by Rose, Callie
“Not hockey,” she said with a smile. “Football. The more of your games and practices I watch, the more similarities I see. I used to date a football player. I went to every one of his games. He insisted, but he didn’t need to. I was completely into the game at the time. He actually kind of ruined it for me.”
“How?”
She sighed and shifted in her seat. “He was… a lot like Damian. He had to be the center of attention at all times. After the first game, he grilled me for an hour about his performance. I hadn’t been paying all that much attention to him specifically, I was more interested in watching the way the team worked together, but that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted praise on all of his good plays and excuses for all of his bad ones.”
“Sounds like an ass,” I said, curling a lip.
“Yeah.” She sighed. “He was. Eventually, I started bringing a notebook to the games just to keep track of what he was doing. It started to become like homework, and it was exhausting. Especially when he played poorly, because at that point I was supposed to be aware of all of the other players to find ways to make excuses for him. It was insane.”
“I can certainly see why that would turn you off of football.”
She shook her head. “Not just football. Jocks in general. By the time we broke up, I discovered that he’d been cheating on me with cheerleaders, fans, support staff… basically anybody who would tell him how wonderful he was and happened to have a vagina.”
I winced. “Well, that was just one jock, but I can understand… ” I trailed off because she was shaking her head again.
“I dated the quarterback in high school. Same story.”
“Maybe it’s just a football thing.”
“And a lacrosse player… ”
“Oh.”
“And captain of the swim team.”
I grinned. “Have you ever dated someone who wasn’t a jock?”
She blushed. “Okay, so I have a type. I dated an accountant once who held a football like it was a stray cat trying to bite him, but that didn’t work out either.”
“More cheating?”
“Oh, no. He didn’t have the guts to try. He was super clingy, like to the point of freaking out during a regular eight-hour workday because I wasn’t sneaking away to text him all day. He would interfere with my after-hours work time, text me obsessively if I had to go out of town for a story, accuse me of cheating if I didn’t answer his calls, the whole personality bundle.”
“Dang. I thought I had bad luck with love.”
She giggled, which made me happy. Our food came then, and our mouths were busy for a while; long enough for me to remember why I had wanted to take her out tonight in the first place.
“Addison,” I asked as casually as I could. “Where do you see this going?”
She stopped chewing and stared at me like a deer in headlights. My heart sank.
21
Addison
I saw his face fall and swallowed quickly.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “Your question took me by surprise, that’s all. It’s only been a few days, and I guess I was still thinking, on some level, that this was just a forbidden fling.”
“Is that what you want it to be?” Hurt shone in his eyes.
I felt like I had kicked a puppy, but I didn’t want to answer too quickly. This wasn’t a decision I wanted to make lightly, or out of a sense of guilt. I’d done that before and it never, ever ended well. So I took another bite and chewed slowly, avoiding his eyes so as not to fall victim to my own impulsive emotions.
“I like you,” I said eventually. “I like you a lot. I could easily… well. In a perfect world, my editor would move the whole office to Denver, you and I would never have any problems, and everybody would live happily ever after.”
He looked like he wanted to ask a question. I held up a hand to stop him.
“Here’s the thing. I’ve nearly lost my career to a guy once before, and with the way we’re going I’m already risking more than I wanted to. So while I like you… a lot… I can’t say right now where I see this going.”
He pondered that for a while before speaking. “Okay. So let’s forget all of that for a second. Let’s look at your perfect scenario, where being with me wouldn’t risk anything and your career would stay the same and everything you ever wanted to happen would happen.”
“All right,” I said slowly.
“Where would you want this to go? Just between you and me.”
I’d stay with you forever.
The thought shocked and startled me. I wasn’t the type to fall this hard this fast. I didn’t quite know how to deal with it. My hesitation was making him twitchy.
“I would want to see this through to the end,” I answered, meeting his beautiful blue eyes. “Wherever and whenever that might be.”
He lit up like a beacon and closed his hand over mine. “Then let’s make it work. Whatever you need from me, I’m all in.”
I smiled at him, but my heart hurt. Practically, I didn’t see how we could make this happen. Fortunately, I knew someone who was utterly impractical and had a habit of finding solutions where there shouldn’t be any. I made a mental note to call Rebecca soon and get advice.
“I don’t know what it would take,” I told him. “But I’m glad you feel that way. This has been the best week of my life. I don’t want it to end if it doesn’t have to.”
Relief washed over his face and warmed my heart. He leaned over the table and kissed me, then sat down with the brightest smile I had ever seen. With that out of the way, dinner conversation rippled over more casual topics. We talked about where our families used to go on vacation and discovered that we had both visited Mount Rushmore in the same summer, but couldn’t pin down the exact day. The thought that we could’ve met already made it feel like it was meant to be.
I knew it was silly, but I couldn’t help but give myself over to the romanticism for a while. Real life would kick me in the teeth soon enough and I would have to deal with the problems. For tonight, all I wanted was to bask in his presence—in the incredible chemistry between us.
We went out dancing after dinner and stayed out until the wee hours of the morning. By the time we made it back to his place, we were all over each other. We didn’t even make it up the stairs before our first round of mind-blowing sex.
Well… we made it halfway up, but that’s where we stopped.
Sawyer caught me around the waist, molding my back to his front as he wrapped his arms around me, burying his face in my hair.
“Fuck, Addison. You smell so damn good. I almost lost it on the dance floor. I just wanted to haul you into my arms and taste every bit of you. Feel every bit of you.”
There was a rasp in his voice that made fire burn through my veins, and I rolled my ass against him, feeling him already growing hard against me.
He wasn’t the only one who’d had a hard time keeping things PG—well, okay, PG-13—on the dance floor. Feeling him so close to me, his muscled body moving in time to the beat of the music, leading mine so effortlessly as we moved together… It’d been hard not to just climb him like a tree, wrap my legs around him, and rip his shirt off right then and there.
I was proud of myself for resisting the impulse, but now that we were back at his house, with no other eyes on us and no one else around, there was no reason to hold back.
“What did you want to do?” I murmured, leaning my head back against his shoulder. He was one step below me on the stairs, so we were almost the exact same height at the moment.
I felt his breath pick up, and he groaned as his hands began to move over my body, his touch heated and possessive.
“I wanted to hold you in my arms like this. To feel your ass grinding against my cock while we danced. I wanted to do this.”
As he spoke, one hand settled on my breast, squeezing and massaging it as my nipple brushed against his palm. The other hand flicked open the button on my pants and worked the zipper down before s
lipping inside and delving into my panties.
I let out a ragged, panting little breath as the pads of his fingers found my clit, working circles around it as our bodies undulated together like we were dancing to some unheard music. His cock was like steel against my ass, and the harder he worked my clit, the harder I pressed back against him, grinding against his thickness as whimpers fell from my mouth.
Turning my head, I sought his lips with mine, and he was right there, kissing me deeply and hungrily as his hands continued their delicious ministrations. His tongue brushed against mine as our kiss grew impossibly deeper, and I moved against him, needing more of everything—more of him.
His fingers became a blur on my clit, and my legs shook as pleasure spiked in my veins. And when he wrenched his lips away from mine and pressed them to my ear, whispering harshly, “Come for me, baby. Let go, Addison,” I did.
My knees nearly buckled, and I grabbed on to him for support as my body juddered and shook in his arms, waves of sensation washing over me like an untamed ocean. He bit down on my earlobe, sending a new jolt of pleasure straight down to my clit, and I panted and whimpered as I clung to him.
He drew his hand out of my pants slowly, and I could feel my own wetness coating his fingers as he dragged them along my skin.
God, why is that such a turn on?
I’d just had an orgasm to end all orgasms, but it was like my body had forgotten that fact. It was hungry for more, already aching with want again.
Sawyer’s other hand left my breast, and he took both of my wrists in his grip, moving me gently to place my palms on the steps a few feet in front of me. I was bent nearly in half in this position, and the feel of the large, masculine body behind me, draping over mine, made a shiver of anticipation travel up my spine.
“You good like this?” he whispered roughly, dragging his hands back up my arms as mine stayed right where he’d put them, braced against the stair step in front of me.
“Yeah,” I breathed, my heart pounding in my chest. “I’m good.”
“Good.” He straightened behind me, his hands still caressing my body with deliberate intention, sliding down my back, over the curve of my ass. “Because you look so fucking sexy like this, Addison.”
He gave my ass a firm squeeze that made me groan, and then his hands moved up to hook the waistband of my pants, dragging them and my panties down my legs in a single movement. I heard him draw in a hitched breath, and my toes curled at the thought of what he was seeing.
I had never had a man gaze at me as hungrily, as worshipfully as Sawyer Dawson did, and it made me feel beyond sexy.
It made me feel wanted.
It made me feel seen.
“Fuck, Sawyer,” I whispered, unable to bear the delicious anticipation. “Please.”
He didn’t deny me. I heard the soft hiss of a zipper as he got his own clothes out of the way, and then the broad head of his cock slid through my wet folds. I sighed, rocking back into him, coating him with my arousal, but before I could take it any further, he cursed softly and drew back.
“Shit.” He sounded physically pained. “Condoms are upstairs.”
“It’s okay,” I panted, craning my neck to look back at him. “I’m clean. And I’m on the pill.”
He blinked at me, and I saw a dozen things filter through his piercing blue eyes. Relief, desire, raw need—and other, weightier things. Things that made my heart seem to swell in my chest until it was impossible to draw in a full breath.
“You sure, Addison?”
His cock was still teasing my entrance, and I could feel him practically shaking behind me, like he was holding on to restraint by a thin thread.
“Yes!” I gasped, bumping my hips back against him.
And that was all it took for the thread to snap. With a fierce, deep growl, he surged forward, filling me in one hard thrust. My body rocked forward with the force of it, and he gripped my hips to steady me as he drew out and plunged in again. It felt incredible to be skin to skin like this with him, and I clenched around him, wanting to bring our bodies as close as possible.
“Oh God, you feel so good, baby,” he murmured roughly.
“Uh huh,” I gasped back, incapable of words by that point.
My fingers were clawing at the step where my hands rested, and my muscles were burning from the effort of keeping my balance as pleasure raced through my veins like a spreading wildfire. I was pretty sure Sawyer’s grip on me was the only thing keeping me on my feet at that point, and I was grateful as hell that he was as built in the upper body as he was in the lower body from all that skating.
The large house was quiet around us, with only the sounds of our grunts and moans, our whispered curses and praises, filling the space around us. When Sawyer wrapped his arms around me, one hand sliding down my stomach until his fingers found my clit again, I sucked in a gasping breath like it might be the last one I would ever take.
And when I felt his rhythm falter and his cock jerk and pulse inside me, I squeezed hard around him, letting myself fall over the edge of oblivion after him.
“Sawyer! God, yes!”
I almost face-planted on the stairs as all my muscles decided to stop working at the same instant, and only Sawyer’s strength and balance, honed by years of skating, kept the two of us from toppling over. He pulled out of me, then wrapped his arms around me and hauled me upright before spinning me in his embrace. He kissed me fiercely, and I clung to him and kissed him back as the echoes of the orgasm ricocheted through my body.
Finally, he broke the kiss and rested his forehead against mine. Our faces were so close together that he was out of focus, but I didn’t need to see him.
I could feel him. Everywhere.
“That was—” he gasped.
“—incredible.” I finished, breathing just as hard as he was.
“Hell yeah, it was.” His hands skated down my back, grabbing onto my ass in a firm grip. “You’re incredible.”
“Right back atcha,” I returned, unable to keep the grin from spreading across my face.
He chuckled. “I think that’s the hardest I’ve ever come with most of my clothes still on.”
“Oh, yeah.” I pulled back a little to look down at our bodies. My pants and panties were bunched around my upper thighs, and Sawyer’s were hanging from his hips, shoved down just enough to release his cock, which still jutted out, hardly softened at all. “Maybe we should take this upstairs.”
“Fuck, yeah.” He dropped his head to claim a scorching kiss. “’Cause I’m nowhere near done with you.”
I grinned against his lips. “I like the sound of that.”
We kissed and cuddled on the stairs for a few minutes before finally moving things into the bedroom. Then we undressed each other properly, and he showed me just what that vibrator I’d stuck in my pocket the day I snooped through his drawers could do.
Mind.
Fucking.
Blown.
22
Addison
I woke up late the next morning, physically tired but utterly content. It was the perfect writing mood, so I went immediately to my laptop and began to write. I had finally figured out how to present Sawyer to the world.
Sawyer Dawson Makes a Strong Comeback, I wrote.
Two years since a broken heart caused Sawyer Dawson to spiral into a seemingly bottomless pit of despair, the Gladiators’ star player is back on top. Described as the team’s inspiration, driving force, and overall best big brother, Sawyer has made it his mission to be worthy of his fan base once more.
I shuffled through my notes for quotes, arranging them around me in piles, sorting them by categories that only I could see. This one for a paragraph about his leadership, this one in an apologetic paragraph, these over here could be related to an explanation for his previous behavior. Once I had everything organized, I began typing again.
I was at it all morning and well into the afternoon. It was after two when I realized that neither Sawyer nor Amelia
had spoken to me all day. I hadn’t expected an invitation to breakfast or lunch, but it was strange to be left so utterly alone after spending the last ten days in constant conversation with the family.
I accepted the freedom without judgment or paranoia and brought my article to a stopping point by four o’clock. By then, I was starving and in dire need of human contact. I shook the kinks out of my spine and stretched my neck, groaning with the delicious feel of it, then went downstairs.
I heard the sounds of an argument when I was halfway down the stairs. I didn’t intend to eavesdrop, not really, but the acoustics of the house made it almost impossible to avoid.
“I’m never wrong about this stuff, Sawyer!” It was Amelia, and she sounded distraught.
“There’s a first time for everything.” There was a cold steel in his voice that sent shudders down my spine. Worried, I picked up the pace but kept my feet silent.
“This isn’t that,” Amelia insisted. “She didn’t do this, I know she didn’t.”
“You’re starting to sound like me. Which is it, sis? Am I supposed to look at the evidence in front of me like you told me to do before, or am I supposed to take your feelings as gospel?”
“Either! Both! You’ve got a good thing going here, Sawyer, I’ve never seen you so happy.”
“Do I look happy now?”
My stomach flipped. I couldn’t imagine what they were talking about specifically, but it seemed to involve me. Unwilling to have my heart and future raked over the coals without a chance to defend myself, I pushed into the kitchen where the voices were originating. Sawyer spun to glare at me. Amelia looked frustrated to the point of fury and wouldn’t look at me at all.
“I’m sorry, am I interrupting? I just came down for a bite to eat, I’ve been working all day.”
“I’m aware,” Sawyer said coldly. He slammed a magazine down on the counter. “Good work.”
Frowning, I picked it up.