The soft, quiet moment, though, is soon ruined by Radovic, who drops his can of Red Bull on the ground and crushes it under his foot. The guy is a brute. He reminds me of a wild boar, maybe. Frankie Knuckles pops out of his carrier and gives his socks a long warning growl.
“Miss Monahan,” Radovic booms, taking another can from his fanny pack. “I just got off the phone with Curtis.”
“Oh, good,” I say, straightening my shirt. “He’ll take good care of Mr. Falconi. I’m sure of it.”
But Radovic shakes his head. “He says you’re assigned to Jimmy for the rest of the season. So welcome to the goddamned Chicago Bears.”
“Well, if I’m going home, I’m going to need a ride. I’m hurting too much to drive.” Jimmy smiles up at me, that all-American prom king smile. “Got a car, Miss Monahan?”
Is this happening? Am I awake? Did I just get poached from Healing Therapies LLC by the Chicago Bears without my consent?
From the clipboard, my phone dings, and a message from Dr. Curtis lights up:
Well done!
A whole season with…
DA BEARS!
Followed by an explosion of football emojis. Answer? Yes. I did. Yesterday, everything was so simple. Things made sense. I had my regular job. I hadn’t knocked a meaty sex god unconscious. I hadn’t had my world rocked by a man who shops at Costco. I hadn’t begged for mercy in bed. Yesterday, I was in charge. Now, I’m at the whims of the football gods, and Jimmy Falconi’s eyes.
Rest with me. Go home with me.
“I don’t think you’ll fit,” I tell him, considering the sheer size of his legs. The girth. The length… “My Wrangler isn’t used to a guy your size.”
“My Wrangler. I’ve never heard that one before,” he says, sitting up and draping his huge arm around my shoulder. “But I moved your Wrangler this morning, pussycat. Or did you forget already?”
It is the land of the double entendre. I cannot escape.
“Come on,” he pleads as he slides off the table. “Play hooky with me. It’s got to be better than wanting to fuck in public and not being able to do anything about it. Right?”
Absolutely, positively true. He is so alluring. So sexy. So cute. So hot. And yet so absolutely off limits.
His eyes taunt me a little more. But the pain from his groin flickers on his face. That pain, more than all the sexiness and the double talk, pulls me closer. I want to help him. I want to be with him. And now he’s my only patient.
First and foremost, he’s got to rest that leg. Doesn’t matter what happens with him and me and the things he does to me. He’s got to rest. That’s what matters now. “Come on. I’m taking you home.”
“Fuck, yeah,” he growls.
I brace his stomach with my palm. His stubble brushes past my cheek, and his fingers tighten on my shoulder.
There are various calls of Fuck you, Falconi! and Get better soon, man, as we head for the hallway. Frankie trots along beside us and Jimmy takes the empty carrier from me, slinging it over his shoulder. It’s adorable, and it makes me think immediately of what he’d look like holding a diaper bag.
Mary!
Halfway to the door, we are met by a guy who looks exactly like a grizzly bear, four hundred pounds at least. On his hoodie is the name VALDEZ. “You know, if you two are going to pretend not to know each other, you should really stop smiling so much,” he says, and squeezes some honey from a stick into his mouth.
Jimmy grabs a few of the sticks from his hand and tucks them into the pocket of his hoodie. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Valdez.” When he says it, he leans in to me just a little more.
“Sure, Costco. Sure. Just…” Valdez looks me up and down, then turns back to Jimmy. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” And he trundles off.
Which is when Jimmy pulls me along underneath him, bringing his lips close to my ear. “He got married to his wife after knowing her for a week. That is what he would do.”
I stare up at him. “You’re such a piece of work, Falcon.”
“Hey, hey!” He beams. “Now you’ve got it.”
Frankie marches along beside Jimmy. Five percent of his weight but every ounce the Big Man on Campus.
“I have a code of ethics, Jimmy,” I say, looking up at him. At his pecs and his neck and that jawline, good God.
He pulls me closer, as if he needs more support. “I love when you say my name.”
I feel my defenses weakening, but I’m staying strong. I am. I have to. “I don’t sleep with patients.”
Jimmy whacks the auto-open button on the wall and the double doors roll apart. The cold air blows in from outside, and a few snowflakes too. Frankie takes off and attacks a snow bank.
“Sleep?” Jimmy asks, turning one of the honey sticks over and over in his fingers, the way people do with pencils. I find it mesmerizing, hypnotic, and get lost in the size of those hands of his. “Who said anything about sleep?”
18
Jimmy
She is all business. She helps me into the car, and doesn’t really say anything at all. I can almost hear her gears spinning. Grinding.
Grind.
Fuck. This woman.
Anyway, I can tell she’s nervous. Maybe even a little angry. It’s not what I want her to be feeling right now. At all. I pop open the honey stick and work about an inch’s worth onto my tongue.
In my lap sits Frankie Knuckles, with his front paws on my knees. As we get on the highway, I help him look out the window, supporting his little barrel chest with my hand and making it so he can put his feet on the windowsill. We pass a semi-truck going slow on the shoulder. The thing has a bulldog on the side, just a logo, but he doesn’t like it. He lets out a low, small growl and puckers up his lips. A little puff of steam appears in front of his face from his hot breath on the cold glass. I wipe it off with my hand and he growls at the passing bulldog again. Mary grabs his panda from her bag and glances at me as she hands it to him. She looks incredibly anxious, and that’s not how I want her. There’s a big difference between on edge and on the edge.
I reach over and put my hand to her thigh. “Mary, nobody will find out. Fucking promise.”
“But you know! I know!” She thumps her chest with her mittened hand. “It’s bad enough I knocked you unconscious—talk about something a PT should never do to her patient! God!” Then, in a sort of protest, she turns the windshield wipers on high and they squeak against the flecks of snow.
“I wasn’t your patient then, and I wasn’t your patient last night.”
“You are now! And as a physical therapist, I should really recommend you not go punching anything, Jimmy. You’ve got shoulder problems and you’re working out at a boxing gym?”
I wince. “I don’t have them all the time. It actually feels fucking fine, until game time.”
Her eyes slide over to mine, but she doesn’t face me. She turns up the heater and snuggles down into her scarf.
Right. I know it’s not ideal. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a semi-successful, aging NFL quarterback, you’ve got to roll with the downs, good and bad. When you see an opening, you’ve got to fucking take it. “No way am I letting you slip through my fingers. And anyway, I’ll bet you can fix my shoulder. Nobody has ever fixed my shoulder.” I roll it in the socket. The weird thing is, it feels fine.
“Jimmy! I’m not a mechanic! You’re not a Honda! I can’t just fix things like that,” she says, attempting to snap under her mittens. She growls a little and then grips the wheel. “This is my job. I take it very seriously.”
“Which I totally fucking respect.”
Clearing away the steam for Frankie again, I give Mary a second to cool down. I don’t know her that well, but I get that I just hijacked her entire schedule, which would pretty much piss anybody off. And she’s a tough cookie. Probably doesn’t like the idea of anybody wanting to take care of her, or look after her, or protect her, or put chains on her tires, but that’s too fucking bad. Because
if I have my way, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I pop open a second honey straw and hold it out in front of her mouth. “I don’t want any honey,” she snaps at the highway.
“Be as mad as you want, pussycat, but don’t say no to a good thing.”
She huffs and then snatches the straw out of my fingers with her teeth.
I’m not a cheater. I play clean, but this is a different kind of game. This is the end run, the secret pass. Shit I know we can get away with, if she’s with me. “All right. Let’s be logical. Are you going to say anything?”
She glances over again and grips the wheel a little harder with her mittens. “No.” She gnashes on the end of the honey straw.
“Am I going to say anything?”
Her pretty, big eyes narrow slightly at the road, and she shifts her hair to one side, playing with the bobby pin that’s holding her bangs off her face.
The silence is fucking deafening. “You think I’m going to blow this? I realize I don’t look that smart, but do you think I’m an idiot?”
Her shoulders relax a little. “No,” she answers, hanging on to the wheel with one hand now, and working some more honey into her mouth with the other.
Man, oh man, those lips. I love to watch those lips suck. Christ.
“So, relax.” I grip her thigh a little more firmly.
“This is insane.” She takes the straw in two fingers and draws out a taste with her teeth.
Dude. I try to give her honey to distract her, and now I can’t even put my subject in front of my verb.
“Cat got your tongue?” she says, giving me side eyes.
“No, just…do you make a lot of men speechless?”
She turns to me slowly, smiling around the straw and biting it with her molars. “Hundreds. Thousands even.” She rolls her eyes.
In my lap, Frankie Knuckles curls up. I take his panda and do a little puppet show for him, making it walk up and down my leg. His tail swishes against my jacket.
Next to me, Mary swallows hard. I can hear it over the heater. The doubt. The hesitation. The uncertainty.
“I’m not giving up, Mary. Not yet.” I make the panda dance over the gearbox onto her leg.
“You are impossible.”
I go on with the panda puppet show and make it dance up and down, animating it with my fingers so its head bounces back and forth. I do this very same thing for Annie and her purple giraffe.
She looks to me, and to the dog, and back to me again. Then she refocuses on the road, softer now. Not so freaked out. Not so stressed.
“There, now. See? This is exactly how I want you,” I tell her, running my palm up her leg.
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“I want you calm. I want you ready. I want you mine.”
Back at the apartment, I direct her to the garage and hit the button on my keys. She pulls inside cautiously, like maybe she’s dinged the roll bar on low exits a time or two. “Where is everybody? Where are all the cars?” she asks, heading down the ramp as the door rolls shut.
“Just us in here,” I tell her, watching for her reaction.
“You’re kidding me.”
I take the empty honey straw from her lips. “Nope. I own this place. Want to move in?”
She sort of gives me that look again, the you’re impossible look.
“Take your pick. Pretty sure units six and nine are wide open.”
She answers that with a dead-arm punch.
I pretend mortal injury and she gives me a side-glance and smirk. She pulls in right next to my Yukon and cuts the engine. “This whole building is yours?”
“Yeah. Another investment.”
She furrows her brow at me. “You make a lot of investments.”
“Mm-hmmm. Never know. Might meet someone who I want to get serious about. Might want to take weekend trips to Belize.”
Boom. I don’t even wait for an answer. I pop open my door and make super dramatic groans, “trying” to get out of the Wrangler, and within a few seconds, she’s run around to help me. Her arm slips around my waist and her palm comes to my abs again. Perfect. I pull her close and feel the wool of her hat on my chin.
I feel kinda bad about it. Kinda. Not exactly guilty, but I’m also not really used to playing the wimp. But anything I can do to get her close to me seems fair. As soon as we step into the elevator, Frankie trotting behind her, I shift her up against the wall and hook one finger over her scarf to get a look at what kind of damage I did.
“Fuuuuuck,” I whisper.
“I can’t believe you did that to me.” She touches the hickey lightly. “I don’t even know when it happened.”
Oh, I do. I remember it fucking exactly. Took me damn near a minute. “When you were coming the second time,” I tell her. “That’s when. I think somewhere between no, no, no, and, Jimmy, oh God, Jimmy.”
Another smack to the shoulder, but this one way sweeter than the dead arm. She brings her hand to my bicep. I flex for her. She moans a little, trying to swallow it but having no fucking luck at all.
The hickey is fucking epic, because I wasn’t only kissing and sucking, but biting, too. “I feel a little bad for defacing the beauty.”
The laugh comes out of her nose in a soft, warm breath. “You don’t. You love it. I can tell,” she says, and leans her hips into my hard-on.
Hell yes, I love it. I just wish I’d given her more than one. But it’s early in the season. And there’s plenty of time to play.
“You’ll heal.” I lick the spot again. “I’ll heal you.”
The noise she makes, it’s the noise I’ve heard women make when they take the first bite of something they adore. I love that noise.
The elevator door opens and Frankie runs out first, sniffing the baseboards in the hallway and inexplicably growling at an outlet.
She pays no attention, so neither do I. I walk her backward up against one of the empty apartment doors, holding on to her hips and moving my fingers past the waistband of her pants.
“Is this where you start telling me what we’re going to do?” she says, running her finger up my neck, along my jaw, and then along the edge of my ear. “Because I really, really like that.”
Fuck yes. I press into her a little more, a little harder, a little more possessively. “Yeah. That’s right now.”
She moans a little, up against my chest, and I feel her fingers slide just past the elastic of my boxers, little ice cubes warming up against my body heat. I slip my hand along her hair and move it from her ear. I kiss that place above her jaw. “Last night, we fucked. But today, it’s going to be different. Today I’m hungry…”
Now I can see her heartbeat in her neck again, that little pulsing quiver of the blood running through her veins. “Hungry for what?” she says, all quiet and dark.
I like leaving her hanging, not answering her questions. Pinching her jaw in my hand, I tip her head to the side and palm her pussy from the outside. I swear to God, I can feel her wetness all the way out here. This fucking woman, I am telling you…
“Last night, I was so fucking gone in you I forgot where I was.” I cup her pelvic bone, compressing her lips. I feel the seam of her panties against the heel of my hand. “You’re going to have to pay for that.”
Her mouth opens slightly; her eyes get a little bit shiny. I draw my palm up her stomach and then go back down, this time right up against her skin. I slide my middle finger along her opening. She grips me tighter, and her hips buck back a little, but she’s relaxed. Not nervous anymore. Not mad. Just ready and wet and exactly how she needs to be. “What are you going to do to me?”
“I’ve got a list.” I tap on my forehead. “It’s called Anything I Want.”
That’s when I kiss her. Kiss the shit out of her; kiss away the words, the questions, and even the air. Her lip is pinched between our teeth, so I kiss her harder and let it pinch a little more. I drive the Y of my hand around her throat. The longer I kiss her, the better it gets. The more she dissolves. The more the
little wildcat tames.
“I’m going to make you mine, Mary Monahan. No matter what the fuck you say about rules or jobs or any of that shit. Because there is something going on here, and I know you feel it too.”
That’s when she brings her hand around behind my head and runs her fingers through my hair. “This isn’t going to be ordinary, is it? You and me?” she says, almost in a moan. You and me. Fuck. I actually feel the shiver run through her body and into mine.
“Make no fucking mistake. When I hurt you, if I hurt you,” I tell her, “That’s me. Worshipping you.”
“Jesus, Jimmy…”
I need to get inside her. I am too far away. She is a fucking drug, and I am hooked. “The earth will pivot on this. The sun will rise and set on this.”
Her breathing gets heavier. Her pupils dilate, and I watch them open up in spite of the bright halogens above us. Her grip on my side gets a little stronger, and she pulls me even closer.
“The things you do to me,” she says, as I put another finger in her and she hisses into my ear. “The things you do.”
“Last night wasn’t even close to what we can do, Mary. We can make the world disappear. We can make everything else just a whisper.”
Her eyes flutter, and she leans her head back on the door, opening her throat to me. I lick along the spot where I bruised her with my mouth, and then move my tongue down to the hollow of her neck.
Deep in my cock, I feel that pressure for her, that need. This woman, she’s not some cheerleader I’ll never see again. She’s not some fan. Our lives have crossed over on top of one another, and that seems as good a sign as any to go for it. Take the plunge. See what happens. See where this feeling goes. “You get one chance to get away from me, Mary. Just one. Say the word right now, and I’ll let you go.”
But she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she presses her pelvis into me and lets her bag drop to the floor. Which is all the yes I need.
“I’m going to take you into that apartment, and I’m going to show you what you do to me. Out here in the world, we’re normal. But in there, when the door shuts, you know what happens?”
Hail Mary Page 10