by Crowe, Liz
“So, over a hundred women, most of whom didn’t know each other, all got together and decided to ruin you for shits and giggles? I don’t think so, Don.” His voice remained even and calm, but inside he was shrieking with rage. His one free hand was clenched in a fist so tight it ached.
“I think you’re a little too into the ladies’ side of stories these days, Baxter. I mean, I knew you like them and all but shit, man, you’ve surrounded yourself and all you can hear is their hysterical mewling about how badly they’ve been treated. You need to get a grip and understand that it’s not about that. It’s about staying loyal to your friends. People who’ve helped you out of tight spots before, or have you forgotten that?”
“I haven’t forgotten that you promised to help me hide the fact that I thought I had to pay for an abortion once. That came to nothing, in case you’ve forgotten. And besides, it’s not like I was doing anything illegal. I just didn’t know who to ask. I was only twenty-three years old and willing to screw anything with two legs and tits at the time.”
“And that’s changed? I doubt it. Not with the situation you’ve managed to arrange for yourself.”
“Don, I’m going to hang up now before you dig yourself any deeper. Trust me. It’s for your own good.”
“And now you’re gonna marry one of them? She’s a nice piece of chocolate ass, I’ll give you that much. But she’s not your usual skinny blonde Barbie type. What happened to you, J.D.? Gone over to the dark side?”
When his ears began to ring in a way he recognized would not bode well for anyone, J.D. touched the end call button and put the phone back on its charging stand. He closed his eyes and took four long, deep breaths before he felt able to exist in the same universe as that racist, sexist, abusive shit head. He could’ve leapt to Kayla’s defense, but he knew from direct experience that with guys like Don, it would fall on deaf ears and be a waste of his energy. Better to end the call, and the relationship, for good.
But his inner caveman needed to hit something, hard. So hard it would be destroyed. The way he wished he could reach through the phone and destroyed Don Harris forever, keeping future generations of young female athletes safe from him. But he’d have to let the American justice system take care of that. He jumped up and paced, jaw clenched, willing himself not to punch holes in his office drywall.
“J.D.?”
He almost leaped out of his skin at the sound of Matilde’s voice on the speaker again. “Yes. What is it?”
“I have some cameras out here. They aren’t ours. They claim you owe them an interview.” He heard the hard edge in her voice and knew if he told her to make them go away, she’d do so, without a whole lot of fuss.
“I’ll be right out,” he said, getting to his feet and slipping his suit coat on. He was sore all over from his recent return to cross-training alongside Makayla, but he set his shoulders, fixed a smile on his face, and opened the door onto his new, hellish reality.
****
Two hours later, the grilling complete, he sat in his darkened office, trying to collect his thoughts. He’d never doubted for a moment that they’d done the right thing. Don Harris was an evil menace, a predator, a rapist. And they’d exposed it all. But his relationship with the man was complicated and the concept that he’d ever relied on him for anything, ever trusted him, made J.D. wish for a long, hot shower, a full-body exfoliation, and a few minutes alone in the room with the asshole.
A light knock on the door made him groan and put his feet on the floor. He glanced at his watch, confused, since Matilde had cleared his calendar after the horror show in the lobby earlier, anticipating his need for quiet.
“J.D? You in here?”
He sighed. This was not what he needed right now. Not even close. He sent a quick text to Kayla, then stood and turned on one of the lamps near his desk. “Hi, Lisa. What’s up? Gwen okay?” Trying to keep the irritation out of his voice, he stepped out from behind the desk and was shocked when she flew into his arms and pressed her face against his neck. “What’s wrong? Where’s Gwen?” He glanced over her head, confused as he patted her back, wishing she’d get off him. Every nerve he had felt exposed, flayed and quivering after the long day of confrontation and anger.
But she just kept bawling, gripping him like a barnacle. Finally, he pulled her off, gripped her upper arms, and stared into her tear-streaked face. “Lisa, talk to me. Is it Gwen?”
“No, no, she’s fine. She’s at soccer practice.” She sniffled. He held out a box of tissues. She took one and dabbed at her eyes.
“Okay,” he said, playing it cool, unwilling to get dragged into any more drama than he’d already endured today.
Lisa sighed and looked at him, her gray-blue eyes brimming with tears.
“So, what’s all this about?”
“I just … I want … you.”
He sighed and flopped into his chair. “Lisa, we’ve been through this. I’ve got someone else now. You know that.”
“Well, so you say.”
Alarmed, he leaned forward. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She sniffled again and leaned on the desk, facing him, her long legs bare up to her skirt’s hemline. When her fingers found his hair, he wanted to jerk away from her, but he was so fucking exhausted, he didn’t have the energy.
“Hey, there,” Kayla called from the door.
Lisa tightened her grip in his hair a second, then let go.
He noted that she stayed close to him, too close. He jumped up and almost ran over to Kayla so he could drag her into the room.
“Hi, Lisa,” she said. “How’s Gwen?”
“None of your business,” Lisa muttered as she pulled her purse strap up on her shoulder and straightened. “For the record, I’m calling B.S.”
J.D. put his arm around Kayla’s waist and gave her a kiss on the cheek. An action that sent his libido lurching toward inappropriateness. He clenched his jaw but kept his grip on Kayla. “Lisa,” he said. “Not now.”
“No, no, I get it. You claim you’re all happy with your new friend.” She moved closer to them, her eyes narrowed, her thin fingers curled into fists. “But I don’t buy it. I think you’re doing this so I’ll leave you alone.” She stepped into J.D.’s space, as close as he was to Kayla, put her hand alongside his face and laid a kiss on him that made him splutter and stumble backward.
Kayla seemed frozen in place, looking from Lisa to him and back again.
J.D. wiped his lips with the back of his hand. But Lisa moved in on him again, forcing him toward the door.
Before he could say anything, Kayla inserted herself between them, her ass pressing against his stomach, one long, dark-skinned arm held out, keeping Lisa at bay. “Okay, listen, I’ve been super polite to you, but I think you need to understand something.” She stepped so she was next to J.D., her arm tucked into his. “This is my man now. And you do not want to know what I might do to anyone who thinks she can take him from me. We clear?”
Lisa’s eyes blazed. She opened her mouth to speak but before she could, Kayla had moved so she was in front of him again, her breasts mashed against his chest, her arms around his neck.
When she kissed him, it was almost more than he could take. After the day’s craziness and stress, it was the most perfect goddamned thing that had ever happened to him and he’d kissed his fair share of beautiful women. Forgetting that Lisa was even in the room, much less watching them, he slid his hands up her back to her neck and kissed her back until the room went dark and his spinning brain finally calmed.
She broke the contact, staring hard at him with an inscrutable expression, then turned and faced his ex-wife. “You can go. Tell Gwen we’re looking forward to having her here this weekend.” Kayla kept her fingers threaded tightly in his. He could feel her trembling but knew he was no better. Speechless, he watched the two women stare each other down in the gloom, tingling from head to toe in the wake of that damn kiss.
Lisa stomped out.
Kayla let go of
him, her grin wide. “Well, that was harder than usual,” she said. “Let’s go work out, whatddaya say?”
He nodded and followed her to the elevator, wondering exactly what he’d gotten himself into with this incredible, frustrating, perfect woman.
****
“I heard you got bombarded by the competition.” They were running on side-by-side treadmills, a habit they’d formed, coming together to work out at the end of their long days before heading upstairs to the no-go zone of their living quarters. He’d been on an incline, needing the extra distraction from her tempting proximity.
“Yeah. It’s to be expected.” He dropped the incline a notch so he could catch his breath but kept his brutal pace, afraid that if he stopped, he’d grab her and toss her down on the deserted gym floor.
“Well, anyway. Sorry.” She hit her incline button so her hill was a tad steeper than his and stuck ear buds in her ears. With a quick glance at her profile, he took his workout back up and they ran alongside each other, going fast, uphill to nowhere, for the next forty-five minutes. She stopped first, he was satisfied to note, as he let his speed slow so he could cool down before hitting the weights.
When he finally stopped and climbed down, he almost ran right over her. “Whoa, hey. What’re you doing?”
“Watching your ass,” she said with a grin.
“That’s my line,” he said, mopping the sweat off his face with a bleach-scented towel.
“So? I co-opted it. You have a mighty fine rear view, Mr. Man. I’m sure you’ve been told this before.”
“I have,” he said, his pulse racing out of all proportion to his recent cardio push. She hadn’t moved and their sweaty bodies were now mere inches apart. “To what do I owe this sudden complimentary attitude?”
“I don’t know. I just felt like telling you.” She paused. “I have an idea.”
“Makayla, I…”
“No, just listen to me a minute. We aren’t going to be together in any way but this weird fake one we’ve concocted for ourselves. But I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided something.”
“Oh?” He took a chance and reached for her, if only to touch his fingertip to a bead of sweat on her neck. She smiled when he put it in his mouth. “Do tell.”
“I think we should be able to enjoy each other’s, ah, physical company while we’re playacting at this engagement thing. I mean, we’re adults. We understand the end game. But I have needs, Mr. Baxter,” she said. She hooked her finger in the collar of his t-shirt and tugged him to her. “And something tells me you do too.”
Before he could blink, her hand was inside his shorts. He kept his cool, unwilling to let her know how damn good her hand felt on his hardening cock. “So … what do you say? About my decision?” She slid her other hand up the back of his shirt, stroking his tense muscles. “By the way, I’m clean, and I take a shot to avoid the whole baby thing. If you can tell me the same thing about your overall cleanliness, I’m good forgoing condoms.”
“I’m clean and I say that we owe it to ourselves, as adults, to give it the old college try,” he said. He grazed her cheek and neck with his knuckles, relishing the sensation of her hands on his flesh.
“Yeah. College. I had a ton of fun there. I’ll bet you did too. Let’s pretend that’s where we are right now. No strings. No commitments. Just some serious quality time between study sessions and training.” She smiled, her face mere inches from his.
Before he could kiss her, she put her finger to his lips. “Hold up there, cowboy. We have to lay down a few rules about this. I mean, I get it. And I want it as much as you do, but…” She pulled her hand out of his shorts, making him shudder at her absence. “I’m serious about this being sex and nothing more. Get me?”
Unable to stop himself, and in lieu of an answer, he covered her lips, groaning into her mouth when she opened it to him. The press of her breasts against his torso almost brought him to his knees. Something about the face of her raw independence, as prickly as she was about it at times, made him want her that much more.
“College huh?” he said, as he walked her backward over to the steps. “If I remember right, I spent a couple of weeks in college fucking eight different chicks. Two of them at once.” He pulled her underneath the stairs, where the trainers kept the mats stored. “Those were some good years.”
Something in him resisted this. Something was telling him to stop. Not to engage. Not to let his lust lead. But he also knew it wasn’t just lust. It was a big part of it, but not all of it. Which scared him just enough to make him hesitate.
Until she yanked his shorts down, then pulled her shirt and shorts off, leaving them in a puddle at her feet and her deep brown skin glowing. “Yep. They were. I hear you’re really good at football. That true?”
“Yeah. I guess. Do you play a sport? You’re really fit.” He ran his hands up her sides, lifted her arms and pressed her back against a stack of blue mats, pinning her wrists over her head and burying his face in her neck, sucking in deep breaths of her, willing this not to be a dream.
“Yeah, I do.” She arched her back when he sucked first one, then the other nipple into his mouth. “Soccer. I’m pretty good, too.”
“Cool. I’ll have to catch one of your games.”
She lifted one leg, angling herself up so he could slide into her without too much effort. “Christ in a sidecar,” he groaned, lifting her other leg and holding onto her ass.
“Fuck me like we’re in college, J.D. Over and over again, until we can’t walk.”
But he could barely hear her anymore. His mind was blank. His ears rang. His head was full of nothing but her—her scent, sounds, the feel of her skin, the sensation of her tight pussy pulling him toward a quick release.
“Yeah, baby. Just like that.” She sighed, meeting him thrust for thrust, the spongy backdrop of the mats providing the perfect surface for this particular activity.
“Oh shit yes!” She cried out when she came, the rolling pulse and spasm of her body making him almost blind and deaf with need.
He held onto her ass and slammed his lips over hers when he came, needing both connections, wanting them, wanting this moment to never end.
“Damn me to hell and back.” He groaned as she eased up and off him. “That was…”
“Fun, right?” She grinned at him. “See? I’m totally right about this.”
He swiped a shaking hand over his face, unsure of pretty much everything she’d said, other than the part about getting to have sex with her instead of tiptoeing around it like a couple of timid prom dates.
She put her clothes back on with her back to him while he tried to put on
his shorts and not fall over at the same time.
“Nice ass,” he said, once he’d succeeded in his task. She turned and smiled at him, which made his heart do a strange, unfamiliar, stutter-step. He sucked in a breath, trying to gather his thoughts post monster orgasm.
What’s your deal, anyway? The small voice in his head he’d been trying to ignore for the past six weeks piped up, loud and clear. You know you’re no good for her. You know you’ll never be a husband again. Don’t get entangled in this. No matter how awesome it is.
“Ah, ah, ah. That’s my line.” She slapped his ass, then gripped it hard, keeping her body pressed to his. The light in her eyes was odd, something he couldn’t read. Which bugged him since he’d always prided himself on his skills when it came to understanding a woman’s motivation.
Baxter, you are a class-A fool.
Yeah. What else is new?
He shook off his inner nag, draped his arm over her shoulder, and kissed her cheek. “I’m down for the plan, hot stuff. But you probably figured that out already.” He cupped her breast, sliding his thumb over her still hard nipple, grinning when she shivered so hard he could feel it in his bones.
“Yeah. You’re kind of slutty,” she said, cupping his half hard cock.
“Huh. That makes two of us, I guess.” He kissed her again, unable to stop
himself, knowing he had to keep his emotional distance and worried, for the first time in his adult life, he wouldn’t be able to do it.
“Off me, already. I need to lift.”
“Still? I honestly don’t think I can now.” He watched her trot out from under their little sex nest of yoga mats toward the free weights.
“Men,” she scoffed, as she set everything up for a hard leg workout. “Such the weaker sex.”
“Oh fuck that. It’s on,” he said, gathering all his remaining energy and mirroring her exact workout for the next hour and half. By the time she’d finished and was giggling her way toward the hot hub, crooking her finger and making noises about another college-style roll in the hay, he was a limp noodle, but beyond impressed with her stamina. He’d done his fair share of game-ready workouts. But she was in another league altogether.
“I don’t think I can be engaged to a woman who can out-rep me,” he said, his hands on his hips, still breathing heavy and wondering if his damn legs would even carry him from point A to point B much less sustain another fuck session with her.
“Well, I know a great way to relax,” she said, as she stripped again and turned to hip sway her way to the locker rooms.
“Good thing I own this fucking building,” he muttered under his breath. Catching up with her, he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the hot tub.
Chapter Nineteen
“Wait, wait, hold on a sec!” Kayla could hardly catch her breath but worse than that, her imagination was dumping way too much possibility into her brain as she and J.D. made out in the elevator on the way up to his place. They’d spent the day sexting, even during a super awkward production staff meeting with her seated at the far end of the conference room table. He finally cut the meeting short, his voice curt, claiming he had “a phone call” and that they should carry on without him.
She’d stared down at the long string of explicit sex talk they’d been exchanging and had smiled with satisfaction, even as she sensed her own need, pulsing and alive and urgent, wanting more from him every day. He’d appeared at her tiny cubicle at six, looking a lot more relaxed, chatting with the other women around her, heating up her space way more than was necessary. Finally, she’d elbowed him out of the way. “Time to work out,” she’d claimed. “Shall we?”