Between Hearts: A Romance Anthology

by Alexander, Erica

  What can I say? I like his junk however it’s covered, and I rarely turn down an opportunity to see it.

  “My brother wondered why I agreed to do those ads until he saw a picture of you—then he knew.”

  “How did he see a picture of me?” He told his brother about us? What does that mean?

  “Uh, you know, pics just around.” He looks away, and his tone is guilty as hell. He’s hiding something.

  “You don’t have any dirty pics of me, do you?”

  I grab his phone resting on the nightstand. I smile when I find that his unlock code, which I know from last year, hasn’t changed. I like these little signs that we’re still connected, even after such a long break, like him keeping me on the list to access his condo.

  Gavin lets me get on his phone. There can’t be anything too incriminating on it, because he could easily overpower me and take it away. It’s reassuring that I don’t need to worry about finding any nude pictures from other girls.

  I scroll through his photo albums. His easy acceptance of my spying on his off-season activities is nice. There are a lot of pictures of him hanging out with his brother and a yellow lab, plus some with teammates and other guys who must be friends from home. He also has photos from the beach, hiking in the mountains, and golfing in Scotland. He tells me a little about his trips as I look at the pictures, stopping on any that interest me.

  There are pictures of some women on his phone, but they either look like relatives or seem like they’re with his friends. I’m relieved. Maybe he did sleep with other women since we were last together, but I don’t think they meant anything to him. Then again, I’m not sure that I mean anything much to him, either, beyond easy companionship and sex.

  Scrolling further back, I look through pictures from last season. I know that one day we hung out, we messed around taking awkward pictures of each other. I cringe when I find them. He managed to take several of me when I didn’t know what he was up to, and I look like a mess, lounging around post-sex, watching Netflix with him. My makeup is long gone, other than the mascara smeared beneath my eyes, and my hair is a rat’s nest because someone had been running his hands through it while we had sex. I’m wearing a huge baggy t-shirt of his, and I could be any size under that thing.

  “I don’t think your brother would be impressed by these pictures.”

  “I think you look fucking hot in them. But I didn’t show him these. They’re just for me.”

  A possessive, cocky expression covers his face, and his tone is genuine. He really does find me attractive in these pictures, although a good portion of that could be due to smug, masculine pride at wrecking me from sex.

  I smile at him and touch his arm. Gavin McGraw knows how to make a woman feel good in many different ways.

  “Was it on Facebook?” I ask.

  “I don’t have Facebook.”

  “Okay. I don’t have Snapchat, because that’s asking for random dick pics.”

  “You mean you don’t want random dick pics from me?”

  “You text those. No need for Snapchat.”

  “You never seem that appreciative, because you don’t send back pics of your pussy.”

  “So not doing that, ever. You have a much better chance of a boob shot.” I know I thought about taking a picture when Gavin’s dick was pressed against me earlier, but I’m really not the type to take sexy shots. I’ve never trusted a guy that much before.

  “Really? How about we take one tonight? We can get my dick in it, snuggled between your tits. That way, we can combine two of my favorite things.”

  “I’m sure you’re thinking you’re brilliant right about now, but let me tell you, the only marketing job you could get with your ideas is in the porn industry.”

  “Babe, if we filmed you and me naked together, the entire porn industry could retire. There’d never be anything better.”

  He’s smirking at me like a cocky fucker, but I don’t complain. It’s flattering that he thinks we’re so hot together. I don’t think he means we should make a sex tape, so I’m not offended.

  “How did your brother see hot pictures of me? Wait, do you follow my Instagram?” My account’s public, but it’s not like I post sexy lingerie poses on there or anything. There are some selfies, but what twenty-something female doesn’t post an occasional selfie?

  Gavin flushes. “Maybe.”

  “Since when do you have Instagram? I thought you’re anti-social media. Too distracting and a waste of time and full of weirdos, remember? You wouldn’t even let your agent’s assistant run accounts for you last season.”

  “Jake set up an account for me during the off-season and convinced me to keep it.”

  “Looking for boob shots, I bet.” Jake is Gavin’s younger brother, and from what little I know about him, he’s a bigger horndog than his brother.

  “No, it’s a private account for friends, family, and teammates only. Look, I’ll show you.” Taking the phone from me, he opens the Instagram app. Jake’s name is on the account, and the profile picture is of a dog, the same yellow lab featured all over Gavin’s photo album.

  “Cute dog.”

  “That’s Jake’s dog, Brutus.”

  “Brutus?” That’s not a name I’d expect for a friendly lab.

  “Brutus is the name of the Ohio State mascot. Jake went to OSU with me.”

  I didn’t know that. We’ve never talked much about his brother, although I know they’re close. He’d visited Gavin a couple of times last season—not that I met him.

  Gavin shows me some pictures of Brutus on his Instagram. “We call him Brute for short.”

  That’s an even worse name for a cuddly, nice dog, but I don’t say anything. I’m not going to tease him about it when he’s letting me into his life away from Philly more than he ever has before.

  Gavin shows me his follows, and there’s not a single hot, trashy Instagram model. I guess he gets his porn in other ways. He doesn’t need to troll online to find girls to hook up with. Judging from the way he picked me up, he’s plenty skilled at meeting them in person.

  “See? You’re the only girl I follow who isn’t an old friend or girlfriend of a friend or one of my cousins. I’m not using it to get laid.”

  “You just use your underwear ads for that.” I mock him, but it does feel good that he looked for my account and followed me, even while he wasn’t bothering to talk to me.

  Gavin groans and throws his arm over his eyes. He’s still shirtless, and I enjoy the show of rippling muscles. Reaching out, I run my fingers over his tattoo.

  “Did it hurt?”

  “I was too drunk to feel it. But it itched like a bitch for a few days.”

  My gaze shifts to Gavin’s phone and his Instagram account. I pick it up to find the picture I’d noticed earlier. It was taken right after he got the tattoo, when it was still red and healing, and it’s the first picture uploaded on his account. Does that mean Jake posted it when he started the account for Gavin? There’s also a picture of someone who looks almost like Gavin’s twin, on a beach that could be Hawaii. He’s shirtless and has a similar tattoo on his left arm. I’m starting to see who probably talked Gavin into getting that tattoo at the Pro Bowl.

  I notice his account name. “Wait, you’re Jakester2500? That sounds familiar.” I’ve seen that account name somewhere.

  “No, it doesn’t. You didn’t even know I was on Instagram.”

  I know Gavin well enough to tell he’s lying. He tries to hide his phone, but I pull it away. He lets me take it, so he’s not completely against my sleuthing. I click on my account from his follows and scan through my posts. That solid red heart gives away that Jakester2500 liked most of the pictures I posted since he started an account.

  “You know, that’s kind of creepy. Especially the ones you liked after you came back in July, when I was busy ignoring your calls and texts.”

  “You want to talk about weird? You ignored me for over a month, then you ran into me, and you were all over me
at that club.”

  We’re finally going to talk about that night a month ago, beyond what I owed him sexually. “I wasn’t.” I do want to talk about this, but it’s not like I’m going to make it easy for him.

  “Yes, you were.”

  “No.”

  “You grabbed my junk. If you were anyone else in my underwear fan club, I would have had security escort you out of the VIP area, which you only got invited to because of me.”

  “You liked it.”

  Gavin smiles, full of cocky confidence. “Hell yes, I did. Why do you think I took you out to my car?”

  He rests his hand on his stomach and smirks at me. “I was going to drive you to my place, but you were so damn horny, I let you drag me into the back seat first.”

  “I didn’t drag you! Like I could make your 200-pounds ass go anywhere you didn’t want.”

  He ignores my contradiction to his version of events. “After I rocked your world, you ran away and left me hard as a rock. You gave me blue balls for days, sweetheart.”

  “I’m sure one of your underwear modeling groupies obliged you when you went back inside the club.” I’ve tried to avoid the image of him doing that, but I have to know what he did after I left.

  “I didn’t go back inside. Tap only wanted one girl that night, one who’s decided to be fucking difficult ever since I got back.” He sighs. “I was shit in the game that weekend.”

  “What? You really let me get you off your game?”

  Gavin stares at me, but he doesn’t answer. I can’t believe this. He’s all about football during the season—total focus and control. I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever come near to touching his football zone. I grab his phone because I can’t quite believe it without proof. I haven’t watched any of his games this season while I’ve been avoiding him, so I don’t know much about how he’s played.

  He watches as I pull up the Condors website and check his game stats for this season. He’s Mr. Consistent, with around eighty receiving yards, six receptions, and one touchdown per game, except that week I saw him, where his stats stink. The game was against a bad team, so it’s not like his performance could be excused as a great defense stifling him.

  I had to write up some press material on Gavin last season, so I learned his stats, and they’re slightly down this year. But maybe that’s because of his rookie quarterback. It’s probably too much to hope that it’s due to missing me. It’s not like I want him to be worse this season, but it’d be nice to know that not having me around affects him.

  Taking that crazy theory even further, last season was his best, even though he won the Super Bowl during his rookie season. He really picked it up during the second half of the season, and he earned his first trip to the Pro Bowl. I’d thought it was a coincidence that it happened while we were together. I’m probably hoping for too much to think it could possibly be more than that. Perhaps it was due to great sex on the regular keeping him loose and happy. Either way, maybe it wasn’t so silly to think he should have invited me to the Pro Bowl.

  I have no idea what to do with all the crazy ideas floating around in my head. But Gavin makes it easy by diverting the conversation back in a direction he’s more comfortable with.

  “At least I had your panties to sniff when I whacked off that night.”

  I’m a lot more interested in his version of events last month, knowing that he didn’t want anyone else after I wound him up. “Did you do that in the backseat?”

  “Why? Do you wish you stuck around long enough to watch?”

  “No, I wouldn’t want to watch you come on my undies. Eww.” I scrunch up my face.

  “Whatever, babe. I bet you’d love to watch that sometime. Leave your panties when you go, and we can arrange something for the next time you come over.” He pauses, a smile on his face as he imagines it. “Or maybe that can be your next dick pic while I’m on the road.”

  “Not going to happen. I’m not leaving here bare-assed under my dress.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Don’t you still have my other panties to use?” I ask.

  “Already used that night when I got home and stared at that bikini pic on your Instagram while jerking off.”

  Maybe I should be offended that he did that when I was mad at him, but I’m not. It’s kind of hot that he got off to me. I certainly got off to him that night, his tongue expertly making me come.

  “I loved how your panties smelled like you . . . at least, until I finished on them. You know how your smell turns me the fuck on.”

  I’ve never had a guy say the things Gavin says to me before. He makes me so confident sexually that I don’t feel shy about it most of the time. “I remember how you wanted to be jacked off that one time you were injured last season.”

  “Fuck, that’s like in the top ten best sexual experiences for me.” Gavin grins as he remembers how he’d been fingering me and spread my moisture on his cock so I could jerk him off.

  I giggle. “Gavin, it was just a hand job.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” His eyes are warm as he looks at me.

  “So what did you do with my panties after you came on them?” I ask.

  “I had to throw them out. Sorry. Maybe if you were speaking to me at the time, I would have washed them and returned them.”

  I nod. “So you looked at a pic of me in a bikini to help you along?”

  “Aren’t you curious for someone who claims they don’t want to watch?”

  “I wouldn’t leave the room if you insisted upon doing it in front of me. But I’m not going home tonight without my panties. Haven’t you felt the temperature out there?”

  “Who said anything about you going home tonight?”

  “You want me to stay?” Last year, we used to spend the night together most of the time we got together, but I don’t want to assume anything.

  “Of course. You’ve only gotten off once, and I’ve only gotten to come twice so far, so I could go for a couple more times. We’ll need to get you off a bunch more until you’re not so horny that you’ll molest innocent guys at the club.”

  “Since when have you ever been innocent?”

  “Hey, I’m offended.” He’s smiling, so I know he really isn’t. “I’m not that wild. I didn’t even have sex until I was sixteen.”

  “You say that like it’s super late.”

  “Some of my teammates got it on at twelve.”

  I wince. That’s just way too young. “What were you waiting for?”

  “True love. And for my muscles to develop.” Gavin sighs, all fake dramatic. “Turns out, my muscles had a lot more staying power than that true love did.”

  I laugh. I love it when Gavin’s relaxed and lets his humor show.

  “So how old were you? I can’t decide if you like dicks so much because you denied yourself until, like, twenty-one and you’re making up for lost time, or you’ve been hitting it since thirteen.”

  “Yuck.”

  I’m kind of taken aback that Gavin’s asking me about this. Not that I have a problem telling him. He’s had his dick and fingers and tongue in me enough times that it’s not out of line to share our sexual histories. But his wanting to know more about me surprises me. We’d never gotten this deep into our pasts with each other while hanging out before. Do bed buddies talk about this kind of thing?

  “I’m guessing it wasn’t option B. So option A? How close am I on the age? Fuck, you must have been a total hottie in high school and college.” Gavin is silent for a moment, like he’s picturing it, a smile tugging at his lips. “It would have been fun to know you at that age, although I bet you were a ball buster even then. Still, I would have loved to deflower you.”

  It sounds like he’s thought about this before. Another surprise. “I was eighteen.”

  “High school or college?”

  “College. Like you, I waited for true love.” I frown. It hadn’t ended well with my first college boyfriend. I’d been much more serious than him about our relationship
.

  “How long did that last?”

  “Two months.”

  “It’s not your fault. Eighteen-year-old males have the attention span of a gnat. But I guarantee you I could have managed longer than two months.” He reaches out and cups his hand over my hip and squeezes it as he gives me a sexy smile.

  He’s really flirting with me now? He claims he could have dated me for longer than two months in college when he couldn’t handle carrying on a casual fling for longer than three months last season? I have no idea what to say to this, so I change the subject. “I bet you were pretty wild in college.”

  “Why? Because I’m a football player?”

  “Because you’re Gavin McGraw. You refer to yourself in the third person.”

  “No, I don’t. I’ve never said ‘he’ about myself. Well maybe about my dick, but that’s it.”

  “So you’re saying you weren’t wild in college?” My voice is skeptical.

  “Maybe if you’d been smart enough to come to Ohio State, you’d know for yourself.”

  “Why would I leave the East Coast for the boring old, freezing cold Midwest? Did you ever tip any cows growing up in Illinois?”

  “You sound like a brat, you know that?”

  “Okay, Gavin McGraw, like you’ve never been a brat before.”

  “Men don’t act like brats, honey. We’re pricks, assholes, jerks, douchebags. Take your pick from those, but no brat.”

  “Alrighty, Jakester2500.” I give him a flirty smirk of my own. “Imagine how much trouble I could cause by announcing your username. You’d have never-ending follow requests from your tighty whities squad.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Maybe if you convince me to be good, I won’t.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Before I leave, you have to suck and kiss my breasts for five minutes.”

  “Done.”

  “Each.”

  Gavin chuckles. “Hell yes. Jana, I’ll suck your titties until you come.” He pauses, tilting his head as he thinks. “Hey, have you ever come that way?”

  “No.”