Page 40 of Slapshot Baby

Feel the slow drag of him inside me, stretching me, filling me until I can't think about anything else.

My breath catches. I press harder, faster, chasing the heat that's coiling at the base of my spine. My free hand grips the pillow.

With my other palm, I cup my breast, rolling my nipple the way he did. Pinching just enough to send sparks down my spine.

Come on, I beg silently. Just let me have this.

I imagine his weight pinning me to the mattress. The slow, stretching drag of him pushing inside me, so thick and perfect it stole my breath. The way he gripped my hips and driven deep, whispering rough praise against my ear while I fell apart around him.

My thighs tremble. The coil tightens low in my belly. I chase it with two fingers sliding inside myself, thrusting in the rhythm he used. My breath comes in short, desperate pants. The ache is almost unbearable.

There—almost—

But it slips away.

The peak hovers just out of reach, taunting me. My own fingers feel clumsy and wrong. Too small and familiar.

They can’t replicate the heat of his skin, the power in his thrusts, or the way his voice went gravelly when he told me to scream for him.

I growl in frustration and switch angles, rubbing my clit with frantic little circles while I pump my fingers deeper.

Sweat beads on my skin. My back arches off the bed. The tension winds tighter, cruelly close…

…and collapses again.

I try everything. Faster. Slower. Harder.

I picture him above me, brown eyes locked on mine, that crooked nose brushing my cheek as he fucked me like he’d never let me go. I whisper his name into the dark like a curse.

Nothing works.

After long, humiliating minutes, I finally pull my hand away and press it over my eyes, chest heaving.

My body throbs, an empty, restless ache pulses between my legs and deep in my core.

The ceiling fan spins above me, slow and indifferent.

I lie there furious and so unbearably alone I could cry.

Wetness coats my thighs. My lips still taste like him. And my stupid, traitorous body refuses to let me finish what he started.

Yet I’m pining.

Like my mother pining for my father every time he wanders back with his easy smile and broken promises. Like Joan Hartley, who should have learned decades ago that charm is not the same thing as commitment.

I'm making the same mistakes.

This is the thing I swore I'd never do.

Kai doesn't remember me. Maybe he's drawn to me right now because I keep showing up with food and jokes. That's gratitude dressed up as attraction.

I'm not deluding myself. He's not about to give up his playboy lifestyle for me. I'm not going to be the woman who magically changes him or any of that fairy-tale crap.

When his memory comes back—when he's back on the ice surrounded by women who look like they were engineered in a lab—I'll be exactly what I was before.

One night.

One he never thinks about.