Page 27 of The Longest Shot
Dripping and furious and wearing a barely-there terrycloth ensemble.
His gaze drops, and I feel it like a physical thing—a slow, heated drag across my skin that makes my stomach clench and my thighs press together involuntarily. Water still clings to my collarbone, each droplet suddenly alive under his stare, rolling down toward the towel's edge like an invitation.
The towel suddenly feels thinner and smaller.
His eyes trace lower, following the water's path, and heat blooms low in my belly despite the ice still dripping from my hair. I imagine his tongue following that same trail, hot against my cold skin, and my nipples tighten painfully beneath the inadequate towel.
The thought makes me angry at myself for wanting it, and angrier at him for making me want it.
His chest rises sharply, a quick intake of breath that makes his abs contract, and God help me, I track every ripple of muscle like my body's keeping score. Three years, and he still affects me like this, like a single spark can ignite the room.
The locker room fades to white noise. There's just his eyes, dark and hungry despite everything, despite the audience, and despite the fact that we're supposed to be different people now. They're locked on to me, sending signals to his brain, and suddenly I wonder if he's remembering.
How I taste.
How I sound when he touches me just right.
What it's like to have his cock in my mouth.
How it felt to fill me up in the back seat of his truck.
How well we fit together before he decided we were better as a punchline.
The moment stretches, taut as wire, both of us caught in this terrible, perfect suspension where anything could happen. I watch his throat work as he swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing. His jaw clenches, releases, clenches again. There's want and guilt and all sorts of messages as clear as neon on his face.
It would have been so easy.
One moment of honesty three years ago and we could be different people now.
But that's done.
I shake my head, forcing away the thoughts, and breaking my trance.
"Is there a reason," I say, "that your team feels entitled to every drop of hot water in this building? Or is basic consideration not covered in Hockey Bro 101?"
The laughter and chatter in the room die instantly, and every head swivels toward us. I can feel them cataloging the scene: their golden boy captain looking gut-punched, the ice queen in a towel that's one sneeze from catastrophe, and enough unresolved sexual tension to power the eastern seaboard.
James opens his mouth. His tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip—another tell, another memory I don't need—and for one stupid second, I think he might actually say something real. But then his gaze shifts past me, tracking movement behind my shoulder, and his whole body language changes.
"Mr. Galloway," he says, standing up straighter, the warning in his voice making my stomach drop before I even turn around.
But before he can evolve past his base programming, the new voice cuts through the humid air.
"Having some trouble, son?" Art Galloway says, stepping around me to place a possessive hand on James's bare shoulder.
Galloway's eyes find me, and his expression shifts through several distinct phases of awful. First: assessment. He catalogs my state with the efficiency of someone who's made a career ofit. Second: calculation. I can actually see him doing the math on what he can get away with.
Third: consumption.
His gaze starts at my face, pauses at my throat where my pulse hammers visibly, then begins a deliberate descent. He lingers everywhere the towel isn't—my shoulders, where the towel barely contains anything, then down to the expanse of thigh that suddenly feels like a landing strip for his attention.
"Riley," he says, and my name in his mouth needs to be burned. "I expect our captains to handle these little… disagreements… professionally."
His eyes make another pass, slower this time.
"And, well," he says, each word slow and his eyes never looking away from my body. "Perhaps with a bit more… appropriate attire."
The pause before "appropriate" carries enough subtext to require a content warning. He's managed to make me being in a towel in a locker room after a shower sound like I've committed some kind of moral crime, his female hockey captain suddenly guilty of something pornographic.
