Sacked By the Quarterback
Afternoon Delights
Belle Maurice
Published 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62210-189-4
Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509 Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © Published 2015, Belle Maurice. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Liquid Silver Books
http://LSbooks.com
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Blurb
Sonny Black was the star quarterback in high school who couldn't possibly be in love with the geekiest girl in school, Mandy Daws. He'd been seeing her under the guise of chemistry tutoring, but when his buddies found out there was a little more going on, he lied and said she was a slut, wrecking her life and earning her enduring hatred. Eleven years later, Sonny is the star quarterback headed for the Super Bowl despite amazing bad luck that has earned him the nickname Sonny Black Cloud. When someone mentions that the bad luck must stem from someone he failed in the past, the first name that comes to mind is Mandy's. He tracks her down at the small university where she teaches chemistry and tries to seduce, beg, or win her forgiveness, and he needs it before the Super Bowl.
Dedication
Kosta Karageorge, in memoriam.
Chapter 1
Mandy dragged her gaze from the lecture she was preparing when she heard the knock at her office door. She’d been hunting all morning for good chemistry life hacks and matching them to concepts she would be teaching. The university president would not be happy if she taught her students how to quick-freeze beer, but sodas would work.
Couldn’t be. She must have fallen and banged her head or had actually used up all the oxygen in her teeny office. Sonny Black wasn’t standing in her office door, all six foot three, blond, and gorgeous of him.
“Mandy?” Sonny stepped into the office, ever willing to invite himself into her personal space.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Mandy demanded. Cursing was supposed to denote a lack of vocabulary, but at the moment cursing was all she wanted to do. Actually, in most of her imagined scenarios she’d also been throwing things at him so she congratulated herself on not heaving the Foundations of College Chemistry book on the corner of her desk at his head.
“I need to apologize to you.” He took the other step necessary to cross her office.
“Apologize? After eleven years?” Eleven years and three months, but who was counting?
“I was talking to this girl—”
“One of the many models and starlets you date now?” Mandy leaned back in her desk chair trying to get some distance. He’d always been magnetic. Even on television. She was supposed to hate him, dammit. This was not fair.
“You know who I’ve been dating?” He grinned, already sure of success no doubt.
Shit, foiled again. “I assumed.”
“Right.” His grin widened. That utterly irresistible grin. The one cameras loved, that wet the panties of any female with a pulse, and that had tormented her since high school. Unfortunately she’d forgotten how much more devastating it was in person.
“I haven’t been.”
“So you didn’t see me get sacked Sunday.”
Oh but she had, and it had been a thing of beauty. The glorious thrill of seeing him slammed on his ass by that Broncos defender had had her on her feet and screaming for joy.
“I thought so,” he said.
“What? Maybe I’m grinning because I was having great sex with my boyfriend Sunday.”
He perched his very fine ass on the edge of her desk. “Right. I know that grin. That’s the patented Amanda Daws Ha Haw grin. You saw the game. You watched me get flattened. You cheered, didn’t you?”
“What if I did?”
“I deserved it.”
Mandy blinked. That was not the Sonny Black she remembered or the one she’d been watching on ESPN all through college and now pro. That cocksure jackass was not the man leaning on her desk looking at his fingernails. “How so?”
“I have the worst luck on the planet.” He folded his arms. “Did you know some of the commentators are calling me Sonny Black Cloud now?”
“Yeah.” Mandy drawled, letting a smile spread across her face. “I love that nickname.”
“You really do hate me, don’t you?” He looked so glum she wanted to lie and say she didn’t. He frowned. “You have that right.”
“Do I ever."
"What I did to you was wrong and I’ve come to apologize.”
“Have you now.”
“You look great.” He reached for her, probably to twist a lock of hair around his finger like he used to.
Mandy pulled away. “You’ve made your apology. You can go now.”
“No, I can’t.” He dropped his hand onto his leg. “I need you to forgive me before the Super Bowl so I don’t go out and make a fool of myself.”
“Which, presumably, is what I want.”
Sonny scraped his hand through his hair, which was what he did when he was trying to figure something out that was eluding him. She hated the fact she knew him that well after so long. She also hated how warm the sight of his mussed hair made her. “I guess it might be. Do you still hate me that much?”
“You altered the course of my life. I had to change schools and even that didn’t help because the reputation you gave me followed me.” The painfully shy, madly in love girl she had been cowered to the surface. Tears formed in her eyes. “You couldn’t let everyone think you might date the geekiest girl in school because you liked her so you lied and told them I was a slut. It was a Catholic school.”
“I know,” Sonny mumbled. “I was a dumb kid. I’m apologizing and I’m hoping you’ll forgive me.”
“Why? What did this brilliant woman you spoke to tell you?”
“She said my rotten luck probably comes from some bad thing that I did in the past. Some time when someone was depending on me and I failed them. And because of that now when I’m depending on defenders and receivers, they’re failing me. So if I can fix what I did this bad luck will go away.”
Mandy stared at him. “And you believe this mumbo jumbo?”
He grinned again. “I was pretty sure you were going to say that.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Charm me. It won’t work.” Mandy ground her teeth together. Don’t let it work. Don’t let it work.
Sonny looked around the office. It didn't take long, but he'd probably walked in with a couple of plays worked out in his head. “Come on, Mandy. I screwed up. Can’t you forgive a guy for being a bonehead and maybe let him take you out to dinner?”
“It still won’t work.”
“Please?”
“First of all, I have every right to still be pissed at you. Second, me accepting your apology will not change the stupid things that happen to you on the field.”
“How can you be sure? I have great defenders and I still have the highest sack rate of any quarterback in the NFL. My passes get dropped more frequently. Every time something goes wrong the media resurrects that fumble at the snap from last season.”
“The one where the ball bounced off your fingers three times before you dropped it and all the other players just stared at you?�
�� Mandy snickered and reached for her computer mouse. “I loved that one. I have the gif on my hard drive.”
“I don’t need to see it.”
“I do.” She opened the hard drive and scrolled down the list.
Sonny put his hand over hers.
Mandy’s breath stopped in her throat. God, she had forgotten how electric that felt. In high school, Sonny had been everything she wasn’t. Popular, confident, easy going, calm. Endlessly sexy. Only two girls in their class hadn’t had crushes on him. Of the two, one knew even then she was a lesbian. The other one figured it out later.
“Please don’t play that gif.”
Mandy jerked her hand away from his successfully yanking the mouse onto the floor. She bent over to grab it, but Sonny beat her to it. He’d crouched and reached around her. Bad luck had made him flexible and quicker to react. Any other player plagued by the accidents he’d had wouldn’t have a career at all, let alone be a star player.
He stayed in the crouch as he handed her the mouse, staring up at her with his breathtaking hazel eyes. “I missed you, Mandy.”
“If this is part of you trying to get me to forgive you—” The scent wafting off him was not Irish Springs. It was spicy and hot, and very welcome.
“It’s not.” He put his hands on her knees and Mandy cursed the impulse that had her in a skirt today. His long fingers traced under her hem. “I missed you. You were special.”
“You know what they say about your first.”
“You weren’t my first.”
Mandy bit her lip. He was hers and saying that nobody else measured up was an understatement. Even at seventeen he’d been gentle and generous during sex.
Not so generous in the school hallway though.
“I never should have let you get away.” He skimmed his thumb to the inside of her knee.
“Why? Did you fail chemistry in college?” Her breath was getting short and she couldn’t stop it. The sensation of his thumb between her knees spiraled heat through her body. She could remember the way the leather seats in the back of his father’s car had felt on her bare ass and the texture of his football jersey clutched in her hands.
“You can’t hate me that much.”
“You’d be surprised.”
He slid his hand under her skirt. “Then let me make it up to you.”
“It’s going to take a lot.”
His hand slipped higher on her thigh. She could see the movement of his fingers under her the fabric of her skirt and she swallowed.
“I’m already on my knees.”
“No, you’re not.” The air had definitely been sucked out of her teeny office. Spots danced in front of her eyes. Warm too. When they were kids he’d been so sweet and funny, at least when they were alone. Not so sweet and funny at school though.
He shifted to his knees. “Better?”
“Getting there.”
He sniffed. “I can tell. You always smelled like heaven when we made love.”
Her heart throbbed, and she clutched the arms of her desk chair. No witty retort came to mind. Damn, all these years she’d played and replayed what she would do if she ever got to speak to him again and somehow she’d never created a scenario for this.
“Let me make love to you now and show you how much I missed you.” He worked his fingers under the elastic of her panties, tugging her toward the edge of the chair.
If they had sex, right here in her brand new office, he’d probably go back to his buddies and talk about how he banged some girl he knew in high school. How bad she wanted it and how it broke his bad luck streak just in time for the Super Bowl. He’d be a hero to those yutzs.
She never had to face those yutzs. “My office door is open.”
He was up and closing the door in an instant and then back, kneeling in front of her, pulling her off the chair into his lap.
And she wasn’t the only one who wanted it bad. His erection was like hot granite between her legs. His mouth covered hers urgently, plundering her breath. She moaned, clutching his broad shoulders. He lifted her out of the chair and perched her on the desk.
“Are you sure you want this?” he asked. The same question he’d asked the first time in his father’s car.
“Yes. You do have protection, don’t you?”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a condom. “Always the boy scout.”
“Not always.”
“That’s behind us. Please, Mandy.” He slipped his hand under her sweater and leaned in to kiss her neck. “You can’t imagine how much I want you.”
Mandy pressed her hip against his erection. “I bet I can.” She unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped them so she could get her hand inside and around his cock to stroke him. All those weekends spent watching him on television in those tight little pants. She’d known how much was cup and how much was him.
He groaned. “You keep doing that and this is going to be over fast.”
Over fast. Why did that line bother her so much? She pulled back, but he still had his hand over her bra, teasing her nipple through the fabric. After the lie broke, the mean girls had nicknamed her Fast. The name had followed her when she transferred. Fast Mandy Dawes.
“Stop.”
His other hand had been working on getting her skirt over her hip, but froze when she spoke. “What?”
“I said stop.” Mandy spread her palms against this chest and pushed.
Sonny stepped back. “What’s the matter?”
“I hate you.” Mandy blinked back tears.
“I thought—I thought you’d forgiven me.” He blinked like none of this was adding up. He used to do that a lot when she was tutoring him through high school chem.
“A little bit of necking in my office isn’t going to make up for eleven years.”
“I wasn’t trying to make up for eleven years. I thought we were starting over.”
“Starting over? Why on Earth would I start over with you?” Beyond the obvious. Oh God, the confidence of his touch made every other man she’d been with seem like a nervous teenager.
“Mandy, I thought I knew what I gave up when I lost you. I didn’t. I really want you to forgive me.”
“Forgive you? Oh that’s right. You needed some kind of superstitious mumbo jumbo forgiveness to make sure you don’t make a fool of yourself on national television in two weeks on the Super Bowl. Huh. Sucks to be you, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I got what I wanted, but I guess you didn’t.” Mandy kept her face still and unemotional. An art she had learned in high school thanks to Sonny.
“What you wanted?”
“A trip down memory lane.” Dear Lord, had she actually been about to have sex on her desk? How tawdry. “Did you think that meant something else?”
“I thought you might give me another chance.”
“Another chance?” She laughed to cover her confusion. What the hell was he talking about? Certainly not another chance with her. He had models and starlets throwing themselves at him. What could he possibly want from a college chemistry professor who had once loved him that he couldn't get from a thousand other women?
“Yeah, I loved you, Mandy.”
“Which is why you told everybody at school that the only way I would tutor you in chemistry was if you would have sex with me.” There it was, the burn of shame.
“I lied. I was a stupid kid.” Sonny zipped his jeans.
“You were failing chem.”
Sonny put his hands on his hips. “That was a long time ago.”
“And here you are still trying to trade sex for whatever you need.” Just when she thought it couldn’t get more embarrassing. When he’d told everyone she was trading him tutoring for sex, he could have been telling the truth from a certain perspective. Maybe she really was that undesirable.
“No, I was in love with you,” Sonny snapped.
Yes, because blond god quarterbacks always went for the geekiest girl in school. Jesus, he had bee
n having sex with her in trade for tutoring. And now he had come here trying to trade sex for absolution for his crimes in high school. She did want to crawl under her desk. “I love how you showed it by humiliating me in front of everyone.”
“In high school. That was a long time ago. There’s something wrong with you if you’re still twisted up about what ninety-two people from our graduating class think about you. You hated them back then.” His fury made him seem bigger. Pretty soon he was going to fill her office with his anger alone.
“You should go before I call campus police and have you escorted out. That would make an interesting story on ESPN, don’t you think?”
Sonny glared at her a moment longer before yanking open the door and storming out. She tracked his progress out of the office suite through his footsteps and the yelps of people he encountered. When the noises faded, she felt safe to sink into her desk chair and cover her face with her hands. Did she still care what ninety-two people she used to go to high school with thought? That was insane. She never saw those people. Her parents didn’t even live in town anymore.
“Hey, was that—Mandy, are you okay?”
Mandy pulled on her poker face for Noor. His dark Indian face wrinkled with concern. “I’m fine,” she told him.
“Then why did you have your hands over your face?”
“Did you guys see Harrison Black in the hall?” Kaylin crowded Noor in the door. Dammit, Kaylin was practically psychic about how people were feeling. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Ninety-two petty, jealous people from her old hometown that she never visited anymore. What a waste of resources to even think about them anymore.
“Mandy.” Kaylin squeezed past Noor and came in the office. “Something is wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong.”
“She had her hands over her face when I got here and I’m pretty sure Mr. Black was in her office.”
“Really?” Kaylin looked from Noor to Mandy.
“You two don’t even understand American Football.” Why couldn’t they just go away? Then she could cut her office hours short and go home to shower, in bleach, before settling in to drink a box of wine and watch Casablanca on repeat until she fell asleep.
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