to hip in heavy black lettering. It was one of the oldest pieces on my body, the name belonging to a history most people never bothered asking me about. Above it, praying hands wrapped around a rosary stretched over my abdomen, Juanita’s name worked beneath them in script I had stared at through more bad nights than I could count. Higher, ice spread across my chest in black and gray, a hockey player frozen into the landscape over my pecs and upper chest as though the game had been carved directly into me instead of becoming the only place I had ever learned how to breathe.

Charm’s gaze moved slowly over every inch of me. “Ryan…”

“Mírame.”

Her eyes lifted, and I caught her hand before she could reach for me, pressing her palm against my bare chest.

“Really look at me, mi hada.” My voice came rougher now. “See who I am like this.”

Her fingers spread over my skin.

“My real name, where I came from, my mother, hockey, and all the shit that built me are right here.” I covered her hand with mine. “My story is on my body where almost nobody ever gets close enough to read the whole fucking thing.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed. I turned slowly and gave her my back.

The cross covered most of it, massive enough that the arms stretched toward my shoulders. Chicano artwork surrounded it, accumulated across years instead of planned all at once. Above it were the words from Psalm 23 that had followed me through some of the ugliest parts of my life. Beneath it sprawled the barrio I had called home for the first eleven years of it—rooftops, wires, narrow streets, old buildings, and pieces of a neighborhood that existed on my skin exactly the way memory had refused to let it disappear. Roses, script, shadows, religious imagery, and Mexican American art filled nearly every remaining space.

I heard Charm move behind me before her fingertips touched my back. She moved slowly, as though she understood she wasn’t simply touching tattoos.

When I turned again, the look on her face nearly knocked the air from my lungs.