I shifted and moved until I could feel the opposite wall nearest the door and set her down.
Luckily, she still had her tennis shoes on, and I didn’t feel too bad about putting her down on a floor that had shattered glass and who knew what else all over it.
The moment my cock left her, I wanted to curse.
The way she felt around me made me realize that I wanted to take up permanent residence inside of her. Though, that would probably look funny when one of us had to perform our jobs.
“There a light in here?” she whispered, sounding embarrassed.
I searched for a light and realized that I’d seen one—but on the outside—as we’d come in.
I searched for the door handle and twisted it open, blinking rapidly when I saw the bright light of the hallway.
Reaching only a hand out, I felt for the switch and grunted when I found it.
Sweeping my hand up, I flipped the lights on and blinked even harder as I tried to get my eyes to adjust, closing the door as I did.
Once I was turned around, I surveyed the damage.
We were in the supply closet for the athletic trainer—or at least her stuff. There wasn’t much on the floor but ace bandage wraps and gauze packets.
The glass that shattered, however, was a jar that had been holding about eight hundred condoms.
All of the condoms were spread out over the ground. Green ones and blue, red, and ribbed, too.
“Wow,” I said as I bent over and dug her shorts out of the mess on the floor. “I guess I should count myself lucky that this wasn’t the chemical closet where the janitor keeps all his supplies.”
“You didn’t know which one you were coming to as you brought me here?” She laughed.
I shook my head and handed her the shorts she’d been wearing.
Glass shards fell out of them, and I shook them out to loosen any other stray pieces.
She took them as she reached up over the shelf above her head and grabbed a piece of fabric that the trainer usually put between our skin and ice packs that we used on various parts of our body.
Then without a hint of embarrassment, she wiped herself clean from between her legs, making me horny all over again, and reminding me that my dick was still very much hanging out of my pants.
“Hand me one of those, too?” I rasped.
Her eyes met mine, and whatever she saw there had her glancing down, eyes widening slightly at what she found.
“You cannot seriously be…” she started.
“I can and I am.” I shrugged. “I don’t know what it is about you, but my control is shot whenever you’re around me.”
She sighed and threw the towel she’d used to clean herself down on the floor, then shook out her shorts until her underwear came free of the tangled mess—as well as a few more shards of glass.
“I’m going to get glass shards in my vagina because of you.” She narrowed one eye at me. “Do you even care?”
I tucked my dick back in my shorts and tried to think about anything besides Conleigh and her vagina.
Like the fact that I still had two more sets to do, and I wasn’t leaving until they were done.
Granted, they’d be remarkably harder to do now that I’d stopped and given my arms time enough to realize that I’d killed them on that first set. I’d also held Conleigh up for a good eight minutes while I fucked the living daylights out of her.
How did I know it’d been eight minutes? A glance at my watch told me so.
“I guesstimate that Joe will give me ten minutes at most, because that’s as long as the athletic trainer can deal with him. He’ll be sent on his way and will be looking for me any minute now.” I paused, my dick once again reminding me that she was half naked. “You should probably put your underwear and shorts back on.”
And just like that, Joe called my name.
I sighed and shook my head. “Quick, tell me something that’ll make this go down.”
I gestured to my dick, and Conleigh snorted. “What would happen if you hurt yourself so bad that you can’t play next season? Do you have to give your money back?”
My mouth fell open as horror washed over me. “Why would you ask that?”
My dick was definitely no longer a problem anymore.
Just the thought of getting hurt sent terror coursing through my veins.
Football was all I knew. It was my favorite thing in life. It was the one thing that was always consistently there for me when I needed it to be.
Granted, my dad was a good dad—when he could be. But we were never what I would consider well off.
He worked his ass off, night and day, to make sure that I got what I needed—clothes, food, a car. He got them all for me, but the price of that was him working his freakin’ ass off and leaving me at home while he worked overtime to accomplish that goal.
I wanted to go to a football camp that the local college was putting on? Twelve hours of overtime. I wanted to get a new pair of cleats? Seven hours of overtime.
It was a vicious cycle for sure, and only now that I was older did I realize that there were times I’d have rathered that he was around more often.
But I didn’t dwell on it. Things ended up okay.
My dad and me were close, we were all happy, and overall, there wasn’t a single thing I had to complain about.
Conleigh, who must have slipped her shorts on while I was lost in my thoughts, walked up to me and placed her hand on my face. Looking at me with concern in her eyes, she asked, “Are you okay?”
I nodded, pulling her into me. “Fine.”
“Are you sure? That was just supposed to be a joke,” she admitted. “I would never want that to happen.”
But it could happen, which was why it was a fairly big fear of mine.
Football had always been there, even when my dad had not.
I wasn’t bitter or anything, but the thought of not having it because I was injured scared me a little more than I was willing to admit.
“Can you wait for about twenty more minutes?” I asked.
She was seconds away from replying when the door to the supply closet opened and Joe said, “Can we finish?”
Joe looked pissed, and I had a feeling that had more to do with the athletic trainer than because I’d asked for some time during the middle of a workout.
“Yeah,” I agreed, placing a chaste kiss on Conleigh’s forehead before letting her go.
When she went to pull away completely, I caught her hand in mine and guided her into the hallway, making a short stop to pick up the rag that she’d used to clean up and drop it into the closest trashcan.
Conleigh promptly blushed scarlet but didn’t say another word.
Joe stalked in front of us, his hands clenched into fists, and I had no choice.
I had to know what had happened.
“Joe?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
Joe sighed and loosened his fists, but the tension was still in every muscle of his body.
“That goddamn woman drives me insane,” he admitted. “It doesn’t matter what I do. Talk to her nicely? Tease her? Bug the shit out of her? None of it affects her. It’s like she’s a cyborg or something.”
“Who?” Conleigh whispered into my ear so that only I could hear.
“Joe has a crush,” I whispered back. “And she doesn’t reciprocate.”
Conleigh made an ‘ah-ha’ motion with her head but didn’t reply, which was good, because Joe and his crush were not a good topic of conversation when he was acting like this.
Joe didn’t get in a bad mood very often, but when he did, he usually had the athletic trainer on his mind.
We arrived in the weight room and it was no longer empty, but the newcomer didn’t bother me.
I was more than used to working out with an audience. Hell, it was my job to athletically perform in front of a very large audience. One more person in the weight room wasn’t much of an audience
at all when compared to the tens of thousands of screaming fans that were normally there for games.
“Let’s do this,” Joe growled.
I looked over my shoulder at Conleigh and gestured to the mats that were set up for us to roll out our muscles with the roller once we were done lifting weights.
She went, but not before she delivered the parting comment from hell.
“I’ll just sit here and do some Kegels while you do your thing.”
Chapter 13
If you wear a condom, it’s not cheating.
-Things you hear as a nurse
Conleigh
Linc was sexy as hell on a good day. Adding a baby to his arms? Yeah, that was just asking for my vagina to implode.
The sheer number of fans that this man had was downright amazing, and honestly, humbling.
Not to mention that Linc was so good with them. All of them.
From the oldest to the youngest—like the two-week-old little girl that someone had just placed in his arms.
“We named her Jamie,” the proud father said. “After James, your last name. I tried to get my wife to go with Lincoln, but she wasn’t sure that it was a good girl name.”
I wasn’t, either.
I also wasn’t sure that I’d be thrusting my two-week-old baby girl into the arms of a man they didn’t even know, but that might’ve been just me.
It was week two of Linc moving in with me, and there hadn’t been a single thing that had gone wrong since the night that Hoax was hurt.
Hell, Tyson hadn’t acted out of character even once.
Then again, he barely looked my way half the time while we were working, and I was beginning to wonder if maybe my stepfather had overreacted. But, then I went back to the fact that Steel wasn’t the type to overreact. Not even a little bit.
I assume that was why it was so baffling to me.
It was a really odd feeling to know that something was wrong while everyone around me acted like everything was fine.
Hell, Tyson hadn’t so much as looked at me again other than to address me when we were both looking after the same patient.
It was eerie.
“That’s very cool,” Linc said, cuddling the baby close. “Why are y’all here?”
Their daughter has a chest cold that’s threatening to put her in the hospital, yet her parents passed her off to practical strangers who hadn’t washed their hands.
It was no wonder the little girl was sick.
Hell, I’d seen their baby in five different sets of arms in the last hour that she’d been my patient, and only one of those people—me—had actually washed their hands first before touching her.
Nothing against Linc and his hygiene habits, but seriously. You never knew what germs were on your hands. That’s why you always washed them before meals, after you went to the bathroom, and after you touched stuff that other people touch a lot—like grocery carts or door handles.
“All right,” I said, smoothly interjecting myself into their conversation.
A, the baby had a blood draw that I needed to add on to what we already drew, and B, Linc looked incredibly uncomfortable holding a sick little baby that was hooked up to an IV.
“Do you mind holding her for just a second longer?” I teased, eyes shining with mirth.
Linc’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say a word. Instead he just nodded his head.
“I’m going to draw a little blood. It’ll take me just a few seconds,” I explained to the parents, who didn’t seem to care what I did to their child. They were too busy being starstruck by Linc’s presence in the vicinity.
“Sure, that’s fine. Do you mind if I take a picture?”
I ignored them and Linc as I did what I had to do, feeling awful when the little baby started to cry.
Five gut-wrenching minutes later, I was walking away with Linc in tow.
“That’ll be on social media within the hour,” I told him as he walked away with me.
Linc snorted. “Fuck an hour. I’ll bet it’s viral in about five minutes flat.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not that cool.”
He winked down at me. “Bet you fifty bucks.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Make it a piece of chocolate cake from Dusty’s, and you have a deal.”
“I can’t have chocolate cake. My part of the deal will have to be something that isn’t going to cause me to have to run an extra mile tomorrow morning,” he countered.
My grin spread. “Anything you want.”
His eyes lit. “Anything?”
I winked. “Anything.”
“What are you telling him anything for, woman?” Pru asked.
“We made a bet that the picture the mother over there just took will be viral in five minutes. Though, I guess we’ll have to set some ground rules on what exactly viral constitutes. Say, one hundred thousand likes?”
Linc shrugged. “Sure.”
His cocky smile told me that he fully expected it to get more.
“Fine, half a million,” I offered.
“Why were you even holding the baby in the first place?” Pru asked. “What the fuck? If that were my kid, I wouldn’t give half a shit who you were. Not when my kid could barely breathe, and we were taking them to the hospital at two weeks old.”
My sentiments exactly.
“I had a newborn put in my arms—like two days old—when I walked in to visit a sick little kid in Maine. He was in the cancer ward, and I was on the way in when the parents with the newborn—they were on their way out of the hospital—saw me and begged for me to hold him so they could get a picture. Then there was this one time that I signed a pregnant woman’s belly. And another time—”
I interrupted Linc and rolled my eyes for good measure.
“You’re six-foot-four-inches and over two hundred and fifty pounds,” I muttered darkly. “You have tattoos covering most of your body, you have a scar on your face, and you’re wearing your cut. Seriously, I would never approach you. Never, not in a million years. I don’t care how big a name you are in football. And those people just put that baby in your hands like they knew you.”
Linc’s lips twitched. “Not everybody’s scared of people in motorcycle clubs.”
“Yeah, as long as they’re good motorcycle clubs,” Tyson muttered, coming up to the nurses’ station and dropping a clipboard onto the desk next to the computer he used. “I have a brother that’s a pain in the ass like that. He joined a motorcycle club and everything. It’s not one of those good clubs, either. It’s one of those really bad ones who do illegal shit. My brother’s been to jail eight times. Let’s just say there are some bikers that you really should be wary of. He looks exactly like me, has no visible tattoos and doesn’t even wear that motorcycle thingy all the time. Yet, he’s worse than you.”
Annnnd that was when everything started to make sense.
“You have a brother in an MC?” Pru asked, sounding surprised.
Which, I suppose, was surprising information to her. I, on the other hand, wasn’t surprised per se, but I was taken aback that it was Tyson’s brother, not Tyson, who was the bad guy biker in the dirty club.
But, it was all starting to make sense now since they couldn’t locate anything at all on Tyson himself.
Had we known about him, we’d have been looking into his brother, and that obviously would’ve been a different story.
“So,” I said, leaning closer to Linc without actually touching him. “Has your brother been in that MC long?”
“For at least a couple of years now, I guess. I don’t talk to him much, but we’ve been trying to mend fences lately. I followed him to town because he decided he was going to hang his shingle here for a year. He got a new job at the refinery plant just outside of town. He’s making pretty good money…or so he says. When our mother died last year, she begged me to take care of him, so that’s what I’m doing.” He sighed. “But Andy has never really been
the kind of guy who liked being taken care of, so I have to be careful, or I’ll make him pissy…why am I telling you this?”
I laughed, hoping that it didn’t sound half as hysterical as I felt.
Tyson made a weird face and then looked over to Linc. “Don’t you ever have anything else to do?”
Linc shrugged. “I like to eat lunch with her because it makes me happy. Is that wrong?”
Tyson frowned. “No, I guess not. And since she’s pregnant, it’s definitely something that you need to make sure she does for the health of the baby.”
When had Tyson turned into such a mother hen?
I wouldn’t go into the fact that the reason Linc kept making appearances was because he was worried that I was here getting attacked—or worse—by the man who was currently fretting over my food intake for my non-existent baby.
“Uh, that’s what I’m trying to do,” Linc smiled.
“Yes,” Pru said, eyes shining with mirth. “You wouldn’t want to get faint. Make sure that you take care of that baby of yours.”
I had to find a way to get out of this lie.
“How far along are you?” Tyson asked, leaning back in his computer chair.
I felt my face flush as I tried to come up with a good lie.
“Well…” I hesitated.
“Let me guess.” Tyson shook his head with a small smile on his face. “You haven’t gone to the doctor yet to see.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it.
I really and truly had no clue what to say.
Just when I was about to blurt out everything, Linc put his hand over my mouth and pulled me into his side. “She’s scared of the doctor. The last time she went, they tried to do knee surgery on her wrong knee. She’s semi-freaked out and paranoid.”
Tyson’s eyes widened as Pru looked away, trying to hide her laughter in the bend of her arm.
She wasn’t doing a good job.
Not at all.
If I were on the other side of the counter, I’d kick her.
“We can draw your blood and make sure your hormone levels are okay here,” Tyson suggested.
Talkin' Trash (The Bear Bottom Guardians MC Book 2) Page 14