Night Games

by Lisa Marie Perry

  “Last night at the casino, you mentioned driving way out here to get away from expectations. So this is what you do—come here at a crazy-ass time of morning to run, then hit the showers at Desert Luck? And before you ask, I know you shower at the facility every morning because your hair’s always wet and you smell like that flowery stuff you shampoo with at the end of training days. That fragrance follows you everywhere…. I heard a coach say the staff lounge has never smelled so good.”

  “Rose hips and jojoba.”

  “Powerful stuff. It could boost morale.”

  “Doubt it. That’s more about player-to-player relationships, solid man management and whatnot.”

  “Then maybe it boosts only my morale.”

  His heated stare fastened on hers the way his hands might pin her wrists to a mattress.

  “Nice detective work,” she managed to get out. At least her voice was strong and not all swoony or shaky.

  Nate edged closer. “Still, it wasn’t easy to find you in the middle of all this. I lost time searching the north loop. I was about to give up when I saw your car outside the gates.”

  “Well, you interrupted my run for a reason. What is it?”

  “Paparazzi crashed the Titanium Club minutes after you left. Camera flashes lit up the damn place like fireworks…but the memory cards are now property of Gian DiGorgio. It doesn’t erase the fact that a few wannabe TMZ minions ended up in my godfather’s private club on my brother’s birthday.”

  Charlotte straightened, ready to jump into defense mode. “Like you said, that happened after I left. I’m not tight with the paparazzi. Blame anyone you want—just not me, because I had nothing to do with it.”

  “I know you didn’t, Charlotte.”

  It took a long moment before she absorbed the magnitude of his words. “Despite my showing up with a journalist and then having a not-exactly-friendly chat with your father, you believe me?”

  “Yeah. But you can see how someone could interpret those facts as proof that you have an ax to grind and set this up. That someone being my father.”

  “Fantastic. So by simply accepting his fiancée’s invitation to the club, I’ve given your father ammo to make even more outlandish accusations against my family?”

  “No. I told him you weren’t involved in it. That I kept track of you.”

  Charlotte stilled. The memory of standing at the blackjack table with Nate’s fingers pressed against her, his body hard behind her, stunned her with a burst of euphoria that was laced with frustration. Once again they’d begun something they couldn’t—shouldn’t, better not!—finish. “Did you tell him how you kept track of me?”

  “Saw no reason to get into specifics. Just know that he’s aware the paparazzi stunt isn’t your fault. I’ll admit he didn’t want to accept that at first, but I persuaded him.”

  “You did that for me?”

  A muscle ticked at his jaw. Clearly he was very carefully selecting his response, as if navigating a minefield. “It was the right thing to do.”

  Charlotte jerked her chin in a semblance of a nod. She could thank him and walk away or stay and find out if the desire she’d felt in his touch and voice last night was still alive in the light of a foggy day. Leave it alone, her saner self warned even as the words tumbled from her lips. “Do you always do the right thing?”

  His gaze dragged over her, as erotic as a lick on bare flesh. “Not always.”

  “You didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to find me here. We could’ve discussed this at camp.”

  “Camp doesn’t really offer me the opportunity to take you…aside for private talks.” His deliberate pause wasn’t lost on her, and the slow tilt of his mouth at her nervous swallow made it evident that he damn well knew it. “So I had to take initiative.”

  “Whose bed did you leave to come out here at such a ‘crazy-ass’ hour, anyway?” There, she’d asked in a sort-of-frank, sort-of-veiled fashion whether or not he was sleeping with someone, at the same time wondering why she couldn’t keep from poking at that hornet’s nest of lust between them. But there was plenty of time for regret later.

  Now was the time for curiosity.

  “My bed. In an apartment that’s mine and mine alone. You’re not the only one with a hideout.” Nate ventured closer. She held his gaze, slowly moving off the trail and deeper into the canopy of trees, and he was keeping up with her…joining her in the foggy semidarkness.

  “And that journalist of yours. Where is he?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “When you were leaving, you looked back at me. If you were so into that guy, you wouldn’t have turned around at the exit. But you did.”

  “The journalist isn’t mine, and I haven’t seen him since we said something to the effect of ‘Have a nice life’ in the DiGorgio parking lot and I drove myself home. I went out with him to please someone who can’t be pleased.” Charlotte gripped the front of her waist pack tightly to keep her fingers from reaching out to slide along his angular jaw and over the hard muscles that lay beneath his shirt. “What do you want from me? Everyone wants something, and if what you want is something I can’t give, then you should know now.”

  “I want to see you. Not trainer Charlotte. Not the Charlotte who dresses up for a man she doesn’t want to be with. I want to see you.”

  “Newsflash. This is me.”

  “Okay.” Keeping his gaze on hers—oh, God, it sizzled through her defenses—he reached behind her with one hand and deftly unlatched her waist pack. It met the ground in a soft thud, and there was nothing in the air but a dense mist and an unspoken dare she knew she wouldn’t pass up. “Then just answer this. Why did you look back at me last night, Charlotte?”

  The emotional face-off came raging forth. What to reveal? What to hold back? But in honesty she found escape. “Because I wanted to stay. With you.”

  *

  Charlotte wasn’t lying to him. Nate’s intuition told him she was for real. Tuned completely in to her, he sensed her boldness and hesitant trust. She wasn’t after a fantasy with some stranger. She was making a choice.

  Despite what was at stake for both of them, they couldn’t seem to keep away from one another. Before, he’d told himself he had the excuse that he hadn’t known the identity of the woman he’d taken up to his suite at the Rio. But now he couldn’t pretend not to know. He’d gone after her. He knew exactly who she was, what she wanted and how finishing what had jumped off at the Rio would be both his best and worst decision ever.

  The plain, cold facts warred with hot lust in his mind, and he had to make a choice. Now.

  Nate hooked a finger into the elastic band reining in Charlotte’s hair and drew it down until her curls tumbled free. He replaced the elastic with his hand, tunneling it through until he could cradle the back of her head. “Stay, Charlotte.”

  “Don’t…”

  Immediately he started to release her, to back off.

  She laughed lightly, using the back of her hand to mop away the shimmer of sweat on her forehead. “Don’t call me Charlotte. Call me Lottie, like you did before.”

  React. That was all Nate would do. There was no need to calculate or plot. There was only instinct and touch and demand. He went for her bottom lip, tasting the soft swell before penetrating her mouth with his tongue. Her groan vibrated in his mouth, and in turn he explored his fill—gently sinking his teeth into her lips, learning the texture of her mouth.

  He let her go and she gasped sharply, crossing her arms protectively across her chest. He’d shocked her. Good. “Lottie.”

  The naked joy that lit her face nearly brought him to his knees. Her arms fell, then swept up in a single graceful movement, the hem of her purple crew-neck shirt tangled in her fingers. In seconds the shirt was floating to the ground and she was in front of him in a black sports bra, shorts and an inviting smile.

  She burrowed her anxious hands beneath his shirt, rediscovering the shape of him, her fingertips bumping along his abdom
inal muscles, then skimming up his back until her palms were pressed to his shoulder blades. “At the hotel…it was, I don’t know, unreal. But I never forgot your body and how you touched me. Did you forget?”

  No way. He’d tried to, because forgetting would’ve made it easier to put things in perspective and manage working with her through hellishly long training days without fantasizing about losing his mind and kissing her on the practice field.

  To answer her he stepped out of her embrace, peeled away her bra and slid his splayed fingers up her damp skin to cup her breasts. She closed her eyes only to open them again—wide—at the sensation of his mouth closing over one of her nipples.

  The taste of her elicited a moan from him, heightened his senses and sensitivity to her touch when she scraped his scalp with her fingernails. He retaliated with a firm grip on her behind, bunching the mesh athletic shorts and tugging them downward even as she toed off her shoes.

  Charlotte dipped to shed her socks, then rose slowly, emerging from the swirling fog with that quirky, irresistible little smirk and dirty intent in her eyes. She was soft skin over toned muscles and killer curves. She went for his jeans, rubbing him through the denim, leaving it up to him to get rid of his shirt.

  In the time it took for him to yank off the shirt, she’d unzipped his jeans and worked her hand beneath the waistband of his boxers.

  Now she was the one shocking him, with her erotic, gritty promises and the way she raked her fingers up and down the length of his erection before baring his ass.

  He sank, landing on his shirt and taking her down with him. Hovering over her with his pants halfway down his thighs, he fumbled for the condom in his wallet. As he searched her eyes for signs of retreat and found none, he pressed the condom into her hand. This wasn’t about a power struggle or manipulation or competition. It was about Nate and Charlotte, giving and taking, finding the rightness in a situation that seemed to be wrong in a dozen ways.

  As she was occupied with tearing open the packaging, he took the opportunity to curl his middle finger against the heat between her legs. She sighed, bowing up, opening herself further to his exploration.

  He leaned, groaning into her hair at the snugness of her flesh around his finger. Relentlessly he teased her until she clenched and dropped back in a series of spasms, and then he let her test the weight of his erection in her hand before she rolled the condom onto him.

  Nate captured the sight of her beneath him, her eyes hooded, her body moving in sync with his, and the feel of her welcoming him into her pulsing wet heat provoked a low curse that made her laugh in surprise.

  “I knew it,” she whispered on a deep sigh.

  “What?”

  “That this would be good.”

  Bracing his weight on his knees and one forearm, he grabbed one of her hands and pinned it to the ground beside her head. Then, with their moans blending and damp flesh meeting in rhythmic slaps, they let go.

  Nate waited until she crawled away to gather her clothes before he righted his pants. There was an awkwardness to her movements. In a matter of minutes she’d gone from hotter than hell to colder than ice.

  Shirt in hand, he walked slowly to her as she pulled up her shorts. He bent, pressed a kiss to the center of her smooth back.

  “Nate. We’re screwed.”

  He gathered a handful of her hair to expose her nape, kissed her there and got a deep, pleasured groan in response. “I know.”

  It was hilarious and shattering at the same time that in spite of all the trouble that could come out of willfully crossing the line together they’d done it anyway. And wouldn’t mind doing it again.

  Charlotte finally moved away to finish dressing, all the way down to snapping the pack around her waist and chugging down a few swallows of her drink. “We’ve stirred up something between us, and it’s not going away anytime soon.” Distractedly, she offered him the bottle, unaware how sweet the gesture was. If either of them should slip and show affection like this in public, the coaching staff, the front office, the media wouldn’t ignore it.

  “If you weren’t a Blue and I wasn’t a Franco, this—” he pointed at her, then himself “—wouldn’t be a problem. Gotta admit, this isn’t the first time I’ve regretted who I am. I love my people, even though they can drive me batshit crazy. It has more to do with me and the choices I’ve made.” He gave her a considering look. “Bet you’ve always been comfortable in your own skin, huh?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “No, Nate. I’m pretty imperfect, and mostly I’m okay with that. I’ve made some poor choices, and there was even one time when I cut my hair off just to get over a really poor choice I’d made. It was all in the name of getting my way and sticking it to my parents, which sums up my college experience.” She stiffened, as if stunned that she’d said as much as she had. “Anyway, it feels like too many people are waiting for me to mess up again.”

  He wanted to band his arms around her, touch her where she was most responsive until that worried frown melted into an expression of ecstasy. But he didn’t. Instead he let her find her own composure and strength. “Charlotte, when we report to camp today, will anything be different in the eyes of the team?”

  “No, because no one knows…. Hold up. Are you saying we have a shot at keeping this between us?”

  “Yeah.” He put on his shirt, glad that he had a spare in his duffel that wasn’t dirtied with telltale signs that he’d been tussling around in the woods.

  “But for how long, Nate?”

  “Until we’ve had enough and can put this aside.”

  After a moment she nodded sharply. “Okay.” Then she took off in a sprint, yet the look she’d sent him under her lashes was drenched in skepticism and mirrored his thoughts.

  What if I can’t get enough of you?

  Chapter 10

  Four training days passed before Charlotte wound up alone with Nate again. Yes, she’d kept count. And yes, she was hyperaware of him when she barged into the staff lounge to toss her smashed Phiaton headphones into her duffel bag. The pair was a casualty of a squabble between a few defensive linemen in the cafeteria.

  Nate had been on a call but cut off the conversation.

  She held up the damaged phones. “Just tossing these away.”

  “Jesus. What happened to them?”

  “Two hundred sixty pounds of linebacker.” Locker open, she was busily stuffing the headphones into her bag when she heard him ease the lounge door closed and engage the lock. By the time she turned around, he’d already crossed the room and was in front of her, hitching his chin at the row of bottles on her locker’s top shelf.

  “Um. Are you a hoarder?”

  “No,” she denied with a laugh. It felt good to tease and banter, relaxed, especially after four days of torturous silence. Work had kept them busy, but it was after hours when she’d think about him and feel his absence most strongly. It wasn’t that she was missing him, she told herself…. That would only introduce a whole new layer of complication neither of them was looking for. This closeness was supposed to be on the low, and temporary, until they could burn themselves out and move on.

  But they had a habit of setting rules only to turn around and break them—along with rules set by everyone else.

  For one thing, he’d locked the lounge door, which just wasn’t done at this facility. Desert Luck’s open-door policy was literal. Part of the new mission statement emphasized teamwork, and no team member had the permission to lock anyone out of any room, be it the auditorium, the conference wing, the training room or a lounge. Charlotte’s only real privacy was the ladies’ restroom, which she used only minimally in an effort to stay integrated with her colleagues.

  And for another thing, she was letting Nate get too close. He was starting to reach her on a level beyond physical.

  “So, what’s up with all the shampoo bottles?”

  Oh, man, the timbre of his voice did something wicked to her. Charlotte rose up on her toes, answering softly, “I hea
rd it’s gotten to be popular around here, so I stocked up on enough to get me through camp. Thought I’d do you guys a favor.”

  Nate reached out to shut her locker, then backed her against it and settled his hands on either side of her head. “That deserves a proper thank-you.”

  She dragged him forward, covering his mouth with hers. Coaxing a muffled groan from him, she snaked a hand into his shorts and underwear to grab his ass. “You’re welcome.”

  “Lottie…there is something I want from you.”

  Instantly tense, Charlotte furrowed her brow. “What?”

  “Your number.” Nate’s gaze dropped to her mouth, which was a bit swollen from their rough kisses. “Don’t you think I’ve earned it?”

  Obviously they weren’t close to getting their fill of one another, and they couldn’t continue taking risks like this at Desert Luck Center. They were on the brink of falling in deeper, strengthening an already powerfully dangerous connection, but she could save them both right here, right now if she just said no.

  “Give me your phone.”

  When he grinned and handed it over, Charlotte knew she was in trouble.

  *

  “She’s playing them.”

  Nate had to fight to control his instinct to defend a woman he wasn’t allowed to step up for. Instead, he helped his brother settle into one of the leather chairs in the home theater as SportsCenter featured coverage from the Slayers’ NFL Play 60 campaign event. Having spent most of yesterday guest-speaking at a UNLV seminar about musculoskeletal medicine, Nate had missed the chance to work with the children who’d been bused to the training facility to spend the day with professional athletes.

  After today’s semiformal dinner for the training staff, hosted at Whittaker Doyle’s house, Nate hadn’t bothered changing out of his suit before driving straight to Lake Las Vegas for a visit. Even though his father was out and his brother still in a foul mood from a grueling physical-therapy session he’d endured earlier in the afternoon, Nate had stuck around, hoping he and Santino could chill like brothers. Like how they had back in the day, when Santino had saved Nate’s life and given him a future…before their mother died and their father fell into his ongoing downward spiral.