by Leslie North
He had seen her, all of her—the kaleidoscope of her skin, the way color communicated her desire—so he removed the glasses and set them gently on the table behind him. When he returned to her, he tugged her closer to the table’s edge and ripped the thin membrane of silken fabric she held aside, vowing to buy her more in fifty different colors and a hundred different patterns. He knelt on the loam of soft, moss-like leaves beneath the prized orchids and flicked his tongue once along the perfect, swelled length of her dripping seam.
She nearly catapulted off the table.
Enhanced by fragrant blossoms all around, she tasted like honeyed milk. As he worked his tongue along the trembling trench of her pussy, her moans expanded to the surrounding glass, and her hands sought something to grip. Finding nothing but delicate orchids within reach only heightened her cries. At his entry into her channel, first with fingers then with tongue, she seemingly decided her tits were the handhold that most grounded her.
The view had the opposite effect on him.
He reached down and adjusted his cock, straining north toward her awaiting sex. Yanking the band of his underwear past the raw and demanding head provided temporary relief against the strain, but his control wouldn’t last much longer. Blood pooled hot along its every insistent inch.
“This wasn’t my surprise, you know.” Her voice sounded like she had swallowed a dozen orchids, dry.
“There’s more?”
Claire sat up, tugged him by his shirt to a standing position and hopped free of the table. She wiggled out a striptease of her skirt and his jersey, still draped from her shoulders, that made him as hungry as a defensive end. Then she scooped up her clothes and heels and his glasses and scurried down the row and out of the greenhouse, her mouthwateringly bare backside dimpling from the frenzied pace.
“What the fuck, Claire?”
The strangled desperation in his voice was laughable, but he pursued her with the mindset of a competitive athlete: good, better, best. Claire was already the best, in every conceivable way. It was up to him to discover what she was beyond that.
Game on.
10
Joan didn’t believe in indoor living, which was why her house was so small. If people had to live indoors, she believed, they should live under glass to get as close to nature as possible. Claire had discovered the glass bedroom on last Sunday’s trip out to the property. Furnished sparingly with a few throw rugs; an old wooden toolbox filled with books; tiny trinkets lining the one-inch thick structural crossbeam that ran the perimeter of the room; a simple, antique iron bed; and enough pillows and white linens to simulate clouds, the room was a masterful centerpiece against the frame of Joan’s English gardens.
Claire ran up the few steps leading into the glass room, Marcus hot on her trail. She underestimated the pursuit of a quarterback. She never got that speed out of him during sessions. At the bedside, she dropped her collection of clothes on a colorful, braided rug, placed his glasses safely on an open window-ledge, and tumbled onto the bed.
Marcus removed a foil packet from his wallet, placed it on the pillow, and climbed onto the bed after her. He pinned her in place with innocent kisses that traveled to not-so-innocent places on her body.
Gooseflesh spread along her inner forearms and thighs. His fingers re-entered her, and she seeped a fresh round of desire around them.
“This is my surprise.”
“That you’re so…slippery I can’t catch you?”
“That I want you to make love to me here.”
“Considered this, have you?”
“Only every day since we met.”
His fingertips stopped their skillful plundering.
“You hated me on day one.”
“I thought you were the most magnetic man I had ever seen. With a temper to match. Would you really have dropped your pants in the conference room?”
He gave her an easy peck on the lips to tease her. “You’ll never know.”
“You had me after that. In the dark hallway.”
“Not my best moment.”
“But there have been a hundred best moments since then. Kneeling in the greenhouse at the top of the list.”
A deep chuckle rumbled through Marcus’s chest.
“Time for the team captain to take direction.”
Claire gripped the hem of his T-shirt and tugged upward. He lifted his arms to accommodate the action until the cotton garment joined hers on the floor. She nudged him back, shoulder blades to the mattress. He obliged, a lazy smile at his lips, then crossed his arms behind his head and stretched long. The hue of his sculpted torso was like blended dark roast and cream, a mesmerizing contrast with the snowy white duvet. The sunlight and the glass walls conspired to elevate the January air to the temperature of Heaven.
In her mind, she catalogued how she wanted him. Not everything had to unfold according to plan, but she intended to check every last box on her list of discovery. She skimmed her fingertip inside the waistband of his athletic pants, careful to slow her progress near the drawstring. For there, peeking out from the confines of his designer underwear, was the hood of his penis.
Extra-large. Until confirmation.
Claire smiled.
“What?” he said through his reflexive smirk.
“I was thinking about extra yarn. Lots of extra yarn.”
At his quizzical expression, she tugged both waistbands low, freeing his erection in a stunning salute to the glass ceiling, effectively stalling any further questions on his tongue. When she had removed every scrap of his clothes, waist to expensive endorsement sneakers, she crawled back up his body, deliberately skimming her nipples along the soft hair on his legs.
He licked his beautiful lips. She licked his rigid offering.
Base to head, bulging veins to downy tip. He was dark and musky and impossibly aroused. With every trail of her tongue, every inch she accepted past her lips, he dissolved into a place of barely-contained groans and groping hands—seeking out what she had in the greenhouse, a grounding against weightlessness. He threaded his fingers through her hair and gripped her scalp, a luxury she had not had. His close-cropped curls added to his sexiness, but she wanted a firm hold for the ride ahead.
Before long, he reached for her, a gentle threat in his plea that he was too close, that she had to slow down. She straddled him, wrapping her folds around his turgid length and using the wetness from her saliva to her advantage. Soon she no longer needed that lubrication, for he sat up, scraped his even, white teeth along her charged nipple and worked it until the slight nip of pain equaled unsurpassed pleasure. Spirals of sensation wrapped her core and descended to her vagina. She flooded around him.
He unwrapped the condom and rolled it on. When he rejoined her in the moment, his eyes telegraphed the expression she had seen so many times on the practice field. Blinding determination. End-goal focus. Hands wide at her hips, he nestled his tip at her entry and filled her.
Completely.
His girth stole her breath. She had wanted something to counter-balance the wanton ache pulsing through her swollen tissue. He gave her everything he had and more. They rocked against each other, taking their time to find the rhythm and space that worked for them.
In the game of intimacy, Marcus proved unparalleled: patient, attentive, expressive, appreciative. They found bliss in the most athletic of positions. And when her cries mounted and he sensed her approaching climax, he peaked with her.
When he had caught his breath, he slipped into yoga jokes. Claire laughed against his kisses, placed his glasses back on his face, and asked him if he wanted a repeat performance, this time in Technicolor.
Never one to back down from a challenge, Marcus took the game ball and ran.
To Claire, the Rogues hosting the Oakland Raiders on the same day Marcus Kingston found color seemed the perfect irony. Maybe it was the universe’s way of balancing out all he had seen and done that morning with the black and white of the task ahead. Marcus had been side
lined before for his injury, but the stakes had never been higher. If Eggert failed as quarterback, the season was over. If Eggert succeeded as quarterback, Marcus’s career could be over.
Claire sat in the Rogue’s conference room, post-game. Two weeks ago, she had occupied the same seat. Spread before her were her game reports, organized by all the criteria the owner had laid out on day one. Sterling never waited for the Monday coaches’ meetings. Absurd wealth, she supposed, bred impatience.
So much had happened in two weeks. She found Marcus. Now she was poised to lose him.
Eggert had played like a starter.
Sterling charged into the room, too many teeth showing, too many words. Fresh off the high of a win that clenched the team’s playoff berth, his robust persona made Claire want to crawl beneath the table or slip out the door. But he zeroed in on her, called her name so the room’s occupants turned and began a round of applause aimed in her direction. She started calculating how quickly she could get to the nearest ladies’ room.
She smiled through it all. Inside, she felt sick.
“Our secret weapon,” Sterling said.
Those in attendance nodded their agreement. Glasses clinked in celebratory toasts.
“Tell us your thoughts on the game, Miss Wynifred.”
“Exciting, sir.” Also heartbreaking, conflicting, and nausea-inducing.
“Let’s see what you’ve got for us.” Sterling poured himself a whiskey on the rocks and laid her data from one end of the table to the other. Each sheet showed numbers that lauded Colin’s performance.
“I requested a numbers comparison to Kingston. Do you have that?”
The knot in her stomach crept to her throat and settled. She reached into her file and removed the reports. Sterling eyed the pages critically, his mouth twisting in variations of indecipherable thought, all while Claire could not help but notice the graph colors—Eggert in red and green and blue, Marcus in the default color of gray.
“I’m sure you know the magnitude of the decision we’ll be making regarding the playoffs. I need to know you stand behind these numbers.”
She had a choice: stand behind the data she knew was right and get her Pentagon meeting or claim her tech still needed work and give Marcus a fighting chance to get back on top. His words charged from her memory: Fear holds you back from greatness, if you let it.
Claire glanced at the ring on her right index finger. Clay had given it to her the week he deployed. Engraved around the thick band of sterling silver, two birds in flight, connected by a string. She had worn it every day of her mission here, as a reminder of why she had seemingly veered so far off-course. Money and connections didn’t come to her tiny little corner of a dusty computer lab. Money and connections wouldn’t come again.
Despite what they had shared, how close they had become, despite Claire’s absolute conviction that she and Marcus together could be something really special, she knew once he found out she had betrayed him from the beginning, any hope of a relationship was gone.
“They’re as accurate as numbers get. Without error.”
“You’re quite possibly smarter than all of us here put together.” The quip came off good-natured. Sterling’s adoring group chuckled. “If you were in my position, Miss Wynifred, which quarterback will win us a Super Bowl?”
She found the question offensive, odious. If Marcus had taught her anything, it was that the sport was a game of instinct. To base such a decision solely on what she, a computer nerd who had never even held a football before she came here, recommended was an insult to the game and everyone else in the organization who had made the sport the axis their lives rotated around.
“My PhD hardly prepared me for decisions about professional sports team management.”
Sterling smiled. He should have had yellow teeth from all the alcohol and cigars he shoved past his veal-colored lips. Their white perfection perfectly illustrated the veneer over the entire situation.
“Don’t be coy, Miss Wynifred. You’re closer to this decision than anyone here.”
Claire wondered what they knew of her relationship with Marcus. Even an off-hand remark by Keane or Eggert might reflect on her as someone less than professional. Marcus’s head between her thighs flashed through her mind. She gripped the armrest of her chair in an effort to keep everything from slipping away—her dreams, her goals, the happiness she thought she’d never feel again after she buried Clay. She glanced around the room: Coach Bana, Sterling’s wife, the board members who wore splashes of Rogues colors, but failed to fully commit because it didn’t fit into their carefully-molded image.
It’s time to get in on your game, your glory. No more sidelines.
“Numbers don’t lie, sir.”
It was a cop-out, falling back on the science. Merely a technicality that she had not told them precisely what they wanted to hear. Her body went numb; her brain shut down. She had to get to the ladies’ room, but at least twelve people who weren’t her people stood in the way, Sterling chief among them.
He took her standing and circling the table as an invitation for a more intimate exchange. For one horrifying moment, she thought Sterling might hug her. Instead, he extended his hand. When she took it, he tugged her into his aura of confidence.
“You’ve done everything I asked and more. Tomorrow morning, I intend to follow through on my part. Your world is about to change, young lady. Better hold on for the ride.”
Claire couldn’t be sure what she said or did in response. The room spun and the door was blessedly close. She stepped out into the hallway. The door clicked closed behind her, lifting and carrying the joyful conversation of the powers-that-be away from her. In the hallway, cool air. And silence.
And Marcus.
She covered her mouth with her hand, ineffectively holding tears and bile and self-loathing inside, and ran the opposite direction.
11
They’d barely waited for the numbers to cool.
Coach Bana and Sterling had ambushed Marcus in the locker room, after the media had trickled out, after the staff had been in to clear the mess left behind when fifty-three happy, sweaty football players had rampaged through like the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Marcus sat on the padded folding chair in front of his well-appointed, fine-grain wood dressing stall, feeling like he’d been kicked in the nuts.
Twice.
The one from Claire hurt worse than the one on the field. That’s when he knew his mistake. He had allowed her past his barrier. And as he had discovered time and time again, vulnerability was the truest path to pain.
He should have slept in. Buried his face in his pillow and let the storm clouds close in. But Mondays since Claire came into his life had always felt honest. New week, new chances, nothing but truth.
And truth was something he needed more than the carrot Bana and Sterling had dangled…
Wow us in practice this week, and we might change our minds.
So Marcus stood at a distance, his feet planted firmly on the sideline of the practice field, trying to find the courage Claire said he possessed. She was dressed in blacks and grays, flowing garments that hid her body like pajamas. He hadn’t bothered with the glasses since they made love for the last time, cleaned up their mess in the greenhouse, and drove back to the city, hands linked. His reporting time had been noon. The hallway outside the conference room had been the last time he’d laid eyes on her.
Until now.
Hell, he didn’t want it to be over.
Woman like that gets under your skin, we all screwed.
He took a deep, fortifying breath, crossed the field, and settled on the same stool from which she had started her orbit into his world. Marcus had held out hope it wasn’t her, that Bana and Sterling had reached their conclusion on their own, that she had refused them her reports, but one look at her—all quivering bottom lip and tense brow and vacant, red eyes—and he knew.
“Goddamn it, Claire.” He kept his voice low, even, controlled, the same
he had used in his most intimate moments with her but with an unmistakable edge he couldn’t siphon out. “Tell me you didn’t use me, get close to me, to distract me from the grand plan. Tell me you didn’t know. Because if you did…you aren’t the person I thought you were.”
“They asked me about my data. I wasn’t going to lie, Marcus.”
“I would have never asked you to. Eggert played a hell of a game. An MVP-worthy game. But that isn’t what we’re talking about here, is it?”
She hugged her arms, pulled them close like there was a chill in the air she was powerless to fight. He had never seen her so listless.
“Did you know all along? That they intended to replicate me, replace me, through you?”
“I did the job I came here to do.”
“That’s no answer, Claire. Did. You. Know?”
“Yes. But I never expected…this. Any of this.”
“What? For me to fail?”
“For me to fall in love with you.”
A caustic laugh burned up his windpipe and erupted from his mouth. He rose and paced the end zone, his hands awkward and shifty and rootless without a football to make the world drop away.
“Is that what this is, Claire? Because it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. Every single person in my life who claimed to love me has ended up betraying me. Every single person but one. And he’s gone. As gone as the brother you keep chasing because you can’t bear to have a life of your own, to allow yourself happiness because that’s something he’ll never have again.”
Fat tears charged down her cheeks. They nearly undid him.
“Congratulations, Claire. I guess your numbers got you what you wanted, after all. I just hope when you get your tech into combat, when you realize men and women are wearing your life-saving gear, you realize there are other kinds of casualties not so easily solved with science.”
He turned toward the tunnel just as Eggert jogged on the field.