by Tia Lewis
We scored a field goal on that drive, which brought the half to a close. We were still down four points when we trotted into the locker room through the long, dark tunnel.
I heard grunting and groaning from the therapy room. I had to look in there, had to know what was happening with Trey. Coach was in there, and Abby. She was examining Trey’s knee, her face hard and worried. I saw frown lines on her forehead and knew it couldn’t be good. Then again, all I had to do was look at the agony all over Trey’s face, the sweat trickling down his skin, to know.
Then, she smiled. “So you take a little time to work this out. You’ll be better than ever in no time.”
“No time?” he gasped, trying to grin through his pain.
“Sure as shit,” she nodded. “But you have to do me one favor.”
“Which is?”
“You have to listen to every single thing I say.” She cocked an eyebrow. “And I’ll have Patrice on your back, too, and she’ll be my spy.” They both laughed as she wrapped an ice pack around the knee and elevated it. She and Coach Cramer stepped aside to talk. I went to the locker room with the rest of the team.
I knew she had a good head on her shoulders, and the team owners wouldn’t have hired her if she didn’t know what she was talking about. It was her bedside manner that had impressed me most just then. Even though Trey’s knee was swollen to the size of a basketball, she was confident and calm and kept it together. That was what he had needed most—a player always wanted to know how soon they could be back on the field.
It wasn’t an easy loss, but they couldn’t all be wins. We would spend a lot of time talking about where we had gone wrong that day and tightening up our defense. I knew they all felt like hell like they had let the team down, but the fact was Denver’s offense was incredibly strong. It wasn’t all their fault.
Since we had the late game that night, we weren’t scheduled to fly home until early the following morning. We’d gotten a hotel room in town. Many of us planned on going to bed early, trying to forget the misery on the field that day. I couldn’t go to bed. I had too much energy rolling through me.
I wasn’t alone. Garrett, Jared, and a few of the others wanted to go out to a club not far from the hotel. “As long as there aren’t a lot of Denver fans there,” I joked. Then again, what were the odds they would recognize us? I didn’t need to get booed out of a club after almost getting booed off a field. I didn’t think my temper could handle that.
The club was fairly chill, though, just a lot of people trying to have a little fun on a Sunday night. If it had been Friday or Saturday it probably would have been a lot crazier, and I was glad that we were able to get a few tables in the back of the club and have some space to ourselves.
“One rule,” I announced. “No talking about the game.”
“What about Trey? How is he?” Garrett looked around to see if anybody knew anything.
“I think Abby was still with him after the game. Anybody see her?” Jared asked. We all shook our heads. Interesting—I had been looking for her, too. I had even called her room, but she hadn’t answered. I wondered if she had hung around all night with Trey. That would be something she would do. I thought about her working through the night to come up with a plan for Trey, while the rest of us were out having a good time. That was so like her. She was always the one doing work behind the scenes, even when we were kids together. When the rest of us were out having fun—going to parties, dances, that sort of thing—she was at home, studying. It was her nature, I guessed.
That was why it surprised me so much to see her walk into the club. I wasn’t the first one to see her, either.
“Hey, there she is!” We were already two or three drinks in when Garrett pointed to the other side of the room, where a familiar redhead had just come in. I watched in surprise as she walked around wearing a tight shirt and skinny jeans, her whole lush body on display for everybody there. I heard a low whistle from one of the guys. I could hardly pay attention. I was too busy looking at her. What the hell did she think she was doing there?
“Damn. I would tap the shit outta that ass anytime,” Joe muttered darkly, shifting in his seat.
“I bet she’s an animal, too, you know? The quiet ones always are.” Mo practically licked his chops.
“Yeah, she’s a beast, I bet. She would claw and scream, probably. Drain you cock completely dry.” Garrett laughed a little, taking a swig from his cold beer with a satisfied smile.
“Look at the tits on her,” Jared said. “She always hides them under those polo shirts. Damn, I wanna get a handful of them.”
My blood boiled. I couldn’t tell them not to talk that way about her—what would that make me look like? But it killed me to hear it. They didn’t know her. She wasn’t just some slut to pass around. She was different. It was bizarre, the respect they showed her when we were all working together, and the way they talked about her when we weren’t. I wondered if she knew how two-faced they all were and thought she had to—she’d told me herself that she was used to working with men. Were we all like that?
The conversation shifted away from her and onto other things, but I couldn’t get into it. I was too busy watching her, my eyes going over her body. Yeah, her tits were incredible. And her ass. I hadn’t had my hands on either in almost a week—hadn’t I wanted it that way? We were keeping it casual, and spending any more time together would have made it harder on her. I had a heart, at least.
But I couldn’t stop thinking of the way she had looked on the beach, naked in the moonlight and again in the sun. We had played like kids, and then very much not like kids. I had seen every bit of her, touched every part of her. And she had loved it, hadn’t she? She was just the way they imagined she was. Like a volcano just waiting to explode. I had made her explode. Could they? Probably not.
Neither could the douchebag who was flirting with her at the bar. My eyes narrowed as I sized him up. A bro. The only way I could describe him in his cargo shorts and rugby shirt, flip flops on his feet. Who wore flip flops to a club? Spiky hair, too, like he had spent time trying to style it. I had a pretty clear picture of who he was and what he wanted from her. He had picked the wrong girl.
“I’ll go ask her about Trey,” I said, standing. Nobody thought to question me, but if they had, I probably wouldn’t have heard. The blood was rushing too hard in my ears for me to hear anything else. Not even the music.
She was laughing at something he was saying when I walked up, but the smile left her face when she saw me. Maybe because she could tell I wasn’t there to just say hello.
“Oh, Max.” She turned to the asshole she was with. “This is my friend Max, Josh.”
Josh. Yeah, I could see him having a douchebag name like this. “I wanna talk to you,” I said, ignoring him.
Her eyes flashed at me in the almost dark club. “I’m busy. Can’t it wait?”
“No. It’s important. He won’t mind.” I put myself between the two of them. I outweighed him by sixty pounds, at least, and was a good foot taller. He was smart enough to back away.
And she looked furious. “Why did you do that?” she spat. “Don’t you ever get tired of embarrassing yourself?”
“I’m not embarrassing myself. You are. Letting some asshole rub up on you in a club.”
“Asshole? You’re the one being an asshole. And he wasn’t rubbing up on me. We were just talking.”
“I wanna speak to you about something important. We have to get out of here.” I looked around. The guys were flirting with a few girls sitting nearby, so none of them were paying attention to me. It was my chance to get her out of there without them noticing.
“I was having a good time! I don’t want to leave!” I took her by the arm, ignoring what she had to say. She didn’t know what she was talking about. I pushed my way through the thin crowd, still holding on to her. She cursed and bitched the whole way out the door and into a cab.
“Are you serious? Who do you think you are? Why don’t you j
ust drag me around by the hair, Caveman?” She had come with me, though. She could have asked for help, but she didn’t. I knew she would rather be with me than any other random nobody.
I turned to her without a word, taking her by the shoulders and crushing my mouth against hers. She fought back, but only for a split second before melting into me. Our tongues fought as I wrapped my arms around her, holding her tight.
By the time the cab pulled up at the hotel, we were both breathless. There was no surprise in her eyes. Only desire. I put her hand on my bulging cock, letting her feel what she did to me. She bit her lower lip. There wasn’t a question about where we were going once we got inside.
18
Abby
My head spun. I had no idea what was happening. One minute I was flirting with Josh, having a good time—he was cute, funny, sweet if a little dim—and the next I was making out with Max in the back of a cab. No question who I would have rather been with, though I didn’t know where it left us. What did it all mean? I was willing to leave the past in the past if that was what he wanted. He’d have to learn how to let me live my own life if that were ever going to happen.
I couldn’t think about it as we walked through the lobby together, or as we got into the elevator to go to his hotel room. Probably because the blood had left my brain, traveling to southern regions. We didn’t say a word to each other the entire way to his room. It was enough to feel the tension between us, the certainty that if a spark went off, we would both be consumed in the explosion.
We were all over each other before the door to my room closed. We couldn’t go to his, since he was sharing. One of the benefits of being the only woman with a bunch of men was having a room of my own. He pushed me up against the door, his tongue fighting with mine just as it had in the cab. I felt his power, his strength. He pinned my wrists above my head with one hand, taking possession of my body with the other. He slid it up beneath my shirt, handling me roughly, not caring if he marked or bruised me. He squeezed my breast, pulling the bra cup aside to fondle my bare flesh. I groaned, and heat surged between my thighs.
He lifted me, letting go of my wrists to grab my ass with both hands. I wrapped my legs around his waist, gripping him tight as he carried me to the bed. It was all so sudden, so right. I hadn’t been able to think about anything but him all week. I had almost given up the hope that we would ever be together again in that way, even though it seemed inevitable that we would. Nobody would ever compare to him.
He threw me onto the bed, making me gasp with the suddenness, the near violence of his actions. I kicked off my heels while he unbuttoned my jeans, pulling them down my legs before running his hands over my calves, my thighs. I felt a brief moment of relief that I’d shaved my legs that day before closing my eyes and sinking into a sensation.
He wasn’t one for talking before sex—instead, he took my ankles and pulled me to the edge of the bed. I let out a cry of surprise which turned to a moan when I felt his fingers slide beneath my thong. He almost ripped the thin scrap of fabric to shreds in his hurry. I knew I was soaked, ready for him, and he inhaled deeply when his nose got close to the center of my pussy. My whole body flushed with embarrassment, but he didn’t seem to mind. He dove between my thighs, no preambles, no teasing. His tongue lapped at my wet swollen lips, then dipped between them and thrashed against my aching clit.
My back arched, a long cry coming from my mouth as he pleasured me. My fingers tangled in his thick, brown hair, holding his head close. He took my wrists and pulled them from his head, holding them to the bed. I felt a shiver run through me. So he wanted to be in control. I let him hold me, then, anything as long as he never stopped the pleasure shooting through every part of me and all starting with his quick, skilled tongue.
“Oh … Max …” I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I could only work toward my orgasm, letting it come, letting him take me there. It was almost unbearable, how good it all felt. I didn’t think I could take much more and actually tried to buck him off. He held on, licking my pussy, letting me writhe and shout beneath him. Finally, it all came together, and I shrieked, my hips rising from the bed, my legs closing around his head as I rode out the first burst of ecstasy. It was incredible, and I came down with a shuddering cry as my body trembled vulnerably.
It didn’t matter to him that I was hardly finished or that I needed to rest for a moment. I only thought I needed to rest. He knew better. He slid two fingers into my pussy, pumping them in a blur of motion while he sucked my sensitive clit. I couldn’t stand it, I was sure I couldn’t stand it, I would die. He would kill me. Didn’t he know he was killing me? And yet I cried out yes, yes, more, urging him on, and he pushed me again beyond the limits of what I thought I could take as another orgasm slammed into me, only minutes after the first. I didn’t know that was possible for me, and my head spun as I tried to make sense of what was happening.
His fingers left me. His mouth, too. I looked up, pushing myself up on shaky arms to find him unrolling a condom over his thick cock.
“Over,” he growled, flipping me himself when I didn’t move fast enough. I gasped, shocked by his forcefulness. He entered me without a word, pushing himself inside. I cried out in surprise, then ecstasy. I almost came again, just after one stroke. He filled me so completely, it almost hurt. And it felt right. I never felt like that before.
He took the lead, setting the pace. His hands on my hips, guiding me back and forth as he pumped in and out. I gladly let him take control, let him ride me like an animal. I heard his little grunts, his growls, and they set me on fire just like his sharp, deep thrusts did. Maybe more. There was something powerful about what was happening, something beyond physical pleasure. Was it supposed to be that way? If it was, I’d been missing out for years. I slammed back into him, meeting his strokes, doubling my pleasure as our bodies crashed together. He chuckled darkly, liking it when I responded like that and rewarded me with a series of quick, sharp thrusts that sent me over the edge yet again. I tightened around his thickness, pulsing and quivering.
And still, he fucked me, our bodies slapping together every time he thrusted. I loved it, wanted it to last forever. I might have come again at some point. It was all a blur. It might as well have all been an orgasm, for all I knew. I lost all sense of time and place and could only feel. It was just the two of us. Just our connection. I cried out his name, begging for more. And he gave it to me, again and again.
It was all so nasty, dirty, and right. So right. My body screamed ecstatically, every nerve ending on fire, my core tightening, tightening, the tension building. Pretty soon it would burst, and I would probably faint, but it would be worth it. So worth it. I grunted and growled and shrieked as my body burned with lust I didn’t know I possessed. How did he know? Or was it all because of him? Would I ever feel that way with anybody else? I couldn’t believe how incredible he was, how good he felt inside me.
I felt his hand slap against my ass as he pummeled me with hard, smooth strokes. I yelped a little in surprise, the brief pain melting into a sweet warmth that only added to the delicious pleasure. I whimpered, wishing he would do it again.
And he did. And then again. I closed my eyes, absorbing the blows, letting him take me whatever way he wanted to. Because he knew my body, he knew what would turn me on until I screamed. I gave myself to him, let him do whatever it was he wanted. I knew it would be worthwhile.
He heard my whimpers, louder and louder every time he spanked me. “That’s right … come for me … one more time, baby …” He slapped my ass so hard, I thought I saw stars. And my body started pulsing, shuddering with one final climax.
“Yes!” I threw back my head, screaming in pleasure as spasms wracked me. It felt like I was exploding from the inside out, my body flying apart in bliss. All I could do was scream in total euphoria to let him know how good it felt. I needed him to know how good it felt, what he did to me.
A few strong, sure strokes later and he reached his peak. I heard him g
runt and felt his body strain behind me before he slid away, then fell onto the bed a moment later. I was still on my hands and knees, shaking a little, unable to believe what he’d put me through.
I eased myself down onto the bed, trembling. My body and my brain were at odds. I couldn’t let myself believe that he did it because he cared about me because he felt the sort of passion for me that I did for him. It was all jealousy, anger. Only a man angry with himself could take a woman that way. I didn’t know where his anger came from—maybe from wanting me, maybe from not being able to get over the way I wouldn’t sit and wait for him. He didn’t like other people playing with his toys.
I looked at him, where he had stretched out on his back with his feet on the floor. I didn’t know what to say. Would it hurt if I told him to go back to his hotel room? Part of me wanted to hurt him. As much as I wanted to believe that he wanted me, I just couldn’t. He’d wanted to remind me that no other man would ever compare to him. That was all.
“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” I whispered, pulling the blankets over me. I still shivered just a little, my body coming down from the unspeakable high he’d given it.
“Huh?” He was just catching his breath.
“You said back at the club that there was something you wanted to talk about. I thought I would ask.”
He chuckled. “Oh, that. It wasn’t important.”
I sat up, my pride getting in the way of my good sense. “Wasn’t important? What kind of game are you playing?”
He opened his eyes, turning to me. “What? You’re gonna ask me that after what just happened?”
“What did just happen? You took what you think is yours, right? Nobody else can have me, now that you have. And you wanted to remind me of that.”