by Liz Matis
“Commando? You are such a slut.”
“Been called a man-whore before but never a—”
“I didn’t give you permission to speak.”
Oh, holy hell. Was Alexa enjoying this as much I was? If so, there was no hint of it. Maybe she hadn’t been kidding when she told my teammates she was a dominatrix.
“Drop ’em.”
I gladly did as she asked, and then kicked my pants to land at her feet in a defiant gesture. She didn’t yelled at me, probably because she was too busy staring at my dick.
“I will say this, the photo on your phone doesn’t do you justice.”
“Thanks.” I think.
She motioned with her gun. “Now turn.”
If she was trying to embarrass me, then she was going about it the wrong way. Being naked in locker room with a bunch of other naked guys and fully clothed coaches, equipment managers, and reporters coming and going was second nature to me. In front of a beautiful woman, naked was my natural state.
“You have a great ass. Spankable.”
Looking over my shoulder, I said, “Thanks. I could use your vote on next year’s FemaleFans.com ‘Cutest Ass in the NFL’ contest.” I was used to being treated like a commodity on and off the field, but spankable took it to a raunchy level I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with. My cock though was one hundred fucking percent on board. “Came in third.”
“A travesty of justice to be sure.” She quirked a smile. “Now shut up and turn.”
Alexa bit her lip, looking a little unsure about her next move. Did she have the guts to take it all the way?
“Now what?” I asked, urging her on.
With an evil genius smile, she said, “Stroke yourself.”
That was not what I had in mind. My cock ached, throbbing not for my touch but hers. For her mouth. For her pussy that I guaranteed was wet for me. “Alexa.”
“Aww, is the game over already? How disappointing,” she gloated.
Okay, so she had the guts to take it all the way. Did I? Hell, yeah. I grabbed my cock at the base. My hand glided over my thick six point eight inches in long, slow strokes. That’s right I’d measured it.
“Good boy.”
The lust in her eyes told me she wanted me just as much as I wanted her. This might have started as a game and she might have been on the offense, but I was winning now. Soon I’d have her writhing beneath me. Her pretty mouth would beg instead of barking orders. The thought of it rocked me, and my thighs quaked like a teenage boy.
“Lie on the bed.”
Had she noticed the wobble in my legs? Stretching out on the mattress, I rested my head on the pillow, inclined perfectly so I could watch her. She stood at the footboard like some kind of angel dominatrix sent to take me on a trip through hell and heaven.
“Keep stroking. I want your cock harder than it’s ever been.”
It was so hard that it might break off. “Alexa, please. I’m going to come.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“With you. I want to come with you.”
“Beg for it.”
“I want you, Alexa.” I’d done a lot of things, but I had never masturbated to a climax in front of a woman.
At some point she’d put the gun away. I could end this now. Grab her from where she stood and toss her onto the bed, but I wasn’t sure how she would react. And honestly I didn’t think I could stop our game without causing myself harm.
“Pump harder,” she commanded.
“Alexa.” My cock throbbed beneath my hand, and I could feel the come ready to erupt out of me. I’d never been so turned on, so hard, so everything in all my life.
“That’s it. It’s almost ready for me.” Yet, she still had all her clothing on. Then Alexa slid the hem of dress up an enticing inch.
More. I wanted to see more. As if all the world’s mysteries could be solved if I could see her panties. Then she made eye contact with me. Her gaze, wild and wanton. Why did she hold herself back?
“You’re ready, Dean.” She licked her lips like she was ready to taste me. Devour me.
I was undone. I came. Hard. I was fucking dying. Alexa was my executioner. And she didn’t even need her gun.
Chapter 8
Alexa
He was magnificent. He was still an ass. But what an ass.
Dean Walker, the ultimate male specimen, coming at my command was an erotic sight to behold. I was a bad-ass vixen worthy of my own comic book series. Who was I kidding? If I was so bad-ass, I would’ve climbed in his bed and onto his beautiful cock. Instead I was no better than a voyeur watching on as he pleasured himself, his gaze full of want, blazing at me until he closed his eyes as his body shook and he shouted my name like a war cry.
To be honest, I’d shocked myself to my core, but as it wore off the recriminations began. I was a hypocrite of the worst kind. All those times I berated my male colleagues for sleeping with clients, and the first time I was tempted I’d surrendered to my base desires.
My mind reasoned with my conscience that I hadn’t really crossed the line. I was in the clear. After all, my clothes were still on. I hadn’t laid a finger on him, even though his body was created for hands-on exploration. In fact, I was a pillar of professionalism. Yeah, right. Dean had no shame and apparently neither did I.
Would Dean use this as an excuse to get me fired? Use it as blackmail to get me to do more?
Please, please use it as blackmail to get me to do more. No!
His body relaxed and his hand stilled. I headed for the master bath to get him a towel. Any excuse to escape the awkward moment that would ensue when he opened his eyes. Anything to get away from the mistake I’d just made.
I delayed my return, using the bathroom. I avoided looking in the mirror as I washed my hands. I didn’t know what I would see. Regret? Desire? After enough dawdling, I walked back in. If I was lucky, he’d be asleep.
“There you are.”
The smoky timbre of his voice created swirls of want inside me.
“For a second I thought I’d dreamed the whole thing.” He patted the empty space beside him. “Come here.”
Instead I threw the towel to his chest.
“Thanks. I think.” He swept the towel across his body. “Alexa, talk to me.”
The lights suddenly flickered, then darkness enveloped the room. Had the stalker saved me? Yep, I’d rather face off against a bad guy than talk to Dean about what just happened.
I grabbed my gun from the nightstand. “Wait here.”
“Bullshit.” He tossed the towel aside and swung his feet to the floor.
I didn’t have time to argue with him. A sane man would have stayed hidden. Only a crazy one would go naked to a gunfight.
I couldn’t control Dean, at least not without holding a gun on him, so I concentrated on what I could control. I itched to bypass the guest bathroom and workout room, but I was thorough and gave them a cursory scan before closing the doors. With my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I approached the living area. I could’ve sworn the drawn curtains were left open. Creeping closer, I realized they still were. All the lights in the city were out. A cloud drifted across the sky, revealing the moon. I heard Dean’s footsteps behind me.
“Just a blackout,” he said.
“I told you to wait,” I hissed. Why was I disappointed to see he had put on pants?
“I’m not going to hide like a punk-ass bitch.”
“So you’re telling me if Oslo or Williams were here, you’d be in your bedroom right now?” He paused long enough for me to continue. “Thought so.”
“I can protect myself.”
“You have to let me do my job. You have to have confidence in my ability to protect you.”
“It has nothing to do with your abilities. At. All.” He cut the air with his hand. “It has everything to do with me. You’re not taking a bullet for me.”
“It’s my job. It’s nothing personal.”
“What?” Dean nodded and tilted h
is head in disbelief like he was channeling Robert De Niro. “How much more personal can it get?”
“It can. It just did. Or almost did.” I was the one who’d dodged a bullet tonight.
“We can remedy that. Come back to bed.” The moonbeams skimmed over his body, giving him the appearance of a man ready to morph into a werewolf.
“To be clear, I was never in your bed.”
“Oh, going to play that card? The old ‘oral isn’t sex’ argument.”
Oral. Sex. My cheeks bloomed with heat. I turned away from him so the moonlight wouldn’t reveal the gleam that had to be in my eyes. Thoughts of riding out the blackout on top of his cock rocked inside my mind. “We did not have… that.”
“You know what I mean.”
My phone buzzed. Crap. That had to be Dubois. I had forgotten to check in. I should hand in my resignation or at the very least ask to be reassigned. As I put down my gun on the coffee table, I decided to play dumb.
“What’s up, Dubois?… A blackout?… I didn’t know… I was sleeping… Yeah, I’ll check on him now.”
I swear I could feel Dean arch an eyebrow.
“Shut up. Go back to jerking off,” I told Dubois and ended the call—and just in the nick of time.
Dean roared with laughter. I laughed too, realizing what I’d said.
An awkward silence followed. Finally, Dean said, “Well, goodnight.”
“Dean?”
He turned around, his voice hopeful. “Yeah?”
“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”
“I’m not the kiss-and-tell type of guy.”
“Then I’m in trouble since we didn’t actually kiss.” How could I command him to do those naughty things in his bedroom and not even have gone to first base with him yet?
He stalked over to me. “Well then, you better shut me up and let me kiss you.”
My mouth dropped open.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” His lips caressed mine. A little squeak escaped me, and I felt his smile upon my mouth. But he didn’t stop.
I might have been able to fight a demanding kiss, but I had no safeguards in place for the slow and steady rush in my blood as his lips played along mine. This was a kiss of seduction. A kiss meant to change my mind. To change my whole world.
My body, always on the ready, released its tension and melded to him. The feel of his naked chest beneath my fingers made me want to dig my nails in like a feline creature and never let go. Dean touched his tongue to mine and I returned his kiss, mirroring his moves.
His hands drifted to my behind and gently squeezed.
The lights sputtered back on. Or maybe I had just realized it in that second. Our lips parted and my heart cracked open.
“Wow,” he said, his eyes heavy-lidded from the slow burn of our kiss. “You pack a sweet punch, Alexa.”
He let me go, and I stepped back. Though I was fully clothed, the chill of the dark void he left between us made me shiver.
“My door is always open,” he added before disappearing down the hall.
Under the cover of darkness, I might have abandoned my last shred of dignity or any semblance of professionalism. With the lights on, my head had cleared and exposed me for what I was—scared. And it had nothing to do with losing my job at Ian’s Security and everything to do with losing my heart to Dean.
*
Protecting a quarterback among eighty thousand fans was a bodyguard’s nightmare. The stadium’s security was one of the best in the nation, but they were looking for the threat to come from a terrorist, not a lone stalker. As Dean’s girlfriend, I was stuck in the box seats set aside for family and friends. I had to trust in Oslo, Williams, and the rest of the security detail to keep Dean safe. Ian’s Security believed in being proactive, and the team met once a day for updates and to go over and over different scenarios.
Approaching my seat, I noticed a long box stretched across the arms of the chair. Flowers? My body tensed and my senses heightened when I looked and saw no card.
“What did you do last night?” asked a wife or a girlfriend of one of Dean’s teammates. I wasn’t sure who was who yet.
Was this simply a mean girl trick? Unlikely. This wasn’t high school. I couldn’t let my old insecurities creep back in and affect my reasoning. Maybe, they were from Dean? Even more unlikely. That left only one alternative—his stalker. I felt paranoid, but no one ever got in trouble at Ian’s Security for being too careful. Better paranoid than dead.
My earpiece was already on so I could hear my coworkers reports throughout the event. I turned my face away and explained what was going on. “What should I do?”
“Don’t open it!” my boss screamed in my ear.
“No shit, Sherlock,” I replied, shaking my head. I wasn’t some rookie on her first assignment. At most jobs I’d be called on the carpet for the remark, but in the male-dominated world of security, it was expected.
“Meet me at the Billings’ private elevator. There’s a scanner at Gate B.”
I gently picked up the box. The players’ girlfriends and wives were looking at me expectantly. “Uh, I’m just going to put these in some water.” I bit my lip and rolled my eyes to the heavens at my dumb excuse. Like where would I find a vase in a football stadium? Geez.
I carefully carried the box to the elevator, just in time for the doors to slide open. I went to step in.
“No. I’ll take it,” said my boss, relieving me of the box. The six-foot-five, former college football player and Green Beret had been in his glory inside the owner’s box. I thought he’d be pissed about being called away for what could be nothing. But the gleam in his eyes told a different story. He’d been riding his desk too long and missed being in the thick of the action.
“But—”
“Go back to your seat like a good girlfriend.”
Before I could argue, the doors slid closed. Fuming, I strode back to my seat. Dean had just taken the field.
In between downs, I made small talk with the two women closest to me while speculating on the others around us. None of them were like me. Yet another place where I didn’t fit in. I was the shortest by far. My makeup was the bare minimum, while they had their faces painted on like they were competing at a beauty pageant. My shoes were practical, one-inch-heeled booties while some of the others sported stilettos in thirty-degree temperatures! They probably wondered what Dean saw in me.
Why hadn’t Dean said something about my attire? As the quarterback’s girlfriend, I was probably expected to dress to impress. But this was a football game for Christ’s sake, not a dance club.
I slid the binoculars out of my bag and made a slow sweep of the stadium. My eyes landed on the Kings’ cheerleaders. The security team had performed background checks, but other than some sex tapes, they all were clean. I continued my sweep as I wondered which ones Molly and Bridget were. If it wasn’t important to the case, I didn’t want to know. Liar.
“You don’t seem too interested in watching your man play,” said Kelly, the wife of one of the running backs.
“I can’t stand to see Dean get hit,” I lied. Or perhaps it wasn’t a lie. He might not have been my Fantasy Football pick, but I didn’t want him to get injured on or off the field. It was up to his lineman to protect him from the other team’s defense.
“You’ll never make it as a quarterback’s girlfriend. He’s the other team’s number one target.”
Yep, Dean Walker was a walking bull’s-eye.
“Reeves?” said Ian in my ear.
“Yeah.” I got up and headed for the concession stand so I wouldn’t draw any curious stares. They already thought I was a little off.
“Looks like you pissed off someone real good.”
“They weren’t flowers?” People buzzed around me, going and coming to and from, buying food or making trips to the bathroom.
“Oh, they were flowers. Dead ones. Dead roses to be exact.”
My stomach fell. I spun around. Everyone looked like
a threat, everyone looked innocent until they all became a sea of blurred faces.
“And there’s something else.”
Buck up, Alexa.
“Bring it,” I said, determined to prove to Ian that I was as tough as any male in his employ, especially after that “like a good girlfriend” remark.
“There’s powder residue on the tips. We have no choice but to involve the FBI. I’m sending it to their lab for testing. Probably just baby powder but…”
Ian didn’t need to finish the sentence. I knew Dean wasn’t the only walking bull’s-eye in the stadium. Were the flowers from the girl I had the run-in with at Martini Madness? Or were they from some other jealous female, prompted by the photos in the gossip pages of Dean and I holding hands outside the club? The guys on the detail ribbed me endlessly about it. I was used to disappearing into the background not being thrown into the spotlight. Hopefully my new claim to fame would be yesterday’s news by the time I moved on to my next assignment.
“You made the stalker make a move. Good job, Reeves.”
Why did that praise suddenly seem hollow? And was I more upset that I’d become the stalker’s target or that we were one step closer to catching her, thereby ending my pretend relationship with Dean?
Chapter 9
Dean
Fourth and goal.
Early in the game, conventional football strategy would tell you to kick a field goal and take the three points. My coach, God bless him, was a rebel. That’s why we got along so well. With three failed attempts by the running backs to break the plane, the offensive coordinator radioed in a pass play to the tiny speaker in my helmet. After relaying the risky call to my teammates, we lined up.
I took the snap, dropped back, and scanned the field for my options. There were none. Like a charging bull, Dawson, the Steelheads defensive back, broke through the offensive line. I’m fucked.
I scrambled until I saw it, a glimpse of daylight. I ducked like a matador, Dawson missed me, and I headed for the gaping hole that opened up like the parting of the Red Sea. It collapsed just as quickly as I was pounded from both sides by the defensive tackles. As I was about to hit the ground, short of the paint, I felt the bulk of my three-hundred-pound center, Jacobs, pushing me from behind, punching my body past the goal line and into the end zone.