“What, no one can talk about Rhetta’s ass but you?”
“Damn right they can’t.”
They both burst out laughing and Caroline could feel a little bit of her nerves slip away. “You have to admit, it’s a pretty good ass.”
“I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t noticed it.”
“Charlie Sondheim!”
“And those calves…”
“Charlie!”
“Don’t get me started on those eyes…”
Charlie screamed and ran with Caroline chasing hopelessly after her.
Mission accomplished.
With Caroline not set to film her interview until that evening, Rhetta made her way to the gym in the hopes of stealing a few minutes alone with her fiancée before their afternoon training session.
As predicted, Caroline was alone in the weights room, doing press-up after press-up to the beat of whatever was reverberating out of her earphones. Rhetta made her way towards her and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her. Caroline noticed her and collapsed onto her back, laying her head in Rhetta’s lap and panting up at the ceiling. Rhetta gently took the earphones from Caroline’s ears and leant down to kiss her, smiling at he salty taste of Caroline’s lips. There was something even more irresistible about Caroline when she was all sweaty from working out. It upped her badass rating by a good ten points and eroded Rhetta’s willpower by more than 100.
“Working hard, stud?” she choked out through dry lips.
Caroline let her eyes close as she waited for her breathing to return to normal. “How… was… the… interview?”
Rhetta brushed the damp hair off Caroline’s face and stroked the back of her fingers along the strong line of her jaw.
“It was actually sorta fun. I was a little bit rigid at first, I think, but I settled down when we got into it. Especially with your pebble in my pocket, reminding me that you’re always right there beside me, even when you’re not. When did you get it?”
Caroline’s chest was still rising and falling sharply and her laboured breath made her voice breathy and low. “I might have swiped one as a memento when you said yes.”
Actually, she had swiped more than one. Rhetta was going to get one for every significant moment between now and ‘I do’. At least that was the plan. Caroline was a little worried that she would run out of things to write that would fit in a four word sentence.
“My sweet, sweet fiancée.” Rhetta sing-songed, her fingers still stroking over Caroline’s heated skin. “How did I get so lucky?”
“You took the words right out of my mouth, Princess,” Caroline winked. “You look so freaking hot in your war paint. You should give me a private viewing when we get home.”
“Oh stop, you.” Rhetta laughed, her cheeks blazing as they always did when Caroline teased her like this.
“Maybe team it up with a softball jersey. Just a softball jersey.”
Rhetta swatted at her arm.
Caroline stuck her tongue out at her. “So, do I get to know what you said?”
Rhetta smirked. “Don’t worry. You featured.”
Caroline pouted. “R! How am I going to know what I’m allowed to say if I don’t know what you said.”
“Whatever you want. This is about you, Caro. Who I am today has been moulded by us, by you, as much as it has by football. You’re my rock. You’re inked on my skin. I couldn’t talk about who I am as a player or as a person without talking about that. For you, it might be different. Just talk from the heart. Whatever your heart says, I trust you.”
“Yeah?”
“How could I not when it always says such beautiful things?” Rhetta smiled.
Caroline pushed herself up on her elbows, drawn in for a kiss by the warmth in Rhetta’s eyes. As their lips met, the alarm on Caroline’s phone went off.
“Time to go, stud.”
“Time to go, princess.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
With all the interviews finished ahead of schedule and already looking great, the team were given the rest of the night off. They had training the next morning, which usually meant a night playing cards or watching movies in someone’s hotel room. But tonight they had been given the freedom to go out and blow off some steam. On one condition, the night be a dry one. No alcohol allowed. That, and they had to be home by 11.30pm.
“Hot daaaaaamn,” Caroline whistled when Rhetta stepped out of the bathroom in her new little black dress. She looked incredible and Caroline’s heart pounded at the sight of her long, tanned legs. Her eyes lingered on them until Rhetta coughed pointedly.
“My eyes are up here, stud,” Rhetta chuckled, enjoying the prickle of heat that shot over her skin at the want in Caroline’s gaze.
“I’ll have to fight to keep them off of you tonight,” Caroline said, her voice low and as intense as her gaze.
Rhetta smiled and turned, sweeping her hair over one shoulder. “Zip me up?”
Once she was all zipped up, Rhetta turned back to face Caroline and smoothed her hands over her charcoal grey shirt, appreciating the way it pulled tight over her biceps and chest. She already knew that she was going to have a hard time keeping her hands to herself. “With you in this shirt, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be the one defending my territory.”
Caroline smirked, her every fibre exuding the kind of confidence that made Rhetta melt. “Your territory, huh?”
Rhetta tugged on Caroline’s belt buckle and wrinkled her nose in a smile. Her cool fingers touched the warm skin just beneath the waistband of Caroline’s jeans, making Caroline’s breath catch. “Uh huh. Mine.”
“Really?” Caroline laughed, her confidence shaken by the unexpected intimacy of Rhetta’s touch. Her fingers slipped a little lower and Caroline gulped. “Wha- what makes you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rhetta drawled. “Maybe something to do with that ring on your finger?”
Caroline looked down at her ring and shivered. It still didn’t feel real. It felt like a dream. Like the best dream she had ever had. One that she hoped that sh would never wake up from.
“I thought that you might want me to take it off.”
All sense of teasing left Rhetta’s posture. “Never.”
“I thought maybe with the video being not – don’t mind the pun – coming out for a while…”
“Never,” Rhetta repeated firmly. “When I put that ring on your finger, I put it there for life. No way would I ever ask you to take it off.”
“But what if someone sees?” Caroline asked. She wasn’t nervous or unsure anymore. She didn’t doubt Rhetta for one moment. What she didn’t want, was for it all to get out on someone else’s terms.
Rhetta sighed. “What if they do?”
“You have it all planned out, R. People might not have seen it yet, but you’ve had your coming out on your own terms. I don’t want to ruin that.”
Not able to think of anything adequate to say, Rhetta leant up on her tip toes and pressed a soft kiss to Caroline’s still lips.
“This is all I care about,” she swore. “Nothing and no one else. You’re my family, Caro. We’re a family. You and me. I don’t care if people see us. Or our rings. Yes, the interview is how I want to come out, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to hide us. If people see it, people see it.”
“Does that mean that I get to kiss you on the dance floor?”
Rhetta giggled. “You better had, stud.”
* * *
For once, the team didn’t all go to the same place. When they were on camp in other countries or even in smaller cities or towns, they always went out as a pack. But in LA, there were more than enough places for those with different tastes to go off in their own groups. Some went to a sports bar, the kids went off to a club and the rest headed for a bar that had a reputation for its live bands and cocktails. Rhetta had gotten the recommendation for the cocktail bar from Sam and some of his friends. It would’t be as packed as the club, but still had a decent dance floor for them to let loose
on. The music would be good and there would be no drunken frat boys. It was her kind of place.
“This place is awesome,” Charlie said appreciatively as they stood by the bar waiting for their drinks, her head nodding in time with the music. A glass was slid in front of her and she made an appreciative sound before taking a sip of the pink liquid topped with a pale orange foam. “And their cocktails are a-ma-zing! Even if we do have to stick to the non-alcoholic ones.”
“We totally have to come back here when we can sample the liquor,” Natalie giggled. “Nice one Morsten.”
Rhetta wasn’t really paying attention. She was watching Caroline order their drinks. More specifically, she was watching the hot blonde bartender flirt shamelessly with Caroline. The woman was tall and curvy with a tiny waist and a top cut low enough that she looked just about ready to spill out of it. She leaned forward as she talked to Caroline, making sure to give her a show as she slowly prepared their cocktails. The last straw was when she began shaking the cocktail shaker and every eye in a ten foot radius zeroed in on her chest.
Pushing off from the table, Rhetta made her way over to the bar, her hips swaying. When she reached Caroline, she looped one arm around the one that Caroline had resting on the bar and slid her other hand into the back pocket of Caroline’s jeans.
“Hey baby. Mmmmm, what’s taking you so long?” she purred in Caroline’s ear, just loud enough for the bartender to hear. She dropped her forehead to rest against Caroline’s jaw and pressed a kiss to her neck.
The second Rhetta touched her, Caroline’s body began to thrum. She knew that Rhetta was jealous and having her stake her claim to her so blatantly was a massive turn on. She hadn’t acted like that since Germany.
“Just making sure that your drink is perfect, gorgeous,” Caroline said smoothly, taking her arm from the bar and wrapping it around Rhetta’s waist.
The rest of the team watched them with sly smiles. They had watched this jealousy game play out before, but this was the first time that Rhetta had done anything about it but sulk in a corner. Now that they weren’t hiding their shows of affection in public anymore, their team nights out were about to get a whole lot more interesting.
As the night went on, the sugar in their drinks and the giddiness that always came from being out together made up for the lack of alcohol in their veins. The usual group had made their way onto the dance floor, earning a fair amount of attention from the single guys in the crowd. Two love sick puppies were pining over a clearly uninterested Charlie and an overly handsy guy had just received a slap from Natalie. Vanessa and Rhetta were in their own world, dancing and laughing together with an energy that was infectious, even from the table way across the room where Caroline was watching them.
“If that guy touches Natalie again she’s going to give him a black eye,” Denise snorted. “You think that we should go and rescue her?”
Just as she said it, charlie ‘accidentally’ stamped her heel down on the guys’s shoe, making him cry out in pain and hobble, red faced, from the dance floor.
Caroline laughed. “Nope, I think they got it covered.”
The girlier member of their team might look like easy pickings, but all packed one hell of a punch.
“You’re one lucky woman, you know that,” Denise mused pensively, “having Rhetta here with you.”
Caroline’s smile dropped for a moment. She missed Huffy too. It was rare that she got to see her anymore and with her retiring, she wouldn’t even get to see her when their teams played. “I hear ya, but I served my time. You’ll get through it. So… when will you guys be sending out baby shower invitations?”
Denise laughed. “We’re working on it. I just don’t want to miss too much, you know?”
Caroline nodded. She got that. When her and Rhetta decided it was time to start a family, she didn’t want to be stuck in another country – or even on the other side of the US – whilst Rhetta was going to scans and feeling the baby kick. She certainly didn’t want her to have to deal with the less pleasant side of pregnancy all by herself.
“Yeah, I know.”
“What about you two? Rhetta doesn’t show any signs of hanging up her cleats any time soon.”
Caroline shook her head. “She’s got years in her yet, but we can’t wait that long. There may be another cutie in national team daycare in a few years time. We haven’t talked about definites yet, but I’d really like to start trying as soon as the Olympics are over. I think Rhetta would too.”
“You better start saving up then. A wedding and a baby. That’s two serious dents in your pocket.”
“Don’t I know it. She’ll get the best, though, no matter what it costs. We’ve got to win this World Cup though, you feel me?”
Fenton and Janine joined them with a new round of drinks.
“That girl of yours certainly has a fan,” Fenton teased, nodding at the dance floor.
She was right. The guy hadn’t worked up the courage to actually dance with Rhetta yet, but he was getting closer and closer. Rhetta didn’t seem to have noticed. She was too caught up in the music. Caroline wasn’t really bothered. She and Rhetta never danced together when they were out. It was far too obvious that they were a couple from the way that they could’t keep their hands off each other. Caroline could only stand Rhetta grinding on her for so long before she couldn’t take it any longer, a fact that Chaya had found out a few months earlier when she had thrown a house party and things had gotten a little heated between the two in her en suite.
Two more guys joined the one with his eye on Rhetta and soon all five of them were dancing a little bit closer than Caroline would like. R and Natalie arrived back at the table, accepting their drinks from Janine and each kissing one of her cheeks, giggling and panting. Natalie looked around to where everyone else was looking and saw what had Caroline frowning.
“Want me to send Charlie over to step on their toes?” she offered.
Caroline shook her head and smiled. “Nah, they’re good. Rhetta can handle herself.”
Charlie shook her head at her. “You really think she’ll be happy with the fact that she got all possessive over you at the bar earlier when that bartender was just flirting with you, but you’re happy leaving her to it when there are three guys dancing all up in her and Vanessa’s space?”
“Please, Rhetta’s mind doesn’t work like that,” Caroline scoffed.
Her eyes drifted back to the dancefloor and she frowned. Rhetta might not have noticed it yet, but that guy was definitely dancing with her now.
“You sure about that?”
The guy leaned over and whispered something in Rhetta’s ear. She laughed.
Caroline had had enough.
The crowd had started to thicken out and Caroline had trouble finding them at first. Then she heard that giggle that never failed to make her giddy, and made straight for it. She broke through a thicket of hipsters and found her fiancée on the other side, swarmed with admirers. Immediately, Caroline felt jealousy flare in her belly. She had never been one for jealousy in the past, always happy with whatever Rhetta would give her, but now she felt it blaze like a fire. Not a monstrous, ugly jealousy of the kind she had always been so careful to avoid, but a whole new kind that she hadn’t known existed. It just made her want Rhetta more, made her want Rhetta to want her more.
She burned with it, could feel it steaming from her as she walked towards them, her eyes boring into Rhetta with such heat that Rhetta felt it and met her gaze.
Rhetta felt her gaze the moment Caroline started towards her. It burned into her, setting her skin alight. And when she met her eyes, Rhetta’s knees near gave way. Caroline wasn’t just walking towards her, she was prowling – a golden panther ready to pounce. And Rhetta was frozen to the spot. She couldn’t move, even if she tried.
When Caroline reached her, she didn’t waste a moment. She stepped right up to her and kissed her like the world around them was burning. Rhetta’s frozen limbs immediately came to life, fisting in
the material of Caroline’s shirt, dragging her closer. She needed her, needed her that close, needed her to breathe, needed her to think, to think of everything – everything they ever could, ever would have, all of it burning through every synapse of her mind all at once. She was alive with it, inflamed with it. Overcome with it.
They burned so hot that as soon as it was over, she curled herself into Caroline’s arms, embarrassment flushing her cheeks. She had never kissed anyone like that in public. She never would have dreamed of it.
Vanessa caught her eye and smiled, nodding slightly before disappearing into the crowd. The few people that had stopped to watch soon lost interest. They were alone in a room full of people and suddenly Rhetta wanted to be where no one could see them.
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