by Serena Bell
I want to reach for her again, as if somehow I could transfer my untouchability into her, but I don’t have that power. “Okay,” I say instead. “Think on it. But don’t take too long. I have plans for you.” I give her a long, hard look, and I can see from the way her pupils widen that she knows what I’m thinking. I tell her anyway. “Next time, it’s gonna be my hands on you. My mouth on you. I’ll take off, and you think about what you need to think about. But you think about that, too. You hear me?”
She nods, eyes huge and soft, tongue peeking out to wet her lower lip.
It’s not until I’m home, slipping key into lock, that I think back to what she’s said: I’m the one who stands to lose the most.
My body still resonates from all that not touching each other, and something tightens in my throat. I lean my head down and set my forehead against the wood of the door, and I think, Iona Thomas, you’re so fucking wrong about that.
Chapter 31
Iona
I’m sitting at my desk Tuesday morning when Coach Thrayne sends for me.
There are ten million reasons Coach could want to see me, but guilt is powerful, and something falls hard in the pit of my stomach when the training intern summons me to the conference room.
It’s not like anyone could know what went on between Ty and me last night. No one saw, no one heard; neither of us will ever tell.
But I can’t help the feeling that I’m cosmically due, that in the balance of the universe, my time is up. I have to pay the piper.
When you get the thing you want most in the world, then try to grab just one more prize—
Your greed is bound to catch up to you eventually.
It’s not just Coach in there. It’s Coach and the team’s asshole owner/general manager, Ted Hughes, and—
Oh, shit.
Ty.
And Sally Slaybourne from media relations, and Janet Weir from legal.
I slip into the room, wondering if everyone can hear my heart pounding.
“Hi,” I say.
They greet me with polite hellos and nods. I pull out a chair across from Ty, whose expression tells me he doesn’t know what this is about, but he knows it’s not good.
“I’ll cut to the chase,” Sally says. “Coach called me because he has film of you and Williams kissing the night of that windstorm.”
Film?
But it’s not really a question. Of course I know that every room is wired for audiovisual. Film is so ubiquitous in football that it’s not unusual to film meetings where most of the participants are—what else?—watching film. Someone must have left the conference room recorder on.
Oh, God.
“I was looking for a meeting earlier that day,” Coach says, his eyes apologetic. He gives me a tight, but real, smile.
My eyes meet Ty’s, and even through our shared fear, I feel the heat between us.
I’m not sure I regret that kiss.
“Because of the power outage, there’s visual but no audio,” Coach says.
Oh, thank the universe for small favors. Bad enough to be caught kissing on film, but I remember the sounds that came from my chest and throat when Ty Williams put his hands on me—
I shake my head, clearing it. Forget shame. What’s going to happen to me?
Ted Hughes leans forward, his doughy face red. “If it were up to me, I’d fire your a—”
“Mr. Hughes,” Janet says tightly. She glares him into silence, then turns to me. “Coach Thrayne believes they’re looking for a running backs coach in Baltimore.”
My heart thuds against my ribs. “What are you saying? Are you firing me?”
“We’re suggesting you might be happier in Baltimore.”
My brain is working fast, trying to stay a step or two ahead of what’s happening. She evaded the question. They’re not firing me. Because—
Because—I’m just guessing here, but I’m pretty sure I’m right—there’s no rule on the books that says a coach can’t have a physical relationship with a player. There never had to be, right? Because until recently, this was an all-male environment, and even though relationships probably did exist, they were never openly acknowledged.
Also because—no guess necessary, it’s a given—it would be a shitstorm if the Grizzlies organization fired me and I went public. Because…
I pause. There’s something else operating here.
What’s the missing piece?
And then I get it.
No one has said word one to Ty. No one has offered him a nice cushy gig in Denver in exchange for pretending to be leaving on favorable terms…
Because they have no intention of firing Ty, and social media would have a fucking field day with that information.
Okay, I think. Okay. I can deal with this.
“We imagined it like this.” Janet Weir is short, toadlike, but her eyes are kind and her demeanor sympathetic. “That if a job were to open up in Baltimore, you might be excited to go back there, since it’s where you’re from and your family is there. We imagined you might be so pleased about the opportunity that you’d be willing to ask us if we’d break your contract for next season.”
“No,” I say.
Ted Hughes is half out of his chair, sputtering at me, but Janet turns to him and says, “Mr. Hughes, we talked about the need to be calm!”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” I’m surprised by how cool and level my voice is. I’ve been possessed by all the calm Ted Hughes can’t seem to summon. “I’m an adult. Ty’s an adult. And if you saw that film, you’ll know that he kissed me.”
And if you saw us last night, you’d know that I’m as full of bluff as you are…
I’m not even sure all the sounds coming out of Ted Hughes’s mouth are words, and even Janet’s stern look and hand on his arm doesn’t stem them.
“What I know is that you’re a—”
“Shut up, Ted,” Janet says, with so much force that we all flinch.
He does.
“We’ve lost only one game since she showed up.”
That’s Ty, who’s been silent all this time. I look over at him and he smiles in a way that turns me liquid. I want to reach out and take his hand—but of course, I can’t.
Coach says, “Damn straight. She showed up here and turned that defensive slide around.”
I know better than anyone that football is complicated, that the fortunes of a team never rise and fall on one player, or even more absurdly, one coach. But I shoot him a grateful look anyway.
“Whatever you’re trying to say here, I’m not leaving the Grizzlies. This is my job. I help win football games. The rest of it is, frankly, none of your business.”
“Everything is my fucking business,” Hughes bellows, but by now, it’s apparent that no one takes him remotely seriously.
Sally sighs. “You know this will be an unmitigated disaster if the press gets hold of it. They’ll say women and football don’t mix. That this is what happens when a woman treads on male territory.”
“I know,” I say. “I don’t want that to happen, but if it happens, I’ll deal with it.”
“They’ll say you abused your power. Or slept your way into the position. It’ll probably be nearly impossible for you to coach in the PFL again.”
“I know.”
“They’ll say Ty used his superior physical power to coerce or threaten or even force you.”
My breath catches, and I glance over at him, because of all the things I can’t bear to contemplate, that is at the top of the list. That someone will take the generosity of that moment, of Ty, and twist it around—
There are awful men in the PFL. There are awful men who do awful things and get off scot-free. But Ty Williams is not one of them.
Ty has been watching me through all this. “So show them the film,” he says lightly. “Let them see it wasn’t that way.” And he gives me a smirk that wriggles its way straight into my panties. For a luminous moment I’m not here in this stupid, sordid meeting; I’m
alone with him, the night of the storm, last night, and God, no coercion necessary, just his power and certainty…
And none of this—how close we’ve come to disaster, the world’s callousness, Ted Hughes’s bluster—seems to matter quite so much.
“The season’s over,” says Ty. “We have one more game. The press isn’t going to get hold of anything, unless someone in this room says something.” He conducts a quick survey. They all shake their heads.
“But what about next season?” Sally asks. She sighs heavily. “I don’t suppose I could convince the two of you to get married? That would save the day. Oh,” she says, laughing. “Ty, you should see your face!”
Startled, I turn to look at him, and it’s true: Ty looks like he’s just had his bell rung—shocked and sick.
I can’t look at Ty as Sally rolls merrily along. “I forgot who we were talking about here,” she says, with a giggle. “Ty Williams, ‘player’ in both senses of the word. Maybe next season will be a non-issue.”
Then she seems to realize what she’s said, and she shoots me a quick, almost lip-biting, expression of apology.
But it’s not her misstep that has clobbered me in the gut. It’s that look on Ty’s face at the idea of marrying me.
I’d been drifting along in my little hot air balloon, riding on the thrill of having outsmarted, or at least not having been outsmarted by, the PFL establishment. Saving my ass and my career.
Entertaining a little fantasy that I was going to walk out of this room with not only my job but the other prize.
The one I’d greedily grabbed for, even knowing that Ty Williams was not something I could hope to hold onto.
Someone has let the air out of the balloon, and I’ve clomped back to earth.
Chapter 32
Ty
She hurries out of the conference room ahead of me.
“Iona!”
I chase her down the hall and call her name again. She stops.
“You were amazing.”
She turns, and I can’t figure out the look on her face. Like there’s a question she wants to ask, but then she just—doesn’t.
“The way you stood up to them—” She was tough. Fearless. Beautiful. I couldn’t stop staring at her in there, at the sweet curves of her cheeks and lips, the proud upward tilt of her chin, the long, strong line of her neck.
She frowns. “It didn’t take much.”
“It took a lot,” I say staunchly. “All of them trying to get you to fold so they didn’t have to lose any sleep.”
“They were probably right, you know. It’s going to be a hell of a mess if it leaks.”
And suddenly, I feel rotten about the whole thing. She wouldn’t be in this position, having to defend herself in front of a gasbag and a squadron of flacks, if I hadn’t pushed her and pushed her and pushed her. And in the end—
In the end, I’m still Ty Williams, “player” in both senses of the word, just like Sally Slaybourne said.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No. Don’t do that.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Stop,” she says. “Just stop.”
We stand there, staring at each other. She’s wearing a hoodie and athletic pants and has no makeup on, and truth: She’s sexier than she was last night in the raspberry dress. Because this is her, the real her. And everything I’m feeling desperately wants a way out. I want to show her what’s inside me right now. After all, there are no secrets anymore, nothing to hold us back, nothing to hide. “Do you have plans tonight?”
She shakes her head.
“I’ll be home. After eight.” And I rattle off my address.
Her eyes come up to meet mine. And they’re full of something. I want to say it’s heat, but I know it’s something more. Because it’s the same thing I’m feeling right now.
She gives a quick nod, so rapid and small I am not even a hundred percent sure I really see it.
Just as I have every Tuesday since Iona walked into McElroy, I use my workout to try not to think about her. Every Tuesday, it’s gotten harder. More complicated. She’s worked her way more thoroughly into my body and brain. When I close my eyes so I’m not staring straight into O’s face as I press, I see her face, shattered by pleasure. I hear the sounds she made Monday night.
It’s a long fucking day.
At eight, I’m heating up a tub of stew from the grocery store when my doorbell rings.
I open the door. She steps toward me and I spread my arms like this is a thing we do all the time. She shows up, I hug her, she lets me.
She rubs her face lightly against my chest, and I feel it all over my skin.
I’m hyper-conscious, suddenly, of how hot she is all over, how alive and mobile. My body goes into overdrive, and I tell it sternly that we’re going to take this slowly, but I don’t think it’s listening. And then she’s lifting her face and tilting her chin, pressing her mouth up to mine, and goddamn.
And there’s no way I can stop or even slow down, not with her mouth open under mine, so slick and hungry, her tongue sometimes teasing, sometimes all-out assaulting. I just want to grab on tighter and kiss harder and open her more, until she is spread wide under me and I can fill her up.
She’s murmuring, half nonsense but half God I’ve been wanting to do this and Yes, Ty and More. She lifts her hands and spreads them wide over my chest, stroking and squeezing through my T-shirt, feeling me everywhere, and my muscles flex against her touch, waking up to her fingers. I’m a physical guy, I use this body hard, but there’s something about the way she’s touching me that makes me feel like I’ve never really been in my body before.
I walk her backward until she’s against the door, trap her with my hips and thighs, rub against her until I realize that I can’t keep doing that or I’m going to come in my pants like a teenager. But she doesn’t want me to stop. She spreads her legs and grabs my ass and urges me to give her the friction she craves.
So I make it a game, as she arches her back and moans and rubs—can I hold back long enough to make her come first?
Not if she keeps kissing me like that, all open and wet and hungry.
“Shh,” I say. “Slow down.”
She whimpers. It’s so fucking hot.
I pull back, then kiss her again, soft and slow. Making her take my pace. Now who’s the fucking coach? See that, Iona? I kiss her long and shallow so she keeps trying to get more, which is un-fucking-believably sexy. I nibble at her mouth, rocking myself slowly against the crotch of her athletic pants, trying to give her enough pressure and enough friction but avoiding my own triggers. She’s still frantic, wanting to climb higher on my body so she’s over the head of my cock, but I won’t let her do that. I just hold her still the way I want her, and she fights a little, but then gives in and let me manipulate us. I find a rhythm and a pressure that make her moan and pant but that lets me stay in control, more a brush than a rub. I pause between kisses to watch her face, because seeing her like this—out of control—is the biggest fucking turn-on.
“You’re killing me,” she whispers, trying again to rub harder, but I can see it in her face now, her gaze far away, her breath fast and ragged, and I raise my hand and cup her breast, find her nipple hard under the thin lace of her bra, tease it, then the other one, too, and she throws her head back and cries out, and I can feel the ripples of her release through the layers of fabric between us, her hand on my arm gripping and relaxing, her mouth, when it seeks mine again, biting and sucking in the rhythm her body is telling her to use.
I hold her tight as she sags against me, and then I pick her up and carry her to my bedroom.
Chapter 33
Iona
He cradles me in his arms, and I feel small and feminine in a way I have never felt in my life. I think about the men who have made me feel exactly the opposite, starting with my father, and I’m suddenly furious at all of them. Because, look, who the fuck cares what I do for a living, how I dress or cut
my hair or how tough or strong I am. I’m just a girl. Just a girl who loves being touched and teased like any other girl.
He lays me down on the bed, opens the nightstand drawer, and takes out a strip of condoms.
“Okay?” he asks.
I’m not sure whether he means the condoms or what they imply he’s about to do to me, but I just nod. He lifts my shirt and I wiggle to help him take it off, then arch my back and lift off the bed so he can reach under me to undo my bra. Normally I wouldn’t let a guy see me naked for the first time lying down with my breasts falling into my armpits, but I’m limp and helpless from how hard he made me come, and I don’t want to play any games. I just want him to get me out of my clothes and take off his own clothes—
I whimper.
“Patience,” he says.
“Fuck me,” I say.
He laughs. “You mean that as a curse or a request?”
“Both,” I say, as my pants hit the floor.
“Mmm,” he says. He’s staring at me in my panties. They’re just nutmeg-colored briefs. But he doesn’t seem put off by the bland color or the conservative cut.
“Hurry up,” I command.
“Nope,” he says. “Who knows if you’re ever going to let me do this again? I’m planning to enjoy it to the hilt.”
“Speaking of the hilt—”
He narrows his eyes, then starts undressing. Fast. Shirt first.
“Let me look.” Because although I’ve caught many glimpses of Ty Williams in various stages of undress, I’ve never, ever let myself actually enjoy them. And he’s right. Who knows what’s going to happen after this? So I should thoroughly savor the sight of all that smooth, taut skin and repressed strength. His chest is wide and perfectly cut, and his body narrows to the waist. His pants ride low, so I can stare at the muscle that dips under his waistline—and his erection swells the cloth there in a way that makes it impossible for me not to stare.
“Feel free,” he says, grinning, and steps closer.
I take him in my hand through the fabric of his sweats. He grunts. “God,” I say reverently.
“No, just my junk,” he says.