Risking It

by Angela Quarles

  Never breaking eye contact, he puts his weight on one elbow and smoothes a hand up along my thigh, the skim of his palm along my skin raising goosebumps in its wake. Up my hip and waist he goes, until he gently cups my breast. He’s too tall to reach it with his mouth, but he tweaks the tip and slowly massages my breast.

  “Jane.” His voice is low, gravelly.

  “Yes?” I tear my gaze from how his long, talented fingers tease and pinch.

  His eyes search mine. “I’m going to start moving.”

  “Yes, please,” I whisper.

  He chuckles, his gaze still intent on mine. He rotates his hips, hitting me in just the right spot with his pubic bone. I swear to God, I feel as if I’m close to coming again.

  “And I’m not going to stop.”

  “Please don’t.”

  He pinches my nipple, and I gasp.

  “If I may continue?” He raises both eyebrows in question.

  I squeeze his butt again and roll my hips, and when he closes his eyes and hisses? That feminine power surges through me.

  “Yeah, fuck.” His Adam’s apple bobs. “I’m telling you, Jane. I’m going to last about three thrusts. Five at the most. But I’m going to do my damnedest to make each one count. I want you to feel each and every one, okay? Feel how I fit inside you, feel how full I make you, and I want you to understand on each of those thrusts, how much you do get me worked up. So much so, I’m not going to be able to last long with my new fucking girlfriend.”

  I know it shouldn’t, but that word melts me a little more. He’s evidently not too scared to voice that much about what’s potentially going on here with us.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He eases out, his butt slipping from my hands—just out of reach—and then he rocks slowly back in with an insistent push right at the end. For emphasis. “Feel that, Jane?”

  “Yes,” I whisper and grip his backside again.

  The hand at my breast moves down to my hip, and he drags out. All of my thoughts and feelings narrow down to the searing heat of him leaving me, the wonderful slick friction of it, and then the slight ache of being almost empty of him, before he glides slowly back in. Filling me.

  And as he does, I understand what he’s trying to tell me. I feel his thrust and how it makes me feel, but I watch and listen and feel what it does to him too. Oh God. Tears well in my eyes again.

  I feel powerful and beautiful. Wanted.

  “I haven’t started yet,” he says on a gasp.

  “You haven’t?”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “This is me manfully trying to draw this out a little longer before I lose control and start pounding into you.”

  I clench around him at his frank words and the visual that forms in my mind’s eye, and he groans.

  “You’re a talker, aren’t you?” I whisper on a half-laugh.

  “Yeah, surprises me too. Never have before. I think I’m stalling.”

  I smile and squeeze his butt cheeks. “I think you are too.” I push my hips up a bit.

  His nostrils flare on an inhale, and the edge of his mouth curls up. “Touch yourself.”

  A jolt of trepidation and excitement tightens my stomach. With my past boyfriends, I had the distinct impression that doing this insulted their prowess. Like it was an indictment. But this is Aiden.

  “Like this?” Good God, is that my voice? It’s all low and husky. I skim my hand up his back and some instinct has me bring my fingers to his mouth. I brush a fingertip along that fat part of his lower lip that drives me wild. Impossibly, his eyes darken, and he sucks my fingers. Desire coils tighter at the sight. I bring my hand down to where we’re joined. He breaks my gaze, following my movement. My fingers probe my swollen clit and the cool wetness from my fingers touches me. I gasp.

  “Five strokes is a fucking pipe dream,” he groans, gripping my hip tighter. “Yeah, like that, baby. I’m going to come fast and hard, and I want you coming too.”

  His words make me tremble, and my fingers stroke hard, chasing the need. He grips my hip, slides out and slams into me.

  “Aiden!”

  The thrust feels like possession, like desire, like…everything.

  I spread my legs wider, one hand skipping up and down his muscled back trying to find purchase, the other working my clit.

  And then he snaps. His hips are frenzied thrusts, pounding into me over and over. And now instead of it being what I feel, or seeing how he feels, it’s an us thing as emotion builds with tension on each stroke. My back pulls tight as an orgasm bursts so hard through me that I’m clamping down hard on his butt and my mouth drops open as if I’m going to scream but no words come out. And the pleasure keeps building and spilling, building and spilling, as I ride his frantic thrusts. He captures my mouth with his, our tongues tangle, and with a grunt he thrusts one more time. His whole body goes rigid, and he gasps into my mouth.

  I whip my legs up tight around his hips, my arms around his back, as he pulses and kicks deep inside me, making me shudder again with another climax.

  He collapses against me, holding our sweaty bodies tightly together, and I relish how he feels against me, inside me.

  I can’t lift my arms. Seriously. I’m…yeah. Can’t move.

  But who cares, right?

  I don’t know what our future brings, but for once I feel the courage to see.

  Chapter 23

  Jane

  “So you and Aiden, huh?” Pepper stands from the hotel lobby’s chair.

  The men’s game is in less than an hour, so we’re heading there now. It’s afternoon, and I haven’t seen Aiden since our early morning wake-up sex-a-palooza. Before he left to meet the team at some god-awful time, he had the strangest request—don my pj’s. His eyes flared with heat when I groggily complied, and he promptly divested me of them, leading to the sheet-scorching sex.

  I cinch my messenger bag over my shoulder and grin. “Yeah.”

  She nods. “He seems like a really nice guy. He owns the Alligator’s Butt, right?”

  “Yep.” And I like that she sees him differently than Claire. Last night, I texted Claire to let her know I was here, since I knew she was set to fly in with the women’s team. I was worried she’d want to meet up, but she texted back to say she was going straight to bed. We’re meeting her at the game.

  Last night in the elevator, Pepper and Luke were the first to witness my relationship with Aiden. I don’t know what flowed through me when Luke started his lecture, but I think I was feeling the weight of not only my guilt in misjudging Aiden, but also how much Claire had misread him, and I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  Pepper and I spend the short drive to the fields finding out about each other and how we met the guys. “Claire seems totally cool,” she says when she learns Claire’s my bestie. “I can’t wait to see the women’s team play.”

  Claire plays camogie, the girl’s version of hurling, but they don’t have a full team, so they’re doing an exhibition match with a couple of other not-full teams to get in some game time. Their game is after the guys’ match.

  Soon we’re pulling into the sports complex where the playoffs are being held. The parking lot is crowded, so we don’t find a spot in the shade.

  She jumps out of the car. “Ready to see some hot men play a rough sport?”

  “How dangerous is it?” I have no clue about this sport. I just know it has a ball and a stick.

  She shrugs and heads toward the fields, and I follow. “On par with rugby, I’d say. It’s confusing as hell, so don’t panic that the rules seem all over the place. But the basics are there’s a round ball, they can hit it with a stick, or with their hands—”

  “Ouch.”

  She glances at me. “Yeah. Some of those balls have been clocked at over a hundred miles an hour, and they catch them in their bare hands.”

  I stop walking. “At that speed?”

  “Well, no, I suspect those are hit with the stick, but still. Anyway, three points if it makes i
t into the goal net, or one point if it’s over the goal bar and between the posts.”

  “Like a field goal.”

  “You got it.”

  By now we’re filing through the gate with other spectators, and I see Claire just beyond, waiting on us.

  She comes up and gives me a big hug. “I’m so glad you could come.”

  “Me too.” After Aiden left, I spent the morning lounging by the pool, reading and finishing up my journal. This time, I pasted in all the pictures of Aiden, daring to give shape to what’s going on between us. It’s my journal. Not Claire’s.

  It was scary, the hope embodied in that action, though.

  Claire and Pepper greet each other, and I turn to Pepper. “Meet you in the stands?”

  “You bet. Don’t dawdle too much, though. Our men are going to want to come by for a good luck kiss.” She waves and angles toward the stands.

  Claire rounds on me. “Hold. The. Effing. Door. Our men?” She’s got a you-go-girl grin for me, which I know is about to disappear.

  My face heats. “About that.” I pull out the journal and hand it over. “I had a great time on the trip.”

  She laughs as she takes it, opening it to the first page. “Must have if you met someone on it. I knew this would be good for you.” She fist pumps and starts flipping pages. And then she pauses once she gets to the Bongoland entry, because now the photos include Aiden. She flips through faster and takes in the ones at the end showing us at the earlier stops. The ones I’d left out.

  “The Turd? He was on this trip with you?” She snaps the journal shut. “What the hell, Jane? This was to help you move past him.” She actually looks as if she’s about to go into Mama-Bear mode.

  I hold up a hand, the same feeling of injustice filling me like it did in the elevator last night. “Stop right there. First of all, he’s not a turd. That was your nickname for him, and I went along. Also? You’re the one who read way more into what happened and thought I was all broken up over him. I was crushed, yes, when you punctured my image of him that morning. But then, I don’t know, I just accepted the outcome.”

  She shakes her head. “You got more into your shell. You just didn’t see it.”

  I shrug. Maybe she’s right. But that’s behind me now. “You misjudged him.”

  “But—”

  “You did. Trust me, okay?”

  She looks hard at me, her eyes searching mine. She chews her lower lip. “Okay. I just hate to see you get hurt.”

  “I’m a big girl.”

  She hands me back my journal. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Claire’s a strange enigma. She’s full-on tomboy. She probably couldn’t care less whether her nails are manicured or not. Sees it, and other girly things, as a waste of time. But she’s got a protective, mothering instinct that is fierce to witness at times.

  We start walking to the stands. “So have you seen Conor yet?”

  Her step falters, but she recovers fast. “Why would you ask that?”

  Payback. “Oh, so we’re still pretending we don’t have the hots for that Irishman?”

  She waves a hand in front of her and makes a pfth sound. “Crazy talk.”

  “God. You’re in such denial.”

  “Whatever. Let’s get you a beer, okay? I can’t have one, so you’re drinking one for me.”

  I laugh. “Ooookaaay.”

  Soon I have a beer in hand, the side of the clear plastic cup already wet with condensation, and we make our way up the aisle of steps to where Pepper’s sitting with a small group. One of them’s Aiden, watching me with a huge grin on his face, and my heart does a little skippy dance.

  Then my face heats just thinking about where I’d last seen that impish grin. This morning, between my legs.

  I have no time to even worry how he’s going to play this in front of everyone because he’s bounding down the aisle, his steps clanging a staccato beat on the metal. He yanks me up against him. I squeal, because a) he took me by surprise, b) he’s already a little sweaty, and c) my beer sloshed onto my hand.

  He gives me a big huge smack on the lips and sets me down, and I know I’ve got the dopiest grin on my face. I don’t even care.

  Luke treads down the steps and slaps his shoulder. “Game time, lover boy.”

  Aiden ignores him. He holds my chin. “You’ll be here after the game, right?”

  “Of course. We need to celebrate your win, don’t we?”

  He gives a quick nod with a mock-serious face. “Damn straight.” Another quick peck, and he follows the rest of the guys onto their side of the field.

  The taste and heat of him lingers on my mouth, and as I watch him flow into interacting with his team, I’m struck by a new feeling. Normally, I’d feel so out of my element here. Hello, I’m at a sporting event! But…it doesn’t matter. For once, I’m in a social situation outside of my comfort zone and…I’m fine. More than fine.

  Aiden

  Holy fucking shit. We might win this thing. If I can make this penalty goal. There’s only a few minutes on the clock, and we’re one point behind.

  I’m winded, my legs are burning, but never have I felt more pumped. As if I can do anything. Part of the feeling is due to a certain person watching me in the stands. But that’s not all of it. I think, up till now, I never really believed we could win. Or believed it mattered.

  I joined and agreed to take it seriously, but I didn’t actually believe. Let’s just say I thought a lot of it was wishful thinking that also keeps me in shape. But the discipline and hard work Conor and Luke insisted on from day one are paying off.

  Since I can’t hit the sliotar past this point, I take it back a couple of yards to give myself running room, while I tell myself to calm the fuck down—my heart’s pounding like a mofo.

  The team ranges behind me as five of their guys line the goal box. Luke and Conor nod, and Paolo’s grinning like a fiend. Because they all know what the opposing team doesn’t. Sure, I’m predictable on the field as a point scorer, but when I have a chance like this—a controlled bat—I go for the goal. Plus a point will only put us in overtime. A goal will win it.

  I set the sliotar on the field, adjusting it a smidge, and jog back a few steps. I turn. And run. Everything narrows down to the sound of my breathing and my feet hitting the grass. I slip my hurley under the sliotar and fling it up. My arm muscles sing as they pull back and then that jolt when I make a perfect connection. Smack!

  Sure enough, most of them were poised for a jump in an attempt to block a point, and that pretty little ball drives hard into a gap in the lower left pocket of the goal.

  It all happens so fast. I’m still running forward from the momentum of my bat, but at that sweet sight, I spin around and pump a fist into the air. I may have also given a shout. Hey, it was wicked, and right now I’m feeling like Superman. Hell, maybe I’m Supermouth here too, cuz I’m screaming myself hoarse.

  There’s still time on the clock, but there’s no fucking way that wasn’t the winning shot.

  Their goalie bats it down field, but sure enough, they don’t get far when the whistle blows.

  Game. We did it!

  Then a bunch of sweaty teammates smother me, and we do a jar-bounce-hug in one giant ball off the field.

  What a fucking high. I got the girl and the winning goal.

  Jane

  They won!

  The last several minutes we’ve been acting like scream-freaks. Ever since Aiden made his run down field and got the penalty shot. And while that totally sounds as if I have a handle on how the game’s played, that’d be a big fat no. But the rush to stand, the happy grins, and frenzied clapping has gotta be good.

  Pepper confirms it. “We won!”

  We make a mad dash down the bleachers to greet the team. It’s just five of us cheering, but we feel mighty in our support.

  We reach the ground, and Aiden’s gaze homes in on mine. He pushes away from the guys pounding his back and runs to me. How the heck does he still
have the energy? I’m exhausted for him. He grabs me in a bear hug, lifts me off the ground, and plants one right on my lips. He’s now full-on sweaty, but this time I don’t squeak.

  The energy of the game still vibrates through him. An adrenaline rush for me by osmosis.

  “We did it,” he says between breaths.

  I give him another kiss. “No, you did it.” I squeeze him tight, loving that I can do this, that I’m so comfortable and not second-guessing everything I say or do.

  “Shh, let’s keep that to ourselves, okay? Team spirit and all.”

  I laugh, but just then the others walk by and each one gives him either a slap on his shoulder or butt and says, “You did it, man,” or “You the man,” or “Way to go. Now, to celebrate!” Each and every one, he fervently brushes off the praise.

  After the last goes by, he touches his forehead to mine and whispers against my lips, “Got a present for you.”

  He’s hard against my stomach. I snort and push into it a little. “I don’t think that’s something we can unwrap right now.”

  He throws his head back with a full-on laugh, and the vibrations tease me all up and down my body, flush against his. His teammates, and Pepper and Claire, look on in wonder. They’re not even pretending they’re not watching.

  “Hang on.” He disengages from me, hustles to his duffel bag, and returns. From its depths, he lifts up a hot pink gift bag.

  “Oh! A real present.”

  He chuckles, grabs my hip, and gives me a little shake. “Yes. A real present. Ran to the store after the team meeting.”

  He laces our fingers together and tugs me up and over to a row, away from everyone still lingering.

  I take the bag, and we sit down next to each other, the metal seat hot from the sun. The gift’s definitely from a specialty store, because the tissue paper is all fancy and done with perfect peaks.

  I pull the paper out and peer inside.

  And my whole body flushes with heat. I swear to God, I clench right there on the metal seat.

  Because at the bottom of the bag is a hot pink vibrator.