I’m hanging on to her. Don’t go anywhere, Sulli. And I wonder what it’d take for this to implode. Because I would lose every company, every business—even my gym—if it meant that I still have her this close, this intimate, this soul-bearing and deep.
This’ll last.
Us.
Together.
It has to.
I go slow but lift her leg higher. I enter further.
“Holy fuck,” she cries. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck.” Tears crest her eyes. “Akara—Kits, it’s…I can’t…” She jerks in my hands.
I let go of her wrists just to see what she’ll do.
She covers her face.
“Sulli,” I whisper, still rocking in and out. “Give me.”
I grasp her wrists again, prying her hands off her face. Her hips buck up into me. The sensation strikes my brain. Fudge-it. Ah.
I blink back stars, and I grind further inside Sulli. With two more pumps, she comes in a high-pitched cry, and I hold her against me while her breath comes down.
“Was that good for you?” she asks.
“Understatement,” I smile and gently pull out.
“You didn’t come, though?”
“Because I wasn’t wearing a condom. And I’m not ready for a literal mini-Meadows to be running around here.”
“Me either.” She eyes my dick. “You want me to blow you?”
I smile at her reddened cheeks, but her words are a fist jerking me off. “Another time.” I reach for my shorts. “I just really wanted to get you off, Sul.”
“What if I want to get you off?”
My smile grows.
Before I can answer, she says, “You can come on me.”
The heat in the room kicks up at her words. My dick still throbs, wanting a release, and she must clearly see that.
“Please,” she begs.
That does me in. I start fisting myself, and she watches with a heady gaze, lips parted. She tries to reach down, and with my free hand, I clasp her wrist in mine. A whimper catches at the back of her throat and tips me over. Everything that has mounted meets a combustible peak and I come on her chest.
She’s grinning like I just gave her a bouquet of roses. I love her.
Breathing heavier, I pick up a nearby gym towel and wipe her up. “I’m going to have to tell Banks about this,” I mention. “We agreed to be honest with each other.”
“I fucking like that actually.” She watches as I pull on my shorts. “Do you think you’ll go into detail about coming on me?”
I look her up and down, but her body language isn’t letting anything through. “Do you want me to?”
Her eyes flit to the ceiling in thought. “I guess it’d be kind of hot knowing you told him about coming on my tits. And vice-versa.”
My brows shoot up. “He came on your tits?”
“Oh, fuck. No. I meant hypothetically.”
I smile. “Hypothetically, yeah, that’d be hot.” I do get off imagining Banks and her together. I get off even more seeing it. I’m aware of my turn-ons more than I was. And I know Banks feels the same.
I’m about to mention this, but the worst fudging sound cuts into Mozart and our hot and sweet moment.
A phone chime.
My phone, to be exact.
Sulli cranes her neck, eyeing my cellphone on the mats.
I glare at it.
“You should see who it is,” Sulli encourages. “It’s probably important, seeing as how you’re a very important person.”
“You’re the VIP of my life.” I lean back down over Sulli to kiss her lightly. “Can’t keep trying to turn that one back around on me, Sul.”
“Sure I can.” Her tenacity swells my lungs.
The chime sounds again, alerting me of the same missed message.
I give her a soft, apologetic smile. “Hold on.” Sitting up off Sulli, I reach for my phone and grab the cell.
She props herself on her forearms.
For a second, I panic thinking Price heard about my relationship with my client. Today is not the day that I want to go to war with Daisy Calloway’s bodyguard, who also owns Triple Shield.
As soon as I skim the text, I relax knowing it’s not about security. Our news hasn’t reached the Cobalt brothers (besides Beckett) or Triple Shield yet.
“Who is it?” Sulli asks.
“My mom.” I read the text out loud, “Everything good here. Don’t worry.”
Worry crests her eyes. “Has she been doing alright?”
“As far as I know.” I spot goosebumps on Sulli, and I grab the nearest article of clothing. My shirt. She rises, our legs interlocking like we plan to do sit-ups together, and I pull my shirt over her head. Baggy on her frame, she fits her arms through the holes while I add, “But that can change at any moment.”
“Do you want to visit her?”
I run a hand through my black hair. “I don’t have the time.” I immediately feel the guilt in those words. “She’s in New York. I’m in Philly.” I glance at my gym office, where I should be shuffling through the P&L for last month.
I don’t move an inch, though.
Am I not worthy of my mom or this gym if I just want to shirk everything aside to extend my time with Sulli?
I say tightly, “I can’t close that distance with how much crap I have going on here.” I grimace and let out a groan. “Fu—frick, I sound like a horrible son.”
She shakes her head, a small smile cresting her lips from my almost curse slip-up. “You’re not. You’re really fucking busy. I’m sure she understands that.”
Mozart switches to Beethoven on my playlist, and I can’t kick the guilt that’s kicking me. I stare longer at Sulli.
“You’ve got that look,” Sulli says.
“What look?”
“The ‘you want to tell me something’ look.” She touches her ankle bracelet absentmindedly. “You get these little wrinkles right between your eyebrows.” She touches the spot on my face.
I scrunch my brows more. “How long has that been going on?”
She laughs. “It’s not an affliction, Kits. It’s fucking cute. Sexy, even.” She wags her brows.
“Sexy is you wearing only panties on the mats underneath me.” I lift up my palms. “In my hands.”
“In your hands,” she repeats with a growing smile. “Yeah, fuck, that’s definitely the hottest thing. You win, this time.” Seriousness reappears as our eyes lock in a solid beat. “Am I right though? You need to tell me something?”
I rub my palm. “Maybe it’s not just time that’s keeping me from visiting her,” I confess. I pause, gauging how Sulli is taking this. Her rapt attention wields no judgment. It pushes me forward, and I continue, “She left me, Sul. She made that choice to leave Philly when she was having health problems. She knew I couldn’t follow her, but she left anyway.” My muscles tighten. “I don’t have an urge to go visit someone who chose to be around her siblings over her own son. Especially after my dad died.”
Sulli holds my ankle consolingly. “I understand being hurt by the people you love. Icing them out. I think I might be really fucking good at that.”
I think about her recently repaired friendship with Beckett. “You fixed that, though. I’m not sure I want to fix this, Sul.”
She frowns. “What if your mom gets really sick? You won’t even visit her then?”
I hold my breath. “If I tell you I won’t, will you think worse of me?”
Her fingers slide against my calf. “No, of course not, Kits. But I will try fucking hard to change your mind. Because I do think that’s something you’d regret.”
Maybe.
I don’t know.
I place a hand atop her head in affection. “My little fucking conscience.”
She smiles. “I’m not that fucking little.” She slugs my arm pretty hard. “And that’s for the curse.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. I fudged it up.
On purpose.
“I was thinking,” Sulli says, “you need a manager, and I cou
ld use a job.”
“You want a job?”
“It’d be nice to have a new goal where my family starts treating me like I’m a capable, responsible adult.” She’s still pissed her dad is treating her like a little girl. “But maybe it’d be a bad idea. You hiring me might not look like I earned it.”
“Good because you’re overqualified.”
She crinkles her nose. “What? How?”
“You’re an Olympian,” I remind her with a smile. “You’re more suited to run some fitness classes than to manage this place.”
Her green eyes bore into me. “I just want to fucking help. You and Banks watch out for me all the time—”
“Literally our job,” I twirl a piece of her hair around my finger.
She smiles. “But I’d like to be a positive fucking force in your life, too.”
“You’re already a positive force, Sul. You’re…” I take a deeper breath. “You’re what keeps me moving. Besides SFO, you’re all I’ve got here.”
She scoots closer and wraps her arms around me. I fit mine around her. My chin rests on the top of her head. It feels good to hold her. It feels like home.
And then a phone starts ringing.
I glare, about to disable every single phone on this planet. We’re going back to the stone ages. For my sanity.
“It’s mine,” Sulli realizes, reaching for her phone.
We break apart a little while she checks Caller ID. Now I’m asking, “Who is it?”
“Unknown, but it says they’re calling from Philly.” She goes ahead and answers. “Hello?” Phone pressed to her ear, I can’t hear anything.
Her brows jump. “Yeah…yeah, I’m definitely interested…wow.” She starts smiling.
I’m more cautious.
It’s the bodyguard in me.
“Thanks, yeah. Sure…I’ll look out for the email. Bye.” She hangs up, grinning. “That was the swim coach from Warwick University.”
Shock arches my brows. “Warwick?”
“It’s a private school in Philly.”
“Yeah, I know that one. It was one of the few colleges I applied to way back before I bailed on the idea of college.” I pause to consider something. “They have a really good music program.”
“Is it the college that gave you a music scholarship for drums?”
I smile, realizing she remembers an offhanded comment I must’ve made years ago. “Yep, same one.”
She refocuses back on her phone with the kind of Sullivan Meadows focus that has been documented extensively online. Her grin returns in full.
I ask, “Did the coach want you to swim for Warwick’s team?”
“No.” She checks her email. “Apparently, they have a couple of Olympic hopefuls on the team.” She glances up to me. “He’s looking for an assistant coach, and he wants me to help train them.”
The Sulli I know would have a hard time training someone else for a competition that she’s still fit to compete in. But a lot has changed since she retired from swimming, and I’m not sure she’s in the same headspace.
“You’ve been looking for a job. Sounds like it’s coming at the perfect time.”
She nods. “It feels a little like fate farted in my face, and I’d be an idiot not to take notice.”
I smile. “Do I need to have a talk with fate? It can’t just be farting around you like that.”
She laughs, then says, “I told him to send me the info. I think I’m gonna do it, Kits.”
Looks like we’re headed to college.
A path I thought I left in the dust. But I’m prepared to protect my girlfriend wherever life takes her next.
I stand and hold out my hand for Sulli. As she grabs tight, I tell her, “I’ll lead the way.”
15
BANKS MORETTI
Fall on a college campus. Yellow, orange, burnt red leaves landscape old brick buildings and the grassy quad. Straight out of a university pamphlet.
Pamphlets that I’d more likely use to blow my nose in than actually read. Nuns at Saint Joseph’s didn’t bother even talking to me or my brother about college.
We couldn’t even afford tuition to the private Catholic school without clocking in hours of volunteer work at bingo halls and canned food drives.
College was for the rich.
For some bougie fuck down the street.
Not me.
What a fuckin’ life—look at me now. I flip a college ID over in my hand, my gorgeous mug staring back at me. Not in all my twenty-nine years did I think I’d be given one of these.
After Sulli accepted the assistant coach position at Warwick University, the three of us needed to be logged into the university system. The IDs act as keycards for all the buildings. Including the gym, fit with a competition-sized pool.
I’m here as security. Here to protect Sulli. And this is almost better than being enrolled. No college tuition fees, no mid-terms to pull my hair out over, and I have A+ perks rather than D- grades.
I’m talking free collegiate paraphernalia.
The administration has been overly kind to me and Akara, considering we’re just bodyguards to their new swim coach. And they loaded us up with an overflowing tote bag.
I carry that tote now.
Black and red water bottles, T-shirts with the “war horse” mascot and the Latin motto vincit qui se vincit; notebooks, pens, plastic cups, tin cups, sunglasses, koozies, and more. Stuff I don’t need.
Stuff that I can’t believe fits into one fucking bag.
But Lord knows I like some free shit.
I fit on the black baseball cap.
Welcome to college, Banks Roscoe Moretti.
Our destination: the gym.
“Is this what orientation is like?” I ask Akara while we saunter across campus like we’re seasoned students. Settled in, milking this shit for all its worth.
Students chitchat with friends, carrying books and bags of their own, entering and exiting stately brick buildings with either purpose or unhurriedness. Thought I’d stick out like a pimple, but the age range is vast, considering undergrad and grad students mix in with the professors.
And I’ve already walked past a couple athletes who came close to my height.
Akara wears a red Warwick U ballcap and types on his phone, not taking in the atmosphere like me. “How would I know?” he asks. “I never went to college either.”
“I thought you toured one?”
“As a bodyguard, not a future student.” He glances up from his cell, just as most students disperse quickly into buildings like classes are about to start.
Don’t envy that.
Reminds me that I never regretted missing out on college. Like my dad and grandpa before me, the military was always gonna be my path.
Wedged between a dining hall and the Eastcrest “athlete” dorms, the glass-domed gym stands like a proud monument on campus. Alumni must throw their money at brawn over brains here.
Good thing my girl is legendary when it comes to brawn.
Only sad thing, Sulli isn’t here with us. She’s back at the penthouse while we’re doing some recon of the area before her job officially begins.
I hawk-eye the gym entrance where a couple students are gathered. Like they’re waiting for something or someone, these two guys loiter outside the glass doors. Backpacks strapped to their broad swimmer’s shoulders, the curly-haired, lean-cut one grips a pair of goggles and the buffer one sports a Warwick Swim T-shirt.
They both turn to us as we approach.
“Keypad isn’t working,” Curly Top tells us. “Someone should be here in a second to open the doors.” He studies our ballcaps, then my Warwick tote bag. “Are you a new student? God, please tell me you’re not a swimmer.”
“Not a swimmer,” I reply, avoiding the first question. Getting a better look at Curly Top, I spot a mole on his chin and recognize him from the roster that the head coach sent us yesterday. I’ve memorized the faces of every swim team member.
Garret
t Winthrope.
His last name sounds like a cough drop.
He blows out a relieved breath. “Seriously, man, you scared me for a second. You’re what six-six?”
“Six-seven.”
“Yeah, I can’t compete with that.”
Garrett is a hair shorter than Akara, who’s six-two.
Gotta say, we’re blending all too well at college. Our mic cords are tucked behind our ears, threaded beneath the collars of our shirts. Neither Garrett nor his buff friend have questioned the sharp-eyed, observant pieces of us that make us bodyguards and not just easygoing students.
Sulli will be around these guys—hell, she’s about to be coaching them. So I take mental notes of which one looks dickish.
There’s always one.
The buff guy lightly elbows Garrett’s ribs. “You know who you definitely can’t compete with, Gar?” He smiles. “Our new assistant coach.”
Akara stifles a smile beside me. Sullivan’s reputation as a badass has reached Warwick University. Can’t say I hate hearing people talk her up. The whole world should know how incredible she is.
Garrett flushes. “Neither can you, Ray. She’s an Olympian.”
Ray laughs. “Yeah, her pussy is practically made of gold.”
I grind on my teeth. Found the smug-looking, granola-eating dick. He’s literally eating a granola bar while we wait.
“Isn’t she a virgin?” Garrett asks.
Ray grins. “Yeah, even better.”
They laugh.
I don’t like these shitheads anymore. Not that I had them on the nice list. They were in fucking limbo, and they didn’t even last long there.
Akara adjusts his baseball hat. To hide his glare.
Another student suddenly opens the door from inside.
“Finally,” Garrett says in relief.
We all head into the gym, but Akara and I detour towards the office. He slips me a look. “Get used to that.”
“What? People talking about her gold pussy?”
Heat hasn’t extinguished from his glare. “No, guys being crude behind her back. I never told her what people said during the Olympics, but the shit I heard made me want a stiff drink every night.”
I grunt. “Sounds like we’re gonna be having a shit ton of fun.”
“I’m banking on it.” He smiles. “See what I did there?”
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