Players

by Rachel Cross

  He pounded into her hard and fast, long and deep. She pushed her fingers up into the space behind his balls, stroking him there until, with two more thrusts so rough he drove her body up onto the bed, he came with a shout.

  He collapsed next to her on the mattress, his body heaving, grinning.

  “That was awesome.”

  She smiled, moved to her side and propped her head on her hand. “It was.”

  She couldn’t worry about how this would affect their burgeoning friendship, or their lessons. She would take Kyle’s advice. Casual. Besides, Enchanted and the road were only weeks away. She did have a no-sex-with-co-workers mandate, but that had been established because she’d caught her first love—the lead prince and a man ten years her senior—cheating on her. Giving Shane skating lessons was hardly the same thing.

  There had been serious relationships since then, but infrequent flings on the road were the norm. These days anything that could be termed a relationship happened during summer when Enchanted was on hiatus. And no matter how intense it started, there was a September expiration date. Shane was no different.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Fuck,” Shane said. Why did good things always go to hell when women were involved? Apparently the fact that he and Amy had spent the last two weeks between his sheets learning every inch of each other’s bodies didn’t always translate into a satisfying ending.

  He rolled off Amy onto the bed and covered his face with his arm, hiding behind his elbow.

  “What the fuck?” he said again.

  “It happens.”

  He lifted his arm, turned his head, and glared at her. “Not to me it doesn’t.”

  She sat up. “Great. Thanks.” She stood, scooped up her scattered clothes, moved into the bathroom, and slammed the door.

  Goddamn it. Now she was pissed at him, when this whole thing was her fault. Sure it had happened—a handful of times—usually when he’d made the mistake of mixing sex with an abundance of alcohol in his youth. Shit. How could he have lost his erection? He’d been rock hard and desperate for her.

  If only she hadn’t insisted on turning over. He didn’t do missionary. He’d be happy with her on top and from behind was always amazing. But why did she have to insist on that? All that heavy eye contact. The position was altogether too personal.

  He pulled on his jeans and went to the bathroom door. “Amy? I’m sorry. I was,” he searched for the word that would pacify her, “insensitive. Can you . . . come out here?”

  There was silence behind the door.

  “Amy?”

  The door opened and she stood there fully dressed, avoiding his eyes. “I’m going home,” she said softly.

  Shane ran a hand through his hair. “Amy. I . . . that doesn’t happen. And I don’t know why it did. Why don’t we get something to eat and try again later?”

  “No thanks. I got mine and I have plans.”

  “Since when?” What the hell was wrong with her?

  She met his eyes and he registered what was on her face—it wasn’t anger, or disappointment, or disgust. It was hurt. And it made his chest ache.

  “Look, it’s no big deal—” he tried.

  “It is to me.”

  “Really?” What the hell? “We’ve had amazing sex a dozen times and this one time—”

  “And why couldn’t you? Do you even know?” she asked.

  He was instantly on the defensive. “There’s no reason for it. This shit happens. Every once in a while you can’t get there. It’s never happened to you?”

  “Of course I’ve had sex without being able to come. And of course some positions work better than others, but you can’t have sex with me missionary style, can you?”

  He backed up a step.

  “That’s not—”

  “That is why. You’re always trying to flip me onto all fours or make me ride you. Always.”

  “So?” He looked up at the ceiling. “I like watching you, Amy.” Every guy had his preferred positions. There was nothing weird about that.

  “You can watch me in any position.”

  He shifted awkwardly. “You’re making a big deal about nothing. It’s just sex,” he blurted.

  Her body froze and her eyes widened a fraction. She put a hand on his chest and gave him a shove, hard.

  Four long strides took her out of the bedroom.

  He followed, naked.

  She grabbed her purse from the table near the front door.

  He followed her. “Amy, what’s going on?”

  “You’re right,” she said, her voice quiet and cold. “It’s just sex. Bye, Shane. See you at the rink.”

  She slammed the door behind her.

  He stood staring, open-mouthed. What the fuck just happened? Had she ended things? Because he had . . . difficulty? Once? That was ridiculous. They’d had sex, sometimes more than once a day, and that was it? He hadn’t been tempted to hook up with anyone else for the first time since he could remember. He liked her.

  Was she going back to Kyle? That guy wanted her. She could deny they had something, but he’d seen the way Kyle looked at her. The way all men looked at her. Like they wanted to defile her fifty different ways. And he’d be Goddamned if he’d let her go like that.

  He nearly tripped in his haste to dress, grab his keys, and slam the front door before he realized it was too late to catch her. He didn’t know where she’d gone and they didn’t have practice tonight.

  He’d made dinner reservations at that little Italian place in Malibu.

  He let himself back into his apartment and called her.

  No answer. Called again. She still didn’t pick up.

  He texted her. “I’m sorry. Please come back.”

  He waited ten minutes. There was no response.

  “Give our,” his fingers paused over the key pad as he slowly typed out the twelve-letter word that left him lightheaded and nauseated, “relationship a chance, please. I’m so sorry.” But it was a relationship. With someone he liked and admired. He had to step up his game with her. She would accept nothing less.

  Fifteen minutes later there was a knock at his door. He flung it open. Amy stood in the hallway, eyes red-rimmed, and her skin blotchy. He yanked her into his embrace with trembling arms.

  • • •

  Until the fight, Amy had split her time between him and her skating friends, staying over at her own place alone nearly as many as she’d stayed in his bed. But since that night, he was jealous of her time. He’d insisted on her staying. They’d stopped to get some of her things and she’d been quasi-living with him from that point.

  Rather than the normal feelings of panic he experienced when someone stayed over, he stressed about the clock ticking on their time together. She’d already explained that she didn’t do the long distance thing. Ever.

  Their days started to fall into a familiar pattern: running every morning on the days he didn’t meet his trainer, followed by fooling around in the kitchen, shower, balcony—oh, the sex they’d had out there. He shook his head, grinning. Good thing he wasn’t A-list or there’d be video circulating about now.

  They lazed away the rest of the day until skating practice—some days he read scripts and she read books. She could sit on his patio and curl up with a book for hours on end—and she was fast, too. She’d even started to read through some of his pile of scripts, insisting he couldn’t put all his eggs in the hockey movie basket.

  She’d had been excited about one script in particular, a comedy where they were looking to cast him as a dimwitted army captain. She had giggled her way through when she read it to herself, then insisted he run through some lines with her. Amy laughed uproariously at his deadpan delivery. She’d sworn it was made for him and so he tossed it into his new “to be considered” pile.

  Then an hour into practice on Tuesday night, his phone rang while they took a water break. His agent. Shane’s heart, already racing from the crossovers she’d had him doing, accelerated still further.


  “Yeah?”

  “Your mother’s in the hospital,” Ike said.

  “So?”

  “So, why the fuck aren’t you there?”

  “ ‘Cause I’m here learning to skate—not that I’d go anyway, my mother is a—”

  “I don’t care if your mother is a three-toed sloth, Shane. Image, son, image. You have a choice of two roles you play in this situation: concerned son or asshole.”

  He sighed. “How do you even know this?”

  “How do I know anything?” Ike said. “It comes over the wires. I have alerts set for all my clients. She’s been on the news in Podunkville, Tennessee.”

  Shane rubbed his brow. “It’ll blow over.”

  “Get your ass to Podunkville. Pronto.”

  “But the skating—”

  “Take her with you, they have rinks there.” The other man hung up.

  The last fucking place he wanted to go. The last fucking person he wanted to see. Take Amy? No way. There weren’t any skating rinks within a hundred-mile radius of his hometown. Likely Memphis or Nashville though. And then it would be all over the news if he showed up to skate there. No thanks.

  Amy had skated off to give him privacy, but as he walked over toward the ice, she glided up. “What’s up?” she asked, taking in the expression on his face.

  “Apparently I need to get my ass home.” Every instinct he had was shrieking at him to leave it at that, but not even his fears of her exposure to his mother could over-ride his desire to have her with him. “Ever been to the Volunteer State?”

  She grinned. “I’ve been everywhere with Enchanted, Shane. Yes, I’ve been to Tennessee, and it was hotter than hell when I was there in October. You want me to come with you in August?”

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  His phone rang and he glanced at the number. “Amy, do you mind getting that? It’s my sister,” Shane said as he steered the rental car down the two-lane highway toward his hometown of Tyler, Tennessee.

  “Hi, Natalie. It’s Amy, Shane’s friend.”

  Shane frowned. She needed to quit with that friend bullshit and call him her boyfriend.

  “Oh, really? Okay. We’re on Route 40 at . . . ” She glanced at Shane with raised eyebrows.

  “An hour away.”

  She told Natalie where they were and then pressed the phone to her chest. “Your mom’s been discharged. Your sister’s got her settled in. Now Natalie’s at her own house and wants to know if you could stop by on your way to your mom’s.”

  “Tell her of course.”

  “Shane says of course,” she relayed. “Okay. See you soon.”

  “She’s already been discharged?” Amy asked, though whether surprised or impressed he couldn’t tell. He nodded. “I’m sure she insisted on it. It’s too soon, but she probably wanted to get home to start smoking again.”

  Amy’s eyes widened. “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked out the window. “Shane, it is so gorgeous here. I can’t get over how green it is—and these rolling hills.”

  “Mmm hmm,” he muttered, distractedly.

  “What?”

  “Wondering what’s going on with Natalie.”

  “You guys are close, right?”

  He shrugged. “We were. Growing up, it was the two of us against the world, or at least against my mom. Nat and her husband, Jesse, live nearby. My mom is . . . well, you’ll see. She’s a tough nut.”

  “Well, she’d have to be if she left the hospital after a heart attack so she could go home and smoke,” she replied.

  His lips twisted. “I’m serious, Amy, she’s not a nice person. Be on your guard with her, okay? If you don’t let her in, she can’t hurt you.”

  She shot him a curious look.

  Forty minutes later they turned off the highway onto a two-lane road, then onto a gravel driveway. A modest ranch house sat nestled under a few giant oaks.

  Amy stepped out of the car and her stretch lifted the baby doll t-shirt to bare her flat stomach. He’d had her at zero dark thirty this morning and considered stopping at some fleabag motel to have her again. Instead of falling into any kind of sexual normalcy, his desperation for her grew exponentially. He adjusted his jeans as his erection swelled.

  Amy caught the motion and the expression on his face and grinned. “You’re insatiable, Shane Marx.” He reached her in five strides as she backed away laughing. He took her by the shoulders and pressed her body up against the hood of the car. Dipping his head, he found her laughing mouth. She turned her head away. “Shane! Anyone in there can see us.”

  “So what?” He set her on the hood of the car, and stepped between her legs. Widening his stance, yanking her knees on either side of his hips, he took her lush mouth, stroked his tongue into her moist, minty cavern, and swallowed her moan.

  He was desperate to fuck her, to get out of his own head. He lifted her skirt; his hand rubbed over her silky thigh and made straight for her panties.

  Amy leaned her head back. “Shane?”

  He recaptured her mouth, sliding the palm of his hand to cup her mound. He could feel her, hot and damp through the cotton. His hand moved to the front of his jeans.

  “Shane!” She put both her hands on his chest and shoved.

  He took two startled steps back. “What?” he ground out.

  “What’s the matter with you? We’re in the driveway of your sister’s house,” she snapped, hopping off the hood. “Get a grip, would you?”

  He raked a hand through his hair.

  Amy grabbed her purse off the ground and held it in front of her, wide-eyed and irritated.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, leading the way up down the walkway to his sister’s front door. Behind him Amy muttered about grown men who behaved like teenage boys and making good impressions.

  What had he been thinking? He hadn’t, that much was obvious. He hated being back here.

  His sister opened the door before he knocked and from the grin on her face she’d seen them going at it by the car.

  Natalie held him tightly. Her body was a shade rounder and her narrow face wreathed in smiles. “God, Shane. It’s been too long!”

  “I know, Nat. I wish you would come out to California and see me more often. Hey, this is Amy Astor,” he narrowed his eyes at her, “my girlfriend.”

  Amy smiled and shook hands with Natalie, who pulled her into an embrace instead.

  “Girlfriend?” his sister thunked him on the back, “and one you bring home for a change? Will wonders never cease? Come on in and sit down. I made coffee ’cause I figure you all have been traveling since the butt-crack of dawn.”

  When they had settled onto the couch in the sunroom, Natalie perched on the edge of her seat across from them, lacing and unlacing her hands as she attempted small talk.

  Shane couldn’t take it anymore. “Out with it. Is it Mom?” he interrupted.

  “Is what Mom?”

  Shane took a sip of his coffee. “Whatever has you so keyed up, Nat.”

  “Oh. That. No. Mom’s the same.” She looked Amy up and down. “Avoid being alone with her,” she suggested.

  Amy cocked her head. “Excuse me?”

  “She’s a nasty piece of work.” Natalie eyed Shane before continuing, “Frankly, I’m astonished you came back after all she’s done.” But there was no judgment in her tone.

  “Same goes. Why are you helping her?”

  “Someone had to drive her ass from the hospital home—I wore earplugs and cranked the radio.”

  Amy’s eyes darted to his.

  “She’ll be fine, you know. She’s a tough, mean old bird,” Natalie said.

  “So why are you so on edge?”

  Nat glanced over at Amy.

  Amy caught the look and stood. “I’ll go refill my coffee, if that’s okay.”

  She waved her down. “No worries, hon, it’s not top secret.” But his sister twisted her hands together in her lap. “Jesse and I have been t
rying to have a baby.”

  “Okaaay,” he said.

  “For the last five years.”

  Shane stiffened. “What’s wrong?”

  “We don’t know exactly, but I’ve never been able to conceive. We’ve, uh . . . ” She took a deep breath.

  Amy pulled her hair back and gestured to the other room. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Why don’t I . . . ”

  Shane’s sister shook her head. “No, it’s okay. We’ve done a few procedures, small stuff—but nothing’s covered by insurance.”

  Shane relaxed back into the couch. “Nat, you know I’m happy to do whatever you need.”

  “Well, we’ve exhausted our savings—between Jesse’s contracting business slowing down with this economy and my income, well, we can’t swing anymore and . . . ”

  “Whatever you need,” he repeated. “Money? Or do you want to come to California to try? We must have good clinics for that.”

  “No, no. We’ve been happy with our doctor. It’s that, well, if we do the in-vitro thing, it’s really expensive. We’re also considering adoption, which is nearly as much. Our real concern is that we’ll spend so much money trying to have a child that by the time we get one, we won’t be able to provide for it.”

  Shane studied his sister, but Natalie’s light-blue gaze wouldn’t meet his. “What’s this about, Nat? You know I’d give you anything.”

  She sighed. “Jesse.”

  Shane sat back, blowing out a breath.

  Natalie rubbed a hand across her eyes. “I’ve decided to borrow from you and not tell him. I’m going to use the frozen stuff we have and . . . do the procedure. If it works, he’ll be happy.” Tears filled Natalie’s eyes and she caught her breath on a sob. “There’s no other way. I want a baby so badly and he won’t . . . he won’t.”

  Shane went over and knelt in front of his sister, taking her hands. “Natalie. Don’t do that.”

  She wrenched her hands away. “You don’t know what it’s been like. For years, Shane. For years we’ve tried and tried, and hoped and prayed. I’ve taken hundreds of those damn ovulation predictor tests and pregnancy tests if I’m even a half day late. Nothing,” she said dully. “Now we’re here, at the end of the line financially. We got a second mortgage on the house. We tried three times the less invasive way. It didn’t work. Nothing has worked,” she repeated, brokenly.