One Kiss to Win: A Bad Boy Sports Romance

by Romi Hart

  As he’d just gotten out of the shower, he smelled so clean and fresh. The fact he only had on a pair of tight boxer briefs did a lot to cool my agitated mood too. And when he dropped the stinky shirt into the laundry basket before taking me into his strong arms, well all my aggression slipped away with ease.

  His mouth took mine in a warm kiss that made my head go light. Even after a year, I still swooned for the man.

  His hands moved down, cupping my bottom, tempting me to pick my feet up and wrap my legs around him. But we had an agenda. A thing he and I both kept forgetting about the whole morning for some odd reason.

  Maybe it was the idea of moving that had us being so forgetful. Maybe the idea of Jett being recruited to play for an NFL team so soon — before our last year of college was even over — was what had our heads in the clouds all morning long.

  A scout for the Miami Dolphins invited Jett out to Florida to check out their facilities and talk to them about where he sees himself after graduation.

  And we were supposed to be getting on a private jet they sent for us in the matter of a couple of hours. And we weren’t even close to being ready to go to the airport. But the way his kiss was working it’s particular kind of magic on me had me barely able to recall all that.

  Slowly, his hands moved off my bottom and up my back as his tongue played with mine and I melted into him. His naked chest against mine that was only covered with a bra. I too had only gotten partially dressed so far. A bra and panties were all I had on, I was waiting for my dress to get finished in the dryer.

  One of his large hands moved up, taking me by the back of the neck as his kiss grew heated, more passionate and his cock began to swell, pushing at my warm center that was beginning to grow moist in anticipation.

  But we had things to do!

  I wrenched my mouth away from his, both of us already breathing heavily. “Jett, we really don’t have time for this right now.”

  He rested his forehead against mine as he sighed. “I know. I don’t know why I’ve kept getting distracted this morning. This is like the most important thing I’ve ever done career-wise. You know you’re the most important thing I’ve ever done, falling in love with you, and moving in together. But asking you to marry me was by far the most important thing I’ve ever done. Thanks for saying yes, by the way. See what I’m doing even now? I’m thinking about everything but what’s about to happen.”

  “Thanks for asking me to marry you and giving me this gorgeous engagement ring.” I had to hold my hand out to look at the ring he gave me a couple of nights ago. He’d taken me out to a fancy dinner and proposed, making me cry right there on the spot and accept his proposal. “I think it’s because it’ll mean so much has to change if they want you. You could be playing for the Miami Dolphins next season, Jett.” I was excited for him, but I was excited for myself too.

  If he did take the job — if one was offered to him — then that would mean I’d be closer to my mother.

  I missed Mom like crazy. I mean, we talked on the phone all the time. And Jett and I made it to Christmas this last year to spend it with her. We had to spend Thanksgiving with his family. Being a couple meant splitting up the holidays to make it fair for each side.

  Things were going great for the two of us. With the fall semester in full swing, we both were doing extremely well with all of our classes. Jett made an excellent study buddy. He’d give me a kiss for each correctly answered question and I’d do the same for him.

  Did our study sessions always end in hot sex?

  Well, sure they did. But that’s what made taking the time to study so dang easy to do!

  Taking Jett by the hand, I led him to our bedroom where his clothes were already laid out for him. I loved dotting on my man. Doing little things like laying out his clothes for him, making sure we had his favorite brand of orange juice in the fridge at all times, and plumping his pillows when I made the bed each morning made him feel the love I had for him.

  “You need to get dressed. I’m going to grab my dress out of the dryer. We have to finish up the packing, we’ll be there for the whole weekend. I think Mom said something about there being a big soccer game today. She wanted us to go to it with her at the University of Florida, where she teaches.” I let his hand go and turned to leave the room.

  He stopped me as he asked, “Laney, you’d like it if the Dolphins made me an offer, wouldn’t you?”

  I turned back to look at him as I nodded. “Sure I would. It would mean being closer to Mom and getting to see her a lot more.” I bit my lower lip because something was troubling me a bit. I didn’t want Jett to take their offer if he really wanted to play for some other team. “But I get it if you’d like to hold out for who you really want to play for. I would understand, Jett. I want you to do whatever it is you want to do, without any pressure from me.”

  His eyes moved from my head to my toes before they came back to meet mine. “What did I ever do to deserve such a wonderful girl?”

  Trying to lighten the mood that had gone heavy, I wiggled my butt as I sauntered out of the room. “You scored a touchdown for me. Don’t you remember that? How could a girl walk away from a man who could do that for her?”

  “And once I’m in the big league, baby, you have at least one more of those coming to you,” he said then laughed.

  “Get your butt ready, Jett. We have to jet!” I laughed at my own joke and heard him laughing too.

  We were about to head off to Florida to see what the future held for us. Nervous yet very happy, Jett and I were moving forward with our lives. Florida might be the direction we were heading after graduation. But then again, who knew what else might be in the cards for us?

  Note from the Author

  Hi, guys. Romi here! I hope you enjoyed One Kiss to Win as much as I did writing it. If so, please leave a short review.

  Read on for your special bonus book, Big Slide. I hope you like it!

  ADAM CHANNING

  I'm a Champion. I'm the best Player ever… on and off the field!

  I'm well-endowed and ladies get wet when they see me. It's that simple.

  Maybe because I'm rich or maybe because I've got a long and strong tool in my arsenal that never gets tired and is full of stamina! Who cares... I just love it!

  After enjoying my wild success in the UK, I've come to the US to play my game and dominate the sports scene here.

  Girls crowd around me all the time. But when Samantha, a hot and sultry reporter came to interview me... I knew I wanted to slide in her right at that moment.

  But, unlike other girls I've met, she's looking more like a challenge which I am eager to WIN!

  I'll make sure to tackle, slide, destroy her defence and penetrate her wet box and score like I mean it!

  I’m here to make a BIG SLIDE... in the field and into Samantha Deary!

  Copyright © 2017 by Romi Hart

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on life experiences and conclusions drawn from research, all names, characters, places and specific instances are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. No actual reference to any real person, living or dead, is intended or inferred.

  Created with Vellum

  1

  “Are you kidding me right now?”

  I muttered the words to myself as I glanced down at my cell, and then looked back out at the road in irritation. I shouldn’t have been paying any attention to my cell while I was meant to be driving, I knew that, but every time it went off I had this panic that something awful had happened. That’s what
I got from seven years being a mom, I guess.

  And this time, it turned out, something was actually wrong. Jacob’s usual sitter had canceled and left me firmly in the lurch, and now I would have to turn this car around and skip out on the biggest interview of my life, or find someone else to take care of him by the time his classes finished in approximately…a half hour.

  I peered out the front of the car and scanned the road for somewhere I could pull over; I was a little early leaving the house, as I always was, so I wasn’t pressed for time just yet. I spotted a rest stop up ahead and quickly pulled over, grabbing for my phone and scrolling through the numbers on it. Who could I get in touch with who could actually help? I had a back-up sitter, but he was a teenager and I doubted he’d be out of school in enough time to pick up Jacob and get him home, and the last thing I wanted was my kid wandering about thinking we’d forgotten about him. Maybe I could call my Mom, see if she was free? But it was a Wednesday, and she’d be out visiting my brother for the evening and wouldn’t be back till way too late to be any help. I leaned forward, crossed my arms against the steering wheel, and rested my head against them with a groan. How the hell had this happened?

  And today, of all days? I couldn’t imagine anything worse. I’d triple-checked that everything was in place when I’d left the house – I’d left money for the sitter, a note with my number on it, and the exact details of where I was going to be and what time I was planning to get home. Everything had been perfect when I’d left for this interview, and now I couldn’t see a way I wasn’t going to have to turn this car around to pick Jacob up from school. I knew I should have asked to schedule the interview earlier in the day, when I could be sure that Jacob would still be under his teacher’s care, but no – I had just gone along with whatever they wanted, in an attempt to prove to both them and myself that I could juggle the single-mom thing and my career as a journalist without any problems. I felt stupid for thinking I could pull it off. Because, as the world seemed intent on outlining to me, I seriously couldn’t.

  I took a deep breath and forced myself back up. I had about ten minutes buffer time to figure things out before I would have to leave to either head to the stadium or turn around and go back to Jacob’s school. That wasn’t a lot, but I could work with it. I dialed up the home phone number of my next door neighbors, praying that someone would pick up – they would likely be all out at work, but I could dream, right?

  After a couple of buzzes, a woman’s voice came to my rescue.

  “Hello?” Lilly greeted me, sounding surprised. She and her partner, Paula, had moved in next to me a few months ago, and they had stepped in to look after Jacob once or twice in similar scenarios. I’d mentioned this interview to her a few weeks previously, and I hoped that she would remember just how important it had been to me then.

  “Hey, Lilly, it’s Sam,” I replied quickly. “Look, I hate to do this to you, but if you’ve got a minute, do you think you could pick Jacob up from school and look after him till I get back? I won’t be long-”

  “Sure thing,” Lilly replied with a practically audible shrug. “Why, what’s up?”

  “I’ve got that interview today,” I sighed. “The one with that soccer player? And the babysitter I had ready for him just pulled out and left me in the lurch.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” Lilly affirmed. “What time do you think you’ll be back?”

  “Thank you so much,” I closed my eyes, letting out a small sigh of relief that puffed up my grown-out bangs. “I left some instructions on the kitchen table, and Jacob will have a copy of the house keys. I should be back about half four or so?”

  “Cool, I’ll see you then,” she replied. “Good luck with your interview!”

  "Thanks, see you soon," I nodded, and hung up before tossing the phone to the back of the car and pulling out back onto the road. I didn't want to hear one more cheep out of that thing today. Jacob was taken care of and that was all that mattered. I had an interview to get to.

  In the panic of the last five minutes, I had lost the calming flow that I had managed to build up on my drive down. I was still ridiculously nervous about how this interview was going to turn out, no matter what my editor had said when she assigned it to me.

  “Honestly, I wouldn’t be giving you this if I didn’t think you could do it,” Irina had repeated to me the day before when we’d gone over a last list of questions and she’d been able to read the panic on my face. “You need to relax. The last thing I want is for you to be going in there all uptight with nerves.”

  “Is it that obvious?” I pulled a face. “Sorry. I’ll get a handle on it.”

  “Make sure you do,” She raised her eyebrows at me pointedly, then patted me fondly on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Call me if you need anything.”

  I wondered if I should put her on speaker just to help me calm some of my nerves, but I didn’t want to give her a reason to second-guess my appropriateness for the job. Not that she could have found anyone else at such short notice, but still – I had a chip on my shoulder about people treating me as less-than because of my position, and I would fight tooth and nail to make sure that no-one had an excuse to back up any assumptions they might have made about me. I tightened my grip on the wheel and checked the turn-offs that were coming up; I wasn’t far away now. Another couple of minutes, at most. I ran through the questions in my head once more, repeating them until they felt like a mantra, and pushed any nervousness that might have been clouding my mind from my head as best I could.

  I was right to be nervous. At least, I thought I was – I had never done anything like this before in my life. Usually, the big interviews went to the guys who’d be working at the magazine a while – sure, I’d been there was just over a year now, but I was far from the most experienced reporter on the team. But Irina had insisted, telling me that my perspective was sharp and different and wouldn’t just come to worshipping at the feet of this soccer star in an attempt to get in on his good side. Well, that she could be sure of.

  In fact, it was that attitude that had got me to move on from my last job. I had written a profile of a boxer I met, and reported the truth; that he was a crude, rude asshole with little to no respect for women and a violent attitude that continued out of the ring. The editors point-blank refused it and demanded that I rewrote it; I let them listen to the tapes I had of our interview and asked them how pray tell, I was meant to make a jerk-off like that sound in any way appealing. Long story short, I quit out of anger that they wouldn’t let me tell the story that needed telling, and Irina snapped me out not long afterward. I was glad that I’d ended up at Sportsweek when I had, if only because it felt nice to have an editor who was actually in my corner for once. And now, it seemed, she wanted to exploit my allegedly controversial viewpoint to get a good story on this guy.

  Adam Channing. That was his name. I had repeated it a dozen times in my head till it had practically lost all meaning to me, and it still felt like some kind of dirty word. Channing had a reputation on and off the field, an English player who had made the jump over to American after an amazing career in Europe to make a buttload of cash and stand out amongst the less creative American teams. He was a well-known heel in the sport, a bad boy who got the crowds going and proved them wrong by scoring dozens and dozens of goals every season. He was an incredible player, and his move to the American leagues had come with what amounted to mourning all over European football. The fact that he had even agreed to an interview with Sportsweek, let alone the fact that I was going to be the one conducting it, just felt something like crazy to me. Not to mention the fact that this guy…shit, he was hot as all hell. I had done plenty of research on him over the past few weeks since I found out that I had landed the assignment, and there was no arguing with the fact that he was a stone-cold hottie. Six foot tall with a body that was built for underwear ads, he had a crop of short, dark hair that brought out the ever-present smattering of stubble across his chin, and even when he was drenched in swea
t at the end of another hard-working match, he somehow managed to look put-together.

  I finally pulled up outside the stadium, and checked in my pocket for my Dictaphone. I pulled it out, switched it on, and held the record button down for a moment or two while I spoke.

  “Test, test,” I tried to speak as clearly as I could. I played it back to make sure the machine was working, and it was. Taking a deep breath, I realized I had no more excuse to hide from the inevitable. I actually had to go in and do this. I opened the door, and was met with the first few spots of rain landing on my feet. Okay, well, I wasn’t going to take that as an omen. Grabbing my phone, I ducked my head down to keep from getting soaked.

  I hurried inside to the stadium, where I flashed my press pass and was directed through to the changing rooms that sat down a few winding corridors. The smell of sweat hung heavy in the air, and I was instantly reminded of the times when my high-school boyfriend and I had snuck into changing rooms to hook up after practice. Yeah, and look at where that had landed me last time, huh? I found myself outside a door with “Adam Channing” emblazoned on it in strong black lettering, and lifted my knuckles, hesitating slightly before I brought them down. Was I certain that this all wasn’t some kind of crazy mistake? That I wouldn’t knock and find the whole staff of the magazine waiting for me, laughing at the fact that I had fallen for a ruse as obviously see-through as this one? I pushed such ridiculous thoughts from my mind and rapped on the door. I didn’t have time for that shit. Not today.

  “Come in,” A voice called from inside, and I pushed the door open and entered. Instead of the sweaty scent that had enveloped me as I’d entered the first corridor, I was met by the smell of aftershave – light, spicy, and expensive. And, of course, the sight of the man who was behind the smell.