Skin in the Game

by Jackie Barbosa

  “By the way,” Cade went on cheerfully, “I hope you managed to hold onto the lead for the rest of the game. It would be a shame if the school board fires you for incompetence before you have the chance to suck up to the new boss.” He reached behind him and took Angie’s hand in his large, warm, reassuring palm. “Although I have a feeling she’s not going to be looking for you to provide her with sexual favors. I’m pretty sure she’s already tapped someone for that job.”

  Donnelly looked fit to be tied. His face was so red, it was nearly purple. “Of course we won the game,” he affirmed sourly. “I just came to see how Jake is doing.”

  “Mild concussion,” Cade said, pulling Angie forward to his side. “He’ll be fine in a few weeks. But I’m glad to know you care about at least one person other than yourself.”

  Donnelly seemed to consider a sharp retort but apparently couldn’t find one. Scowling, he turned abruptly and stalked toward the hospital entrance. If life were like cartoons, there would have been steam rising from his ears.

  “Good night,” Cade called after him with false courtesy.

  “You shouldn’t tease him like that,” Angie said, despite her glee at finally seeing Donnelly put firmly in his place. “He really does care about Jake’s well-being.”

  “He’s a raging asshole, that’s what he is. I almost wish he had managed to lose the game.

  He should lose his job.”

  “Oh, Cade, he isn’t all bad.” Angie didn’t know why she felt the need to defend Donnelly, but she supposed there could be loyalty even between enemies when they’d worked together long enough. “Besides, I don’t care about him. Is it true? What you told him about Harvey and me being head coach from now on?”

  “Of course it’s true. That wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun if I’d been making it up.”

  Angie felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her. “But…but…why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “You didn’t give me much of a chance, jumping my bones like that.”

  Her cheeks heated. She had pretty much assaulted him. Although he’d been a plenty active—and eager—participant in the assault.

  He gave her a crooked grin and added, “Not that I’m complaining…boss.”

  She blinked. “Boss?”

  “Hey, you’re the head coach now, but you still need an assistant until Harvey is well enough to come back. In the meantime, I’m available for the job. “ He leaned forward and brushed his lips across the sensitive skin beneath her earlobe, sending an instant rush of heat to her core and raising gooseflesh along her neck and arm. “And I’m more than willing to sleep my way into the position.”

  “Oh.”

  The sound was breathy and weak, but the pulse beating in her throat, in her wrists, and between her thighs at this suggestion was the polar opposite of weak. It was strong, heavy, and insistent. After almost two weeks of denial, her desire for him had surged to an unstoppable tidal wave of need.

  Her nerve endings sang with joy. Tonight, she was going to throw caution to the wind and embark on a real, honest-to-God affair with this gorgeous, smart, wonderful man. When she thought about it, she’d treated him shabbily the past few weeks, holding things against him that weren’t his fault. Instead of behaving in kind, however, he’d treated her with respect and kindness, to the point of preventing her from compounding her mistakes by taking the blame for Jake’s injury when she didn’t deserve it.

  So for one, she was going to take a real risk. And she was absolutely, positively not going to worry about the future or the condition of her heart when the affair came to its natural end.

  She turned toward him, a smile that felt both wicked and thrilling overtaking her lips. “As it happens, I am accepting applications.”

  His eyes grew dark with that smoky intensity she recognized from their first night together. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “I have to warn you, though, the screening process is rigorous.” She dragged the tip of her finger down the center of his chest toward his abdomen. His muscles twitched at her touch.

  He grabbed her hand when she reached his navel. “I think we ought to continue the interview somewhere more private, don’t you?” The words were a low growl. “Because I’m this close to demonstrating my qualifications right here and now, and I’d really hate to be interrupted by Donnelly a third time.”

  Abruptly reminded that they were still standing on the island between the hospital’s main entrance and the parking lot, Angie blushed again. In his magnetic presence, it was easy to forget such trivial matters as where they were and who might see them. Harper Falls was too small and too traditional a place for a high school math teacher to carry on a wild, public affair with anyone, let alone a celebrity like Cade. She was going to have to be more careful in the future.

  But she wasn’t going to let being careful stop her.

  “You’re right. I’d say your place or mine, but…well, there’s really only your place, isn’t there?” she said.

  “And this time, you stay the night.” It wasn’t a request, although it wasn’t exactly a command, either. It was more of an aspiration.

  One she shared. Except, despite her best intentions, she was already starting to aspire to forever.

  Chapter Eleven

  It wasn’t the long, leisurely seduction Cade had imagined when he’d envisioned getting Angie back in his bed. He didn’t, in fact, even get her into his bed. They were both too hungry, too needy to wait longer than it took to enter the hotel suite and close the door behind them.

  No sooner had that been accomplished than they were exchanging frantic, open-mouthed kisses against the wall and tugging frantically at each other’s clothing. She undid the button of his jeans, unzipped his fly, and delved inside his boxers to release his cock. He sucked in a pained breath as her cool fingers explored his heated, aching flesh and cursed the fact that she, too, was wearing jeans. Why couldn’t she have been in a skirt? Then it would have been a simple matter of pushing aside her panties…

  Sensing his frustration, she moved to help him, toeing off her shoes and wiggling her hips as he pulled her pants and panties together toward the floor. When they reached her ankles, she kicked her way out of them, gloriously naked below the waist but for a pair of knee-high black socks. And somehow, they were most erotic thing he’d ever seen.

  Slipping his fingers between the apex of her thighs, he found her slick and ready. Her body was just as anxious to skip the preliminaries as he was. Thank God.

  “I have to be inside you,” he muttered against her neck. “Now.”

  Her eyes dark and luminous with desire, she nodded her agreement.

  “Back pocket. Wallet.”

  She reached around him to fish out his billfold. Flipping open the slim leather case, she located the single condom packet and removed it, passing it to him with trembling fingers. He tore the plastic open and rolled the delicate sheath on carefully so as to avoid any chance of tearing it. The rest were too damned far away.

  He took her then, bracing her against the wall, her legs wrapped around his hips, his palms supporting the firm half-moons of her ass. Burying himself in her tightness was everything he remembered and more, and the little sounds of pleasure she made in her throat tore at every shred of control he possessed.

  The cadence of his thrusts increased with each breathy moan, each muffled whimper that escaped her. She clung to his shoulders, the back of her head thumping softly against the wall as he drove into her, over and over, striving for completion, for union.

  His orgasm built not only in his loins, but in the center of his chest, at the tips of his fingers, even behind his eyeballs. There was no reining it in, no holding it back, so it was a matter of pure luck that when he came, she was with him, her muscles clenching around him in exquisite counter-rhythm to the rolling waves of his own release. He rested his forehead in the curve of her shoulder as he shuddered into her, her body no separate entity, but rather a sweet, feminine exte
nsion of his own.

  He’d never really understood math before, he realized. One plus one didn’t equal two at all.

  One plus one equaled one.

  ***

  Pinned against the wall with her legs clutched around Cade’s lean hips, Angie was certain she had never been in a more physically uncomfortable position in her life. Her calves were cramping, the skin on her shoulder blades felt raw, and she was probably going to develop a bump on the back of her head where it had bounced against the wall during their frantic coupling.

  And she couldn’t have cared less. Not while she still floated on this haze of sensual bliss with Cade’s hands supporting her buttocks, his cock still buried inside her, and his irregular breaths fluttering across the skin of her neck.

  He lifted his head from her shoulder when his breathing had somewhat normalized. His expression was almost…sheepish.

  “Hey,” he said. His voice was husky and a bit hesitant, as though he wondered whether he needed to apologize for something.

  That tiny glimpse of uncertainty, of vulnerability, was the last thing Angie expected. He always seemed so supremely confident of himself and of her reactions to him; even when he’d failed at seducing her, he’d expected nothing else. The fact that he was worried now both amused and pleased her.

  Silly, sweet man.

  He couldn’t have failed to realize that she’d been every bit as needy and impatient as he had. How long had it taken her to come after he’d thrust that delicious cock of his inside her?

  Probably not more than three minutes.

  And yet, despite the evidence that he’d more than satisfied her, he had the decency to worry that he might have pushed her too far, too fast.

  Not even close!

  Still, she couldn’t resist teasing him just a little. Recalling their first time together and the way he’d strung things out as long as possible, almost tormenting her with his determination to go slowly, she gave him a playful frown and said, “Well, that was definitely not…slow.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he admitted with a rueful shake of his head. “But I promise to do much better next time.”

  “Mm, as much as I approve of the idea of a next time, I’m not sure anything could be better than that, let alone much better.”

  Cade’s brown eyes narrowed and turned smoky. “That sounds like a challenge to me.

  How much do you want to bet I can make it even better?”

  “I’d say before we can make a wager, you have to define better. Also, who decides if it was better or not?”

  He grimaced. “Well, we’re sure as hell not having the players vote on it this time.”

  Angie burst out laughing at the sheer comic horror of the notion, and Cade groaned as her inner muscles tightened involuntarily around him.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “No, that’s okay. It reminds me that if we stay like this too much longer, we might get stuck and have to wait for the maid to help us get apart in the morning.”

  She laughed again, eliciting another groan. “You’re right. That would be even more awful.”

  As she unwrapped her legs from his hips and lowered them to the ground, she noticed for the first time that she was still wearing her knee-high socks. Ugh. Could anything be less sexy?

  “I’ll bet Haley Burroughs wouldn’t be caught dead in these,” she muttered, reaching down to pick up her underwear and jeans from their heap on the floor.

  “Huh?” Cade was zipping up his own jeans, having discarded the condom and tucked himself back into his boxers.

  Angie’s cheeks flamed. She hadn’t meant for him to hear that. She knew it was stupid for her to worry that he found her lacking in comparison to his past girlfriends. He was here with her now, and he clearly found her attractive enough that he’d taken her up against a wall the second they’d walked in the room. If that wasn’t enough to convince her of her appeal to him, nothing ever would be.

  “It’s nothing. I was just thinking these socks aren’t what I would have worn if I’d known we were going to be doing this tonight.”

  “Are you kidding?” He dropped to his knees in front of her and wrapped his palms around her calves. “I’ve never seen anything as hot as your legs wrapped around me in these.

  Sort of like boots, but without the sharp heels digging into my ass. Very sexy.”

  “Really?” The word came out on a sigh as he began to knead the sore, stiff muscles beneath his hands. The clothes she’d been clutching slipped from her grasp, and she grabbed onto his shoulders to keep herself from melting into a pool of pleasure at his feet—okay, technically, at his knees.

  She was powerfully aware that his mouth was almost level with her sex. If he leaned forward just a little, he could press his lips just there… Her legs threatened to liquefy at the thought.

  “Oh, God, yeah.” His voice was a low, sexy rumble, ruffling the curls at the apex of her thighs. “I swear, from now on, the sight of a pair of black socks is always going to make me hard.”

  Despite the erotic sensation his touch evoked, Angie managed to keep her wits about her enough to observe wryly, “You’re going to have a tough time walking through a department store, then.”

  He looked up at her, a lazy smile curving his lips. “Guess I’ll just have to bring you with me whenever I go shopping so my hard-ons won’t go to waste. Just be prepared to be pulled into a dressing room and ravished every time we pass a sock display.”

  Angie had to close her eyes. If she kept them open, if she kept looking into his earnest face and smoldering eyes, she’d start to believe that he meant what he said, that he actually imagined a future in which they’d do normal, domestic things together like shopping. But there wasn’t anything domestic or normal about Cade. He was a multi-millionaire, a celebrity. Even if he never stepped foot on the playing field again, he’d always be rich and famous. There was nothing for a man like him in Harper Falls.

  And there was nothing for Angie anywhere else.

  She couldn’t leave Harper Falls. He wouldn’t stay. The sooner she accepted those truths as self-evident, the sooner she could enjoy the thrill of having him for however long it lasted.

  He nuzzled the hem of her blouse, pushing the fabric up toward her navel. His lips brushed her abdomen, sending tiny electric shockwaves along her nerve endings.

  That’s right. Don’t think; just feel.

  Not that any such self-admonition was necessary. Between the expert manipulation of his hands on her calves and the tiny kisses he pressed on her belly, deep thought wasn’t exactly her strong suit. His touch was like a magnet, erasing all the data from her brain and turning her mindless with lust, her sex damp and heavy with renewed arousal.

  “In fact,” he said, his lips grazing across the triangle of her curls, “I think it’s working already.”

  “What’s working?” she asked, their previous conversation a dim memory.

  “The socks. I’m hard as a rock. And not a dressing room in sight.” He made a clucking noise with his tongue.

  “I’m sure you can improvise.” She gasped as his mouth drifted downward, closer and closer. Her thighs tensed in anticipation.

  “I’m flattered by your confidence.” His tongue darted out to stroke the seam of her sex, lightly, briefly.

  Too briefly.

  She knew him by now. He’d drag out this sensual torture all night if she let him. Time to take the bull by the horns. Or the man by the balls, as the case might be.

  “I hear bedrooms are good for this sort of thing, and I believe there’s one right next door.”

  “Really? That seems a little…unimaginative.”

  “You can show your imagination in other ways.” She released her grip on his shoulders and ruffled his hair. “Besides, I seem to recall you saying something about me being the boss now, and I think it’s about time you demonstrated your work ethic.”

  “Oh, well, when you put it that way…”
He got to his feet. “I suppose I have no other choice.”

  “You’re right. You don’t.”

  She took his hand and led him toward the bedroom, acutely aware that she was treating him to an excellent view of her bare bottom as she walked in front of him. If he’d been any other man, she probably would have been embarrassed by what she was doing. She would have been self-conscious and uncomfortable, wondering whether he truly found her attractive or just desperate. But with Cade, she didn’t worry because he’d made it absolutely clear to her—with his words and with his actions over the past week and a half—that he wanted her. Badly. If she was desperate, well, so was he, and that knowledge was thrilling and empowering.

  And so she slowed her steps, swaying her hips in deliberate provocation. Cade’s reaction was immediate and thoroughly gratifying. He closed the distance between them until his chest was pressed against her back and muttered, his voice hot and thick in her ear, “This is one instance in which a little more speed wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

  She smiled, but she didn’t walk any faster. “Who’s the boss here?”

  “You are,” he growled, not sounding at all happy about it.

  When they got to the bedroom, she turned around to look at him. God, he was handsome.

  And unbelievably turned on. His eyes were dark and dangerous, his mouth set in an almost grim line, and the bulge in his just-tight-enough-to-be-ridiculously-sexy jeans was enormous.

  Oh yes, he wanted her. There was no doubt about that.

  “Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to get undressed?” she asked.

  Those grim lips turned up ever so slightly at the corners. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  He whipped his T-shirt off over his head, revealing the sculpted musculature of his chest and abdomen. Although there was no way to achieve that degree of definition without a lot of weight training, he didn’t have the exaggerated proportions of a bodybuilder, just a perfectly chiseled set of pecs and lightly ridged six pack bisected by a fine trail of dark hair that disappeared into his waistband. Or it did until he unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them and his boxers toward the floor.