by Jen Doyle
Then Kozlowski stepped forward, his eyes conveying the same laser-like focus as they did from third base even as they rolled at Rico’s hyperbole. He threw his arm around Nate’s shoulders. “Back off, Castillo. I’m getting my boy back.”
That set off a round of trash talk—Sox and Cubs v Watchmen; baseball v basketball v football; younger guys v Pete’s veterans. Several rounds of Scotch were poured, and then there was a move back to the table where packs of cards had already been broken out. Nate took a sip of his drink and let his gaze come to a rest on Dorie, who was caught up in conversation with Eddie and Troy. And, hell, they seemed to be talking about the wives and girlfriends—going so far as giving her numbers to call. Shit. She was not going to like that—not one bit. He was about to go over and save her when Pete came up to him.
“You okay with this?” he asked. “I can cut it short if you want. I’m guessing this wasn’t what you had planned for the evening.”
Nate looked at the man. What Pete had done for him tonight was incredible. Nate wasn’t about to bring up the subject of the waiver, nor was he going to even attempt to explain whatever it was that was going on with Dorie. Hell, he didn’t even understand it himself.
He was taken aback by how right it felt to have her here. If she was starstruck—and he had no doubt she could name every single man in this room—she didn’t show it. Nor was she in any way irritated that what had been ‘planned,’ as Pete had put it, was completely off the table. She just seemed to be looking for a way to unobtrusively remove herself and let Nate hang with some friends. He took a sip of his drink, watching her trying to inch away, even as she smiled at something Rico said.
“Hey, Donelli,” he said, startling her. “You play poker?”
A grin came over her face, then she cocked her head to the side. “Is that the one with the chips?”
He laughed. He didn’t believe for a second she wouldn’t be running the table by the end of the night. That wasn’t the case for the others—they all looked up at her with renewed interest as they saw an easy mark.
“Don’t fall for it,” Nate said, unable to hide his smile as he tried to warn them. These were some of the best athletes on the planet and she was going to take them down. “She’s a wily one.”
She gave a little snort of a laugh that shouldn’t have been cute but was ridiculously so. “He exaggerates.” But she was already working it; if she was even the least bit intimidated by the sheer power in the room, she didn’t give a hint of it.
It was clear Pete didn’t know what to make of it. What to make of her. But after an assessing look at Dorie, Pete just rolled up his sleeves and cracked his knuckles. “Deal the woman in.”
And Nate wasn’t wrong. By about three hands in, it was clear to everyone that Dorie was either very good at cards or “the luckiest chick on the planet,” according to a disgruntled Haney.
“Rather be lucky than good,” she murmured before laying down an ace-high flush, which irritated Haney even more.
She also, not surprisingly, had an amazing poker face, something Nate would have liked to know about several days ago. Watching her closely through the night—surreptitiously, of course—it was clear that the only tell she had was when she had a particularly hopeless hand. She’d bite her lip and roll her shoulders in a way that highlighted that beautiful rack of hers.
It was distracting enough that it took him a full two hours before realizing it was deliberate. And that it got more pronounced as Haney, who tended to be a bit of an ass when he was drunk, got more and more vocal with comments of the “little lady doesn’t belong” variety. Comments that had Nate ready to throw down with him then and there, although every time he even started to respond, he felt a swift kick to his shin, which was accompanied by a death glare from Dorie.
It turned him on more than a little bit. And as much as these guys were his friends, he had to admit that he wasn’t all that sympathetic to the ones who were falling for it. Not when they seemed to be fully okay with letting Haney’s comments slide. If they could take the heat on the field, then there was no excuse for not being able to take it here, no matter who was dealing it.
It wasn’t until the end of the night that it fully paid off. By this point—a little after 4:00 a.m.—it was down to Pete, Dorie, Nate and his friends. The pot was three thousand and change, the highest of the night, and she was biting her lip the whole way through. Since she’d taken enough of everyone’s money so far, no one had a problem raising on her despite the fact that every single one of them was good enough to know exactly what that lip-biting meant. They were going to crush her and they were fine with that.
So when she laid down a full house—”Aces full of tens, baby!”—you could literally hear the jaws drop.
“You are fucking kidding me,” Kozlowski said, throwing down his cards.
“Like my brothers always say, boys...” She leaned forward to pull in all her chips. “Never trust a pair of tits.”
Nate choked on his drink. Despite the lightness in her voice, she was clearly pissed. And not a little bit triumphant.
Rico, who up until that moment had been about to go home several thousand dollars richer, let out a tear of Spanish that Nate could barely follow—and that was after being schooled in the language by some of the best pitchers in the game. You didn’t have to speak Spanish to get an impression of what he was saying. But Dorie just gave a smile. A whatever kind of shrug. He should probably be frightened out of his mind. Should be, but wasn’t, which was something he had no intention of analyzing right now.
“That’s not a pair of tits,” Haney muttered. “That’s a wolf in chick’s clothing.”
“She played us,” Troy said, sitting back, with a glint of admiration. Use your opponent’s weakness and all that. Of course, he could afford to be generous, since he’d folded early on. He turned to Nate. “Your new girlfriend played us.”
As Haney finally loosened up and joined in on the conversation, Nate came to the realization that, fuck it all to hell, he really was in trouble. Especially because he realized he wasn’t nearly as interested in protecting her as he was in watching her take them all down. That he’d begun to consider her an equal in a way that only his teammates had ever been—an equal who had no interest or need for him to defend her.
“I’m not his girlfriend,” she’d muttered.
As the cards were put away and the conversation turned back to Dorie’s win, Nate took the cigar Pete handed him and smiled. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.” Unlike Dorie, he had no problem rubbing her win in their faces.
Dorie just shrugged as she stacked her chips. The sly smile she gave was only for him.
Pete, who had remained silent through all of this, held out a cigar. “Smoke?”
She looked at it and then at Pete, her eyes narrowing. Nate had no more idea of what exactly Pete was thinking than she did, although it probably ran along the lines of: this woman is going to take you to the cleaners and you’re not even going to care.
She shook her head. “Thank you, but no.”
Thank God. If she put one of those in her mouth and blew?
Then she stood and stretched, and he was pretty sure his head was going to explode. Both of them.
“I assume there’s a bed somewhere around here that I can crash on?” she asked.
“End of the hall, corner room,” Nate ground out. Christ.
She smiled and gave a mumbled, “Good night. It was really nice to meet all of you.”
They all just kind of smiled back at her, though some reluctantly. When she finally picked up her bag and disappeared out of sight—not acknowledging Nate in any particular way, incidentally, which he was trying not to let bother him—there was a collective exhale and then a moment of silence.
“Dios mío,” Rico finally muttered.
“Christ, Hawk, that w
oman scares me,” Kozlowski said, taking a drag on his cigar as he looked at the hallway Dorie had disappeared into. “Where did she come from?”
“And does she have any sisters?” Troy asked, setting off a round of comments that was increasingly vulgar, though that had never bothered Nate until tonight. And although the other guys were careful enough not to say anything about Dorie herself—you did not talk trash about a man’s woman and expect to get away with it—it reminded Nate that what he wanted with Dorie was unlike anything he’d ever wanted before.
He almost laughed. That thing about “the life” chewing her up and spitting her out? He and Wash couldn’t have been more wrong.
Unfortunately, his silence didn’t go entirely unnoticed. Troy was the one who called him on it, looking down the hallway after where Dorie had gone and then swinging his gaze toward Nate. “Holy Christ,” he said, his drink nearly spilling out of his hand. “You’re going to marry her, aren’t you?”
Nate knew he should laugh that off. And he didn’t need to look over at Pete to know why the man had been so quiet. But, hell if he didn’t get a rush just at the thought of her as his wife.
Not that he’d be giving that answer here tonight, of course. Hell, no.
“Dude,” Haney said. “Makes sense to keep her.”
God help him, if Dorie heard that.
“Shut up,” Rico muttered.
“What? Like he doesn’t already know what the guys are saying?” Haney went on as if Nate wasn’t in the room. And since Nate didn’t, actually—he didn’t generally listen to crap like that—he sat back and gestured for Haney to go on.
Which Haney did. “That you were on your way out. Even before the wreck. That your head hasn’t been in the game for a while now and that the Watchmen were crazy to sign you, because it was only a matter of time before you tanked.”
Knowing he didn’t want to end this night in a full-out brawl, Nate ground his teeth and decided not to kill the guy.
Ignoring the others’ glares, Haney tossed back the rest of his whiskey and then pointed right at Nate. “But, fuck, man. You’re back. You got me? You. Are. Fucking. Back. And if she’s why then you’d better fucking hold on.”
There was about ten seconds of silence before the entire table burst into laughter.
“Jesus Christ, Haney,” Troy said. “What the fuck are you on? He barely even won a hand tonight.”
Standing up and stretching, Haney just shook his head. “Because he spent the entire night with a hard-on.”
“Like you didn’t,” Kozlowski said, laughing as he pushed Haney toward the door.
Good thing everyone left after that, because Nate would have hit at least one of them soon.
He cleaned up whatever couldn’t wait until morning and walked through the condo back to the bedroom, turning lights off along the way. And he had to admit, Haney—crazy as he was—spoke some truth. Although his game hadn’t suffered—yet—signing with the Watchmen, a team he’d get to help build from the ground up, had been partly in hope of recapturing the joy and excitement again. Because it sure as hell had been fading.
But, yeah, something had changed in the short time since he had left Chicago on Tuesday night. Even his condo felt like a new place. He hadn’t even come back here after that dinner because he pretty much hated it. Thanked God it was just a sublet through June. But now, after a night that would probably rank up there in his Top Five for a very long time—with the knowledge that Dorie was in his bed—it felt like home.
Dorie hadn’t even bothered to change. She’d just stepped out of her jeans and then crawled under the covers. After stripping out of his own clothes, he climbed in next to her, nudging her over. “You’re on my side,” he whispered into her neck.
Rather than move over, she pushed back into him—not helpful. “My side,” she mumbled back.
They were clearly going to have some conversations if he managed to talk her into letting this be more than a temporary thing. He did just have one much more immediate thing he needed to clear up, however. “That, uh... That thing you were saying about the Pill...?”
Her body went tense for the most fleeting of moments and then relaxed. “Right,” she said. “I was meaning to talk to you about that.” She turned in his arms so that she was facing him. Did not look him in the eyes as she trailed her finger down his chest. “I mean, I know it’s crazy to think you’d take my word for it. And it’s not like it makes sense since this is such a short-term thi—”
“It’s not a short-term thing,” he interrupted, his hand running up the back of her leg. Goddamn he loved the way her breath hitched.
Undaunted, she continued, “And it’s really just about sex—”
“It’s not just about sex,” he snapped, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice on that one.
She ignored that, too, saying, “But I’ve never been with a guy without a condom,” as her arm snaked down between them and she took him firmly in hand. “And I’d really like for that to be different with you.” Then she started to play.
Oh, fuck. Sweet Jesus, fucking fuck. He grabbed on to her shoulder. How did she do that? Although, no, he didn’t want the answer to that question, because she’d clearly had some practice.
“And you?” she whispered as she feathered kisses down his throat. “All clean, right? I mean...” Her mouth was traveling across his collarbone. She threw her leg over his and pushed up so she was straddling his thighs, stroking him the whole time. “I’m assuming that would have been headline news by now if you weren’t.”
A laugh escaped even as his eyes rolled toward the back of his head. How was it possible she could make him laugh right now? About something that usually made his blood run cold, no less. “Yes,” he gasped. “For some reason—” Oh, shit, she was throwing in some tongue. “—they didn’t want—” Fuck. Taking him into her mouth. “—that in the press—” Taking him all the way to the back of her throat. Sweet Jesus, fuck. “—release.”
She did something then that nearly blew him out of his mind. He managed to keep control, but only because there was no way in hell he was coming until they were doing this bareback.
And then her mouth was abruptly gone.
Her head came up, sexy as sin—hair wild, lips full and puffy and red, eyes anime-worthy wide. “Did you just make a joke?” On hands and knees, she stalked up the length of his body looking so fucking hot that the beast inside him wanted to roar. He almost started panting like a goddamn dog.
Poised above him—so close he could feel her heat—she held still as he yanked her T-shirt over her head, as he nearly tore her panties in two. “Pretty risky move, making me laugh when I have you in my mouth.”
That’s what that was? He would have laughed again if the entire future of mankind didn’t depend on him grabbing her by the hips and yanking her down over him and, oh, fuck, yesssss, driving into her tight, wet heat. He wasn’t sure who took who after that, just that it was hard, fast and so damn perfect that it almost brought him to tears.
Or maybe that was because of the look in her eyes—hell, yes, she was falling just as hard as he was—right after she came. She shut it down quickly, reaching up for a quick kiss before turning around and resting back against him.
Short-term?
Only about the sex?
Hell the fuck no.
He wrapped his arms around her and fell asleep.
Chapter Seventeen
The sun wasn’t nearly high enough in the sky when Nate woke up. He should have felt worse than he did; his head should have been pounding. But he didn’t and it wasn’t. There was only one thing throbbing and for only one reason.
Waking up with her was everything he’d dreamed it would be.
Literally. It felt like the second his eyes closed, he was caressing her. Shifting her hair off her should
ers, kissing the back of her neck as he ran his hand down her arm, over her hip, the smooth skin of her thigh...
She’d just called his name when his eyes flew open and he realized that the sun was out. That she was actually wearing a T-shirt that she must have pulled on at some point during the night and that her back was still to him. But that he was buried deep inside her.
“Nate,” she whispered as she angled her hips, pulsing around him from within.
He tried to wait. He didn’t want to take her like this, without fully knowing if she was as wet and ready as she seemed or if that was still just part of the dream. But then, trembling, her hand found the back of his thigh, clenching him as she gasped. Her body clamped down around him as he kissed the base of her neck.
That was all it took. He exploded into her, rocked as she shattered around him. He grabbed the headboard, desperate for something to ground him, to keep from taking flight. When she reached up and closed her hand around his, though—fell back against him with a low moan—he was lost. It wasn’t just that he’d begun to fall, it was signed and sealed: he’d fallen full in love with her. In a matter of days.
He pulled her closer and dropped his head, wanting to breathe her in; overcome by a hunger from so deep inside that it took his breath away. “You’re killing me,” he finally managed to say.
“I know,” she said, stretching out languorously like a purring, satisfied cat. “I’m sorry. I even contemplated the can-you-help-me-in-the-kitchen quickie last night but it didn’t seem the time. And, uh, I probably would have gotten lost trying to find the kitchen.”
Right. Because she was insisting it was sex only, short-term. This was seriously beginning to bug him.
But before he could say anything about it, she slapped him on the leg. “Now leave me alone and let me get some sleep.” She pulled the covers up over her shoulder. “Gotta rest up for the next time,” she said dreamily.