Healing the Quarterback (Wildhorse Ranch Brothers Book 2)

by Leslie North

  "That was different. That was behind closed doors!"

  "The stadium is closed," Charlie reminded her. "Come on. You know you want to."

  If she denied it, she'd be lying. She hadn't had contact like this with Charlie since that stolen moment in her office, and the distance had been driving her crazy. Judging by how things were taking shape below the belt, it wasn’t just her. Charlie pressed the fierce jut of his erection against her thigh. As if she needed reminding. It was practically all she could think about when she woke sweaty and wanting in the sleepless hours of the night.

  "I don't know…" she murmured as Charlie trailed his lips up to hers. He gave the nipple he teased a light twist; pleasure-pain electrified her. She opened her mouth to protest or to moan or to invent a new noise to let him know how conflicted she was, when Charlie's mouth claimed her own in a passionate kiss.

  And just like that, she was done for. All the fight seeped out of her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down further. If she was going to sink beneath the overwhelming weight of this sensation, then she was going to drag this insufferable quarterback down with her.

  "That's more like it," Charlie growled his approval as he shoved at her clothes. He pushed shirt and bra both up over her breasts. He cupped her newly-exposed peaks, clenching and rolling them together until she wanted to cry for release. The fingers of his other hand undid the clasp on her jeans and pushed them down her hips.

  "Am I the first girl you've found time to indulge in your office?" Dylan gasped as his fingers probed below.

  "I never even considered trying something like this," Charlie admitted as he trailed kisses down her clavicle. "This is pretty wild even for me."

  "You don't say."

  "Gotta live up to the name somehow," he said as his fingers thrust their way up inside her. Dylan clutched the back of his hair and moaned. She had been slick before, but feeling Charlie knuckle-deep and scissoring her open made the situation unsalvageable. By the time he withdrew, his fingers were coated with her; he licked them clean appreciatively, and Dylan thought she would lose it. Already she had ceased to care just how exposed they both were. Somehow, pinned beneath Charlie, with his broad shoulders hovering over her protectively, she felt invincible. Is this how he felt every time he hit the field in front of an adoring crowd? All she needed was his glacial-blue eyes fixed on her with rapt, unflinching attention to feel the rush.

  But if Dylan felt powerful beneath him in that moment, Charlie seemed determined to strip her of any further say she had in the matter. Remaining sprawled beneath him was consent enough; he pushed her jeans the rest of the way off, with Dylan squirming and bucking her hips to aid him. She could sense his urgency. Not only that, she reciprocated it wholeheartedly—she needed Charlie inside her, right now, or she would die from incompletion.

  She shoved at the front of his shorts. The tent he pitched was massive, so big she had to use both hands to navigate his waistband over and down. She pulled his boxers down with his shorts, and his erection sprang free, jutting thick and throbbing toward her. She took it into her hands and smoothed her palms down its length in measured, alternating strokes. When she paused to squeeze, Charlie groaned explosively. God, she loved the feel of him in her hand and the knowledge that she could make the strongest man she had ever encountered weaken for her with the light pressure of a touch.

  Charlie licked the palm of his hand lasciviously; before Dylan could anticipate his next move, he thrust it back down between her legs and opened her up once more, lubricating her with his spit. It was so rough, so primal and thoughtless, that Dylan quivered and shook. She tightened her thighs against her own muscle spasms, still fighting for some appearance of control, but she was fast coming undone. It was Charlie's hand that now guided the proceedings.

  He positioned his erection at her opening. Dylan hitched her right leg over his hip, clenching her thigh over the bunching muscles, as Charlie plunged down and up. The wide dome of his cock butted up against her passage. She knew he would find it slick and welcoming. The pressure gave.

  "Mmm!" Dylan hummed, capturing the moan of appreciation deep in her throat as Charlie sank inside her. She couldn't hold in the blissful sigh that followed or prevent her head from falling back on the fresh turf beneath her. The aroma of the grass broke over her, enveloping her senses. As Charlie craned himself closer, she could smell his natural musk warring with his spearmint body wash; no smell on earth could be more masculine or more likely to drive her out of her better senses and reduce her to a bundle of nerves and raw need.

  Her fingers wound themselves in his jersey, making knots to give herself something to hold onto. Even though he had her solidly pinned beneath him, her back pushing into the ground, the risk of falling upward into the big, blue sky felt ever-present. The pleasure that sparked and shivered through her threatened to send the world careening off its axis. Goosebumps erupted all along her arms and the backs of her thighs. She couldn't tell up from down; she was out of control, and they had barely gotten started.

  Charlie dropped down to his forearm and planted a quick kiss on her forehead. Dylan sought his lips with her own, but before she could come anywhere close to capturing the kiss that eluded her, Charlie curled his massive body and bucked up into her. She sheathed him again completely in that single thrust.

  Dylan wailed wordlessly as she clung to him. She was afraid her cries would reverberate throughout the empty stadium, but she couldn’t keep silent in the face of his might. She compressed her lips tightly together, but his next thrust obliterated all thoughts of stifling any noise. She had to let him know what she needed.

  "Fuck me, Charlie," she growled low in her throat. Her command caused him to stall; before she could even think to give any more orders, he brought one hand up to untangle her fingers from his jersey. He reached back behind him to yank the shirt over his head one-handed and toss it away. A thin sheen of sweat covered his neck and torso. He chuckled low in his throat as he pinned her wrists above her head.

  "Didn't take you long to change your tune," he noticed. "Guess you just had to be reminded of what you were missing." He punctuated his good-natured taunt with a forceful thrust, rolling her back so that her hips came all the way off the ground. Dylan hiked her legs close around his waist and hissed in pleasure. "What a beautiful tune it is," Charlie added as he lowered his lips to her neck.

  "You're seriously…going to tease me…right now?" Dylan demanded between pants. Charlie's hips drove into her in steady, rhythmic thrusts. He suddenly changed tack, grinding his pelvis down into her. The friction against her clit was like watching the fireworks go off above the Austin stadium. She moaned and gasped and strained against the hands that held her wrists down. Charlie lowered himself until his chest pressed flush against hers. He reverse-rolled his hips again, and Dylan arched beneath him. Any more of this and she was sure to leave a doctor-sized imprint on the fifty-yard line for some unsuspecting groundskeeper to discover.

  "God, I love making you sweat." Charlie licked along the curve of her neck, tongue catching beneath her chin. "Looks like you love it, too. You want to come for me?"

  Of all the insufferable, cocky, domineering questions to ask at a moment like—

  A shiver coursed through Dylan suddenly, the foreshock of orgasm. No way. She refused to respond that easily to him! There's no way she was going to allow herself to be directed to come. She tried to hold herself perfectly still beneath him. Charlie's knitted look of concentration lifted, and he grinned roguishly. His expression said it all: I don't think so. He wasn't going to let her hold back on him now. Dylan knew she was in deep trouble. God, it was so deep…and getting deeper with each…

  "Ohhh, shit," she heard herself curse. Charlie's hand released her wrists, and she grabbed for his shoulders.

  "Hold onto me," he instructed

  As if there were anything else for her to do! Charlie tucked his arm between her and the grass, raising her waist to meet him as he thrust him
self inside her once with a brutal finality. He couldn't have known it would push her over, but it did. All the mounting pressure that had been collecting in her belly spilled over, and the orgasm swept through her like waves bursting past a dam. Dylan arched into his embrace with a cry that would have brought the stadium down around them had he not been there to capture her mouth in his. He swallowed her pleasure, and she tasted the sweet sweep of his tongue as it scoured past her teeth. Another throb rocked through her, and Charlie's thrusts quickened; she hadn't even come to full completion before she felt the hot jet of his seed emptying inside her.

  Charlie withdrew slowly with a groan, his spent cock teasing the outsides of her oversensitive folds. Another shiver raced through her, and she longed to take him inside her again, but she was exhausted. She could feel traces of him weeping down her inner thighs. He dropped his head into her chest, and almost his entire body weight settled on top of her. A laugh of surprise burst from her—along with any spare breath she could manage—until Charlie redistributed his weight with a chuckle and settled in against her.

  "I love you, Charlie Wild," she muttered as her fingers caressed his sweat-tangled hair.

  "Thought I'd be the one to say it first." His voice was muffled by her breasts. When Dylan drew her chin back a little to consider him, Charlie returned her look. He wasn't giving her his usual half-cocked grin; hell, his eyes weren't even droopy with post-sex exhaustion. His expression was alert, open. She wondered if he could hear the moment her heart stuttered to a stop. She knew she hadn't made a mistake in choosing this moment to bare her soul—but she suddenly felt in need of a perspective that wasn't the chiseled face gazing at her. It was too easy to look at Charlie and want to forget all rules and responsibility.

  "This doesn't change anything," she asserted.

  "Doesn't it?" His eyes were fixed on her lips. Dylan felt dizzy with the weight of her own feelings for him. She didn't want to ruin the moment by frustrating him, but she had to persevere. Part of her obligation to both of them now was to stand on the strength of her own convictions, even if it meant saying something Charlie wouldn't want to hear.

  "Not in the way you might expect." Dylan sat up, pulled her shirt down and adjusted her hair. Once she felt composed enough to continue, she crossed her legs. She took Charlie's hand in hers as he did the same. "I'm in love with you—"

  "I love you, too."

  "But that doesn't mean I'm going to relent. I'm not going to look the other way just because it would make you happy and make things easier between us."

  "You won't need to look the other way," Charlie stated. "You have nothing to worry about, Dylan. I won't see other women. And I never expected things to be easy." His mouth slid sideways, his dimple appeared, and Dylan hated the way her heart clenched at the sight. She wanted to back down. She wanted to savor the moment, but she had to see this conversation through to its conclusion. It was too important to drop for the sake of the smile she loved more than anything.

  "No. I'm not talking about having a…relationship with you, although I'd like to. But I think this conversation needs to come first, so that you know where I stand. We've complicated things by having sex. But I'm still your doctor, Charlie. I'm not going to trade one role, one relationship, for the other. So while it's true you've come to mean more to me than I ever expected, it only means I have more reasons to want you well. Your knee shouldn't be played on this season. You need to concentrate full-time on your recovery. That's why I'm not going to clear you."

  There. She’d said it. Dylan gazed at him, holding her breath despite herself. She watched the charming, love-struck expression he wore slowly fade as the realization of her seriousness on the matter hit home. She wanted nothing more than to immediately take it back, but she resisted the urge. She hated herself for it.

  But she would hate herself more if anything happened to him.

  "That's not possible." Charlie's hand slid from hers, and he rose suddenly. He teetered slightly on his knee—breaking Dylan's heart and confirming her resolve in a single unsteady moment—before straightening. His gaze shuttered. "I…need to think about this."

  "About this? Wait—about which part?" Dylan snatched her pants up, struggled to her feet, and started after him as Charlie made for the locker room.

  "All of it."

  Dylan frowned. "I understand you have to think about us, and you should. Hell, I still have to think more about it. But Charlie, the knee is non-negotiable. I'm your doctor," she concluded.

  Charlie turned abruptly, surprising her, and Dylan knocked into his chest. Her hands came up, and he caught her. That strong, angular face she had come to worship the sight of when no one was looking was now twisted and miserable. Because of her. God, she wanted to take it all back.

  "You're more than that now," Charlie said gravely. He reached up to smooth her hair away from her forehead. Then he released her and turned to go. His bent head and bowed shoulders disappeared from view as he ducked into the shadows of the stadium.

  Dylan didn't follow.

  10

  Charlie

  Smitty did not appear to relish the moment he pushed the pictures across the table to Charlie. His public relations guy was showing a new face, a grim face. Whatever had happened, it wasn't good.

  Charlie rocked forward in his chair, eyeing the expression of his management team. No one in the room was smiling. When his eyes flickered down eventually, he saw the reason why.

  "Does Dylan know about this?" The words left his mouth before any thoughts about his own image could register. As far as he was concerned, that's what his team was there for—to control whatever havoc a guy like him could wreak and help him come out on the other end unscathed. There may have been people, a lot of people, who thought Charlie Wild was just another self-centered jock who had made it to the bigtime, but his own well-being was the furthest thing from his mind at that moment.

  He lifted up the first photograph, studying the picture, even though it wasn't really necessary. He had lived that moment on the fifty-yard line with Dylan, after all—there was no reason to play voyeur to his own memory. In the picture, the two of them were still (at least partially) clothed, meaning it had been taken in the moments leading up to their epic consummation. Thank God for small graces.

  "Dr. Rose has been informed, yes." Smitty shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was wearing his sunglasses, but Charlie had a feeling it was more in an effort to conceal what he was really thinking than to ward off the harsh light of the conference room.

  "And the hospital?"

  "If you're asking after her job, Charlie, I can confirm that although the general faith in Dr. Rose has been shaken, she's in no danger of losing her position at the moment."

  "And they aren't going to strong-arm her into a resignation?"

  "Charlie!" Another suit broke through their exchange in exasperation. "Do you understand what's happened? You just got caught fucking your doctor in the end zone—"

  "Fifty-yard line."

  "And these are the questions you decide to ask us? There's only so much interference we can run here on your behalf! The images of you and Dr. Rose have gone viral, and it doesn't look good."

  "You don't think the two of us look good together?"

  "That's not the point," Smitty interrupted impatiently. "You were rehabbing more than just your knee down in Lockhart, Charlie. You were rehabbing your image. We had planned for you to make your return to the Teamsters as a more mature, level-headed sports icon. Someone the kids could start to really idolize and look up to without their parents having to shield their eyes every other time your name made the headlines. With this latest stunt, that depiction is out the window."

  Charlie leaned back in his chair again and crossed his arms behind his head. "Maybe I'm getting fucking tired of false depictions, Smitty. I fell in love with my doctor. Why don't you take that story and run with it?"

  Charlie's idea was met with a resounding chorus of disbelieving laughter. Something
in his chest clenched, and he could feel his own pulse skyrocket as he realized they thought he was making a joke. Either that, or they thought him so completely incapable of making a commitment outside of football that he didn't know what he was talking about. It was condescending as hell, and he'd had enough.

  Charlie rose, flinging the folder of pictures back across the table and only narrowly missing Smitty's face. "Get it out there. What am I paying you guys for? Dr. Rose and I are in a committed relationship. That ought to sit better with people. We'll have our taboo cake and eat it, too."

  "Have you actually spoken to her about this?" Smitty called after him. "It's likely those vultures in the press are going to try and reach her for comment, if they haven't already. I'm not going to risk putting a story out that's going to be immediately debunked by the other half of the…party…in question."

  Charlie fell silent. In all honesty, he had been avoiding contact with Dylan since their bittersweet departure that day at the stadium. He didn't want her to know what he had planned behind her back. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, the adage went. Only now there was going to be a hell of a lot to forgive.

  He wasn't sure they were going to make it through this. As he made his way out of the conference room and down the stadium hallway to the showers, he pulled his phone out. He had missed multiple calls from Dylan. He felt the clenching sensation again but knew he couldn't seize upon the easy remedy for it. Not now. Instead, he bypassed the missed calls screen and dialed the team doctor.

  "Roberts?" he said as soon as he heard the other line pick up. "It's Wild. I assume you've seen it by now in the news. I can't have my doctor linked to me right now, so I'm going to need you to clear me. I don't care what you have to do. My knee is holding up fine."

  Charlie paused, listening but not comprehending the droning voice and shuffling papers on the other end. He knew how sideline maneuvers like this played out. Roberts may have been the team doctor, but he was there to make sure Teamsters played.