It was going to be a hell of a long four quarters.
Chapter Twenty-Two
ISLA
I found myself watching the clock, wondering how many times Jessie would brush his leg against mine. So far I was at seven and we were only two minutes into the game.
Was he doing it on purpose?
His leg bounced up and down, up and down.
I finally gripped his right knee and stopped the bouncing, but kept my hand there. He stared at it. I could feel the heat of his skin against my fingers, my palms. Why did he have to be so sexy? Why did he have to feel so good?
His lips parted as he very slowly placed a hand on top of mine and then squeezed.
There was no release.
No return of my hand.
I wasn’t sure if I liked it or if I wanted to run away screaming. Especially if a simple hand-holding had me wondering what else his hands could do, and his mouth, and his tongue. I shivered. I knew exactly what he was capable of as a kisser.
But those hands.
Those large hands.
I squeezed his fingers harder.
They were promising.
Very promising.
Mouth dry, I picked up my wine and downed it just as the Rams scored their first touchdown and the stadium went wild.
I picked up my foam finger and did a little fist pump, careful to keep my other hand on Jessie’s.
My sudden movement must have caught him off guard because our hands moved, slipped into his lap.
He froze.
My eyebrows rose as my knuckles came into contact with either a freaking bat in his pants.
Or what was probably every woman’s favorite part of Jessie Beckett.
Beckett had a bat.
The bat of Beckett.
Swing, batter, batter.
Oh hell.
Heat. So much heat emanating from his lap.
From . . . it.
I gulped again.
Jessie seemed frozen.
I tried to break the tension. “Football do that to you too?”
He didn’t laugh.
His scowl was more pained than angry.
I stared at his lips, the way they parted, the way my own chest seemed to heave and pant all at once as I leaned in, and then pressed my hand backward. His eyes rolled back.
National television.
Bad idea.
All of it.
“You guys want a hot dog?” Colin yelled.
I jerked my hand away.
Jessie pressed a palm to the front of his pants and cursed.
I snickered behind my hand and whispered, “Jessie already got one.”
“Hilarious.” His lips twitched. “More like Polish sausage.”
I scrunched up my nose. “I always add ketchup to mine and just swirl my tongue around the tip to—”
Jessie clamped a hand over my mouth. “Keep talking and your naked ass is going to be pressed against the glass while I fuck you.”
Nobody had ever spoken to me like that before.
Excitement built up in my chest at the prospect.
Us together.
No.
That was what got us into this situation in the first place. With Jessie probably lusting after some hot cheerleader below, and me touching his penis and talking about hot dogs!
Ugh.
“Guys?” Colin asked again.
“Sure,” I answered for both of us. “Two hot dogs.”
“Load them up with ketchup,” Jessie said without taking his eyes from mine. “Isla loves her ketchup.”
I bit down on my bottom lip as he ran his tongue over his top lip and then tried to adjust himself again.
“Coming right up!” Colin yelled.
I snorted out a laugh while Jessie groaned again like it was the most painful experience of his life.
Colin handed me the food, Jessie grabbed his hot dog and shoved it in his mouth like he had no time for words or chewing.
I knew that type of behavior well.
I called it horny hunger.
Give your sex-deprived body something to chew on, otherwise you gnaw off your own arm or worse, sleep with the first person to hit on you at the bar and wake up to find out that he still lives with his mom and kisses her on the mouth.
Yeah, taking that one to my grave.
That was a long time ago, though.
Now, now I ate.
Poor Jessie.
Poor me.
I stared at my hot dog and wished it away, wished it was a Polish sausage, wished my situation with one of the hottest men alive was different.
With a sigh, I lifted the hot dog to my mouth at about the same time I saw myself on the big screen with a giant splotch of ketchup on my Rams jersey.
Right. Between. My. Breasts.
Granted, my shirt wasn’t low, so it was on my shirt between my breasts, but it was still there.
And obvious.
Jessie turned to me, my mouth was still open. He grinned and took a bite out of the part facing him, then ran his finger down my shirt and licked the ketchup off.
I laughed and shook my head. “Best hot dog of your life?”
“I prefer a different kind of meal . . .” His eyes flickered down, and because I was horny hungry, because I hadn’t yet eaten my hot dog and satisfied all hormonal cravings, I mauled him.
Maybe mauled was the wrong word, but suddenly my hot dog was midair and I was straddling the man and kissing him like I was trying to rescue the bite he’d just taken.
I was an animal.
He was turning me into an animal.
His hands gripped my ass as he deepened the kiss. I felt every part of him straining against me with such force that I wanted to move.
Insanity.
This is what insanity felt like.
Wanting to rub myself against him with a hot dog in my hand and ketchup on my shirt.
In front of the entire world.
“Guys,” Blaire said through a haze of lust and almost dry humping. “Cameras are off you guys, good job. People were cheering and catcalling like crazy, can’t doubt that kinda chemistry. You guys aren’t drunk, are you?”
I pulled away as Jessie locked eyes with me and said in a gravelly voice, “Sober.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
JESSIE
I would never look at a bottle of ketchup again without getting hard. It was a problem, since ketchup was everywhere.
Just like the taste of Isla on my tongue.
My mouth buzzed.
My body was irate.
And I didn’t know where to put my hands.
At all.
Awkwardness washed over me as Isla slowly crawled out of my very disappointed lap and sat next to me, retrieving her hot dog and shoving the whole damn thing so far inside her mouth that I knew I’d be dreaming of the image until my death.
Either that or the image was going to somehow kill me.
I tried to get myself under control. Again. And then she had to go and grab another damn hot dog and do the same thing.
When she got up a third time, I gripped her by the wrist and very slowly said, “Chew.”
“What?”
“Please.” My voice was strained as I released her hand, and when she returned, she took small bites.
I almost wept with relief.
Halftime came and went.
I didn’t move from my spot. I physically couldn’t without showing Blaire and Colin why I was as stiff as a statue.
Isla toyed with the foam finger, and when the cameras dashed to us again, she hit me over the head with it. My reaction was anger and then irritation because I hadn’t really been paying attention to anything but her.
I didn’t even know the score.
I always knew the score.
I was an ex-NFL player.
We were two days in and the woman was already making me insane, changing things about myself I’d always known to be true. I always watched the game. Always. I ripped it
apart, I memorized the plays, the routes, the different calls that should have been made by the offensive coordinators. I bled for football.
And I didn’t know the score.
I grabbed her hand and kissed the back of it.
Not for the cameras.
For me.
Something broke free in that moment. Maybe more of the bondage that Vanessa had kept me under was starting to dissipate, but it felt good, it felt like . . . I could breathe easier.
All because I wasn’t keeping score.
All because of a hot-dog-eating maniac who didn’t play by my rules—or force me to play by hers.
“Still hungry?” I asked as I squeezed her hand.
“Starving.” She shrugged like she was uncomfortable and then cleared her throat. “I, um, eat when I’m . . . at games.”
“Most people eat at games.” Was it my imagination or was she blushing?
“Right.” She nodded and then pointed at the field. “It’s too bad Seattle’s beating the Rams.”
“What?” I whipped my head back to the game. “When did they even score?”
“I think they were inspired by our kiss,” Isla teased. “Either that or my hot-dog-eating skills are on point, because they’ve been scoring like crazy.”
“Someone should,” I grumbled and crossed my arms.
Isla leaned over and whispered, “Heard that.”
“Oh, you were meant to,” I fired right back.
And just like that, the tension crackled, increased, and burst in front of my eyes until all I saw was her.
Two and a half quarters of hell down.
One and a half more to go.
Chapter Twenty-Four
ISLA
I watched the game.
But wasn’t paying attention to anything other than Jessie’s movements.
His knee bounced up and down again like he either had to pee or was ready to do something crazy.
I didn’t blame him.
The room felt too small.
The air too hot.
My clothes too tight.
And the food had only made things somehow worse.
“Hey, guys.” Blaire and Colin were still here? Blaire’s voice sounded louder as she made her way toward us. “We’re going to go grab some merchandise, you want anything?”
“No,” we said in unison, like we planned it.
She looked between us with a frown, then shrugged. “Alright, we’ll be back in a bit, the lines are probably crazy, so who knows . . .”
The door shut.
I looked around us.
The staff was gone.
The bartender wasn’t there anymore.
The food was left on the tables.
We were completely alone.
But visible from every angle except against the back wall, thanks to the giant window to the front and sides of our booth.
I slumped back in my seat just as Jessie’s hand crept onto my right thigh and then retreated like he had second thoughts.
My chest heaved as I looked at him from the corner of my eye. His gaze was on the field.
But his presence was completely with me. I felt him, like I could read his thoughts, like I knew exactly what he would rather be doing.
Me.
Sex would ruin things.
I couldn’t give him that kind of control over my body—men like Jessie were greedy. They’d ask for more, they’d use promises to get it.
And then they’d get bored.
A time-out was called.
And the cameras panned to us again.
I quickly bounced onto Jessie’s lap, thinking it would look playful and fun, only to realize he still had a huge problem.
Huge.
Problem.
“Fuck!” His hands came to my waist, fingers digging into my skin. “A warning next time before you break my dick off.”
“Sorry.” I wiggled my ass to get comfortable and grinned at him as he pulled my legs across the arms of the chair.
He clenched his teeth. “Move that ass again and I’m spanking it on national TV.”
I moved.
He spanked hard.
I moved again.
And I’m sure parents everywhere covered their children’s eyes as the camera quickly panned away from our little PG-13 show.
“Cameras are gone,” he whispered as his hand stayed on my ass like it belonged there. I could have sworn I felt him grow beneath me, strain to reach me.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to stay on my lap.”
“I’ve made a new friend, it’s rude to just abandon him.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Oh, have you?”
I nodded. “I’m friendly.”
“Very.” He swore loudly and then wiped his face with his free hand. “You have no idea how much.”
“Does this count as our two hours?” I tried changing the subject in order to keep myself from jumping him.
He tilted his head. “Do you want it to?”
“No,” I gulped, surprising myself and him at the same time, if I read the look on his face right.
“Me either,” he rasped.
I pressed my hand against his chest. “This would be a really bad idea.”
“What?” He gripped my hips harder. “Kissing your fiancé again?”
I grinned. “Nice justification there.”
“I would justify every damn thing in the world for another taste of you.”
He really shouldn’t say things like that to me.
To someone starving for that look in his eyes. Even if he only meant sex, his look matched those words.
They were dangerous.
So. Dangerous.
To someone who was cheated on.
To someone who still looked in the mirror and wondered what they were missing.
To someone like me.
I kissed him first.
His lips molded around mine as he cupped my face with his hands. I didn’t care about the TV screens, the cameras, this was for me.
Jessie was for me.
His tongue slid past my lower lip on a groan.
I pulled back and slid off his lap, then grabbed him by the shirt, tugging him up the stairs and toward the back of the box.
I made it maybe three feet before he gripped me by the waist and slammed my body against the wall. His hands went from my waist up to my breasts then down again like he couldn’t decide where he wanted to place them. His mouth never left mine as his thumbs grazed the bare skin on my stomach, my shirt rose higher and higher. I reached between us, tugging him against me with his belt. I undid it and let it fall to the ground, even as my mind reminded me this wasn’t smart.
Bad idea, bad idea.
My body wasn’t listening.
My heart was pretending it wasn’t happening.
And my blood was pounding so hard I was sure that he could hear it roaring through my veins.
“I’ve never wanted someone so desperately.” There he went again with the words, the words he didn’t mean, the ones he didn’t know I needed. I tugged his pants down at about the same time his mouth met my neck, and I lost all sense of time and just felt tongue, teeth, lips, sucking.
My knees buckled, he caught me with one hand while I gripped his length and felt him pulse beneath my fingers.
It had been too long.
So long.
Damn, everything was long.
Huge.
His kiss deepened on another moan from me as I moved my hand. His body jerked in response like he wasn’t used to women touching him, pleasing him, which in turn pleased me, made me want to drop to my knees and make him feel good the way he was making me feel good.
So I did.
I slid down the wall.
His half-lidded gaze was the type of lazy, sexy gaze that every woman wants, but none of us really get. It was fantasy.
The entire situation wasn’t real.
But this I could make this real.
Ev
ery touch.
Every lick.
“Isla,” he said just as I leaned in. “You don’t need to do this, this isn’t—”
I shut him up as he slammed a hand against the wall behind me, and when I pulled back I could have sworn I heard him utter, “Only you, I’ve never let anyone . . .”
And then he stopped talking.
Chapter Twenty-Five
JESSIE
I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, my skin had a rosy hue, my breaths were still coming out short.
I blacked out from lack of oxygen.
From kissing.
From thinking I could survive off her lips.
And when oxygen isn’t present, you say and do things you shouldn’t, like allowing her to drop to her knees in front of me.
Like letting her suck me dry until I saw stars and hallucinated while my soul took a vacation and floated above my body.
Her mouth.
Her tongue.
Her.
Just. Her.
Vanessa had never touched me like that, and when I asked why, she said it was demeaning, yet anything went when it came to her having sex outside of our marriage.
I never told anyone.
Because guys like me didn’t complain about their own wives finding them disgusting.
It was my secret to keep.
That I was used in my own marriage for sex only when it was convenient for her—only when whoever she was sleeping with wasn’t putting out. I’d gotten myself tested and never looked back.
Dry spell didn’t even begin to cover it.
More like dry years.
She wanted sex, she used me.
So I withheld.
I stared back into the mirror—my life with Vanessa had been so fucked up and I didn’t even realize how bad until I was out from underneath it.
A knock sounded at the door. I washed my hands and opened it to see Colin giving me a funny look.
“What?” I tried to look casual while my eyes searched for Isla. She was back in her seat with popcorn in her lap. For being so small the woman could really put away her food.
“Did anything happen”—he motioned to the room—“in here while we were gone?”
“No,” I said quickly and patted him on the shoulder as I made my way to Isla. The minute I sat she handed me popcorn without a word.
It was like nothing even happened.
Confused, I watched the game with her, held her hand, talked to Colin and Blaire as my confusion grew, and when she got in my car after the game, all hell broke loose.
Dangerous Exes (Liars, Inc. Book 2) Page 10