🔥 Offside 🔥

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An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from The Last Play That Counts
by Aurora North

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This bonus chapter takes place three months after the epilogue. It contains extremely explicit sexual content including strap-on sex, power exchange, and two women who’ve been together long enough to know exactly what the other needs. Intended for readers 18+ who have finished the novel.

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← Back to The Last Play That Counts

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Offside

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Lena

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The garage was Zara’s domain.

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She’d claimed it the week we moved in — hung pegboard on the walls, organized her gear by season, installed a workbench she’d never once used for its intended purpose. The garage was where she kept her off-season training equipment, her spare sticks, and the boxes of goalie gear that didn’t fit in the locker room during the summer months. It was tidy and cold and smelled like rubber and concrete and the faint, permanent ghost of athletic tape.

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I had no business being in the garage. But it was December 23rd, four-day holiday break, the house was empty — Isabel had flown home after Thanksgiving, no team obligations until the 27th — and I was looking for the box of Christmas lights that Zara swore she’d put “in the garage, on the shelf, behind the thing.”

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There was no shelf. There was no thing. There were, however, three bags of goalie gear that I’d never opened because Zara’s equipment was sacred territory and I valued my life.

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Curiosity is a character flaw. My mother’s told me this since I was four years old, usually after I’d dismantled something in the kitchen to see how it worked. La curiosidad mató al gato, Lena. Curiosity killed the cat.

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I opened the bag.

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Practice gear. Not her game set — the backup stuff, the pads she wore during summer training, slightly worn, slightly smaller than the current ones. I pulled out the blocker. Turned it over. The palm was molded to the shape of her hand — her specific hand, the long fingers, the broad palm, the grip that I knew intimately enough to navigate in the dark.

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I put it on.

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It was enormous. My hand swam inside it — Zara’s hands are bigger than mine by a full size, something I’m reminded of every time her fingers span my hip bone or wrap around my wrist or do the approximately seven hundred other things they do that make my nervous system short-circuit. The blocker hung off my forearm like an oversized puppet. I looked ridiculous.

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I struck a pose anyway. Full goalie stance — knees bent, blocker up, free hand extended. The universal posture of a woman protecting a net she doesn’t have from a puck that doesn’t exist.

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“What are you doing?”

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Zara was standing in the garage doorway.

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She was in joggers and a thermal that clung to her shoulders and her arms and the flat plane of her stomach, and her hair was still damp from the shower, and she was holding a mug of coffee in one hand and looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before.

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Not the ghost-twitch. Not the almost-smile. Not even the full smile I’d earned over months of dedicated effort. This was something else. Something that started in her eyes — a darkening, a dilation, a shift from amused to alert — and spread downward through her body in a visible wave. Her grip tightened on the mug. Her weight shifted forward. Her jaw did the thing — that flex of muscle in her cheek that I’d learned to read as the first indicator that Zara Marks was experiencing an emotion she hadn’t planned for.

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“I’m looking for Christmas lights,” I said. “I found your gear instead.”

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“Take off the blocker.”

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“Why? I look great.” I struck another pose. “Tell me I don’t look great.”

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“You look—” She stopped. Swallowed. The coffee mug was being held with the controlled intensity of a woman who was considering setting it down. “Take. Off. The blocker.”

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I looked at her. Really looked. The darkened eyes. The shifted weight. The jaw flex. The white-knuckle grip on an innocent mug of coffee.

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“Oh my god,” I said. “You like this.”

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“I don’t—”

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“You do. You like seeing me in your gear. Zara Marks, goalie extraordinaire, is standing in her own garage having a moment because her girlfriend put on a blocker.”

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“It’s not the blocker.” Her voice was lower than usual. Rougher. The bedroom voice. The voice that bypassed my brain and spoke directly to the base of my spine. “It’s you. In my space. Wearing my things. It’s—”

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She set down the coffee.

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That was the signal. In our house, in our life, the setting-down of a beverage was the equivalent of a starting pistol. It meant: I am no longer interested in hydration. I am interested in you.

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I dropped the blocker. Crossed the garage. She met me in two strides.

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The kiss was hard. Immediate. No preamble, no build — just her mouth on mine and her hands on my waist and my back hitting the workbench with a rattle that sent a screwdriver rolling off the edge. Her body pinned mine against the wood. The bench was cold through my leggings. Her mouth was hot. The contrast made me gasp and she swallowed the sound the way she swallowed everything I gave her — completely, hungrily, without apology.

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“Not in the garage,” she said against my mouth.

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“Why not?”

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“Because I have plans.” She pulled back. Her pupils were blown. Her breathing was controlled in the specific way that meant she was fighting to keep it controlled, which meant she was closer to losing it than her face suggested. “And they require a bed.”

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“Plans?” I raised an eyebrow. “What kind of plans?”

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“Come upstairs and find out.”

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I followed her. Through the garage, through the kitchen — she grabbed the blocker from the floor on the way out, and I decided not to question that — up the stairs, down the hallway. Into our bedroom.

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She set the blocker on the nightstand next to the wooden puck.

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Then she went to the closet. Top shelf. Behind the stack of sweaters she never wore. She pulled out a box. Set it on the bed.

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I stared at it. Plain cardboard. Discreet. The kind of box that arrives from a website you browse in private browsing mode.

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“Open it,” she said.

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I opened it.

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A harness. Black. Simple, well-made leather. And a silicone cock — not huge, not performative. Moderately sized. Dark purple. The kind of purchase that required research, deliberation, and the particular decisiveness of a woman who approaches sex the way she approaches goaltending: with preparation, precision, and an absolute commitment to execution.

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I looked at the box. Looked at Zara. Looked at the box again.

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“Zara Marks,” I said slowly. “You’ve been planning.”

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“I’ve been considering.”

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“How long?”

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“Three weeks. I ordered it after — I don’t know. I was watching you in the kitchen. You were cooking. Something with garlic. You were dancing to a song I didn’t recognize and you were barefoot on the tile and you looked so—” She stopped. Recalibrated. “I ordered it that night.”

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“You watched me cook and immediately purchased a strap-on.”

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“There were intermediate steps.”

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“Were there?”

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“Several. Including a thorough evaluation of materials, sizing guides, and user reviews.”

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“You read user reviews for a strap-on.”

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“I’m thorough.”

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“You’re a psychopath.”

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“I’m a goalie. Same thing.” She stepped toward me. Took the box gently from my hands. Set it on the nightstand, beside the blocker that she’d inexplicably carried upstairs, beside the wooden puck Mateo carved. “I wanted to try something new. With you. If you want to.”

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The if you want to was important. Not perfunctory — genuine. Even now, even after two years and a thousand nights, Zara asked. She always asked. The wall was down but the care was permanent, structural, load-bearing. She would never assume. She would always check.

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“I want to,” I said. “I very, very much want to.”

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She kissed me. Slower this time. Not the garage collision — something more intentional. A declaration-of-intent kiss. The kind that says I’m going to take my time with you and you’re going to feel every second of it.

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She undressed me first. The way she always did — piece by piece, methodical, her hands and mouth following the path of each removed layer. My shirt. Her mouth on my collarbone. My sports bra. Her tongue circling my nipple until I was gripping her shoulders. My leggings. Her hand tracing the inside of my thigh, not touching where I needed her, deliberately, maddeningly not touching where I needed her.

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“You’re being a tease,” I said. My voice was already wrecked. Two minutes of being undressed and my voice was already gone. That was the Zara effect — the concentrated, devastating patience of a woman who had learned every trigger in my body and deployed them with the precision of a sniper.

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“I’m being thorough.” She knelt in front of me. Pulled my underwear down. Pressed a kiss to my hip bone — the compass rose, always the compass rose. “Lie down.”

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I lay down. Naked on our bed in the December light while Zara stood at the edge and stripped off her thermal and her sports bra and her joggers and then — with the calm, focused energy of a woman suiting up for a game — put on the harness.

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I watched her adjust the straps. Tighten them. Test the fit with a small, experimental shift of her hips. She looked down at herself, then up at me, and for a second — just a second — I saw uncertainty flicker across her face. New territory. Uncharted. The goalie standing outside her crease.

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“Come here,” I said. “You look incredible.”

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She climbed onto the bed. Over me. The weight of her body — familiar, beloved, mapped by muscle memory — settled against mine, and the new sensation of the toy pressing against my thigh sent a bolt of anticipation through my core that made my breath catch audibly.

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She heard it. Of course she heard it. She cataloged every sound I made, filed them in the vast, meticulous archive of her attention, and used them against me with devastating accuracy.

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“Tell me if you want me to stop,” she said. Her mouth against my neck. Her hand sliding down my body. “Tell me if anything doesn’t feel—”

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“Zara.”

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“Yeah?”

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“I love you. You read user reviews. Now fuck me.”

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Her mouth twitched. The ghost-twitch that had become a real smile that had become a laugh over two years of loving Lena Cruz. Then her hand slid between my legs.

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She didn’t rush. She started with her fingers — two, sliding into me with the easy confidence of someone who knew my body better than her own crease. She worked me until I was gasping, until my hips were rolling against her hand, until the slick sounds of her fingers moving inside me filled the quiet bedroom.

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“Ready?” she asked.

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“I’ve been ready since the garage.”

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She withdrew her fingers. Positioned herself between my legs. I felt the tip of the toy against me — warm from our body heat, slick with my arousal — and then she pressed forward.

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Slowly. God, so slowly. Inch by inch, watching my face with that goalie focus — tracking every micro-expression, every shift in my breathing, every flutter of my eyelids. Reading me the way she read a shooter. Adjusting in real time.

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The stretch was — different. Fuller than fingers. Smoother. A continuous, deepening pressure that made my back arch and my hands fist in the sheets and a sound leave my throat that was lower and more guttural than I expected.

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She paused. Fully inside. “Okay?”

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“More than okay.” I wrapped my legs around her waist. Drew her closer. Deeper. “Move.”

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She moved.

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Slow at first. Long, deliberate strokes that drew nearly all the way out and then pressed back in, each one hitting a depth that made lights pop behind my eyelids. She braced herself on one arm, the other hand gripping my hip, and the muscles in her shoulders flexed with each thrust and I was watching them — the architecture of her body working, the lean power, the controlled force — and the visual plus the sensation was almost too much.

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“Harder,” I said.

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She gave me harder. The pace increased. The depth increased. Her hips drove against mine with a rhythm that was steady and building and I was making sounds — loud sounds, the kind that used to embarrass me before I learned that Zara wanted every single one — and she was watching my face with that dark, intent focus and the combination of being filled and being seen was a demolition charge detonating at the center of my body.

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“God — Zara — right there — right there —”

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She shifted her angle. Subtle. A goalie’s adjustment — millimeters, not inches. But those millimeters changed everything. The toy pressed against my front wall with each stroke and the pressure built in spirals, tighter and tighter, and I was gripping her back hard enough to leave marks and she was breathing hard against my neck and her thrusts were getting faster, less controlled, the precision giving way to something rawer —

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“I’m going to come,” I gasped. “Don’t stop — please don’t stop —”

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She didn’t stop. She drove into me with a steady, relentless rhythm and her mouth found my ear and she said, low and rough: “Come for me.”

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Three words. Three words in that voice and I was gone.

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The orgasm ripped through me like nothing I’d felt before — deeper, fuller, originating from a different place than fingers or tongue could reach. My whole body seized. My legs locked around her waist. My nails raked down her back. I screamed — actually screamed, a raw, shattered sound that bounced off the bedroom walls and probably reached the neighbors and I could not have cared less if the entire city of Boston was listening.

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Zara held me through it. Slowing her thrusts, gentling, letting the waves roll through me while she pressed her forehead against mine and breathed with me. Her arm was shaking. Her whole body was shaking — the effort, the restraint, the holding-back that was costing her.

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“Your turn,” I said. My voice was destroyed. I sounded like I’d been screaming for an hour, which, functionally, I had been.

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She started to pull out. I stopped her. Hands on her hips.

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“No. Stay.” I pulled her down. Kissed her jaw. Her ear. “Flip.”

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“Flip?”

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“On your back. I want to ride you.”

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Something crossed her face — a flash of surprise, then want, then the specific look of a woman who has just been presented with a scenario she didn’t know she wanted until it was offered. She rolled onto her back. The toy stood between us, slick with me, catching the light.

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I straddled her. Positioned myself. Sank down.

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The angle was different from above. Deeper, somehow. The fullness pressing against different spots, finding new nerves. I gasped. She gripped my thighs.

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“Okay?” she asked. Looking up at me with those dark, steady eyes. Her hands on my thighs. Her body beneath me. The goalie on her back with the forward on top of her and the reversal of everything — the power dynamic, the position, the who-leads-and-who-follows — was its own kind of devastation.

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“Very okay.” I rolled my hips. Experimental. She hissed — the base of the harness pressing against her clit with each movement, and the realization that this worked for both of us simultaneously made my brain go white.

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I rode her. Slow at first, then faster. Finding the rhythm, the angle, the specific pace that built the pressure for both of us. My hands on her chest. Her hands on my hips, guiding but not controlling. She was watching me — watching my body move, watching my breasts, watching my face with that reverential, cataloging focus that meant she was memorizing this. Saving it. Filing it in the archive next to Montreal and the kitchen floor and the first time she said I love you.

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I reached down. Found where the harness met her body. Slipped my fingers underneath. Pressed against her clit — direct, firm, the way she liked it — and the sound she made was the payoff for every patient, persistent month of learning how to unlock Zara Marks.

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A broken sound. A wall-falling sound. The sound of composure shattering.

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“Lena — fuck — don’t stop—”

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“Let go,” I said. Our words. The words we’d been saying to each other since the beginning — in equipment rooms and hotel beds and kitchen floors and dark apartments. The permission that wasn’t permission but recognition. I see you. You’re safe. Let go.

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She let go.

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Zara came with her eyes open. Looking at me. Not behind a mask, not behind a wall, not behind anything. Just — open. Her mouth forming my name without sound. Her body arching off the mattress. Her hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise. The orgasm moved through her in visible waves — her stomach clenching, her thighs trembling, her breath coming in sharp, staccato gasps that were the most honest sounds she’d ever made.

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I came again. Watching her come — the open eyes, the silent name, the total vulnerability — pushed me over the edge without warning. A second orgasm that hit like an aftershock, shuddering and bright, and I collapsed onto her chest and her arms wrapped around me and we lay there, tangled, trembling, the toy still between us, our hearts hammering in syncopated rhythm.

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Silence. Breathing. The December light through the window. The distant sound of a neighbor’s Christmas music, tinny and cheerful and completely at odds with what had just happened in this room.

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“Well,” I said into her collarbone.

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“Well.”

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“The user reviews were accurate.”

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“I’ll leave a five-star rating.”

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I laughed. Into her skin, into the sweat-damp hollow of her neck, laughing because we’d just had the most intense sex of our two-year relationship and she was talking about leaving a product review. Because this was us. This was always us — the heat and the humor, the sacred and the ridiculous, existing in the same breath.

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I rolled off her. She removed the harness with the practical efficiency of someone removing athletic equipment — unclip, unbuckle, set aside. She dropped it over the edge of the bed and pulled me back against her chest.

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I traced the scar on her forearm. The thin line from mid-forearm to wrist. My ritual. My prayer.

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“So,” I said. “The garage.”

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“What about it?”

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“You saw me in your goalie glove and lost your entire mind.”

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“I didn’t lose my mind. I had a… response.”

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“You had a response that resulted in you carrying the blocker upstairs. It’s on the nightstand, Zara. Next to our initials puck.”

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“I was tidying.”

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“You were having a kink revelation.”

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“I was—” She stopped. The dimple appeared. “It wasn’t a revelation. I’ve always liked you in my things. The crewneck. The shirts. The hoodie you stole in November and never returned.”

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“And the goalie gear?”

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“The goalie gear is — different. The gear is me. The most me version of me. And seeing you wearing it — standing in my space, in my armor — it’s like…” She searched for the words. Goalie brain, trying to articulate something the body understood before the mind. “It’s like you’re inside the wall. Not on the other side of it. Inside it. Like it’s ours now. Not just mine.”

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My chest did the thing. The expanding thing. The thing that had been happening since October two years ago and showed no sign of stopping.

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“That’s either the most romantic thing you’ve ever said or the weirdest,” I said.

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“It can be both.”

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“It’s both.” I reached for the blocker on the nightstand. Held it up. “I’m keeping this. For future… right moments.”

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Zara looked at the blocker. Looked at me. The full smile. Teeth and dimple and every light in the house blazing.

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“Noted,” she said.

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Outside, the neighbor’s Christmas music shifted to something slower. Inside, the December light was fading from gold to amber. The blocker sat on the nightstand next to the wooden puck and the alarm clocks and the water glass, and it looked — against all reason, against all aesthetic logic — like it belonged there.

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Everything in this room belonged here. The gear and the puck and the books and the woman beside me and the life we’d built from nothing but a crooked grin and a sentence in a locker room on a Tuesday night in October.

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You’re the only person in this room who’s louder when you’re quiet.

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Still true. After everything. Still true.

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Thank you for reading The Last Play That Counts.

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If this book made you feel something, please consider leaving a review. It helps more than you know.

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