“Saint Rachel.” He scoffed. “She lied to those parents. Every one. She didn’t treat them like family. She treated them like recruits for her father’s flock.” His voice dropped into a valley of regret, so low she had to strain to hear him. “And I wasn’t much better. Young men deserve more from their coach.”
“Once they came into the program, I’m sure you treated them like family.”
“Sugar, sometimes I don’t know. I was fond of them. I made sure they passed their classes and stayed out of trouble. But I didn’t want to hear if someone was hurt. Twisted ankle, sprained finger, pulled hamstring. I wanted them to play beyond the minor pain, because that’s what champions do.”
Shards of disappointment prickled her conscience. She wanted to believe he was a good man on every front.
“Those young men looked up to me.” Trent rested his elbows on his knees, staring at the beer bottle it was too dark to read. “Their parents entrusted their sons to me. But in the end, they were a means to an end – a stepping stone to the NBA.”
“I’m not liking you very much right now.” And yet, she wanted to hug him. Few men admitted their weaknesses.
“That’s why I wanted to coach at the professional level. Players are used to being expendable here. If they don’t produce, they get traded. If it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world.” He wished he believed his own words more.
“This team is different. Evan – ”
“Is a great athlete and a savvy businessman. He knows nothing is a sure thing. You can tell those players they won’t be traded or they won’t lose their positions with the Flash, but you’d be lying, just like my wife lied to those parents.”
She wouldn’t be like that. She’d never lie to those men. They were her…her…friends?
Who was she kidding? She’d lied to them already. She’d told Ren and Antoine not to worry about their jobs. “I have to go.” She stood, but he caught her hand.
“You want to sell this team pipe dreams? You want to create some close-knit NBA family and be a part of it? You need to be prepared for reality.” His voice was low and rough, as rough as his stubbled cheek.
“So that’s it? You’re going to let Viv trade Evan? That’s the other trade you mentioned in Jack’s office, isn’t it?” She didn’t want to believe it. This was worse than Viv going rogue. Almost as bad as Daddy’s having other children.
“No, sugar. We were going to offer Antoine and a first round draft pick.” He sighed. “You win. You and I are going to work together to keep the team emotionally balanced.” He put his beer on the table and pulled her into his lap. His breath brushed across her neck. “But I don’t want you to lie to my players about their future. Because you’ll feel bad about it when a player gets traded or dropped from the roster. And you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”
He was right. She knew he was right. That didn’t mean she had to like it. “I’m not going to stop being positive.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” His hand inched beneath her blouse. Warmth spread from his touch to her core.
“I thought we agreed – ”
“This isn’t sex, sugar,” he whispered huskily, his Southern twang becoming more pronounced. “This is just me appreciatin’ a beautiful woman.”
His hand swept up her waist to her breast. His fingers traced the line of her lacy bra from one cup to the other.
She settled against his chest, angling her neck for him to nibble. “I can’t believe you don’t care about all those injuries. I see how you treat Randy.”
He stilled.
“Was Randy trusting, like Ren? Or pretending to be all that, like Antoine?”
“No.” His voice dropped. “He had heart and skill. Like Evan.” He pulled her closer.
She pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. “What did Saint Rachel say when Randy was injured?”
“That I was the devil. That if I went on television with her father to repent, I’d be saved. She bought into the media story because she’d never bought into the idea of me. It was the last crack in our shell of a marriage.” He’d halted his caresses, and those heated kisses on her neck. His entire body seemed still and waiting.
“You’re afraid,” Cora began slowly. “That I’ll put the needs of the players above your need to win.”
He nodded.
“I will.” She turned in his lap, facing him. “Our jobs are different. I need to keep them sure of themselves. You need to keep them wanting to play their hearts out for you, hungry for a win.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I was looking for when I shared my story with you.” His fingers hooked into the V of her bra.
Her breasts felt full and heavy, swelling toward him. “I won’t sacrifice what I believe for anyone.”
“Admirable trait.” His hand slid down her belly, slid lower still. He squeezed the flesh at the juncture of her thighs. “Tell me if we have a problem.”
A problem working together? Or a problem that he was touching her as if they were going to have sex?
She shouldn’t have sex with him again. She thought of Gemma and Mimi. Of Amber. Of her plans to go to Paris, plans that held little appeal lately. She considered the possibility that she was just a rebound to him. There were so many reasons she should stop this.
He nibbled on her earlobe. His fingers strummed her like a tautly strung guitar.
She recalled how it felt to be filled by him, to have him look her in the eyes with fire and desire. “If we have sex, don’t think I’ll do what you want with the team.”
“If we make love, I won’t be thinking.” He pressed kisses along her jaw-line. “I’ll be lost.”
She reached for his waistband. His hand captured hers. “Not here.”
“I want you. Now.”
He set her on her feet and stood, leading her inside, locking the door behind them, but leaving the curtains drawn, allowing the pool lights to spill into the room. “Don’t you know a bed was made for more than sleeping, sugar?”
He stripped the covers to the floor. And then he stripped her with a slow pace that frustrated. A shirt over her head. Kisses on bare flesh. The clasp of her bra undone. Suckling that made her breasts ripe with wanting. Leggings inched off. Nibbles along her inner thighs that made her tremble.
“I’m dying here, Trent.”
“Patience, sugar.”
Every time she reached for him or for his clothes, he brushed her hands aside. When she was finally naked, he arranged her on the bed and looked at her.
“You’re beautiful.”
“And I’m ready.”
“I could look at you all night.”
Despite the darkness, she could feel the intensity of his stare. “I might fall asleep at the pace you’re going.” She was drifting into shrew territory, but she wanted him. Every cell in her body pulsed with need.
“If you drift off, I’ll hold you and watch you while you sleep.”
Cora wasn’t used to waiting for sex. She propped herself on her elbows. “Is everything all right? Down there? You don’t need a pill or anything?”
“Sugar, I’m about to burst. You’re talking about me as if I’m an old man. Let me show you what this old man is made of.” Finally, he stripped off his T-shirt and shucked his shorts to the ground. But when he joined her in bed, he didn’t have a condom.
“You are so not old.” She reached for him eagerly, but he stilled her hand.
“Let me teach you something new,” he whispered.
“What?” The man who’d been with a preacher’s daughter for ten years had something new to show her? Had he snuck into Wicked Tantric?
“Sunday morning sex.” His voice was as tempting as soft butter drowning in maple syrup on hot griddle cakes.
“It’s not Sunday morning.”
“I know, but this is how my ideal Sunday morning would start. I’d explore your body and make you melt. Then you’d do the same for me.”
“That’s what I’m trying to
do.” She began stroking him, trying to increase the pace.
“Sugar, I want to taste every inch of you first. Didn’t I make myself clear? Lie back and enjoy yourself.”
“I can’t.” She flopped onto her back, pounding her fists into the mattress. “You’re going too slow.”
He covered her body with his, paying special attention to her breasts with his mouth. She almost didn’t care that it took him so long to slide lower.
Now that’s more like it.
She arched her hips against his pecs. She was aching for release. “Hurry.”
Finally, his tongue dipped where she wanted it most. But he didn’t heed her urgency, her need. He set a slow, Southern pace, when she wanted the speed of Southern California.
“Please.” Her hips bucked in an encouraging rhythm.
If anything, he stroked slower, gripping her hips and holding them in place. Each pass of his tongue sent her into a sweet, languid place. The need for speed dissipated. He could touch her like this forever. She’d float in the zone between urgency and completion, between heat and ice. Her entire being pulsed with each stroke, waited for the next one. Until finally, she went up in icy flames.
But he wasn’t done. He lay beside her and suckled her breast, while his finger plunged repeatedly inside her, and that part of him she wanted most lay hard and trembling across her thigh just out of reach.
“Talk to me,” he encouraged, screwing her with the wrong appendage. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you.” She clenched around his finger. “I want you to f – ”
“Shhh.” He stretched up to kiss her. “We’re past that word, don’t you think?”
What?
Somewhere deep inside, around where she supposed her heart should be, Cora tensed. Sex had to be impersonal, had to have distance. He was asking for something she couldn’t give.
As if sensing her fear, he moved his finger in a way that made her gasp. “Since you can’t tell me what you want, I’m going to be creative.” And then he kissed her, a tangle of tongues in a slow dance as lethargic as her first orgasm. His hand worked its magic between her legs, again and again.
“Let me touch you.” She kept reaching and he kept elbow-checking her away. “I’ll go slow.” She was starting to be a fan of slow. She burned all over.
Someone spoke, out by the pool.
He tensed.
She took advantage, taking him in hand, soothing him with a tender stroke. “They can’t see us in the dark, even though I can see you.” Not the details, but she could see the outline of Trent’s face, his short hair, the breadth of his powerful shoulders.
He was such a tender-hearted man. Strong as he led his warriors on the court, but remorseful in his decisions when his men were hurt.
“They couldn’t see if you put on a condom. Or if you came down on me again.” She paid special attention with her hand to that strong, hard part of him. “They couldn’t see us f...They couldn’t see you losing yourself inside me or me combusting when you find that sweet spot.”
He reached for a condom, but instead of increasing the pace, he positioned her on her side again so she could see out the window to the pool where two men were talking and smoking cigars. He spooned himself behind her, sliding home.
She was ready for him to bring it.
Trent had other ideas. He kept up that slow, languid rhythm. His lips and tongue traced patterns on the back of her neck and shoulders. His hand roved from her breasts to that delicious pressure point between her legs.
“You drive me insane,” she panted.
“Don’t lose it. Not yet.”
She laughed, not sure who he was urging – himself or her.
That icy hot feeling was building inside her, swelling through her limbs like a building ocean wave, curling, tightening, thundering, until she was wildly taking him over the crest and pounding down in an explosion of energy.
The men by the pool stopped talking and looked around.
“What a surprise, sugar,” Trent whispered. “You’re a screamer when we go slow.”
~*~
With Cora, the sex was all good. Slow or fast.
Slow was pink-room delicious. Fast was as racy as her black lace lingerie.
Trent sat in the Jacuzzi tub, beer in one hand, Cora’s breast in the other. The bathroom was steamy, and not just the mirrors. “Tomorrow’s workout is going to be tough without sleep.”
“Sleep is overrated.” She turned in his lap. “We need a condom.”
He tsked. “Always in a hurry. Give me a chance to soap you up, first.”
She swiped his beer, took a swig, and slid the short distance to the other side of the tub. “Have at me, Reverend.”
Trent squirted a dollop of liquid soap on a washcloth. “I’ve always wanted to make love in a bath tub.”
Cora refrained from comment. She took another swig of beer, her gaze roving his chest.
“And out under the stars. On a beach.”
“Is that your bucket list?” The implication in her tone being she’d been there and done that.
It wasn’t the first time she’d made him feel old and stodgy. “Name one place you’d like to do it.” He soaped up her shoulders, working his way down her arm.
“A place I haven’t had my bell rung?” She shifted into the corner, away from the tub spigot.
“Yeah.” Her other arm received equal attention. The body wash smelled like his aftershave. He hadn’t thought men’s aftershave could smell sexy to him. On her, it did.
She watched him squirt more soap on the washcloth.
He swirled the rag around one breast, then the other. “Don’t tell me you’ve done it everywhere.”
She shrugged.
“On a beach?”
She nodded.
“Under the stars?”
She nodded.
“In a tub?” He dipped the washcloth below the surface to wash her tender parts.
She scrunched her nose. “Not a tub like this. Jacuzzi or not, this is a tight squeeze.”
His chest ached. Trent wanted to wipe away the memory of sex with other men. He kneaded and circled and rubbed her with the wash rag until she looked at him in that way of hers – half-lidded, lips parted, gasping. “God, you’re beautiful, Cora.”
It didn’t matter that they’d had sex twice already. It didn’t matter that the hard porcelain of the tub hit his angles uncomfortably. It mattered that he gave her something she hadn’t experienced before. He pulled her close, replacing his dick where his hand had been, taking her the way she wanted, fast and hard.
Except the experience inside of her was different in the water. She was hotter, one new texture after another as he plunged in and out, sending water splashing over the tub’s edge.
She clutched his shoulders and threw her head back, taking him with her. And then she claimed him with a kiss. Her wet hands speared through his short hair. “You distracted me so much, I didn’t notice you putting on a condom.”
Trent stiffened, and not down there. “I didn’t use a condom.” Reality came roaring back to him.
To them.
They scrambled to their feet.
“You’re on the pill, right?”
“Yes.” Water dripped out of her nooks and crannies, sluiced down her lithe curves. She had to be thinking what he was thinking – about Antoine’s birth control baby. “Ninety-nine percent effective. And my last test was negative for disease.”
“Welcome to L.A.” And dating. He was sleeping with a woman who was regularly tested for sexual diseases. He reached for a towel and wrapped her in it. “Sorry. It won’t happen again.” But Trent wasn’t so sure. She made him forget. And not just condoms.
She stepped gracefully out of the tub. “We need to set some ground rules.”
“I agree. Condoms should be rule number one.”
“We need to talk about what this is and what your expectations are.”
“We’re dating.” He grabbed another towel
.
She stood at the bathroom door, looking indecisive.
Anger accelerated his pulse. “We’re dating, sugar. Or is that not how it works here? In the South, if you fool around with a woman, you date her.” It wasn’t what he wanted, to be tied down with expectations on his time other than the team. But he wanted to get to know her better. She made him feel alive, as if he’d gone from a black and white existence to full-on 3D color.
“It’s just…” She stared at her feet. “I told you, I don’t date.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Trent rubbed himself dry as if his body was the offending party, not her. “The day we met you said it had been a long time since you’d had sex. You have to date.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t date anyone these past few years because I planned to leave the country to study fashion in Paris. So I made arrangements…With men.”
“You’re a hooker?” Holy crap! He was so damn naïve. He almost slipped in the bath tub.
“No!” That brought her chin up and her voice down. “I had friends. With benefits.”
He was officially angry now. He wanted to punch someone. Preferably every one of Cora’s scumbag friends with benefits.
His face felt carved in stone. His brain was just as dense. “Rachel never slept around.”
“And the fairy tale continues.” She dropped her towel and drew sarcasm around her in its place. “Saint Rachel probably told you she was a virgin. That’s probably why your sex life has been limited to dark bedrooms and Sunday mornings.”
Jealousy sprouted fangs. “How many men?”
“That’s none of your business.” She walked out of the room, turned on the bedroom light, and exposed them both to anyone out late at the pool, as if to prove she didn’t care who saw her naked. Or who fucked her.
“What was it you said in Jack’s office about Hugh Irving?” She faced the windows, turning her back on him as she snatched up her clothes, jerking them on. Blouse, leggings. “Oh, yeah. Don’t judge a man by his past? You’re such a hypocrite.”
“That’s different.” He knew it wasn’t. “How many?” He dropped his towel and tugged on his shorts. He wanted names. He wanted to sit down with Amber and ask her why she’d let her little sister act like a…like a... “You’re too young to have lost track.”
Book Boyfriends Cafe Summer Lovin' Anthology 2015 Page 24