by Mia Watts
“How are they taking the addition of a Gimlet to the team?” Another person called over the top of the hum. The wall lit with a reflection of cameras flashing.
Only Bobby would hold a media blitz in the hallway outside his office. Conveniently for him, it blocked her from the safety of hers.
“Ms. Harper? Ms. Harper, is that you?”
Flora cringed, then pretended to search for something on the tile before standing. “Hi, Monica. I can’t find my favorite pen. It’s silver with onyx accents. Have you seen it?” She blinked expectantly at the receptionist who took in her outfit with unveiled curiosity.
“No.” The woman made a sniffing sound, testing the air and gave Flora a peculiar look.
Flora harrumphed, ignoring the look on the attendant’s face. She plopped her hands on her hips as she shot a forlorn look toward the ground. “Damn. I loved that pen. I could have sworn I dropped it here.”
“Maybe they’re where ever you left your shoes?”
“In my office? I looked there already.” Flora smiled, straightened her hemline. “Well, if you see it…”
“You bet.”
Flora bravely turned toward the hallway. She took a stabilizing breath.
“Um, Ms. Harper?”
“Yes, Monica?” She turned to face the smirking receptionist.
“You might want to go to the lady’s room.” Was Monica blushing?
Flora raised her chin, daring Monica to comment on anything remotely resembling the fact that Flora looked and smelled like sex. Monica missed it completely.
“I think you have hand cream on the back of your—uh, dress.”
Hand cream? Memories of Ian fucking the crevice of her ass and shooting onto her back—where the jersey had been bunched up. Oh, hell.
A man carrying a camera bag glanced at Flora and stumbled. “Hey, baby. Lookin’ good!” he said as he passed.
“Monica, I think I made a critical error in my wardrobe this morning.” If one camera guy was leaving the media swarm, others would be following. Getting caught in Ian Tate’s jersey with his cum all over her back wouldn’t be in the acceptable practices handbook. She just hoped Monica bought the story she was about to get fed.
“No kidding. You look like you just got laid by our new quarterback.”
“I knew I should have worn the black designer jeans,” Flora muttered, passing off her choice of attire with increasing hope. “Good thing I keep extra clothes in my office.”
“Yeah, but getting there is a little hopeless.”
“Monica, is it worth dinner at Luccio’s with Bing and Filsguard to hide me?”
The receptionist’s smile grew soft and dreamy. “How about dinner at Luccio’s with Coach Haler?”
Fifty year-old, salt and pepper at the temples, softening physique, Coach was definitely do-able. Apparently Monica thought so, too.
Flora smiled, brightly. “Done!” She dodged around the reception desk and ducked out of sight. Five minutes later, the media had buzzed past her hiding place and excitedly shuttled from elevator bay to cars until nothing but the quiet chirp of Monica’s phone filled the empty space.
“They’re gone,” Monica whispered.
“Sterling, too?”
Monica half stood and leaned over the desk to look down the hall. “Yep. He’s got his office door shut.”
Flora breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Monica. I’m going to my office right now and calling Coach.”
The receptionist flushed and shoed her away. Flora dashed down the corridor to her office and wasted no time shutting herself in.
And that’s when she remembered. “Shit! I don’t have a change of clothes here.” She’d used them the time before her locker room appearance. It’s what had necessitated her call to Fauna. Flora had shoes—scads of them, but she couldn’t wear shoes in place of clothing all day.
“Fauna is going to kill me,” she said aloud, trudging over to her phone for the inevitable call. But first she had to set up Monica with Coach Haler.
———
Ian slammed his foot on the brakes, squealing into the parking space closest to the entrance. His cock was an idiot. Though it had finally dropped to only semi erect, his balls throbbed painfully, no doubt having taken on a blue hue.
What the fuck was she playing at?
Seemed Bobby had been right all along. Flora Harper did nothing but tease. It made trying to get her into a compromising position much less of a problem to Ian’s conscience.
Ian muscled through the throng of reporters and opted for the stairs. He ignored the shouted questions and snapped pictures. With the silver doors spitting out more and more of them, he had no interest in sticking around to find out why or play nicey-nice.
He reached the reception desk just as Flora’s door clicked behind her. Oh, she was so going to pay for her little exit. He didn’t know how the hell she’d entered or exited his hotel room, with the flip bolt still in place, or how she’d managed to get to the office so fast, but he knew she’d be there. For him, it was a matter of yanking on his jeans as he walked out of the hotel suite and jogged over the scant distance to the stadium offices.
Had she wanted to get away from him so bad that appearing in public in his jersey, barefoot, and clearly well-fucked didn’t matter to her? From what Bobby said, she was more cautious than that. She teased but never got caught in a position compromising enough. Well, if the reporters had seen her, she’d have been on the wrong side of the camera for sure. He doubted they’d have left at all, preferring to camp outside her office until they got their story.
“Mr. Tate?” the receptionist called. “Mr. Tate! You can’t go in there right now.”
He ignored her, fixing Flora’s door as his target. He didn’t bother knocking either. She hadn’t bothered saying goodbye. He didn’t owe her anything except perhaps a good, hard fuck.
Ian slammed the door behind him, flipped the bolt. Behind her desk, Flora stood with a phone at her ear and rapidly widening eyes.
“Ian, you can’t be in here.” Panic colored her voice.
“Why not? You’re in here.”
Her tight little nipples pebbled behind the glistening jersey fabric. She slapped the phone down and set her breasts to jiggling. Though she’d tied his leather belt around her slim waist causing the fabric to blouse, it also drew the hem of the shirt up high on her thighs. The inside of one had whisker burn.
Ian’s annoyance shifted to lust.
His gaze trailed back up her body, lingering on the way the light reflected off her covered hips and the slightest rise over her mound. No one who looked at her would make the mistake of believing she wore any kind of bra or panties. She was barely clothed sex and her choice garment was his football jersey. He couldn’t have made a more forceful claim on her if he’d tried.
“It’s my office. I work here.”
She gripped the side of her desk as he drew closer, his gaze tripping up to her distended nipples and the sheen of fabric which fluttered across her chest on every rushed intake of air. Flora was turned on. Knowing it turned him on.
Her hair, normally styled in artful abandon, appeared tossed, unbrushed in her haste to leave him. Evidence of his whiskered ardor marked her delicate neck and slim jaw with redness, and her lips still had the puffiness of thorough kissing. She licked them and he barely restrained his appreciative groan.
“Considering your normal discretion—I’m assuming you weren’t lying to me about never fraternizing with a player—I’m surprised you’d come to the office looking like my personal sex kitten complete with tagging,” he said, gesturing to his jersey.
She bristled. “I have a job to do. Whether it’s inconvenient timing or not, I have to do my job or the franchise loses money and you lose your job.”
“Stopping at home first didn’t occur to you?”
“It didn’t seem to occur to you either since you showed up right after me.”
Ian skirted her desk. “I don’t know where you live. I
do know where you work and the fact that you’re considered something of an ice queen. Though,” he said, turning her and pulling her chest against his. “You sure weren’t an ice queen last night.”
Flora licked her lips. “You need to go.”
“You left before we finished.”
“We finished,” she said, not too convincingly.
“Did we?” His voice came huskily. “I know you finished, but I was just getting started. Tell me you don’t want what I want.”
“I don’t—”
She broke off when Ian nudged his pelvis against hers. A small sound escaped her and Ian thought it was probably the sexiest non-admission he’d heard. She wanted it, him, badly. She just didn’t want to say the words. He cocked an eyebrow, giving her time to formulate her denial if she still thought to make one. His mamma had taught him never to interrupt a lady. If Flora’s glazed expression, her clutched fingers on his shirt, were any indication, Ian was being a very, very good boy while he waited for her answer.
“You don’t?” he prompted.
“I can’t.”
“I’m confident that you can. There isn’t a curve on your body, or an expression you give, or a mannerism to any of your silky movements that suggests you aren’t capable of fantastic sex.”
Ian’s hand stole down over her ass, lifted the hem as his play-roughened hands found her smooth cheeks. He kneaded them, dipped one hand lower to coast his middle finger against her pussy from behind.
Flora gasped, closed her eyes. Her face flushed as she lifted it to him.
Ian took her offering, kissing her with more tenderness than his brash words would have suggested he might. He wanted her to feel him, wanted to chip away at the wall she kept trying to put up between them, not because of Bobby and his agenda, but because of Ian’s ridiculous hunger for this woman.
He needed to know she could soften, possibly care about him when she didn’t seem to care about many people in the business. The Flora that melted in his arms, showed moments of vulnerability, was not the same Flora who out-bargained Bobby for players or blithely seduced and blackmailed. He couldn’t believe they’d be the same woman.
She tasted as dewy sweet as he remembered. Her breasts lifted with each breath to press against him. With the same wordless cry as before, she lifted her leg to his waist, giving his inquisitive fingers full access to her moist folds. Who was seducing whom, he wondered briefly?
Her hand stole downward. The rasp of his zipper, the pop of his button and his cock sprang free right into her waiting hand.
He swept his tongue inside, unable to hold back and wanting to possess her the way he’d intended to before she’d run out.
“Is this a yes?” he asked, needing to hear her say the words.
“It’s a definite maybe,” she answered.
Ian withdrew his finger from petting her, brought his hands back up to her clothed hips. “Not good enough.”
Flora pushed at his chest. Her gaze met his. She caught her bottom lip with her teeth and a suggestive smile dared him to give in first. Flora unbuckled the leather belt. She held it up, cocked her head to the side as though waiting for him to make the next move, then dropped it to the floor.
He couldn’t move. What else would she do?
Flora’s arms crossed in front of her as she captured the bottom of his jersey. She wiggled her hips a little and lazily dragged it upward over her head. She held it up the way she’d held the belt. Her smile grew wicked.
Ian’s cock warred for the right to make this critical decision.
Pinched between thumb and forefinger, the jersey dangled. Flora released it and it snaked on the floor. She swiped a hand behind her, pushing her keyboard to the side, and hopped up onto the matted surface.
“What are you doing?” he asked stupidly.
“So you’re saying you didn’t get through school on an academic scholarship?”
“Watch it,” he warned.
“No, you watch it,” she said, her voice rolling over him in suggestive waves.
Leaning back on her hands, Flora opened her legs, letting her legs swing playfully. She was already wet for him.
Flora tossed her head, flinging her long dark hair back from her shoulders so that it spilled down her back, then casually raised one perfectly manicured hand to fondle her full, firm breast.
Ian took a long, deep breath. He rested his hands just inside her knees, keeping them open as he leaned in. He rubbed the side of her nose with his. “Three hundred pound men tackle me to astro-turf on a daily basis. I get cortisone shots into my knee and shoulder every couple of weeks and I’m used to living with pain. You can tease me all you want, Flora, but until I hear the words, my cock won’t get a formal introduction to your pussy.”
“Are you afraid I’ll cry rape?”
“Possibly. I’m well-versed in the reversal of intentions. Do you know how many players wind up with assault charges?” He was only half-teasing her, but if what Bobby said held any truth at all, Ian did have to be careful with this one, no matter how much he wanted her.
Flora’s hand left her breast and wrapped around his naked cock. She stroked him sensuously. He automatically flexed and thrust into her caress. At this rate, he was fighting a losing battle. She had to know it, too.
“Quite a few.”
“If you want me, you’ll need to be explicit,” he said. The more she refused to say it, the harder he stuck to his guns. Was there something to Bobby’s claim? Did she hope to get him on assault and blackmail him? And if he was even thinking this way, why the hell did he still want to fuck her and damn the consequences?
“Do you have a condom?”
Ian pulled one out of his pocket and held it up. There were more in there from the handful he’d grabbed when he’d found the bed empty and all he’d wanted to do if find her and punish her with the best sex of her life and swear she’d never have it again. Fully aware of the ego it took to think such things, he chalked it up to defensiveness. She’d left him. She’d been partially bound to his bed post, writhing with pleasure, waiting for him to come back to her and her taste still on his lips.
Flora took the condom from him, ripped it open, and rolled it over his aching dick. Then giving his pants a shove from where they barely clung to his hips, smiled when they crumpled to his ankles. He toed off his shoes and nudged the jeans away from his feet.
He’d been angry and yet grabbing a fist full of condoms and tracking her down to finish what they started made him not only stupid but uncharacteristically superficial. What was it about her that made him crazy to crack her shell, plant himself deep inside her heart where she couldn’t shake him free?
“Take off your shirt,” she commanded.
He wanted to affect her, change her, fundamentally alter her until she needed him beyond the façade of control she seemed to clothe herself with.
“You take it off,” he said, not sure if he meant the cloak of self-control or his remaining piece of clothing.
Flora sat up and dragged his shirt up his chest. Ian raised his arms over his head to help. She laughed as she wormed it up and over, one arm at a time.
“Want me, Flora.”
“I do,” she said, swallowing hard on the words.
He leaned over her again, brushed his lips across hers, plied her bottom lip between his and flicked the captured portion with his tongue. “How much?”
She sighed into his mouth. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she said, “I hate that I want you, Ian Tate. I hate that I’m dying to feel you inside me, but I do.”
“That’s all I needed, baby.”
Chapter Seven
Ian cupped her shoulders and pushed her backward in one swift movement. He sat on the edge of her chair, hooked her knees and pulled her forward forcefully parting her sex with his nose and mouth.
Surprised, aroused, she squawked at the rushed intimacy of his face in her pussy and the way her channel tightened instinctively. Heat raced through her veins and Flora�
�s tummy flipped as Ian groaned against her clit.
“I can’t get enough of your hot little cunt,” he murmured.
Flora fisted her hands in his hair, holding him to her. She gasped for breath as his lips, tongue, whiskers drove her mad. Her legs trembled and she forgot to complain when his fingers entered her grasping pussy instead of his sheathed cock.
The strangled sounds coming from her weren’t words. Her body buzzed, heated, begged for her in a way words would never express. Flora wanted this or she’d die.
His arms wrapped her thighs in an iron grip from underneath. Ian’s hand curled over her hip as he roughly pulled her nether lips apart. Nothing hidden from him, he devoured her pussy. Cool air touched her wet flesh when he left one spot for another. Her cunt squeezed hungrily around his fingers. He added another to the thrusting duo and Flora saw colors streak across her vision.
“Oh, God, Ian!” She let go of him to touch her breasts, stroke, and roll her jutting nipples into tingling twins that mirrored the need Ian had stoked inside her.
Sharply, he hooked his fingers inside while his thumb rubbed the mouth of her opening, building fire upon fire. He backed off, giving her only that one handed stimulation as air touched her in every exposed part.
Her clit strained forward, she could feel the tiny nub as erect as it could get in its quest to find Ian’s attention. Flora looked down the length of her body, watching him watch her, seeing the way his lust-heated gaze darted from the way she tugged on her nipples to her open pussy inches from his face.
Ian sucked her clit, rhythmically.
Flora’s hips tipped toward him as he splayed her legs as wide as they would go. She tossed her head from side to side. Orgasm closed in on her.
Suddenly, he pulled off, stood, and trapped her wrists to the desk. She protested, ground her hips up against his rigid cock. Orgasm shimmered so close!
“Don’t come,” he commanded.
“I want to.”
“I said no.”
She stared up at him, seeing the same half-crazed expression on his face that she knew she must share. Why was he stopping? “I was almost there.”
A smile lifted his lips. “I know, baby.”