by KB Winters
“Why?” he asked, his tone sounded like he was sincerely confused.
I laughed. “To sleep?”
He tugged on my hips, dragging me back into the way-too-comfortable bed. “Nah. Sleep is way too overrated, baby.”
Before I could object, his lips found the sweet spot on my neck and I was lost again.
Chapter Fifteen
Trey
After fucking Josie all night, I slept like a rock. She had a body that wouldn’t quit. Better than I’d ever experienced. The way she straddled me and ground on my cock was so damn sexy. She danced like a ballerina up there.
When I finally came out of my semi-conscience state, I stirred at the sound of a frantic voice. The sound was muffled and I opened my eyes to figure out where it came from. My hotel room was pitch black except for the soft red glow of the alarm clock. With the blackout shades pulled tight, it was impossible to tell what time it was. I propped myself up on my elbow and rolled over to flick a blurry-eyed glance at the bedside clock. 6:32.
Damn. I groaned and flopped back down into the mountain of pillows.
“I know…I—” A pause. “Yes, I’m aware of the—”
The voice was Josie’s and it was coming from behind the bathroom door. Did she have the lights off in the bathroom? The strip at the bottom of the door was dark. Who could she be talking to so early?
“Yes. I understand that. I promise, I’m getting the…” her voice faded off again. She must have been pacing back and forth in the large bathroom.
Whoever she was talking to, it didn’t sound like it was going well.
A few minutes passed and then the door popped open with a soft click.
“Baby, come back to bed. It’s too damn early to be awake,” I mumbled against the pillow, my voice thick with sleep.
“Shit!” Josie hissed. “Did I—uh—did I wake you?”
“I don’t think so. But come on, if you’re not tired, I’m sure we can think of something else to do to pass the time…” I said, grinning in the dark.
Josie scoffed. “No…I don’t think that’s a good idea, Trey.”
I pushed up into a sitting position and flicked on the lamp. Josie was standing with her back to me, in the middle of the room, fully dressed in her outfit from the night before, and was fussing with her hair. She spun around, her expression contorted, as though she was startled by the sudden flood of light. She blinked a few times and secured an elastic band at the base of her hair. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were wide.
“I’m pretty damn sure I could change your mind on that…” I threw back the covers, and grinned as her eyes raked down my body. She nibbled her lip when her eyes landed on my hard on. I chuckled. “See? Already making you reconsider. Come here, baby.” I said, but she stayed firmly in place.
“I can’t…Trey. This whole thing was a mistake.”
I groaned and raked a hand through my hair. “Damn it, Jo. Don’t do this…we fucked. We had fun. End of story. I’m not asking for anything more than a little fun.”
She crossed her arms. “But that’s kinda the whole thing, isn’t it? It’s just fun for you.”
“You told me that’s what you wanted!” I stood up and stepped back into my shorts. Clearly this was a losing battle. She could still stare at my junk from inside my shorts.
Her eyes sparkled and a rush of heat came over me. I’d never wanted her more. She was damn sexy when she was all fired up and pissed off. “When did I say that?” she demanded.
“The night we talked at the bar! You said your dad wanted you to come home, get married, and knocked up. You told me that isn’t what you’re looking for. You talked about your career and getting ahead before you did that whole thing.”
She threw her hands up. “That doesn’t mean I want some no-strings-attached fling with you!”
I glanced down at the bed, silently reminding her that it was kinda what she wanted.
She growled. “You know what I mean! I don’t have time for this. I have to get work done before my boss fires my ass and I’ll be left with nothing but the family ranch.”
I watched as she stalked over to the desk in the corner, snatched her purse up, and threw it over her shoulder. “I’m sorry if I led you on…”
I scoffed, the sound coming out somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “What?”
She stopped, rooting her feet for a moment to turn and glare at me. “That’s what you’re pissed about, isn’t it?”
I grinned. “Baby girl, I’m only pissed ’cause we’re fighting instead of fucking right now.”
She sucked in a quick breath and I grinned wider. She rallied and gave an exaggerated eye roll to cover her initial reaction but her pupils were still dark and dilated. She wanted me. Bad. “Goodbye, Trey. I’ll see you after the game. Maybe this time you could answer some of my damn questions.”
I shook my head. “What are you talking about? I didn’t even see you at the last press thing.”
She folded her arms again and glared at me. “Well, I was there and I tried to get your attention.”
So that’s what this was all about. Her boss must have been the one on the phone, chewing her ass out for not getting coverage after my monster game. “Jo, it was a fuckin’ madhouse! I didn’t even know you were there!”
She tossed her ponytail along with her hand and turned away from me. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’s not your job. It’s mine. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go salvage what’s left of my career before it’s too late.” She stormed to the door and disappeared before I could come up with something to get her to stay. It would’ve been hot as hell to fuck her when she was pissed like that.
Oh well.
Another time.
Whatever was going on with Josie and her career was an excuse. A wall. I could—no, I would—find a way around it. I wasn’t going to give up so easily. I’d had a taste of Josie Crawford and I was damn sure gonna have another!
Chapter Sixteen
Josie
The road trip continued, from Seattle, I followed the Warriors to LA and then back to Denver for the final game of the stretch of away games. By some cruel set of circumstances—or, more likely, a discount given to the station—I ended up in the same dumpy hotel as my first stay in the city. It was a different room, and this one provided a view of the fancy hotel across the street where Trey and I shared a drink. He was most likely over there, hanging with the rest of the team, celebrating their string of wins. The road trip had been a wild success that had the whole country buzzing. They dropped one game in LA, but other than that, they swept the other teams and were making sports news from coast to coast. Most of the stories revolved around the Trey Delgado narrative. Everyone was talking about the hot streak and the sudden reformation of the once lagging team thanks to Trey’s superstar factor and the star-in-the-making pitcher Cody Wright.
Well, everyone but Oklahoma City’s Channel 6 News.
I’d been in the postgame press conference after every game but so far, only one of my questions had been answered and the rest of my segment was filled with regurgitating everything the other sports reporters had to say. Mr. Jones was not impressed. To say the least.
Denver was my last chance to get the exclusive. Otherwise I might as well just book a one-way ticket to Dallas and hang it all up.
“Maybe I should have just taken the damn weather girl job,” I muttered to myself a moment before jerking the dusty curtains closed so that I didn’t have to see Trey’s hotel. “At least then I’d be on TV.”
Since nothing in my reports and footage was new, the station hadn’t even bothered to play any of it. Everything about this assignment was fucked up and I was losing sight of any grain of hope to turn it around. I hadn’t heard from Trey since the morning in Seattle, after I’d stormed out of his hotel room, ranting and raving about my job like some kind of psycho witch on a tirade. It was humiliating. Definitely wasn’t my finest hour and just replaying the damn thing in my head made me cr
inge. I’d woken up to my phone—that had somehow ended up tucked against my ribs—vibrating like crazy. I vaguely remembered getting it once Trey was asleep so I could set my alarm for the next morning and must’ve fallen asleep before it made it back to the night stand.
The early morning call was from Mr. Jones and I ran into Trey’s bathroom to take the call. While he was on speaker phone, lecturing me about my lack of footage, I sneaked out to gather my clothes from the hotel room floor and then ducked back into the bathroom to attempt to defend myself to my irate boss. It hadn’t done much good. Mr. Jones told me that nothing I’d sent back to the station was worth playing on air. They wanted fresh, unique coverage and apparently that wasn’t what I had. At the end of the call, he basically told me that if I didn’t get the interview, the network would can the entire ten-piece segment and I’d be back on coffee duty.
Indefinitely.
My plans for something bigger, something meaningful, were unraveling at a rapid pace.
After fleeing Trey’s hotel room that morning, I threw myself into producing a series of clips of myself, talking about the game and my speculation on Trey. But I couldn’t get into the specifics. At least, not without breaching Trey’s confidence. The segments were edited and ready to send to Mr. Jones but something was holding me back from hitting SEND. If he didn’t like them enough to run them, and still insisted on a firsthand interview with Trey—it’d be all over.
I’d tuck my tail between my legs, go home to the ranch and see if I could get some freelance work to occupy myself in between blind dates with rich farmers and church ushers.
“Oh, gawd…” I grimaced at the idea. After being with Trey, there was no way those guys could satisfy me. I’d be back to sneaking my vibrator into bed after they’d passed out for the night.
Why was it all the fuckwads were amazing in bed and all the nice guys sucked? Was there such a thing as an all-in-one kind of guy? A nice guy with looks, charm, and a cock to die for?
If there was—I certainly hadn’t found him.
Not that Trey wasn’t a nice guy. He’d always been respectful to me, but I knew that was only a small part of him. Truly nice guys didn’t have baby mama drama, lawsuits claiming breech of moral clauses, and enough barroom scuffles that if he weren’t a major sports star, he’d probably be behind bars by now on assault charges.
That wasn’t the kind of guy I could trust in the long run—or even take home to meet my parents. He wasn’t the kind of guy I could build a future with. I’d always wonder if he was being faithful to me. Women threw themselves at Trey like dogs in heat. I couldn’t trust him to keep coming home to my bed every night when he was getting sext messages and naked texts day and night from rabid fans and bored housewives.
Nope. He wasn’t the one for me. Even if he was the only one I couldn’t stop thinking or dreaming about.
All Trey Delgado was, was a big, musclebound, panty melting distraction.
And right now, that was the last thing I needed.
* * * *
The Denver game was another runaway success but I couldn’t be bothered to leave my seat. I wasn’t in a cheering mood. Besides that, I was too busy studying the notes on my phone, reciting the postgame questions in my head as though I was cramming for an economics final exam in college. I had to get a good segment tonight. Over the course of the afternoon, I’d made a list of questions that might stir up a good conversation and get me some kind of credit with Mr. Jones. At this point, an exclusive with Trey was out of the question. I refused to sit down with him and talk like we hadn’t fucked all over his hotel room. There was no way I’d be able to maintain anything close to professionalism, and I refused to let my first big piece end up making me out to be some kind of obsessed fangirl.
I was putting all of my eggs into my plan B, which was a slam dunk postgame show, and the self-produced videos I’d made, chronicling my time on the road with the team. They were sensationalist shit, but at least it was better than going back to Oklahoma City empty handed.
Toward the end of the game, I pocketed my phone, and took deep breaths before I got any more nervous. I’d glanced up and spotted Trey a few times over the course of the game, but at the moment, he was nowhere to be seen. He’s done his job and the coach likely had him sitting out the rest of the game, knowing the second string could take it home. His absence was fine with me. I was constantly wet, imagining him inside me, thinking about the way he moved his hips, and the taste of his sweet and demanding kisses.
And his cock. I had to stop thinking about his cock.
The home team fans were leaving the stadium already, not wanting to stick around and watch their team lose. I hopped up from my seat and started to make my way into the early surge of foot traffic to get down to the media pit. I managed to get there early enough to get a good spot toward the front table and spread my feet wide, rooting myself in place. I wasn’t going to get knocked over, bumped sideways, or trampled on. Not tonight, damn it. Tonight, I was going to get my questions answered.
Forty minutes later, Cody Wright, Coach Robinson, and Trey filtered out from the visiting locker rooms, all three wearing triumphant, but exhausted, smiles as they took their places at the table. The Three Amigos. That was the not-so-clever nickname the media had assigned to the three of them. Three sets of broad shoulders that were responsible for the weight of the Warriors’ future.
The team’s PR assistant started picking off questions and the reporters around me started shooting off one after another, rapid fire. It seemed to always start that way, a roar of chaos until Coach Robinson got irritated and called order. “All right, let’s get this going,” Coach Robinson barked over the rush of questions. “My boys are bone tired and we have an early flight home tomorrow.”
I tried to avoid glancing at Trey, but slipped, and found him already staring at me. Our eyes met and I couldn’t look away again. My heart palpitated and my lips went dry, so I flicked out the tip of my tongue to smooth over the last remnants of gloss. Trey followed the quick movement and his eyes went wider. Shivers tore up my spine and flashes of his reflection in the high rise window, standing behind me, grabbing onto my ass, while he—
Stop it, Jo!
I tore my eyes away from his and focused on what Coach Robinson was saying. “—think that’s really the key here. We need to focus on…”
My eyes drifted back to Trey and Coach’s words faded from my ears. He was still watching me intently. His eyes a silent question. I gave him a smile and my heart jumped when he returned it. Fuck. I was fangirling all over the place. I’d have to catch my drool.
“Excuse me,” he said, glancing away from me for a split second, just long enough to get the attention of their PR gal. “I want to see if Josie Crawford, from our home station, channel 6, has any questions,” he said, snapping his fingers in my direction. All eyes shifted onto me and I froze. “Ms. Crawford?”
“Right—um—I do. Yes. Um…” My mind was a blank slate, completely empty of all the questions I had so diligently studied during the game. And, since I’d been studying the notes and not watching the game, I couldn’t even springboard off the last topic of conversation. Shit. “Can you tell our viewers about your strategy leading into the playoffs? Are you making a push?”
I groaned at the simplistic question and the seasoned reporters around me offered a commiserating grumble at me stealing their time.
“We’re gonna do what we do. Kick ass, take names, and then do it all over again,” Trey replied, flashing a wide smile for the cameras.
Coach Robinson shot him a droll look. “We have every intention of getting into the playoffs, but that’s not where our focus is right now. We are doing this thing one day at a time, one game at a time. Next question.”
The seasoned reporters around me swooped in like hungry vultures and ripped away any chance I had for a follow-up question. Seeing that I was beat, I slunk away from the crowd.
I was done. I just wanted to go to the airport, get on my fl
ight, and go home to my own condo, my own bed, and my own life. I was tired of pretending to be something I wasn’t.
I got out of the pack of media reporters and started down the hallway, looking for the nearest exit. My hair was down and sticking to the sweat on the back of my neck. I stopped walking, tucked myself in an alcove, and fished an elastic band from the pocket of my dark wash jeans. “Gawd, that was a disaster,” I groaned, raking my hair back, violently forming a ponytail.
A chuckle sounded over my shoulder. “Actually, I thought it was pretty good.”
I whipped around at the sound of the deep voice and my mouth dropped open at the sight of Trey, towering over me. “Oh—hi…” I snapped the elastic in place and dropped my arms.
“You set up a nice beat for me to play the cocky bastard which is always a good time,” he said, grinning at me.
I tossed my ponytail over my shoulder. “Well, thanks for trying to help.”
He leaned against the wall, bracing against his shoulder as he folded his arms, and stared down at me. “What the hell is going on with you?”
“What do you mean?” I fired back, my tone more than a little perturbed.
He shrugged his other shoulder. “You’re a mess.”
“Gee, thanks.” I shook my head. I so did not sign up for this.
Trey chuckled. “You’re out of your league with all those damn reporters.”
A hollow, humorless laugh bubbled up from my throat, fueled by frustration, exhaustion, and frazzled stress. “Thank you, Captain Obvious. I’m not even supposed to fucking be here.” I shook my head again, this time harder, like trying to clear water from my ears after a swim. How had any of this even happened? One day I’m going into Mr. Jones’ office to demand a reporting job and somehow ended up on this joke of an assignment. I would have been better off turning in my resignation and going home to Dallas for a few months to recoup.