After Practice

A Straight Captain, Off-Ice Girlfriend Bonus Scene
by Aurora North

Set three weeks after Chapter Twenty-Four. Contains explicit sexual content. For readers 18+ only.

⚠️ Content Warning: This bonus scene contains graphic FF sexual content, strong language, and praise kink. Intended for readers 18+ only.

The training facility was supposed to be empty at ten PM.

Cam knew this because she’d checked the schedule twice before driving back — once on her phone in Ivy’s kitchen while Ivy was in the shower, and once in the parking lot, sitting in her truck with the engine off, making sure the last of the cleaning crew’s cars were gone. Three weeks of being out and she still had the instincts of a woman who’d spent a decade hiding in plain sight. Some habits died hard. Some habits, Ivy said, needed to be fucked out of her.

Ivy had a way with words.

The weight room lights were on a motion sensor. They flickered on as Cam pushed through the double doors, flooding the room in flat, institutional white — barbells racked in descending order, cable machines standing like sentinels, the long wall of mirrors reflecting nothing but empty benches and the ghost of ten thousand reps.

She dropped her bag by the door. She was in compression shorts and a cutoff, her hair pulled back, her body still buzzing from practice that afternoon. Coach had run them through a brutal forechecking drill — two hours of board battles and transition skating that left her hip flexors screaming and her legs feeling like they belonged to someone who hadn’t slept in a week. The team had a day off tomorrow, and she should be home in bed.

Instead she was here, because Ivy had texted her forty minutes ago.

Meet me at the facility. Bring your resistance bands.

Cam had stared at the text, thumb hovering over the screen. Why?

Because I want to work on your hip mobility.

At ten PM.

I do my best work at night, Captain. You know that.

Then, a beat later: Bring the bands. Lock the door behind you.

And then, three dots pulsing for a long, loaded moment before: Wear the black shorts. The tight ones.

Cam had driven twelve minutes under the speed limit with her heart hammering against her ribs, her thighs pressed together against the ache that had started the moment she read that last text, her brain cycling between this is a terrible idea and God, yes.

She was halfway through her warm-up — hip circles, banded walks, the mobility sequence Ivy had built for her back when touching Cam’s body was still technically professional — when the weight room door opened behind her.

Ivy stood in the doorway in black leggings and a sports bra, her dark hair down around her shoulders. No quarter-zip. No team logo. Just skin and ink and the look on her face that Cam had learned to read like a scouting report.

That look said: I’m not here as your trainer.

“Lock it?” Cam asked.

“Locked it from the hallway.” Ivy crossed the room, and Cam tracked every step — the roll of her hips, the definition in her shoulders, the lavender tattoo climbing her left arm in the harsh overhead light. “How’s the hip?”

“Tight.”

“Mm.” Ivy stopped two feet away. Close enough that Cam could smell her — something warm and herbal, the lotion she used after her own workouts, and underneath it something darker. Something that made Cam’s mouth water. “Show me.”

Cam knew what she meant. She performed a slow crossover step, left to right, the same transition Ivy had first clocked from the stands four months ago. Her hip flexor pulled, a dull thread of resistance that she’d been managing with ice and foam rolling and sheer stubbornness.

Ivy watched with her trainer’s eyes. Then her gaze shifted — up Cam’s thighs, over the hem of her compression shorts, along the strip of bare stomach between her waistband and the cutoff’s frayed edge — and her eyes weren’t clinical anymore.

“The compensation is better,” Ivy said. “But you’re still guarding.”

“I’m always guarding.”

“I know.” Ivy stepped into her space. Her fingers found the front of Cam’s hip, pressing into the crease of her flexor with expert precision. Cam’s breath hitched. “That’s what I want to fix.”

“You want to fix my hip.”

“I want to fix the part of you that won’t let go.” Ivy’s thumb traced a slow circle over the tight muscle, professional and devastating. “Even now. Even after everything. You’re standing in an empty gym with the woman you love and your shoulders are up around your ears.”

Cam exhaled. She hadn’t realized she was doing it — the armoring, the instinctive tension she carried like a second skeleton. Three weeks of being out and her body still braced for impact every time Ivy touched her in a room that smelled like the facility.

“Old habit,” Cam said.

“I know a cure for old habits.”

“Stretching?”

Ivy smiled, and it was the smile Cam had learned to be terrified of — slow, knowing, the kind that reached her pale green eyes and turned them darker. “Something like that.”

She kissed Cam. Not softly. Not the careful, exploratory kisses of their early days, when every touch felt like standing on the edge of a cliff and choosing to jump. This was the kiss of a woman who’d already jumped, who knew exactly what waited at the bottom, who wanted Cam to stop looking down and fall.

Cam’s hands found Ivy’s waist. The skin there was warm and smooth, the muscles beneath tight from her own workout, and Cam pulled her closer with the kind of urgency that would have terrified her four months ago — the desperate, greedy need to feel Ivy’s body against hers with nothing between them but heat.

Ivy’s tongue slid against hers, unhurried. Claiming. She kissed the way she did everything — with the confidence of someone who’d studied the subject until there was nothing left to learn. She bit Cam’s lower lip and tugged, and the sharp sting traveled down Cam’s spine like a current and settled between her legs in a heavy, pulsing throb.

“Bench,” Ivy said against her mouth.

Cam sat back on the nearest weight bench. Ivy straddled her lap in one fluid motion, knees bracketing Cam’s hips, fingers threading into her hair. The position put Ivy above her — looking down with those green eyes that saw everything, the freckle below her ear catching the light, her mouth swollen and her breath coming fast.

“There she is,” Ivy murmured. She tugged Cam’s hair, tipping her head back, and pressed her lips to the hinge of Cam’s jaw. “There’s my girl.”

The words sank through Cam’s chest like a stone into warm water. My girl. She’d spent thirty years being The Anchor, The Captain, the woman who held everyone else together. No one had ever called her theirs. No one had ever wanted to.

“Tell me what you want,” Ivy said. Her hips rolled forward, a slow, deliberate grind that pressed the heat between her thighs against Cam’s stomach. The friction through the thin layers of fabric pulled a groan out of Cam that she felt in her teeth. “Use your words, Captain.”

“You.” Cam’s voice came out rough. “I want you.”

“You have me.” Ivy’s teeth found Cam’s earlobe, and she bit — gently, then not gently. Her tongue traced the shell of Cam’s ear, her breath hot and damp, and she whispered: “Be specific.”

Cam’s hands tightened on Ivy’s hips. She could feel her pulse in her throat, her fingertips, the aching space between her legs that had been building since Ivy’s text. “I want your hands on me.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere.”

“Everywhere is vague.” Ivy rolled her hips again, slower this time, a filthy, deliberate grind that dragged the seam of her leggings against Cam’s bare stomach and left a streak of damp heat on her skin. Ivy was already wet. Through the leggings. Cam could feel it. “Tell me exactly where you want my hands, Captain, or I’ll sit here all night and make you watch me touch myself instead.”

The image hit Cam like a slapshot to the chest. Ivy on her lap, hand between her own legs, head tipped back, coming apart while Cam could only watch — fuck. “My — between my legs. I want your fingers inside me.”

“That’s better.” Ivy kissed the corner of her mouth, a reward. “Good girl.”

Ivy pulled back and looked at her. The smile was gone. What replaced it was something raw and intent, a hunger that matched Cam’s own. “Take off the shirt.”

Cam pulled the cutoff over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra — hadn’t bothered, knowing where this was heading — and the gym air hit her bare skin like a slap. Her nipples hardened instantly, from the cold and the way Ivy’s gaze dropped to her chest and her breath stuttered — that small, involuntary sound that made Cam feel more powerful than any goal she’d ever scored.

“God, you’re beautiful.” Ivy’s hands settled on Cam’s ribs, thumbs tracing the underside of her breasts without touching them. Circling. “Every time. Every single time, and it still hits me like the first.”

“Ivy—”

“No.” Ivy’s thumbs swept higher, barely grazing the lower curve of her breasts. Still not touching where Cam needed her to touch. “I’m going to take my time with you tonight. You spent thirty years not being touched by someone who wanted you like this. So you’re going to sit here and let me look at you and let me touch you and you’re not going to rush me.”

Cam’s jaw clenched. Patience had never been the problem. The problem was that every nerve in her body was screaming at her to grab Ivy’s hands and put them where the ache was worst, and the only thing stopping her was the tone in Ivy’s voice — the calm, clinical authority that turned Cam’s spine to liquid.

“Lie back.”

Cam lay back on the bench, her shoulder blades pressing into the vinyl, the barbell rack above her head casting a shadow across the ceiling. Ivy stayed on top of her, one knee on either side of the bench, and leaned down to kiss her throat.

It was methodical. That was the thing about Ivy — she touched Cam the way she analyzed skating mechanics, with precision and patience and an intimate understanding of exactly where the pressure needed to go. Her mouth traveled down Cam’s neck, teeth scraping the tendon, tongue soothing the sting. She bit the spot where Cam’s neck met her shoulder — the spot that made Cam’s hips jerk involuntarily — and sucked hard enough to leave a mark. Cam felt the blood rise to the surface of her skin, a bruise blooming under Ivy’s mouth in the place where her practice jersey would cover it, and the possessiveness of that — I’m marking you because you’re mine and I want you to feel it tomorrow — made Cam’s cunt clench around nothing.

She kissed the hollow of Cam’s throat, the ridge of her collarbone, the space between her breasts where Cam’s heart was slamming so hard she was sure Ivy could feel it against her lips.

“Your heart rate’s elevated,” Ivy said, and her voice had the clinical edge that made Cam’s stomach clench. “Resting pulse should be around fifty-five for an athlete at your level. You’re well above that.”

“You’re diagnosing me right now?”

“I’m observing you.” Ivy’s tongue traced the curve of Cam’s breast, circling inward with the kind of deliberate patience that made Cam want to scream. Each pass tighter, closer, but never reaching the peak. “It’s what I do.”

“Ivy, if you don’t—”

“If I don’t what?” Another slow circle. Closer. Her breath fanning hot across the stiff, aching point of Cam’s nipple. “Ask me nicely.”

“Please.”

Ivy closed her mouth over Cam’s nipple and sucked, hard, and Cam’s back arched off the bench so violently the barbell rack rattled. The sensation was electric — wet heat and pressure and the edge of Ivy’s teeth and then her tongue flicking in quick, precise strokes that matched the throb between Cam’s legs.

“Easy.” Ivy’s hand pressed flat against Cam’s stomach, holding her down. The strength in that single hand — trainer’s hands, hands that manipulated muscle for a living — pinned Cam to the bench like she weighed nothing. “I’ve got you.”

She moved to the other breast without warning, sucking the nipple into her mouth and biting down — not gently — and the sound Cam made was raw and ugly and she would have been mortified by it four months ago but right now she didn’t care because Ivy was pulling back to blow cool air across her wet, swollen nipple and watching it tighten and smiling like she’d just solved a particularly satisfying equation.

“Ivy, please—”

“Please what?”

“More. I need — fuck — I need more.”

Ivy’s mouth moved to the other breast, and her hand slid down Cam’s stomach to the waistband of her compression shorts. She didn’t pull them down. She traced the elastic with one finger, back and forth, while her tongue worked Cam’s nipple and her teeth grazed the sensitive skin around it.

“You know what I love about you?” Ivy said, breath hot against Cam’s wet skin. “You run an entire hockey team. You control the pace of every game you play. You manage twenty athletes and a coaching staff and a media schedule and you do it all without breaking a sweat.” Her finger dipped below the waistband, just barely, tracing the sharp line of Cam’s hip bone. “But right here, on this bench, you can’t control a single thing. And that’s exactly what you need.”

Her finger traced lower. Over the front of Cam’s shorts, featherlight, following the seam down the center. Cam felt the pressure split through the thin fabric, felt Ivy’s fingertip drag across her clit through two layers of material, and her hips bucked so hard Ivy had to brace herself.

“I need you to stop talking and—”

“And what?” Ivy’s finger pressed harder, rubbing in a slow circle that made Cam’s vision blur. “You’re soaked, Captain. I can feel it through your shorts.” She pressed her palm flat against Cam’s cunt, cupping her through the fabric, and the heel of her hand ground into Cam’s clit with the kind of targeted pressure that made Cam’s thighs shake. “How long have you been like this?”

“Since your — ah — since your text.”

“Since my text?” Another slow, devastating grind. “Forty minutes of driving here like this? Wound up and dripping and trying to convince yourself it was about hip mobility?”

“I didn’t — I knew it wasn’t about—”

“You knew.” Ivy slid her hand inside Cam’s shorts, and the first touch of her fingers against bare, slick skin made them both gasp — Cam from the contact, Ivy from what she found. “Jesus, Cam. You’re drenched.”

Her fingers slid through the wetness, parting Cam’s folds, gliding through the slick heat without entering. She traced the length of Cam’s slit, base to tip, coating her fingers, and then circled her clit with two fingertips so wet the slide was frictionless.

“Shh.” Ivy hooked her fingers into Cam’s waistband and pulled. Cam lifted her hips and the shorts slid down her thighs, past her knees, off one ankle. She was naked on a weight bench under fluorescent lights in the facility where she worked, and she had never felt more exposed or more alive.

Ivy sat back on her heels and looked at her. The pause was deliberate — Cam knew that now, knew that Ivy used silence the way she used her hands, as a tool for dismantling the walls Cam built between herself and vulnerability. Being looked at like this, bare and wet and spread under the flat gym light with nothing to hide behind, was its own kind of surrender.

“You’re staring,” Cam said.

“I’m admiring.” Ivy’s hands ran up Cam’s thighs, thumbs pressing into the inner muscles with the practiced pressure of a woman who knew anatomy like a second language, and Cam’s legs fell open like a question she’d already answered. “The quadriceps development alone — do you know how gorgeous your legs are? These lines here—” she traced the definition along Cam’s inner thigh, her thumb millimeters from where Cam needed it “—this is ten years of training. Ten years of crossovers and squats and skating drills.” Her thumb grazed higher, dragging through the wetness that had spread to Cam’s inner thighs. “And all of it leads right here.”

She touched Cam with two fingers, sliding through the slick heat between her legs, and Cam’s whole body jerked.

“Oh, god—”

“That’s not my name.” Ivy’s fingers found her clit and circled it, slow and sure, with the kind of clinical precision that made the touch devastating — she knew the exact pressure, the exact rhythm, the exact angle that made Cam’s brain short-circuit. “Try again.”

“Ivy — Ivy — please—”

“Good girl.”

The praise hit Cam’s nervous system like a power play goal. Her hips rolled into Ivy’s hand, chasing the pressure, the friction, the devastating competence of fingers that knew exactly how she was built. Ivy had mapped her body the way she mapped skating patterns — with obsessive attention and total recall — and she played Cam with the confidence of someone who’d already memorized the playbook.

Ivy’s fingers circled faster, tighter. She pressed two fingertips against the left side of Cam’s clit — the side that was more sensitive, a fact Ivy had discovered three months ago and filed away with the same precision she applied to game-day treatment plans — and rubbed in quick, focused strokes that made Cam’s stomach muscles seize.

“Not yet,” Ivy said.

“What do you — ah — what do you mean, not yet?”

“I mean I’m not done with you.” She slowed her hand. Drew her fingers back through the wetness, down, circling Cam’s entrance without pushing inside. “I mean I want you to come on my mouth, not my hand. I mean I want to taste how wet you are and I want you to watch me do it.”

Cam made a sound that wasn’t a word.

Ivy slid off the bench and knelt on the gym floor between Cam’s legs. The visual alone nearly finished Cam — Ivy Tannenbaum on her knees on the rubber mat, dark hair spilling over Cam’s thighs, looking up at her with those pale green eyes gone almost black with want.

“I’m going to taste you now,” Ivy said. Not a question. An announcement. “And you’re going to let go. All the way. No guarding, no bracing, no controlling the outcome.” She pressed a kiss to the inside of Cam’s knee. “You’re going to let me make you come, and you’re going to be loud about it, because there’s no one here but us and I want to hear you. I want this room to remember what you sound like when I make you fall apart.”

“I—”

“That wasn’t a request, Captain.”

She pressed her mouth to the inside of Cam’s thigh, an inch from her center, and kissed the skin there — open-mouthed, wet, her tongue tracing the tendon while Cam’s hips strained toward her. She kissed the other thigh. The crease where thigh met hip. The soft skin below Cam’s navel. Everywhere except where Cam was aching, swollen, desperate.

“Ivy, I swear to god—”

“Mm. I love it when you beg.” She looked up from between Cam’s thighs, and the sight of her — lips parted, eyes dark, close enough that Cam could feel her breath against her cunt — was pornographic. “One more time.”

“Please. Ivy. Please put your mouth on me. I need — I can’t—”

Ivy’s mouth found her, and Cam stopped being a person.

It was the same disappearing act as dropping a puck — the moment when thought dissolved and instinct took over — but this was its opposite. On the ice, she disappeared into control. Here, under Ivy’s tongue, she disappeared into the complete and terrifying absence of it. Ivy licked her with broad, flat strokes that covered everything — from her entrance to her clit, long and slow and thorough, tasting every part of her — and then narrowed to the tight, focused pressure on her clit that made Cam’s hands fly to Ivy’s hair and grip hard enough to hurt.

Ivy moaned against her, and the vibration traveled through Cam’s clit and up her spine and she nearly came right there.

“Yes — right there, don’t stop, don’t you dare—”

Ivy didn’t stop. She sucked Cam’s clit into her mouth and flicked her tongue against it in a rhythm that matched Cam’s heartbeat — fast now, urgent — and then she slid two fingers inside her with one smooth, deep thrust that bottomed out against that spot, and Cam’s thighs clamped around her head and her voice cracked on a sound she didn’t recognize as her own.

Ivy fucked her with steady, curling strokes, her fingers reaching deep, dragging against the front wall on every outstroke while her tongue worked Cam’s clit with relentless precision. Each thrust was deliberate. Clinical. Expert. She added a third finger — the stretch made Cam cry out, sharp and breathless — and twisted on the next stroke, and the pressure inside and outside was too much and not enough and Cam was shaking, gripping Ivy’s hair with both hands, her heels braced against the bench, her back arching.

“Oh, fuck — Ivy — I can’t — it’s too—”

Ivy pulled back just enough to speak, her lips slick and swollen against Cam’s skin. “You can. You can take it. You take harder hits than this every game.” She curled all three fingers against the spot and held. “Let go, baby. I’ve got you.”

The orgasm built like a breakaway — that gathering speed, that narrowing of focus, the moment when the angle opened up and there was nothing left to do but shoot. Cam’s back arched off the bench. Her heels dug into the vinyl. Every muscle in her body locked and held and then released, and she came so hard she saw white — not the fluorescent lights, not the ceiling, just blinding, obliterating white — with Ivy’s name ripped out of her lungs and Ivy’s fingers still moving inside her, slower now, drawing it out, working her through each aftershock until Cam’s thighs were trembling and her breath was coming in ragged, broken sobs.

Ivy didn’t pull out. She eased Cam down with soft, slow strokes, her mouth pressing gentle kisses to Cam’s inner thighs, her hip bones, the shaking muscles of her stomach. When Cam’s body finally stopped clenching around her fingers, Ivy withdrew them slowly — and brought them to her own mouth.

Cam watched through half-closed eyes as Ivy licked her own fingers clean, and the aftershock that rolled through her was almost as devastating as the orgasm.

“That,” Ivy said, “was good form.”

Cam laughed. It was the helpless, shattered kind of laugh that came from somewhere deep in her chest, the kind she’d never made before Ivy — before this woman took a wrecking ball to every wall Cam had ever built and then climbed through the rubble to hold her.

“Get up here,” Cam said.

“I’m comfortable.”

“Ivy. Get. Up. Here.”

Ivy climbed back onto the bench, and Cam rolled them — carefully, because it was a weight bench and not a bed, but with the athletic coordination of a woman who’d spent her life controlling her body in tight spaces. She landed on top, Ivy beneath her on the narrow vinyl, and the look on Ivy’s face — surprised, delighted, hungry — made Cam’s stomach flip.

“Hi,” Ivy said.

“Hi.” Cam kissed her and tasted herself on Ivy’s lips — salt and musk and the faintly sweet undertone of her own arousal — and the intimacy of it made her cheeks burn even after weeks of this. “Your turn.”

She peeled Ivy’s sports bra up and off, and the lavender tattoo unfurled across Ivy’s shoulder in the gym light — the delicate stems, the clusters of purple flowers, the way the ink moved with the muscle beneath. Cam had memorized it by now. She kissed the lowest bloom, the one that sat just above Ivy’s left breast, and felt Ivy’s breath catch.

“I spent an entire team stretching session staring at this tattoo,” Cam said against Ivy’s skin. “Back in August. Before I’d even admitted anything to myself. I watched you demonstrate a hamstring stretch and I couldn’t stop looking at this lavender and I was so furious with myself I went home and did wall sits for an hour.”

“I know.” Ivy’s fingers combed through Cam’s hair. “You weren’t subtle.”

“I thought I was being incredibly subtle.”

“Cam, you turned red every time I touched you and then stared at my shoulder like you were trying to memorize it for a final exam. The only person you were fooling was yourself.”

Cam bit the soft skin beside the tattoo — not gently — and Ivy gasped, her back arching, pressing her breast into Cam’s face. “I’m not trying to fool anyone now.”

She worked her way down Ivy’s body with the same focus she brought to game prep — systematic, thorough, refusing to leave any territory uncovered. Ivy’s neck — the spot beneath her ear that made her fingers tighten in Cam’s hair. The dip between her collarbones where her pulse fluttered fast enough that Cam could feel it against her tongue. Her breasts — smaller than Cam’s, sensitive enough that a scrape of teeth made Ivy’s whole body arch off the bench.

Cam sucked one nipple into her mouth and bit down, tugging, and Ivy hissed and grabbed the back of her head and held her there. Cam circled the other nipple with her thumb, pinching it between her fingers, rolling it until it was stiff and dark and Ivy was writhing beneath her, her hips grinding up against Cam’s thigh with a desperation that was soaking through her leggings.

“Cam — Christ — your mouth—”

“What about it?”

“It should be — ah — registered as a weapon.”

Cam smiled against Ivy’s stomach. She kissed the soft skin there, felt the muscles contract beneath her lips, and moved lower. She hooked her fingers into Ivy’s leggings and pulled them down her hips, her thighs, off her legs entirely. Ivy wasn’t wearing anything underneath — hadn’t bothered, for the same reason Cam hadn’t worn a bra — and the sight of her spread out on the bench, skin flushed and chest heaving, her dark hair fanning across the vinyl, her thighs parted and glistening, made Cam’s chest ache with a tenderness that coexisted with the want. Inseparable. Two edges of the same blade.

She kissed the inside of Ivy’s thigh and looked up. The mirror on the wall behind them reflected the scene back at her — Cam’s broad shoulders between Ivy’s legs, the line of Ivy’s body curved in anticipation, the harsh light rendering everything in sharp, unforgiving detail. Cam could see herself. Could see what she was doing. Who she was doing it with. There was nowhere to hide.

She didn’t want to hide.

“Watch,” Cam said, nodding toward the mirror. “I want you to watch.”

Ivy’s eyes found the reflection, and her lips parted. “Oh, that’s — you’re—”

Cam lowered her mouth to Ivy’s center and watched in the mirror as Ivy’s head fell back.

She’d gotten good at this. Four months ago, the first time she’d touched a woman — touched Ivy — she’d been shaking so badly her hands couldn’t find a rhythm. Now she read Ivy’s body the way she read the ice — patterns, openings, the half-second shift in breathing that meant there, yes, don’t move. She licked her in long, slow strokes, tasting her — rich and salt-sweet and uniquely Ivy — and then she dragged her tongue flat and firm from Ivy’s entrance to her clit and pressed there, holding, letting Ivy feel the full width and heat of her tongue against the swollen bundle of nerves.

Ivy’s hand slammed down on the bench so hard the sound cracked through the room.

“Fuck — Cam — oh my god—”

Cam narrowed her focus. She sucked Ivy’s clit gently, lips wrapped around it, tongue flicking in precise, targeted strokes — the same way Ivy had done to her, but with Cam’s own instincts layered in: read the shift, adjust the angle, stay in the pocket. She slid two fingers inside and Ivy was so wet the entry was effortless, silk-smooth and scorching, clenching immediately around her. Cam curled her fingers and found the spot that made Ivy’s hips buck off the bench, and she pressed into it with the kind of relentless, focused pressure that had earned her the captaincy — the refusal to quit, the willingness to stay in the tight space and do the work until the defense broke.

“Don’t stop,” Ivy gasped. Her hand found the back of Cam’s head and held her there, fingers tangled in Cam’s hair, pulling with a force that sent sparks down Cam’s scalp. “Don’t — oh — right there, baby, right there, you’re so good, you’re so—”

“Say it,” Cam said against her, because she’d learned something about herself in the last four months — she needed the words. Needed them the way she needed oxygen and ice time and the weight of Ivy’s body against hers in the dark.

“You’re so good,” Ivy said, and her voice cracked on the second word. “You’re so good for me, Cam. My — fuck — my good girl, my beautiful, stubborn, perfect—”

Cam fucked her harder. Deeper. She curled her fingers on every stroke, grinding the heel of her hand against Ivy’s clit when her mouth pulled back to breathe, and then she sealed her lips around Ivy’s clit again and sucked while her fingers drove in relentlessly and Ivy’s thighs clamped around her ears and the sounds coming out of Ivy stopped being words entirely — just raw, guttural, desperate sounds that bounced off the mirrors and the barbells and the institutional ceiling tiles.

Ivy came with her back arched and her eyes locked on the mirror, watching herself fall apart under Cam’s mouth, and the sound she made was Cam’s name stretched into something raw and reverent that bounced off every surface in the room. Her cunt pulsed tight around Cam’s fingers — rhythmic, squeezing, the contractions so strong Cam could feel them in her wrist — and Cam worked her through every last wave, slower now, gentler, reading the diminishing tremors the way she read the final minutes of a game, easing toward the buzzer without letting up entirely until Ivy’s hand loosened in her hair and her thighs fell open and she went absolutely boneless against the vinyl.

Cam stayed with her through the aftershocks, pressing soft kisses to her thighs and her hip bones and the small, sensitive spot just below her navel. When Ivy finally went limp, her chest heaving, her eyes glassy, Cam climbed up the bench and lay beside her — half on the bench, half hanging off, one foot on the floor to keep them from rolling onto the rubber mat.

“This bench is terrible,” Cam said.

“It’s a weight bench. It’s not designed for—”

“For what we just did on it?”

Ivy laughed, and the sound was warm and loose and completely unguarded. She turned her head and kissed Cam’s shoulder. “Worth it, though.”

“Yeah.” Cam stared at the ceiling — the same institutional tiles she’d stared at during ten thousand workouts — and felt something settle in her chest. Not tension. Not the tight wire of control she’d been strung on for a decade. Something softer. Something that fit. “Yeah, it was.”

Ivy propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at Cam. Her hair was wrecked, her mascara slightly smudged, and the lavender tattoo glowed against her flushed skin. She was the most beautiful thing Cam had ever seen, and Cam was done pretending that thought belonged to someone else.

“You know what I was thinking about during practice today?” Ivy said.

“If you say my hip flexor, I’m leaving.”

“Your hip flexor is fine. Possibly the most famous hip flexor in women’s hockey, given how often I’ve had my hands on it.” She traced a pattern on Cam’s stomach. “No. I was thinking about the press conference.”

Cam’s chest tightened. The press conference. Three weeks ago, standing at the podium with the team logo behind her and every camera in the arena pointed at her face, saying the words she’d rehearsed in Ivy’s kitchen at two in the morning while Ivy held her hand under the counter and didn’t let go.

I’m in a relationship with someone on our staff. Her name is Ivy Tannenbaum, and she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’m done pretending otherwise.

“What about it?” Cam said.

“The way you looked when you said my name.” Ivy’s eyes were soft, the green of them catching the light. “Like you’d been holding your breath for thirty years and you finally let it out.”

Cam swallowed hard. She was not going to cry on a weight bench in the training facility. She was not.

“I was terrified,” Cam said.

“I know.”

“I thought I was going to pass out at the podium.”

“You didn’t.”

“No.” Cam reached up and tucked a strand of dark hair behind Ivy’s ear. “I didn’t.”

Ivy leaned down and kissed her — soft this time, tender, the kind of kiss that meant I see you and I’m staying — and Cam kissed her back with everything she had. With the discipline of ten years and the vulnerability of the four months that had rewritten her.

The kiss changed.

It happened the way it always did — the soft edges sharpening, the tenderness tilting into hunger, Ivy’s hand tightening in Cam’s hair and Cam’s grip shifting from holding to pulling — and suddenly the post-sex haze wasn’t post-anything. It was a prelude.

“Again?” Ivy breathed against her mouth.

“Again.” Cam sat up, bringing Ivy with her. “But not on this bench.”

She stood, pulling Ivy to her feet, and walked her backward toward the mirror wall. Ivy’s bare back pressed against the cold glass and she gasped — from the temperature, from the look on Cam’s face, from the realization that Cam was pinning her against the same mirror she’d just watched herself come in.

“This is new,” Ivy said. Her voice was unsteady. Her eyes were enormous.

“I’m tired of the bench.” Cam braced one hand on the mirror beside Ivy’s head. With the other, she traced a line down the center of Ivy’s body — between her breasts, over her navel, through the narrow strip of dark hair, and lower. She slid two fingers between Ivy’s folds and found her still swollen, still slick, still sensitive enough that the touch made Ivy’s knees buckle. “I want you standing. I want to watch your legs give out.”

“Cam—”

“I spent a decade in this facility pretending I didn’t want you.” She pushed her fingers inside, and Ivy’s mouth fell open and her hands flew to Cam’s shoulders, nails digging in. “Every session. Every treatment. Every time you put your hands on my hip and I had to pretend I wasn’t imagining this. So now I’m going to fuck you against this mirror and I’m going to watch your face while I do it and neither of us is going to pretend it’s about anything other than the fact that I am desperately, stupidly in love with you.”

“It was four months,” Ivy managed. “Not a decade.”

“It felt like a decade.”

“That’s — oh — that’s because you’re dramatic.”

Cam curled her fingers, deep, and Ivy’s head fell back against the mirror hard enough to make it shudder. Her reflection stretched behind her — the curve of her spine, the muscles in her back, Cam’s hand between her legs, both of them naked and flushed under the flat white light.

Cam fucked her slowly at first. Long, deep strokes, her palm grinding against Ivy’s clit on every push, her other hand braced against the glass to keep Ivy upright as her legs started to shake. She watched Ivy’s face — the way her brow furrowed in concentration, the way her mouth opened on each thrust, the way her eyes kept drifting to the mirror behind Cam’s shoulder where she could see Cam’s back, the flex of her arm, the movement of her hand.

“You like watching,” Cam said. It wasn’t a question.

“I like — fuck — I like watching you.” Ivy’s hips canted forward, taking Cam’s fingers deeper, and she bit her lip so hard it went white. “I like the way you look when you’re — when you’re inside me. Like nothing else in the world matters.”

“Nothing else does.” Cam pressed her thumb against Ivy’s clit and rubbed in tight circles while her fingers worked inside. “Not right now.”

She dropped to her knees. Ivy’s back was still against the mirror, and Cam hooked one of Ivy’s thighs over her shoulder and buried her face between Ivy’s legs, and the angle was new — deeper, Ivy spread open above her, one leg trembling and the other braced over Cam’s broad shoulder — and the sound Ivy made was high and broken and completely uncivilized.

Cam licked into her with her fingers still moving, tongue and hands working together, and she could feel Ivy’s thigh shaking against her cheek, could feel the way Ivy’s hand fisted in her hair and pulled, could feel the mirror vibrating against her knuckles from the tremors running through Ivy’s body. She fucked her faster, harder, her tongue flat against Ivy’s clit while her fingers drove deep and curled on every stroke, and Ivy’s sounds dissolved into a continuous, breathless litany — yes, there, don’t stop, please, Cam, fuck, baby, don’t stop, I’m going to, I’m—

Ivy came with a scream that echoed off every surface in the weight room. Her thigh locked around Cam’s shoulder, her fingers twisted in Cam’s hair, her whole body seized and held and then shattered, pulsing against Cam’s mouth in long, shuddering waves while her legs gave out entirely and only the mirror at her back and Cam’s hand on her hip kept her from sliding to the floor.

Cam eased her down gently — lowering her to the rubber mat, settling beside her, gathering her against her chest while the aftershocks rippled through her. Ivy was boneless, trembling, her face pressed into Cam’s neck, her breathing ragged.

“You were right,” Ivy said eventually, her voice wrecked. “The bench was terrible. The mirror is much better.”

Cam laughed. She pressed her lips to the top of Ivy’s head and held her, both of them naked on the gym floor, and the room hummed around them — the low drone of the air system, the distant click of the building settling, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.

After a long time, Ivy shifted. She traced the lines of Cam’s abs with one finger and told her about a new plyometric sequence she was designing for the forwards. Cam listened with her eyes closed, one hand in Ivy’s hair, feeling Ivy’s heartbeat slow against her ribs. Ivy talked about power output and ankle stability and the biomechanics of edge transitions, and Cam understood maybe forty percent of it, and the sixty percent she didn’t understand sounded like music because it was Ivy’s voice and Ivy’s mind and the particular kind of genius that had seen the flaw in Cam’s skating before anyone else and then, somehow, improbably, seen something worth loving in the woman attached to the flaw.

“We should go,” Cam said eventually. “Before security does a walk-through.”

“Mm. Five more minutes.”

“You said that ten minutes ago.”

“And I’ll say it again in five minutes.” Ivy pressed her face into Cam’s neck. “I like you here. In this room. In our room.”

Cam smiled. She pulled Ivy closer, and the mirror reflected them back to themselves — two women tangled together on the floor of an empty gym, unhidden, unashamed, and completely, recklessly in love.

“Five more minutes,” Cam said.

Ivy kissed her neck. “Good girl.”

Thank you for reading! Cam and Ivy’s full story is available in Straight Captain, Off-Ice Girlfriend by Aurora North.