THE HARDEST YARDS (A BAD BOY FOOTBALL ROMANCE)

by Andrea Rose

“Then let me distract you as we both walk and talk…in the direction of your apartment?”

  “A lovely thought.”

  “I’ll bring croissants and coffee.”

  I walked with a goofy smile, hand in my pocket, a star in my own stupid music video. A flock of frightened pigeons took flight over me.

  “Yo, Ari?” Tyler said as I heard him moan to stand from bed.

  “Yes.”

  We hung on the phone in silence a while, me listening into the background sounds of his locale, the sound of clinking plates and cupboards closing.

  “So…” Tyler broke the silence. “What are you wearing?”

  “Really?”

  “Humor me.”

  I laughed and played along. “Um, a beanie, my dad’s old Army jacket…”

  “Ooh,” Tyler cooed sensually.

  “Black jeans…with sexy rips on each knee.”

  “You know how much I love knees, baby girl. What else?”

  “Converse…socks with pictures of dogs on them for luck…”

  He heaved. “That’s both the sweetest and most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Killed the mood?”

  “You could never kill my mood.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve said before, I have a gift for mentally undressing people. How about you tell me what’s underneath those jeans?”

  I pushed through a crowd of screaming high schoolers. Tyler would take it to the extremes on his end, I needed to keep it PG-13 on mine.

  “What color panties you wearing?”

  “Seriously?” I giggled shyly. “I am not good at this game.”

  “Come on. If it’s embarrassing, then be embarrassed and I’ll be here to catch you. Tell me what color panties.”

  My lower lip stayed mostly between my teeth as we kept speaking. “Black.”

  “My favorite,” he rasped. “What do they look like?”

  The subway was three blocks away but it felt like things were only just getting started.

  I sat on a bench in an empty playground. “They’re…silky…” I said in a smokier quality. “…Tight…”

  “Have you been having dirty thoughts about me?”

  My toes planted firmly into the grass.

  “Yes…All morning…” I cringed into my palm and breathed. “And my soft…black…panties…they’re so wet for you…”

  I waggled my head on my hand.

  “Jesus Christ Almighty.” Sounded like Tyler thought I was doing a good job.

  I sniffed another embarrassed laugh.

  “What’ve you been thinking about?” he said.

  An audible swallow and I froze up.

  “Ari…” Tyler breathed. “What do you think about me doing to you if I ever got my hands on you?”

  I scurried from the bench as a family arrived, running around a corner to a rose garden.

  I held the phone away from my face, cheeks burning. I’d thought about what Tyler King would do to my body a hundred times…

  “I think about you pinning me hard against a wall…” My hand caged my mouth.

  “…I’ll hold your hands above your head…” Tyler helped.

  “…Your tongue licks my ear…”

  “What if I tugged your hair back, would you like that?”

  “…Yes…”

  “Then what?”

  “…When you do, I breathe your name…and beg for you not to stop…”

  “Do you want my hand reaching up your skirt…? I’ll push your panties aside…”

  I closed my eyes and detached from inhibitions, listening to Tyler’s dominance calm me down the phone, his own breaths becoming faster, my panties getting excited.

  “I want you to feel how wet I am for you…” I whispered. “You spread it, rub me…And keep breathing in my ear…

  “…I tell you how bad I’ve fucking wanted you, about all the naughty thoughts I have…Where I have my cock buried inside you…Fucking you madly…Because I hate how badly you’ve made me want you…”

  I gasped and felt my whole body turn warm. “…My nails scrape down your back…Your lips kiss me, suffocate me…I’m taking your thick cock…Feeling it deep inside me—”

  “Ariana, do you want me?”

  My index finger between my lips, I told him, “Yes.”

  “Goddammit. When can I have you?”

  —Thud!

  My head knocked sideways, a douse of hair masking my face. A kid’s soccer ball whacked some sense back into me when I hadn’t noticed company had arrived.

  “Sorry!” a concerned mother yelled my way and her kid raced towards me.

  I handed the ball to the kid. “Thank you,” he said.

  “No, thank you. Honestly.”

  Had I completely lost it? I had the most overwhelming urge to touch myself in a public park.

  Tyler King hadn’t lost his edge at all.

  …That or I’d gone mad. I never caved into sexual desires, let alone in daylight.

  “Ari?” Tyler said through the phone.

  “I’m in a tunnel. Bye.”

  I hung up the call, tossing my phone back into my bag like a hot potato. I cupped my mouth and headed straight for home.

  Tyler made me feel a little too much better. I pined out for sex I hadn’t had in months. Whenever Braydon and I had our weird, violent breakup sex—the morning I decided it was one-hundred percent definitely over for good.

  Bo shouted my name when I walked into my building’s lobby.

  “There’s guests waiting for you,” he said.

  My keys chinked on the tiled floor.

  “Not Mr. Thatcher, ma’am. In the cloak room.” He winked.

  “Oh,” I said and bent down for them again. “Tell him I’m busy.”

  “He’s not alone.”

  21

  “Pack your bags, babe,” Phoebe said once she’d busted in through my door first. “We’re taking a mini-vacation.”

  “What?” I said and tensed my brow. “You’re leaving for LA in a few hours.”

  “Yes I am. We’ve cleared your calendar—Wow, for someone so organized, you are not tidy.”

  She shoved aside a pile of laundry with her foot.

  “It’s untidy not…unclean.” I hurriedly neatened a stack of unopened letters spread on the table beside me.

  “I like that you are. Makes me think you might not be a robot after all.”

  I gathered some dirty dishes to throw into the sink and hid the empty tub of ice cream in the oven—It wouldn’t fit in the trash.

  “I appreciate you thinking of me but no way I can go on a vacation right now. I thought this was meant to be brunch. Where’s my coffee?”

  Tyler’s hand came from the back of me and rested on my stomach. His other arm presented a tray of four different sized cups.

  “I didn’t know your coffee order. Got some choices.”

  I breathed him in with a laugh and let him kiss my head when Phoebe climbed onto my balcony.

  “Nice view.” Phoebe turned back inside and I threw myself away from Tyler’s touch. “I’m gonna pack your bag to save us time. While I’m gone, would you two please get whatever this is out your system first. I’ll turn up my headphones.”

  My eyes bulged when I turned to a guilty Tyler.

  “Shh,” he whispered, twisting my hair in his fingers.

  “We have an agreement, babe. We’re a tricycle. See you in an hour or two.”

  “Tricycle? What is she on about?”

  It was no use. I nuzzled into his touch, surrendering to the fact I couldn’t fight this.

  He rested his forehead on mine then pulled down my lower lip. “We’ll keep this secret.”

  I inhaled his minty fresh breath, warm, sensual…

  He pressed me against the wall and raised my hands above my head.

  “Haven’t you always wanted to do something bad?”

  I missed the sensation of a man’s assertive touch.

  My hands got trap
ped between one of his. He let out a heavy breath, teeth grazing lightly at the side of my neck.

  A moan from my throat urged him to continue.

  I wrapped my legs around his hips. His length pressed through our pant seams.

  I’d never felt so turned on when his tongue encircled mine, consuming all my worries.

  Tyler was in my mouth.

  Tyler King’s face was staring at me from the cover of the magazine.

  I shut my eyes and pulled the real one in closer by the sides of his face.

  Fingernails raked skin in hurried seduction. Sweet nothings fell into my ear.

  “I wish you understood how crazy you drive me,” he breathed.

  Our eyes met, bodies heaving in eager anticipation. “I do,” I said. “You do it to me too.”

  “I threw myself into us headfirst after that night.”

  I wriggled to break free but his strength dominated mine.

  “I’m only dipping my toes in and out?” I said.

  A crooked smile. “Exactly.”

  “I have no choice.”

  Phoebe blasted music from the bedroom..

  We were alone.

  Colors amplified.

  I lost sight of everything in Tyler’s hands.

  I hung around his neck hearing the zip of his trousers. We both raced to slip my pants and thong over my hips and feet.

  Our mouths met again, in drawn out hard kisses, nostrils hissing in anticipation.

  He bent me beck and rubbed his hand up under my shirt to tenderly mould my breast.

  “Fuck me, Tyler,” I husked. A hard tip brushed along wetness. He picked me up and wrapped my legs around him, folding into his intimate embrace.

  “Tell me you want it,” he said.

  “I want it.”

  “Beg.” He tugged my hair back roughly.

  I struggled against him with a crazed grin.

  “Beg for this cock.”

  “I want it, please. Please.”

  “You haven’t been acting like you want it?”

  He guided my body downward.

  E x p l o s i o n s …

  …Tyler thrust inside me…

  I wheezed and dug my nails into his warmth. He thrust once, twice…Grinding in deeper and easier movements, filling me completely.

  “Get your tits out,” he commanded with a snarl.

  My hoodie went over my head to the floor and I cradled his head in my arms.

  Face buried in my heaving chest, he gnawed love bites over my skin, lost in the throes of our wanting of each other.

  “You feel so good inside me,” I whined.

  He growled—a hungry panther, eyes burning with fire.

  “Ari, shit.”

  “Fuck me. Harder.”

  He slapped against my thighs and I raced to remove his shirt.

  Perspiring flesh and hurried wanting…

  Climbing higher,

  higher,

  higher…

  Knock-knock-knock!

  Both our heads shot toward the front door,

  then back at each other.

  Tyler slid from me, hot and bothered, as I tugged up the sofa blanket as a dress.

  “Shh,” I said.

  An apologetic Phoebe tip-toed into the hallway.

  Knock-knock-knock!

  A hard jostling at the key hole.

  A ringing in my ears.

  “You changed the locks on me? You wanna get in more trouble!” Braydon’s whiny voice boomed through the wall and Phoebe’s music went off.

  “I’m helping you,” Tyler whispered and strode towards the door.

  “No.”

  “You stupid bitch!” Braydon yelled again.

  “I’m calling the cops.” Tyler kept his voice low, trying to keep calm as he stormed off down the hall.

  I scurried him after him towards my bedroom with Phoebe. “You guys shut up. He’ll get bored soon and leave. Until then, don’t say a word.”

  “That fucker hurt you.”

  “Pretend you’re not in there all you want! I’m calling the locksmith!”

  I panicked.

  Tyler squeezed my hand tightly.

  I couldn’t look either of them in the eye, embarrassed he and Phoebe were witnessing my biggest mistake up close and personal.

  “I’m calling downstairs,” Tyler said. “We’re going on that trip until I figure out how to get this asshole from your life.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll beat his ass right here.” Tyler said.

  “Lover not a fighter, remember?”

  “Hey Bo.” Tyler used my cellphone to call downstairs. “Tyler King, sorry to bother you again but we have an abusive cockroach up here who we need exterminated. Can you help us out? He doesn’t know any of us are here right now and we wanna keep it that way. If you could let the police know he’s in violation of a restraining order…”

  My heart thudded in my chest, half-loving watch Tyler fight my battles, half-resenting him for it.

  Braydon stopped pounding on the door.

  Not good.

  “What’d he say?” I asked, rushing into jeans and a sweater.

  “That we better find another way out. They gotta give all owners a spare key if they ask. Cops won’t be here before then.”

  “You guys have to go down the fire escape. Hurry!” I shooed them onto my balcony that faced the alley way, giving them enough cover.

  “You’re coming with us,” Phoebe said.

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere we can be alone for real.”

  Tyler carried me out the window.

  “Wait!”

  I slunked from his arms to grab my emergency weekender for sudden occasions like having to be saved from your abusive ex or business trips.

  My hand took Tyler’s.

  “Escaping down another fire exit,” I said, dimpling my cheeks to him.

  “Except this time, it’s leading away from this fucker not right for him.”

  22

  I wrapped my arms around Phoebe with a kiss in the La Guardia Departures Hall. Ariana waited in the car with Martin. Photographers got the shot they wanted and our adventure could begin.

  “You and me have other travel arrangements, my darling,” I said to Ari when I climbed in the back seat with her.

  I brought her onto the tarmac where she sized up the all-black private chopper in the distance. “Tyler, what the actual fuck are we doing?”

  “It’s this or fearing Braydon your whole life. C’mon. You think I would’ve done this without checking it off with Yuri first?”

  She side-glanced me. “I’m not sure yet. Where does she think we’re going?”

  “To the ranch, so me and Phoebe can get away from the noise and the bullshit.”

  “Ranch?”

  The copter rotors roared. The air cleared. We had lift-off.

  “Wait!” she yelled over the headset while she dug through her massive bag. “I forgot my motion sickness pills.”

  Her clammy hand gripped mine tightly, pulse racing.

  “Why did I agree to this? Why did I agree to this?” her voice graveled through the headphones. “I’ve never been in a helicopter before.”

  “Scared?”

  “Terrified.”

  “Everythin’ OK back there?” the pilot turned over a shoulder.

  “I…”

  I ensured her, hoping she’d understand one thing—With me around she had no reason to be scared anymore.

  Her jaw clenched. “I’m doing this. I’m actually doing this.”

  An hour and a half cruising over open plains of gold and green nestled in the early sunset, we touched down on my ranch’s back yard.

  “Whoa,” she yelled over the rotor. “I forget how pretty the world outside the city is.”

  “Welcome to Maryland. My second home.”

  “We’re in Maryland? I—I lived in Baltimore a while. My parents are still there, actually.”

  “Baltimore? We’re prac
tically neighbors.”

  Under the raging wind of the departing chopper, I threw both our bags over one shoulder and took her hand.

  The copter flew off East and the land fell silent.

  An eagle soared over head and Ariana stared up in wonder, tracking its flight path.

  “I just dropped everything to run away to the middle of nowhere with you,” she noted aloud.

  “Never done something crazy for a feeling? For love?”

  I shrugged and played nonchalance. “Who knows?”

  “I did once. You saw the result of that earlier.”

  She raised her phone into the air and walked up toward the house.

  “Is there signal out here?”

  I stole her phone from overhead…

  “No work allowed on the ranch. Ranchers orders. Your client won’t be getting into much mischief with you here to keep an eye on him.”

  She turned slowly into my arms and kissed me. “Won’t he? That’ll be a change.”

  I nudged her then took her hand in mine. “Ready for the grand tour?”

  Phone out of reach, Ariana finally saw where she was.

  “Holy shit,” she whispered while I switched on the outdoor lighting flooding my house in an amber glow underneath a purple sky.

  “Pizza oven…sofa…barbecue…bar…jacuzzi…” I outreached my arms. “Mi casa su casa.”

  “You own this? This is yours?”

  “Four hundred acres of it. Not tryna brag—It’s a humble size to the neighbors. Don’t come here much, though.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “You try sitting in that house alone and see how you feel. Ironic I bought the place to run away from the city. Now I’m running right back to get away from here.”

  “Expensive irony.”

  I nudged her hip.“You like it, though?”

  Ariana’s mouth fell open, trying to find the words as I switched on more lights inside the vast, open plan house.

  “I…” She reached up and tugged my hair. “You’re kidnapping me more often.”

  The bags dropped to the floor and I stole her by the waist. We breathed onto each other, her nails grazing down my arms, noses brushing cheeks.

  “What are you waiting for?” she asked.

  “You first.”

  She pushed me backward onto the outdoor lounger.

  “That’s what I like to see.”

  Eager hands hunted for my belt buckle. I gently choked her neck to pull her flat against my chest.