The Player

by Rhonda Nelson

“I want you so damned bad,” Jamie told her. He brushed his fingers past her butterfly and smiled against her neck when they came back wet.

  “Then take me,” she taunted, running a finger over his engorged head. She wriggled out of her panties.

  A second later he’d located a condom, another three and he was ready. He whirled her around, sat her on the edge of the massage table, then spread her legs and in one solid thrust, pushed into her. Her breath caught in her throat, her lids fluttered closed and her head dropped back, seemingly too heavy for her neck.

  Interminable seconds passed as Jamie absorbed the feel of her around him. His heart segued into an irregular rhythm, his legs shook, and he had to lock his jaw to keep from roaring in primal, almost caveman-like approval. Every hair on his body prickled with awareness and his stomach did a little pirouette of pleasure. Nothing in his past experience could have prepared him for the complete rightness of this moment. Everything began and ended here, Jamie thought, shaken—reformed and reborn—to the very core.

  He looked down at her, bare breasts, sweet belly, his rod buried into her warmth, then his gaze tangled with hers—soothing and blue and heartbreakingly beautiful—and James Aidan Flanagan did the one thing he’d sworn he’d never do.

  He fell head over heels in love.

  11

  * * *

  IT TOOK EVERY OUNCE of willpower Audrey possessed not to pass out. The feel of Jamie’s body inside her—the desperate need in his eyes—was so intense it literally took her breath away.

  So far, she hadn’t been able to get it back.

  He was big and solid and his presence consumed her. And those gorgeous hazel eyes…Tortured, anguished, wondering, wistful and curiously doomed. She didn’t have to be psychic to know what he was thinking.

  She could feel it.

  He wanted her, but didn’t want to. He needed her help, but would never willingly accept it. He was hurting and angry and bitter and hopeless.

  She’d felt those emotions and more when she’d touched his tattoo, a permanent tribute to a man who’d given the ultimate sacrifice for his country. Naturally when she’d pressed for more information, he’d derailed her with sex. A blatant stall tactic, but how could she complain when he felt so right seated between her legs?

  Audrey tightened around him, drew him even farther into her body. She watched the veins in his neck strain, watched him lock his jaw and a thrill of feminine power whipped through her, urging her to take even more. She angled her hips forward, pushing him even deeper inside her and saw little stars dance in her peripheral vision.

  God, he felt good. Better than anything she could have ever imagined.

  Jamie withdrew, then plunged back in sending shock waves of sexual delight pulsing through her. Her womb contracted, slickening her folds. They’d barely started and yet, amazingly, she could already feel the quickening of climax tingling in her clit. This felt so right and it had been so very long—so very, very long—since she’d had a proper orgasm, she couldn’t bear to wait a second longer. She wanted to savor it, but couldn’t summon the strength. She worked herself beneath him, forcing him to up the tempo to give her more.

  Jamie answered with a wicked chuckle, wrapped a muscled arm around her waist and pounded into her. He was hot, hard and thrilling. Harder, harder, then faster and faster still. Deep then shallow, a fabulous combination designed to energize every nerve inside of her. She was coming apart, Audrey decided, as the tension inside her wound tighter and tighter. Any second now she was simply going to break and fly into a million pieces.

  Jamie bent forward, licked a wild path over both nipples, then sucked one into the hot cavern of his mouth.

  She fractured.

  Her back bowed so hard off the massage table she feared it would break, her mouth opened in a silent scream and she dug her nails into his ass, holding him there while she convulsed around him. Every contraction around the hot, hard length of him made her limbs weaken. The orgasm tore through her, whipped her insides into an erupting volcano of sensation so perfect it brought tears to her eyes.

  The force of her own release triggered Jamie’s. His lips peeled away from his teeth and a feral growl of approval, which would have made a caveman proud, ripped from his throat. He lodged himself firmly into her, so tight and so deep you couldn’t have gotten a toothpick between them.

  It was more than just an orgasm, Audrey realized as her gaze tangled with his, it was a statement.

  She was his. He’d claimed her.

  For all intents and purposes, he’d just planted a no trespassing sign in her vagina. It was barbaric and romantic and her idiot heart soared with ridiculous joy. Chest heaving, she let her head fall back and a long peal of glorious laughter echoed up her throat.

  Evidently pleased with himself, Jamie bent and kissed her forehead. “You look happy.”

  “What tipped you off? The smile or the orgasm?”

  He chuckled, carefully withdrew, then helped her up, thank God, because she couldn’t have managed it on her own strength. “Both.” He cocked his head toward the back of her house. “Are you up for a little lather-rinse-repeat?” he asked.

  Another dark thrill coursed through her. “You want to take a shower?”

  His voice lowered an octave. “Among other things.”

  Ooh-la-la, Audrey thought as, unbelievably, her womb issued another greedy contraction. That must be where the “repeat” part came in. Jamie, naked, wet, needy and hard…

  Oh, yeah. She could definitely go for that. Among other things.

  HE’D DONE IT, Jamie thought. After a lifetime of being very careful—of always maintaining an emotional distance—in the course of the past four days he’d abandoned and broken every bachelor rule. He and Audrey had had more than three unofficial dates. She’d eaten off his plate. And, he thought, as his gaze traced the beautiful lines of her slumbering face, he’d spent the night with her.

  In her bed, no less.

  Strangely enough, no clap of thunder rent the heavens and the first rays of dawn peeking above the horizon didn’t appear any different from any other he’d witnessed in his thirty-some-odd years on this earth.

  And yet everything had changed.

  Not in the world around him, Jamie thought. No, she’d changed his world from within. The world he lived in might not have changed, but the one inside him no longer remotely resembled the one he’d been a part of before.

  Somehow, someway, when he hadn’t been paying attention, he’d fallen in love with her. He wouldn’t have knowingly done it—he was too much of a coward—but he couldn’t deny that it had happened nonetheless. And never had that been more startlingly clear than when he’d pushed into her and looked into those calm clear blue eyes. She’d been so perfect that he’d felt the back of his lids burn with some unnamed emotion he hadn’t had the courage to claim in years.

  No doubt, he’d become the butt of his friends’ jokes—oh, how the mighty have fallen, they’d tease—and Garrett would most likely make good on his threat, but this morning, in this very instant, frankly he just didn’t give a damn.

  So long as he was with her, the rest of the world could simply go to hell.

  He wasn’t going to worry about Garrett or what he would say. He wasn’t going to worry about his role in meddling in her private business. He wasn’t going to worry about falling in love and the resulting powerlessness that would no doubt bring. He just wanted to be with her.

  Audrey’s head was on his shoulder, her sweet hand curled palm down against his chest—his heart, specifically—and he could feel her plump breast resting against his side. Moses lay sprawled at the foot of the bed—on his feet, thank you very much—and from his vantage point beside the window, Jamie could see a couple of squirrels leaping from tree to tree. Their antics drew a smile. He felt Audrey stir and turned to watch her wake.

  Her eyes were heavy-lidded with the last vestiges of sleep. She caught him watching her, smiled sleepily, then stretched like a cat. “Goodmo
rning,” she murmured groggily.

  “Morning, beautiful,” Jamie told her.

  “I’m glad you stayed. I’d pegged you for the leaving type.”

  In another life, with any other woman—but not with her. His gaze tangled with hers. “You’re worth waking up with.”

  She smiled at the compliment and a stain of pink washed over her cheeks. Amazing, Jamie thought. He’d taken her six ways to Sunday last night—on the massage table, in her shower, against the hall wall and in her bed…and yet she couldn’t take a compliment from him without blushing. Odd that he should find that endearing.

  “So are you.” She reached up and tousled his hair. “Your curls are all mussed.”

  “So are yours.”

  She grimaced. “But yours are sexy, whereas mine look like they’ve been hit with a weed-whacker and styled with a garden rake.”

  “Not true,” Jamie told her, fingering one long curl. He wrapped it around his index finger and tugged her toward him for a sweet kiss. “I love your hair. It makes me hot.”

  Another one of those nervous smiles. Intrigued, Jamie sat up on one elbow and stared at her. “Are you not accustomed to compliments, or do they just make you uncomfortable?”

  “Both,” Audrey told him.

  He traced a finger down the achingly familiar slope of her cheek. “We’ll have to work on that.”

  “You could stand a little work yourself,” she told him, her gaze searching his.

  Since he knew she was referring to his inability to open up, Jamie decided a subject change was in order. “We could stand to work on breakfast,” he improvised. “Are you hungry?”

  Though she clearly wrestled with pursuing the line of conversation she’d started, to Jamie’s immense relief Audrey let it drop. Not permanently, he knew, but at least he’d gotten a reprieve. She nodded. “Yeah. Let me take Moses out, then I’ll fix us something.”

  “Let me,” Jamie offered. He pushed up and planted his feet on the floor. “You cooked last night.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “You don’t know your way around my kitchen.”

  Jamie chuckled. “I think I can manage,” he drawled, shooting her a wicked grin. For someone who was determined to help the world, she wasn’t very good at accepting help herself, Jamie noted, intrigued.

  Audrey chewed the corner of her lip and her eyes twinkled with humor. “Smart-ass.”

  “How about ‘Thank you, Jamie, that sounds nice’?”

  “Thank you, Jamie,” she replied dutifully. “I like my eggs over medium and prefer strawberry jam on my toast.”

  Ah, now that was more like it. “What am I?” he teased. “Your short-order cook?”

  Audrey stood, shrugged into her robe and shot him an unrepentant grin. “You asked for it.”

  What could he say to that? She was right.

  “Come on, Moses,” she said, her voice trailing off in a sigh. “Time to give your offering to Mother Earth.” She paused, turned and shot him another smile. “And there’s absolutely nothing short about you.”

  “Thank you,” Jamie told her, feigning a humble nod. “That’s how you take a compliment.”

  Rather than comment, Audrey merely shook her head and left. Though he dreaded it, Jamie waited until he heard the back door close, then checked the display on his cell phone. He cringed when he saw two missed calls—both were from the Colonel.

  “Flanagan, I want an update. Give me a call back ASAP.”

  The second call was received at eleven-thirty and was a lot less cordial. “Flanagan, you’d better be taking a late-night basket-weaving lesson because if you are doing anything—anything—that you’re not supposed to be doing with my granddaughter, I will be on the first available plane up there and will personally tear your nuts from your body. Do not toy with my granddaughter’s affections.”

  Was it toying with her affections if he wanted to be the sole object of her affection? Jamie wondered. Didn’t matter. He sincerely doubted that the Colonel would recognize the difference.

  For a moment Jamie considered telling Audrey about the real reason for his visit. Given what they’d shared and everything he wanted to share in the future, it didn’t seem right to keep it from her. She’d be pissed at first, of course, and he could hardly blame her, but she wasn’t completely unreasonable. She’d recognize that her grandfather had only had her best interests at heart and that he’d merely been repaying a favor.

  Ultimately, though, he decided against it. Audrey had never had any intention of shackling herself to that self-important blowhard, as the Colonel had put it. And she needn’t ever know that anyone had interfered, least of all him. And this worked out nicely for him, as he wasn’t altogether sure that she would see things the way that he wanted her to. Self-serving? Manipulative? Selfish?

  Certainly.

  But the end justified the means here, Jamie decided, because it would damned hard to love her properly if she hated him.

  And the idea of Audrey hating him was…unthinkable. What were his plans? Aside from making her breakfast, then making love to her again, he didn’t have any. But he knew that in any future plans he had, he wanted her in them.

  “A-HA!”

  In the process of coming around the corner of her house, Audrey started, swallowed a scream, then pressed a hand to her rapidly beating heart. “Tewanda, what the hell are you doing?” she snapped. “You scared the life out of me.” She glared at Moses. “Some guard dog you are,” she mumbled.

  “I was waiting on you,” Tewanda told her. “He’s in there, isn’t he? Stella got her groove back last night, eh?” she asked, her voice loaded with innuendo. She danced around in a little circle. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. I can tell. You’ve got the glow. The orgasm aura.”

  “Shut up,” Audrey hissed, shooting a furtive look over her shoulder. “He’ll hear you.”

  Tewanda sidled forward. “Well?” she asked pointedly, her eyes dancing with do-tell mischief.

  “Well what?”

  She let go an exasperated huff. “How was it?”

  Audrey wanted to hold back, to make her audacious friend suffer, but ultimately she couldn’t do it. She giggled—actually giggled. “It. Was. Amazing.”

  Tewanda did her little dance again. “I knew it! Some guys you can just tell, you know, and the two of you were casting sparks from the get-go.” She paused. “So what are you going to do about Derrick? Cutting him lose, right? Telling him no? Adios, sayonara, goodbye, don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out?”

  “Tewanda.” Honestly, Audrey thought, stifling the urge to laugh. She didn’t know what had made her friend happier—that she’d finally had magnificent sex or that she was breaking up with Derrick.

  “Well, you can’t mean to stay with him, right?” Tewanda asked. She paused, considered her. “There’s more here with Jamie already than there’s ever been with Derrick. Hell, even I can see that.”

  She was right, Audrey knew. Four days into a relationship with Jamie had yielded more emotion than fourteen months with Derrick. Jamie did it for her on all levels. He was brilliant and funny, a bit wounded but not damaged beyond repair, though she knew he didn’t believe that. He was loyal and gorgeous and…and she’d fallen for him, Audrey realized helplessly.

  It was that simple and that complicated.

  The idea that he was supposed to leave tomorrow made her previously happy heart constrict with panic. She didn’t want him to leave. Ever, she thought with a wry twist of her lips, though that might be a tad premature.

  All she knew was that she wanted him. She wanted to share every dawn and every sunset, every victory and every setback. She wanted to always see those laughing hazel eyes and bask in that crooked sexy grin. She wanted more lather, rinse and repeat, Audrey thought with a small grin as her insides did another little meltdown.

  But most importantly, she wanted to help him. She was close, she knew. She could tell they were teetering on the edge of a breakthrough. Meaning tha
t she’d just about pushed him to the breaking point and every bit of that pent-up grief, regret and misplaced guilt was going to come boiling to the surface. He’d come dangerously close last night and, while she could have pushed this morning, intuition had told her to hold back.

  Though he’d derailed her with sex last night, she didn’t want anything coming between them in bed. Bed needed to be a safe zone, Audrey thought. For whatever reason, she got the distinct impression that it hadn’t been for Jamie. That he rarely, if ever, lingered for any intimacy.

  Moses did his business, then trotted back to her side.

  “So what now?” Tewanda asked. “Are you still sticking to the schedule or are you going to improvise?”

  They were supposed to start ballroom dancing this morning, but given the time factor Audrey had working against her, she decided that adhering to the schedule wasn’t a good idea. “We’re improvising,” she said.

  Tewanda clearly took that as doublespeak for sex-all-day. “No worries,” she said, smiling like a Cheshire cat. “Turn the walkie off. There’s nothing here that can’t go without your attention for one day. Go commando and incommunicado and get laid-o.” She whooped joyously again, then started back toward the office.

  Smiling, Audrey merely shook her head.

  Tewanda paused, turned and shot her a look which was curiously serious and sincere for a person who’d only a moment ago told her to get laid-o, for pity’s sake. “Audrey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m happy for you. He’s a good thing.”

  Audrey’s chest warmed and a small smile tugged at her lips. “Yeah,” she agreed, nodding. “He is.”

  And a girl could never have too much of a good thing.

  12

  * * *

  NOW, HE COULD TRULY get used to this, Jamie thought contentedly. He and Audrey had said to hell with the schedule, she’d turned off her walkietalkie and they’d spent the entire day doing whatever struck their fancy. He’d made breakfast, they’d eaten, then showered, then enjoyed another session of lather, rinse and repeat. His lips quirked.