by Stacey Lynn
“Fantastic. Once I can’t feel anything then it will taste good.”
“Yup.” Kolby and Beaux slammed another shot with me before Kolby slid his glasses and limes into the center of the table.
I took my third without hesitating. “Where’s your daughter tonight?”
Kolby took a sip of his water glass. “With my ma. They’re at home, unpacking.”
He shook his head, his eyes filled with that same awed look Beaux had for the entire first year of playing for the Vikings. The “how did this become my life?” look.
I still saw it spark in Beaux from time to time, but a few years in, the wealth and shock was diminishing and being replaced with a new normal.
“You moved your mom up here, too?”
A muscle popped in his cheek and I sensed I’d touched a topic he didn’t want to discuss. “Ma’s the only one I trust to watch Mya.”
I didn’t understand the love a parent had for their child—not personally—but I’d seen my mom sacrifice in order to try to give us everything. It was that memory, of my mom coming home from work only to have time to shower and go to another job, that made me slide my hand around Kolby’s shoulder and squeeze. “You’re a good dad, Kolby.”
“Let’s hope she thinks so.”
“She will.”
“Need more shots?” Beaux asked, his hand already in the air and waving down the waitress.
The burn of the liquor in my veins made my cheeks and chest warm. I was feeling relaxed and tipsy.
I shook my head. “No. One more beer and I should be good.”
He rolled his eyes playfully. “So much for drunk and stupid.”
“Oh, there’s still plenty of time for stupid.”
“Right,” Beaux teased. “Of course.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. We both knew me. I had never been a partier and with the drinks and the warmth and the dim lights, I already wanted to get to the apartment and start cleaning the shower and floors so I could move in.
I had too much of my mom in me, and not enough of Beaux. I blamed the fact that we had different fathers.
Where he let everything roll off his back, never worrying and stressing, I had a hard time relaxing, always planning and preparing. We couldn’t be any more different.
Conversation drifted then to Beaux and Kolby getting settled in Raleigh, the things they’d seen in the last few months since they’d moved out here. What they wanted to do next, their thoughts about the upcoming preseason game.
I wasn’t involved in most of the conversations, so my eyes drifted along with my thoughts. Thoughts of a surly, rude tight end who had yet to appear. Disappointment uncurled in me and made me frown.
I didn’t want to see him, yet I couldn’t stop thinking about him either. The interaction earlier was more unpleasant than most I’d had in my life. Yet I couldn’t lie—along with probably millions of other women in the country, I had pictured Oliver starring in my fantasies at some point since he began in the NFL.
Admittedly, as soon as Beaux was traded, thoughts of meeting Powell were first in my mind.
Yet as much as I teased my brother about making out with his teammates, I wouldn’t do that to him. I wouldn’t want to be the cause of possible tension for him in the locker room or on the field. When he was playing, my job was to support him, not make it more difficult.
With a heavy sigh, I slid out of the booth.
Beaux’s gaze caught me with a questioning look.
“I’ll be right back. I just need some air.”
“And then a dance with me,” Kolby said, flashing me a wink.
The kid was cute. I could admit that, too. He was also harmless. Safe.
“You know? I think my restroom trip can wait. Want to?”
“Hell yeah. Sexy cougar woman in my arms? I’ll have to beat the men away from you.” He frowned, a teasing glint in his eye as he wiggled his fingers. “On second thought, maybe we shouldn’t. Can’t get these hands broken in a bar fight.”
I punched him in the shoulder. “Shut up.” I turned to Beaux. “You mind?”
“Go kick back, Sis. You’ve earned it.”
I rolled to my toes and kissed his cheek while I waited for Kolby to slide out of the booth. He gripped my hand and led me down the stairs, pulling me behind him so we wouldn’t get separated in the crowd at the bottom. Halfway down the second flight, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I paused, tugging my hand out of Kolby’s, and looked around. Seeing nothing, I shook off the strange sensation and hurried to catch up to my dance partner.
The music was louder on the dance floor, pulsing through my body and filling my veins with that instant need to move.
The song was fast and perfect, and as Kolby guided us to an area of the floor beneath the VIP area where we’d sat, he set his hands on my waist, pulling me to him until my hips were against his.
We would have had to shout to be heard, so we were silent while we moved, our bodies connected. It had been so long since I’d been out. Most days I felt too old for a bar scene—not that Patrick would have ever gone anyway. And if Patrick didn’t want to go somewhere, we rarely did.
I lost myself in my thoughts, my regrets, and the feel of warm and strong hands on my body as sweat began to bead at my neck.
The buzz of the alcohol beginning to dissipate as I lost myself in the music, it was just me and Kolby while he spun me in circles and we goofed around. We made funny faces and moved our bodies in time to the music.
We stayed there longer than the one song we’d agreed on, and it was at the end of the fourth when I finally needed a break. My toes hurt in my heels, and the strap of fabric across my back clung to my skin.
“I need a break!” I shouted, leaning into Kolby’s arms.
He wrapped them around me. “Wondering when the old woman was going to stop. Lasted longer than I thought you would.”
I shoved him playfully again and turned to walk off the dance floor, but when I went to take my first step, my feet froze in place.
Kolby bumped into me, pushing me forward, and before I could stumble, I was pulled into another set of strong arms.
“The next one’s mine.”
Chapter THREE
SHANNON
Electricity zinged up my arms and down my spine, straight to my toes where they curled inside my heels.
Powell was a force on the field. Running and catching, he could do it all with the grace of a panther. Amazing, considering his six-four frame. He looked like he’d be large and bulky, awkward, but he was fast. He was powerful.
With his body guiding me backward onto the dance floor I’d just tried to exit, he was also undeniable.
Magnetic.
Heat swirled between us as I flexed my arm and tried to pull away from him.
My mind screamed to run.
My body screamed louder to resist the urge to do so.
“What are you doing?”
His sandy blond brows pulled together, sharpening into points. For a moment I thought he couldn’t hear me.
Then he leaned down, pulling me to him until my hand hit his chest. My fingers curled into his muscled firmness of their own accord.
“I’m thinking someone like you should have a real man. Not the boys you’ve been hanging with tonight.”
He’d seen me. He’d been the one watching me. I knew it with the same certainty I knew my panties were becoming wet despite his absurd assumption.
“You don’t know me. You know nothing about me.”
“I know what you want.”
He didn’t know crap. Anything he could say or assume was wrong.
I should have pushed him away from me. I should have found the way he rolled his hips against mine repulsive.
Instead, I became malleable to every move he made, my body succumbing to his presence and the static igniting in the breaths of space between us.
His gaze dropped from my eyes to my breasts, his stare bold and unabashed before he
looked back at me. “You want what they all want. The fame, the money, the right to say you’ve sucked our large cocks.”
Yes. Repulsive. Yet a wave of excitement rolled through my body, heating it at the mere thought of his cock.
He continued before I gathered my scattered thoughts. “But what you don’t know is that men new in the league are still boys, easily led by sexy pussy with tits and ass and legs for days, but they don’t know what to do with it once they have it.” He was talking about my brother. And my brother looking at my ass and tits. I didn’t want to throw up like I normally would.
I was stuck on the fact that he thought I was sexy. How fucked up was I?
Not fucked up enough, or drunk enough, or dumb enough to not know where this was going. A quick fuck against the wall in the hallway where he’d turn me away from him, lift my skirt and plunge deep inside me, all without having to kiss or touch me.
I was lonely and still reeling from a failed engagement. I wanted a few hours of oblivion and possibly a one-night stand, but I wasn’t a pushover and I wasn’t an idiot. I deserved more than the sexy look he was giving me offered.
“Oliver?” I asked, my tone breathless and raw from the dancing and from the way his fingertips were running along my exposed skin.
“What, baby?”
I fought the cringe at the worthless endearment. My fingers slid from his chest to his shoulders and I pulled myself closer.
Flames shot through me as I brushed against the sizable bulge in his pants. “You don’t know shit. And if you don’t get your hands off me this very fucking second, my brother will kick your ass on and off the field.”
He dropped his hands like I’d burned him and shot me a quizzical look.
That furrowed brow was no less sexy.
I grinned and forced myself to step back. The space was necessary. Without it I might have said fuck my morals and jumped up on him, climbed him like a monkey in a tree and let him give me the ride I knew he’d be so good at.
“Your brother? Who?” A hand scrubbed down his face.
I didn’t take the time to explain. A rush of bodies pressed against us, giving me my opening.
I turned on my heels and trembling legs and got the hell off the floor, back to the VIP area and into the ladies’ restroom without looking back.
My back hit the wall of the bathroom and my hands went to my face before the door closed behind me. My fingers still shook from adrenaline and lust and desire when I pressed them to my temples.
I needed to get out of there.
I needed to leave.
How could I have ever been attracted to an asshole like Patrick, just in a prettier and sexier package?
All men were the same.
They thought with their dicks and thought women should bend to their will just because they flashed a wad of cash and the promise of an orgasm.
And fuck that, my fingers hadn’t let me down yet.
“Get yourself together,” I murmured to myself before I used the restroom.
When I was done, I splashed cool water on my wrists and my throat. My body was still heated. The memory of Powell’s body against mine. The sway of his hips. The size of his erection.
“Shit.”
Squeezing my eyes closed, I tried to vanquish the memories that were so brief they should have already disappeared, but they hadn’t. They were there, vivid and clear as day and equally powerful as the vision of Patrick pounding into a woman in a bathroom much like the one I was in at the moment.
The memory was a bitter slap to the face, better than any splash of cold water on my still-flushed skin.
I walked into the hallway with my head held high, my heels stable, and my resolve strengthened. Never again would I let a man use me and toss me to the side like Patrick had.
I would move on from him, but it would be with a man who knew how to treat a woman with respect, and had the ability to cherish them.
“Beaux’s your brother.”
The strained voice stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t turn to him.
“Yes.”
I waited for an apology I assumed would never come, and was surprised when it did.
“I’m sorry. I might have fucked that up down there.”
Might have? He’d essentially called me a whore. I spun on my heels until I faced him directly. With Oliver several feet away, his back braced to the wall, his hands on his hips, I barely had to tilt my head up to see him clearly.
“He was right about you, though. You’re a prick.”
A lip curled in response. “I said I was sorry.”
“Forgiven.” I turned around and walked back to Beaux. He had three teammates around him, women draped on their laps, but none on his.
His eyes were on me, his face holding that look of concern I was getting so, so tired of seeing on him.
“You okay?”
“Good. Ready to head home, though.”
He shot a look behind my shoulder and stood immediately. “What’d he say to you? I saw him follow you back to the bathroom.”
“Nothing, Beaux. It’s fine, I swear.”
His gaze searched me for honesty. I was lying, and we both knew it, but I still reached around him to the table and picked up my small clutch.
“Let’s just go. I’m wiped after the trip out here.”
He wrapped his arm over my shoulders and pulled me to him.
As he turned me, my head twisted and my gaze locked on Powell’s. He was sitting at the bar now, a glass of honey-colored alcohol in his hand. His stern expression was firmly in place and I turned back around while I still could.
With the heat in his gaze, the look of want still in his eyes, and the fact that he’d actually not only apologized but seemed genuine, I had no idea what to do about Oliver Powell.
Only that it was best if I stayed far, far away.
***
I tugged at the end of a strand of my hair and clenched the phone tighter in my other hand.
“Can you please let this go?”
Patrick’s voice was like nails on a chalkboard. “Please, Shan. I’m so sorry. I miss you. I want to see you to talk about us. Don’t throw us away like this.”
Same old lines. Same things I’d heard for the last month.
After seeing him in the restroom, fucking Priscilla against the wall, I had taken off. I hadn’t said anything, just made some choked, animalistic noise, and run from the bathroom and restaurant like hell was nipping at my heels. I was most likely halfway home before he’d realized that I was the one who’d seen him; me that I’d heard him calling her “baby.”
He’d caught up with me in our apartment as I was slashing my wedding dress with the sharpest knife I could find.
The apologies had started immediately. The lies quickly followed. That it was just that one time, that he was stressed and scared about the wedding. I had stood in our bedroom that we’d shared for two years listening to his pleas and apologies for almost an hour, feeling nothing but soul-sucking grief.
I was only now just beginning to realize that the reason I’d put off our wedding for so long was because somewhere, deep down inside me, while I liked the financial stability he provided, I didn’t fully trust him to take care of me. For the last year, we’d argued about getting married before I’d finally caved and set a date. He’d proposed after we had been dating for two years and I finally agreed to move in together. Then I dragged my feet in getting married, always finding an excuse or reason to continue putting it off. I should have known back then that our relationship wasn’t going to work. It didn’t mean it didn’t still hurt to see him cheating on me.
Each word he spoke over the phone was a punch to my gut. I didn’t trust that Patrick still wanted me. He didn’t want to lose. He didn’t want to look like a fool. He wasn’t the guy women walked away from.
He was a McDonnelly. Ginger-haired and Irish to the deepest parts of his marrow, his family owned more than half of Des Moines. They still owned thousands of acres of
land and businesses. No one said no to them.
I was still finding it hard to do so.
I sighed. “I’m scheduling a moving truck. I only want my stuff. Can you please let me know when’s a good time for them to come and pick it up?”
“Come home and discuss this with me, Shannon. I want to see you. I want you to hear me out. I swear to you, this will never happen again. Priscilla’s been moved to a different department, and I don’t even see her anymore. Please.”
His voice had softened, gone gravelly and determined, coaxing me against my judgment to listen, to give in like I always did. Her name on his lips was a bucket of cold water on the temptation.
I tapped a pencil to paper and gritted my teeth together. “No. And I don’t have time for this. I have things to do, and if you won’t be cooperative I’ll figure it out on my own.”
“Shannon—”
“Goodbye, Patrick.”
I hung up the phone at the same time a growl sounded from behind me.
I was in what would soon be my office at Stamped. I’d scrubbed the place from top to bottom over the last week, including the cute and full-of-character upstairs apartment. Every day it settled in a little bit more that this place was mine.
All mine.
Once I got my stuff, anyway. Fortunately, I’d had the smarts to bring all my jewelry-making tools and equipment with me.
Everything was scattered about on two folding tables I’d picked up as soon as I’d cleaned the downstairs office.
With the Arts Festival opening next week, I’d been desperate to start creating. I wanted the store ready to go by then, but there were a million things I still had left to do scribbled on a ripped piece of notebook paper…somewhere in my office.
Amazing how I could make such a huge mess when I had so little.
“What did the loser want now?”
I turned to Beaux to see his arms across his chest, shoulder leaning against the door to my office. He was freshly showered, telling me he’d come straight from his late workout.
I groaned and tossed the pen to the tabletop. “Same old crap. Apologies, refusing to let me go.”
I hated that there was a small part of me that was glad. Because if he didn’t want to let me go, maybe everything we’d shared, everything I thought I’d once loved hadn’t been a lie.