Scoring Off the Field (WAGS series)

by Simone, Naima

  Her hips rolled, meeting his every plunge with a passion that stole what little breath and lucidity he had left. What started as languorous and measured turned fierce, frantic, and so damn greedy. He planted a hand near her ear, preventing himself from crushing her. Pressing his forehead to hers, he recoiled and rocked his hips, slamming into her over and over, riding her hellbent for an ending that loomed so close but stretched so far away. An ending he wasn’t even certain he wanted to reach. Not if it meant he couldn’t continue burying himself in the sweetest heaven and the fieriest hell.

  A bolt of electricity sizzled up his back, nailing him at the nape of his neck, before racing down again, and culminating in a sizzling current at the base of his spine. Gritting his teeth against the oncoming release, he reached between their bodies and rubbed her clit, circling the hard nub before gently pinching it.

  A scream ripped from Tenny’s throat as she went rigid, arching in a perfect bow. Her walls spasmed around his cock, sucking him deeper, milking him. Grabbing her hips, he rocketed into her, a growl rumbling in his chest. His mind blanked, and he was an animal with his mate, fucking her—them—into oblivion.

  His hoarse shout razed his throat raw as he bucked against her, spilling into the flesh that had become his sole reason for being. He couldn’t speak, hell, couldn’t breathe as he pumped, chasing mind-shattering pleasure. And as his mind rebooted, and he eased his weight down on her, unwilling to separate from her, he pushed aside the thread of unease that had returned with his brain activity.

  He should get up, give them space after that…whatever it’d been. But he couldn’t. Instead, he curled his body around hers, inhaling her sweet musk of citrus and sex.

  No commitment. No relationship. No changes. Just sex.

  The mantra ran through his head, and for a second, he focused on mentally repeating it. But the warmth of her and the heavy satisfaction deadening his limbs submerged the reminder under unconsciousness.

  Tomorrow. He’d reinforce the boundaries tomorrow.

  …

  “Seriously?” Tennyson demanded from the doorway of Dom’s bedroom.

  If not for the tray with freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies and two glasses of milk perched on it that she held, he could easily picture her fists propped on her hips as she glared at him.

  “What?” he asked, throwing back the covers and jumping from the bed to retrieve the tray. Part of his motive was chivalry. And the other part was the aroma of those cookies. They were his damn weakness. He would have to work out extra hours in the gym to alleviate the guilt, but they were well worth the additional sweat and reps.

  She jerked her chin in the direction of the television where clips from the previous week’s football games scrolled along with the sportscasters’ commentary. “Did you turn it on as soon as I left the room? Kinda makes me doubt my ability to drop you into a sexual coma.”

  Carefully setting the glasses on the bedside table nearest him, he flashed her a grin. “Sweetheart, never doubt your sexual prowess.”

  She snorted, climbing on the bed. “Prowess? Now who’s busting out the vocab words?”

  He chuckled and joined her on top of the covers, setting the tray with the cookies between them. He didn’t hesitate to grab one and stuff the whole thing in his mouth.

  “Damn, these are good,” he mumbled.

  “My cookies are always good,” she deadpanned.

  They glanced at each other and snickered.

  Propping his back against the headboard, he passed her one of the glasses of milk and kept one for himself. The next twenty minutes passed in a comfortable, pleasant silence as they ate and watched television. After they were finished, he dragged on a pair of sweatpants and carried the empty dishes to the kitchen. By the time he returned, Tenny had snuggled under the blanket, and he paused, taken aback by the warmth swirling in his chest.

  This wasn’t the first time she’d curled up in his bed; he couldn’t count the number of times they’d crashed here and watched movies. But then, he hadn’t kissed that pretty mouth, sucked on those gorgeous breasts, or been inside her tight, little body. No, lying next to her now took on a whole new meaning. The impact of it was different. More powerful, more visceral.

  A fine tension entered him, eating away at the particular ease and looseness that was a result of fantastic sex. It reminded him of the unease that had filtered through him earlier when she’d accused him of basing a business decision on her feelings. Then, he’d been determined to not lose focus on what had driven him, shaped him, and given him an identity all these years—football.

  Maybe he needed that reminder again. Especially when the strings that he’d claimed to be nonexistent in their arrangement seemed to be tangling and growing tighter with each passing second.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked around a wide yawn.

  Not immediately replying, he crossed the room and settled on the bed next to her.

  “Do you know why I love football so much, Tenny?” he murmured, his stare fixed on the wide, arched window in his bedroom and the view of trees that had fully transformed into a gorgeous explosion of reds, oranges, and golds. After a moment, he didn’t see autumn’s display. A blurred, wavering picture of a big man with dark brown hair and a wide smile and a slender woman with red hair and laughing blue eyes had replaced it.

  “No,” she said, her voice and warmth closer. Her knee pressed into his thigh, and her citrus and sex scent drifted to him, teased him.

  “My childhood was great,” he said, images of that small but comfortable brick house in the middle-class neighborhood of Huber Heights flickering in his mind’s eye. “My parents both worked to provide the best home for me, but they always had time for me. We had one steadfast rule in our house: dinner at the table every night. Didn’t matter what we all had going on with work or school. We always ate as a family. That time was where we talked, laughed, reconnected. I never doubted for one second that I was loved by either of them.”

  He swallowed hard, attempting to dislodge the knot in his throat strangling him. His memories tended to overwhelm him, drown him. Which was why he didn’t exhume them often. And by often, he meant ever. Not even to Tenny, though she knew the broad-brush strokes of his past.

  “You can’t live in Ohio and not love football,” he continued, allowing a faint smile to curve a corner of his mouth. “And my family was no different. Especially my father. I learned the game before my ABCs. We attended every Friday night high school game, watched every college one on Saturday, and NFL on Sunday and Monday. Mom enjoyed it, too, but I think she got more of a kick out of watching us and just being together. Dad and I, though…” He shook his head, smiling. “We were fanatics. He had me enrolled in Pop Warner football as soon as I was old enough to join. Even then, I was good, fast, able to throw. I loved it. Loved everything about it. The best part, though, was knowing my parents were in the stands, cheering me on.”

  “They sound special. I knew they had to be even though you didn’t talk about them,” she whispered, her fingers intertwining with his, and he clutched them like a lifeline.

  “Dad used to tell me I would play for the Bengals one day. That was the only thing we ever disagreed on. I wanted to be a Steeler.” He laughed. “Football…it was our thing. Mom would get her crossword puzzles or true crime novels, Dad would have his two beers—no more than that—and Lay’s plain potato chips, and I would have the ball he gave me when I was five. The three of us would sit in the living room and watch together.”

  He bowed his head, his heart pounding so hard that for a moment, he struggled to breathe. His fingers flexed as if trying to grasp something that was turning into elusive smoke and dust. And no matter how desperate, how frantically he swiped at it, grabbed at it, he could never capture it.

  “One Saturday morning, my team faced our league’s rivals. The game started at ten o’clock. We were kicking their asses. At half-time, I looked in the stands and couldn’t find my parents. They always sat on the third r
ow right behind our bench. At the end of the third quarter, they hadn’t arrived. And when it ended, they still weren’t there. They’d never missed a game. Not one. So when my coach approached me an hour later and told me there’d been a car accident and they’d died, a part of me wasn’t completely shocked. I knew if they weren’t there, it hadn’t been by choice.”

  “Dom,” she breathed, her voice catching. Her grip tightened on him, almost bruising. “I didn’t know…”

  “They died on their way to see me,” he rasped.

  “No.” The objection cracked in the air like a whip. “They died doing what they loved. Supporting you. Cheering you on. Showing their love for you.”

  “You know,” he said, hearing her words as if from a great distance, “I can’t remember my mother’s voice or my father’s laugh anymore. Even the memory of how they looked becomes more blurred with each year. The social worker allowed me to keep pictures of them, but some of the kids in my first foster home thought it was funny to rip them up and leave them on my pillow. So I don’t have anything of them but my fading memories and the connection we had through football. As long as I keep that connection, I’ll never lose them.”

  “Dom, look at me.”

  He couldn’t. Not with the pain so raw and fresh inside him like a wound with the scab torn off. Allowing her to see that… He shook his head. Hell, he didn’t want to feel it; how could he let her stare it in the face?

  But she didn’t give him a choice.

  With a gentle but firm grip on his chin, she turned his head toward her. She shifted, kneeling next to his hip, and for several long moments, she didn’t say a word, just studied him, her eyes soft, dark, and gleaming with the tears that slowly rolled down her cheeks.

  “Why are you crying?” he murmured, cupping her jaw and wiping away a tear with the pad of his thumb.

  “Because you won’t,” she whispered. Turning into his hand, she kissed the heel of his palm, and the tender caress squeezed his heart in a tight fist.

  Closing his eyes, he leaned forward until his forehead pressed to hers. His breath shuddered out of him, and he trembled. It embarrassed him how his body shook as if his skin and bones were too fragile to contain the churning of emotion swirling inside of him at category ten speed. And like objects directly in the path of those destructive winds, he was in danger of being swept up and flung away.

  A sudden need to touch her surged within him, and he didn’t question it. Didn’t fight it. He clutched her shoulders, dragged her to him, over him. In this black emotional storm, she grounded him. She was his anchor.

  She didn’t try to get him to talk as he jerked the T-shirt she’d slipped on over her head. She didn’t utter an objection as he shoved down his sweatpants and freed his cock.

  She did tunnel her fingers through his hair, cradling him, brushing her lips over his as he pushed deep, so fucking deep inside her. She did gasp and roll her hips, taking all of him as he whispered her name over and over against her mouth.

  She did offer him oblivion.

  And grateful, he took it.

  Took everything.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tennyson pressed her palms to the desk in Dom’s home office, staring down at her spread fingers as if they contained the answers to the questions whirling around in her head.

  Veronica Maitland with the Offices of Families and Children wanted her to come to Dayton for a face-to-face interview. She’d been very impressed with their telephone call and wanted to meet before the final decision was made. It was Wednesday, almost a week since she and Veronica had first spoken, and Tennyson had started to become nervous that maybe the other woman had changed her mind about Tennyson being a candidate for the job. But from the call she’d just received, that hadn’t been the case at all.

  Her belly clenched, and she sucked in a lungful of air and deliberately released it. Until an hour ago when she’d received the call, the job and relocation to Dayton had been “someday” and the future. Well, it seemed her future had become her near present.

  She had to tell Dom. For weeks, she’d put off telling him about even applying for the position. And even though the morning after they’d first had sex, she’d mentioned the interview for a new job, she hadn’t shared the exact details. All he knew was her time as his PA was ending. He had no clue she could possibly be moving across the country.

  Closing her eyes, she covered her mouth, slowly rubbing it before sliding her hand down her chin.

  A seed of doubt wormed its way inside her, taking root. Her reasons behind her decision hadn’t changed. She needed to finally stand on her own, be her own safety net for the first time since they’d met. How could she ever know she was strong and independent if she always had Dom to fall back on? How could she ascertain who she was outside of him?

  She’d had little control over her life. Her mother had shattered her confidence at an age when she’d needed affirmation and love most. Instead, her mother had turned Tenny into an object whose only purpose was obtaining attention. By the time Dom had come into her world, Tenny had felt like little more than a thing. His protection, affection, and devotion had slowly offered her an identity. He’d sheltered her, and she’d let him. She’d felt worthy only because that beautiful, fierce, gifted boy had loved her. She’d been content, if not happy, with his friendship even though a little more of her died each time he turned to a woman who wasn’t her.

  Now, that was no longer enough.

  Actually, it hadn’t been for a while. But adding sex to their relationship had brought it into crystal-clear focus. She’d burned under the heat of his passion, the brand of his possession. And there was no way in hell she could step aside and watch as another woman eventually claimed what she longed for as her own. It would destroy her, and her resentment and pain would destroy her and Dom.

  And after his confession about his parents, she was more convinced than ever that she could never be a priority in his life. She knew what he’d been trying to tell her with that story. Football, his career, his drive to play and be number one, would always take precedence. Not that she could be angry with him—no, not after what he’d confided in her. For him, football was his last tenuous connection to the people who had loved him most. He hadn’t said it, but she understood anyway: to lose it was to lose himself…to betray their memory.

  How could she ever compete with that guilt, that desperation? A better question: should she?

  Sighing, she swiveled in the desk chair and stared out the window. Heavy, brooding clouds clustered together, reflecting her mood. A foreshadow of the storm that would erupt between her and Dom. Because, yes, if they offered her the job, she would accept and move to Dayton. She would establish a new life, meet new friends, maybe welcome a new man into her life. A man who could love her as much as she did him. A man who could accept her vocabulary obsession, traumatic past, and fear of hospitals. A man who would place her first in his life, cherish her.

  Though she’d made her decision, the unease squirming inside her didn’t ease.

  “Hey,” Dom called from behind her.

  She started, spinning around. Damn, she’d been so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t heard the beeping of the alarm or him entering the office. Splaying her fingers over her chest like some faint-hearted damsel in distress, she stared at him. He must’ve showered at the facility because his dark hair was damp, and he wore his customary after-practice uniform of a long-sleeve thermal shirt and sweatpants. Even those simple clothes couldn’t detract from his strength and vitality. Power emanated from him. Intensity radiated from his clear blue eyes, and she flushed under it. Images of them from the last several evenings fluttered across her mind—her riding him, their mouths fused together, sharing breath, coming together.

  Unable to bear the scalpel-sharp force of that gaze, she ducked her head, pretending to organize the already organized desk.

  “How was practice?” she asked, scrambling for some semblance of normalcy.

  “It was
fine.” The short, vague reply relayed the truth, though. It must not have gone as well as that “fine” would have her believe. She swallowed a sigh. He worried so much about the game, his playing, and the backup quarterback watching him like a hawk. So much pressure weighed down those strong shoulders. And very soon, she would be adding more by announcing her intentions to leave. “What’s going on? I had to call you a couple of times before you answered when I came in. Everything good?” He approached her, pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and then propped a hip on the desk’s edge.

  She could wave off his observation and postpone telling him about the job until later. Maybe after this week’s game. At least wait until the weight of this coming Sunday had passed. The last thing she wanted was to be the source of a distraction.

  And she was making excuses.

  Shit.

  “Actually, something came up that I need to talk to you about.” She rose, unable to continue sitting still, and rounded the desk. “It’s, uh, kind of important.”

  His eyes narrowed, but he shifted around so he faced her and remained silent, indicating for her to continue with a nod.

  “Remember that job interview I told you about last week?” A flock of raptors took flight inside her chest, their wings battering her. Her pulse pounded, and a rush of white noise momentarily deafened her. Fear, acrid and metallic, coated her tongue. She’d never tasted it before in Dom’s presence. “I heard back today, and they asked me to attend a second interview.” She paused, a vise tightening around her throat. “In Dayton,” she added in a low rasp.

  The room filled with a frigid quiet that seemed to penetrate her bones, chilling her to the marrow. Outside, the first drops of rain bounced against the windows, the pitter-patter steadily growing in intensity. Each drum of water against glass emphasized the vacuum of silence in the room.