by Stacey Lynn
“Dick!” he shouted and turned toward his own locker on the far side of the room.
Because we were men, and we thought with that part, and in the locker room everything went, I reached down and grabbed my semi-hard dick and shouted Beaux’s name.
“She likes it, though, you know? I think it’s good for her.”
“Damn, Powell,” one of our defensive linemen groaned. “That’s just nasty.”
“You’re nasty,” I shouted back. “Hale can take it.”
“Oh the innuendo in that one. The things I could say,” Rudolph muttered, earning another round of groans throughout the room.
“Don’t fuck with the quarterback,” someone else shouted.
I thought it was the safety, Smith, but I turned back to the locker when I saw Hale’s cheeks had turned bright pink with embarrassment like Shannon’s did. I might have gone too far, but the safety kept talking.
“Quarterback’s pissed off at you and you won’t get the record for tight end receiving touchdowns this year.”
“I wouldn’t fuck with his record,” Hale said.
I turned to him, the fact that I’d forgotten all that lay in the palm of my hands…all that rested in his had been momentarily forgotten while my judgment became clouded with pussy.
“Swear to fucking Christ, Powell, I wouldn’t pull that shit on you, no matter how much you piss me off. Don’t fucking hurt her. You do and I’ll kick your ass, but that shit won’t filter onto the field.”
I examined him then. It was the most serious I’d ever seen him, most determined about anything. Beaux was always so fucking laid back it was hard to trust him, but I couldn’t find a single part of him that didn’t seem one hundred and ten percent honest about his statement.
Something grew between him and me in that moment. Respect.
I needed it from him like I needed to give it to him, and that would earn his trust, both on and off the field.
“I hear you, kid,” I said.
I dropped my shorts and wrapped a towel around my waist. I only had a few minutes for a quick scrub-down before I could be at Shannon’s when I told her I would be.
I didn’t need to spend any more of it bonding with the men.
***
She answered the door to the condo as soon as I knocked, her hair disheveled and flying out behind her, and a little breathless. None of it matched the fury flashing in her eyes that she tried to hide as soon as I stepped in.
“Beaux called, said he and the team were going out tonight. Did you plan that?”
I grinned. “Fortuitous, I think, but no, I didn’t. Is that why you look ready to strangle someone?”
She groaned and moved toward the kitchen. “No. I’ve been on the phone with my friend Melissa all damn day because Patrick’s being a douche-nugget about my furniture.” She yanked the cork out of a wine bottle and filled a glass with deep red liquid. “Sorry, you want some?”’
“I’ll help myself to water. Who’s Patrick?”
“My ex.”
My head was buried in the fridge when she muttered the word. When I looked back, she was swallowing the wine like she was in a college chugging contest.
“Hey.” I walked to her and took the glass from her mouth, smiling as she leaned forward to get one more drop and then licked her lips to get any remaining ones that fell. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head and looked over my shoulder. “That’s not why you came here. Not to talk about that.” Her brow wrinkled and she looked at me. “Why did you come here? This morning…I thought—”
“We’ll get to that.” I opened my water and chugged half of it. I was stuck on her ex being an asshole—an asshole that fucked around with another woman and was stupid enough to get caught. Red blurred at the edges of my vision. “Tell me what happened today. Is that why you were irritated when I called?”
“Irritated, pissed, distracted and too busy to handle all this shit on my lap? Yes.”
“Whoa.” I handed her wine back. She was babbling and manic. Maybe the alcohol would settle her down. “Calm down. You eaten dinner yet?”
“No. I ordered pizzas a while ago.”
Pizza and massive carbs would mean a four-hour workout tomorrow instead of three. I didn’t say shit. She looked like she could reach for a butcher’s knife and fling it at the next thing that set her off. It wasn’t going to be me moaning about pizza.
“How about we sit and talk,” I suggested and then opened the door to the freezer. I was helping myself like I lived there and she didn’t say a word. I dug through bags of frozen vegetables until I found an ice pack.
“You’re hurt?” Her eyes jumped and her gaze quickly roamed my body before meeting mine.
“Twisted my ankle. No big deal, I swear.”
Her shoulders slumped a bit and for the first time since I’d arrived, I think she breathed.
I walked to the living room couch and sat down, propping my foot onto a pillow on the coffee table to keep it elevated. Once I was settled, I put my arm on the back of the couch and gestured for her to join me.
I tried not to let it bother me that she sat just out of my reach instead of curled into my side like I wanted.
We’d get there after she bitched about Patrick and after we talked about where I was taking us. She didn’t trust me yet and she shouldn’t. I’d been way too fucking mercurial.
“Talk to me.” I waited for what felt like forever before she began.
Chapter THIRTEEN
SHANNON
I’d been on a rollercoaster all day long. After Oliver’s abrupt departure this morning—not knowing at all where we stood, but feeling like something had shifted between us, something moving past this four-week arrangement we’d agreed on—I’d received a call from Patrick.
The day went downhill from there.
I set my glass of wine down on the table and tucked my feet under me on the couch and faced Oliver.
He’d gestured for me to sit next to him, but I was still too raw, too dizzy to trust his touch.
Now, just out of his reach, I wished there was a way I could move closer without being obvious. I wanted to be closer to him, pressed against his defined chest and enclosed in his sinewy arms.
Under the right circumstances, it would be a safe haven.
I didn’t know if we were there yet, so I held back, trying to be smart.
“Patrick and I lived together,” I started after I tried to piece together the day enough to tell it so it made sense. “But he moved into my apartment. I added his name to the lease after the first year, and I’ve since had my name removed from it, but all the furniture in it is mine. He’s refusing to give me a time that movers can be there to pack it up and move it out here until I agree to see him so he can apologize.”
“He wants you back.”
Oliver’s voice went steely and I sighed. “Yeah.”
“And you want?”
“Gosh.” I shook my head and messed with my hair. “Not that. I think he’s embarrassed and pissed that someone of my caliber of lifestyle walked away from him.”
Oliver’s brows jumped up his forehead.
“I know,” I said as I laughed softly. “His family is really wealthy. Think they might have owned all of the Iowan land at one point, and they’ve sold it off.”
It was an exaggeration, but their wealth overwhelmed me on the best of days. They either currently owned something, or had once owned the land most of the Des Moines area had been built on, not to mention the buildings they owned, too.
“Anyway, I’m just a girl from a rundown home, with a single mom who had two kids with two different dads and could barely afford to raise us.”
“That’s not you,” Oliver snapped. He was so serious.
I couldn’t pull my eyes off his tawny eyes.
“That’s not who you are.”
“It is, though.” I shrugged. I wasn’t ashamed of my past.
Compared to Patrick and his family, who hosted fundraise
rs for politicians and didn’t eat anywhere except a restaurant with valet parking—a rarity in Des Moines—we were common. Lower class.
I waved away his statement. “It’s not a big deal. Beaux and I came from nothing. I’m proud of my mom. She worked her whole life, paying for it in the end, and I didn’t mind taking care of her or helping Beaux succeed. I don’t even think Patrick wants me. He just doesn’t want to lose.”
“So how are you getting your stuff?”
“I’ve considered staying with Beaux until I can afford new stuff for my apartment above Stamped.”
“There’s an apartment there?” Oliver’s eyes lit with interest. “You mean, when I was there earlier, we were ten yards from a bed and didn’t end up in it?”
The teasing glint in his eyes relaxed me and I laughed, tilting my head against the back of the couch.
“Surprising, huh? But no, the bed is nasty and I could live there, but I want my own stuff. Patrick can afford to replace everything with the snap of his fingers. He’s only holding onto it to maintain some twisted sense of control.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“My best friend Melissa has a key. She’s going to meet the movers there next week, or as soon as I can get everything scheduled.”
She was ecstatic about the idea.
When we had talked earlier, she’d told me about a photo she’d seen online of Oliver and me leaving the game together. We’d laughed and over-analyzed everything that had changed for me in the short time I’d been here. When I told her I was happy, she’d reluctantly agreed not to cause potential problems with Patrick—even if she was gloomy about me making her promise not to slice and dice all of Patrick’s expensive suits like she’d mentioned.
While I had struggled with my frustration with Patrick all day today, I also realized something important.
I was over him long before our relationship was over. We’d been roommates mostly for six months before we broke up, before I caught him cheating. We’d drifted apart before he began cheating, bored and too placated with our lives after only a few years together. If a relationship could be that dull after such a short time, we had no business spending a lifetime together.
I wanted passion and excitement. I wanted friendship and respect. I wanted laughter and late night movies in bed and marathon, athletic sex sessions. I didn’t want those moments to dull before the I Dos were spoken, and with Patrick they had years prior.
It might have been my stubbornness that made me hold on for so long, something Melissa reminded me of when we spoke. I’d been unhappy for a long time and before I was unhappy, I’d been uncertain of the future.
I loved that she waited until she knew I could handle hearing the truth before stating it.
“Hey.” Oliver tapped my hand that was near him and when I pulled my gaze to his, he was smiling. “Where’d you go?”
I laughed and shook my head. “Sorry. I was thinking of Melissa. I miss her, I guess. We talk almost every day, but it’s not the same.”
His lips twisted, quirked up on one side. “What’d she say about me?”
The question threw me before I realized he was teasing. I teased back. “Said if you have a cock as big as I’m proclaiming you do, I’d be the biggest fool in the world not to ride it as long as it’s offered to me.”
The words flew unbidden from my lips. I blamed the wine I’d chugged. One glass before he’d even arrived. As the blush hit my cheeks, Oliver leaned forward to get close enough to wrap his hand around my wrist.
He tugged me to him, pulling me until I straddled him, careful of the leg he had propped on the coffee table.
“What exactly did you tell her about my big cock?” His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist and sent shocks up my arm to my chest.
I rolled my hips, unable to stop myself. Beneath me, his bulge hardened. “I told her everything. Everything you do to me. Everything you make me do. Everything you make me feel.”
His hands dropped to my hips as he groaned. He stilled me, held me against his hard length between us, and met my eyes. “And if I want more? If I think we could be more?”
My lips parted. “What?”
“What would you say to that?”
I’d come to Raleigh to start over. Being close to Beaux had been my only option after leaving Melissa and Des Moines behind. The last thing I’d expected, two weeks after arriving, was this.
To meet Oliver Powell. To end up in his bed. Or to have him kiss me the way he did this morning, angry and adamant that I’d never say goodbye to him again. When he’d gone silent in my workroom, I was certain that was what he was doing when he walked away from me. When he’d come back and kissed me hard and long, he’d thrown me for my first rollercoaster loop of the day.
“I…I don’t know.”
I wanted to be honest. I also wanted to think of what I needed. I didn’t want to get lost in his shadow, forgetting my passion and my desire.
“What if we drop the timeline we set forth and see what happens?”
I was still stuck on my last thought. “I won’t stop Stamped for you.”
He frowned. “I would never ask you to.”
“That means I can’t come to away games, or be there every time you need me to come running.”
His frown changed direction and his hands left my hips to press against my cheeks. “Fucking hell, Shannon. I wouldn’t demand that shit of you. You have your own business. You don’t think after seeing it today that I wouldn’t respect that?”
I didn’t know what to think. If I was honest, I wanted a redo on the entire day. I wanted to not freak out in the shower that morning. I wanted to do everything different once we got to Stamped. I wanted to be able to sit on his lap, at that very moment and not be afraid I would lose myself in him.
“You scare me,” I admitted, my voice breathless.
“Then we’re even.” He leaned forward and brought his lips to mine, nipping at my bottom lip and then soothing it with his tongue. “Because you terrify the shit out of me.”
I laughed. He pulled me forward until our foreheads touched. Through his thick, dirty blond lashes, he looked at me, his hazel eyes swirling with amusement. “I still want to try this. Something with you. Something without timelines and restrictions. You in?”
I threw caution to the wind. I considered Melissa’s advice from earlier…if it makes you feel good, makes you laugh and makes you happy, jump in and enjoy the ride. I considered my own feelings, along with the fact that he was as scared, too.
I considered the fact that sitting in his lap, I was already beginning to grow heated and wet in my center, longing for him. This morning, I’d gotten him off. I was still sore from last night, but disappointed I’d freaked out before he could return the favor.
I considered all of it, staring into his eyes, debating and making him nervous by the wait, based on the way his nostrils flared and his eyes darkened.
The doorbell rang, breaking the moment.
“Yes,” I whispered and tilted my head to brush my lips against his. “Yes. Okay. No deadlines.”
Chapter FOURTEEN
OLIVER
It was all I needed to hear. She swung a leg over mine and stood up.
I rolled to one hip and grabbed my wallet out of my back pocket, handing her cash. “Here.”
“I already ordered it before you got here.”
I gave her a look. “Take the money, Shannon. You knew I’d be here eating it and I’m guessing you bought twice as much knowing I was coming.”
“Three times, actually.” She grinned and swiped the money out of my fingers. “Thank you.”
She wiggled her ass as she headed toward the front door for the pizza.
When the man was paid and tipped well, she disappeared into the kitchen.
She returned with three large pizzas, and stacked on top of the boxes were paper plates and bottles of water.
I moved to get up to help her when she stopped me. “Don’t. I’ve got it and
you need to rest your ankle.”
It had been so long since someone had attempted to take care of me, tried to help me, that I had to swallow the smart-ass comment.
“Thanks,” I mumbled when she took her place next to me on the couch.
We ate. We talked about her jewelry business, about football and the season. Every time she offered up an opinion, I realized how much she truly knew the game. She’d studied it, loved it. It seemed almost as much a part of her as it was to me.
It only increased my attraction to her. Since Serena had walked out on me, angry I’d tossed her to the side for a dream I’d had since before I ever asked her out in high school, I hadn’t met a woman like Shannon. Most of the conversations I’d had with women over the last several years revolved around my muscles and the way my ass looked in tight football pants.
I didn’t know women like Shannon existed. Every layer I peeled back, every time I dug deeper, I continued to be pleasantly surprised.
She knocked me sideways and upside down as we watched ESPN highlights of the night’s preseason games. She yelled and cursed when Beaux’s old team won.
“What the hell?” I asked, surprised by her outburst.
My hand curled into her shoulder and I pulled her closer. I wanted her there. Loved her energy and her inability to hold back anything she was feeling.
“I can’t help it,” she said, bouncing on the edge of the couch. “I wanted them to lose.”
“Typical girl,” I said, pulling her so she fell against my chest. The ice on my ankle was long gone. I’d iced and rested it and I was tired of it. “Always holding a grudge.”
She slapped my abs, and I grabbed her hand with my other one, holding her against me. “Shut up. I can’t help it. They let him go and they could have used him and now their old quarterback doesn’t have a decent backup.”
I laughed and pressed my lips against the top of her head, inhaling the sweet scent of her shampoo. “Yeah, but then he wouldn’t be here, in Raleigh and starting.”