The Player Next Door: A Novel

by K. A. Tucker

  He swallows hard. “Are you going to make me beg?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt,” I say glibly.

  When he sinks to his knees on the floor in front of me and stares up with those heated whiskey eyes, I want to take my casual words back.

  My resolve no longer exists.

  Strong hands seize my thighs, his fingertips stretching high and wide, his touch searing my bare skin. “How’s this?” he asks, his voice deep and raspy.

  “It’s a start,” I manage.

  “A start?” His eyebrow arches in question. “As in, I should keep going?” He waits a beat for me to answer—the sight of Shirtless Shane kneeling in front of me has stolen my voice—before leaning in to press his mouth on the exposed skin just below my belly button. Meanwhile, his calloused hands slide up the backs of my thighs and under the loose material of my shorts to grip my flesh.

  I gasp as my body responds, flooding warmth between my legs.

  What are you letting happen, Scarlet?

  I’m sure as hell not about to stop it. I weave my hands through his messy brown mane as I enjoy his lips and tongue and hands against my skin. Even during all those years I had convinced myself that I hated Shane Beckett, I imagined moments like this.

  It was never as good as the real thing.

  He pulls away, pausing to meet my gaze for a moment—as if checking with me first—before his hands shift. With a tug, my shorts easily slip off my hips and fall to the floor. I step out of them without a word, wishing I’d had the foresight to throw on a sexier pair of underwear.

  “Do you know how many times I’ve thought about doing this?” He nips at the front of my panties with his teeth.

  “Once or twice?” Heat from his mouth radiates through the thin white cotton, and I wait anxiously for him to remove them too. This experience is already a hundred times better than Red Wine Golden Retriever Man and I’m still half-dressed in sloppy, paint-stained clothes.

  Screw this.

  With quick fingers, I unknot my T-shirt and grab the hem, hoisting it over my head to toss haphazardly to the floor. It leaves me standing there in my mismatched and unsexy bra and panties. There’s only one way to fix that. Reaching back, I quickly unfasten and shed my bra. Hooking my thumbs under my panties, I shed those too.

  Shane leans back on his haunches and looks momentarily startled as he takes in my naked form. “Damn. You’re …” His intense gaze settles first on my breasts. “So incredibly beautiful.” And then he’s rising to his feet, catching my mouth with his on the way up, his hands cradling each side of my face. He gently herds me backward to my bed, all while his lips move fervently over mine.

  The backs of my legs hit my bed frame and then suddenly I’m on my mattress, lying on my back, Shane on top of me, fitting his hips between my thighs. But he doesn’t move beyond kissing me, his hands weaving with mine to pin them above my head, our tongues tangled in a seductive dance that draws a moan from my throat.

  It would be easy to skip foreplay, take off his shorts, and go straight to the main event. But Shane doesn’t seem to be in any rush, our kiss dragging on by the minute, much like we used to do all those years ago.

  Except I’m naked, and he’s lying between my thighs, and his erection pressed against my core is torture that’s intensifying by the second.

  Finally, I can’t help myself. I roll my hips.

  He groans. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  A flash of the mating bug calendar—specifically September’s praying mantis—hits me and I laugh. “Not until after you’ve served your purpose.”

  “I guess I better take my time, then.” Releasing his grip of my hands, he shifts his body to lie next to mine.

  I mumble my displeasure and he shushes me through a kiss, his lips shifting to my jawline, then to my neck and my collarbone, the trail of kisses slow-going and teasing and wet. His hand has found its way to my breast, and the pad of his thumb rubs smoothly and methodically against one of my pebbled nipples.

  “Your skin tastes the same as it did back then,” he murmurs against my flesh.

  “Really? Like what?” I trail my fingertips over his arm, marveling at his sculpted biceps.

  He takes the untended nipple in his mouth and I shiver as his teeth grazes my skin. “Sweet.”

  I shiver a second time as his palm slides down the length of my body, along my stomach, down farther. One of his long, slender fingers slips across my slick entrance. A whispered curse escapes as he pushes it deep inside me, followed by a second that makes my thighs part for better access.

  “You’re so wet,” he rasps.

  “I always am around you,” I confess, dragging my fingertips along his back, intoxicated by the plane of hard, lean muscle. “But this is not how I saw today going.”

  “Is it better?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I joke.

  “Let me help you decide.” Hot breath teases my skin as he shimmies his big body down, his tongue leaving a wet line along the center of my abdomen, dipping into my belly button, before he’s kneeling before me once again, his eyes alive with lust and riveted on the view.

  “I think we’re failing at the taking-it-slow part,” I whisper, as my body tingles with expectation.

  “You want me to stop?” he asks, swallowing hard, his chest laboring with his uneven breaths.

  I answer by parting my legs even farther apart. I don’t know how I stopped this from happening all those years ago. I must have been stronger, more resolute, at seventeen than I am at thirty, I accept, as I shift my hips, welcoming him in.

  I shudder with the first swipe of Shane’s tongue along my sensitive flesh. It’s quickly followed by another, and another, as he expertly works me over as thoroughly as he just kissed my mouth, his strong hands gripping my thighs, stroking them while keeping them spread.

  I can’t help the sigh as my body sinks into the mattress, buzzing with the building pleasure. While I don’t take nearly as long as Justine says she does to get off, I’m not the sprinting cheetah of orgasms. But my thighs are beginning to prickle with warmth. Maybe it’s all these weeks of pent-up frustration. Or maybe it’s that gorgeous face between my legs. If Shane’s this talented with just his tongue, what will his—

  “Good?”

  My muscles instinctively tighten beneath his murmur. “Yes. You should give lessons.” My voice is embarrassingly breathless.

  His responding chuckle causes a second clench. “Lessons? To whom?”

  “To men, everywhere. Now, please stop talking.” I reach for his silky hair, threading my fingers through, and pull his face in closer as I roll my hips.

  He curses and seems to take that as his sign to dial things up because I feel his touch once again, his fingers curling to hit a spot deep inside me, making me gasp. My body responds with eagerness, undulating, welcoming the slow and steady work of his moving hand and the rush of the impending orgasm.

  It hits swiftly, pushing me over the brink to ride the waves, Shane’s name escaping with a deep cry of pleasure.

  “Holy shit,” he whispers, his breathing ragged, his eyes shining with awe, his lips glossy and swollen as he watches me for a moment. Pulling himself to his feet, he towers over my splayed, boneless body—all six foot whatever of him, shirtless, his torso tanned and hard, his chest heaving, his dick pitching an impressive tent within his shorts.

  “Please tell me you have a condom somewhere in this mess?” he asks in a gruff voice.

  I grin lazily. “I have a whole box in my nightstand. Unopened. And big enough to fit Dixon’s bananas.”

  His dimples flash with his cocky grin. “Those got nothing on me, babe.” His thumbs hook under the waistband of his shorts and I hold my breath, watching with eager eyes as I’m about to get my first full close-up view of naked Shane.

  Rap music begins playing inside his pocket. It takes me a second to realize it’s a ringtone.

  Shane tips his head back and lets out a guttural groan. “You’ve gotta be
kidding me!” He takes several calming breaths before abandoning the strip show to slip his phone out of his pocket. “Hey, buddy. Yeah … uh-huh …”

  It has to be Cody.

  “Do you really need me …” Shane pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, okay. I’m just”—he grits his jaw—“finishing up here. Be home in a minute.” He ends the call. “I’ve gotta go.”

  My disappointment swells. “He’s stuck on a level?”

  “I’m going to tear the power cable out of the wall,” he grumbles, but then sighs. “I promised him I’d take him to the mall to buy some new clothes. He doesn’t like going with his mother.” Shane’s eyes rake over my naked body. “But I really don’t want to go.”

  “I can see why you wouldn’t.” I stare pointedly at his groin, at the still-prominent hard ridge. My body was priming itself for the promise of feeling that inside me and I really don’t want him to leave either. But I’m also not willing to rush it. “We can pick this up another time.”

  “Promise?” He peers at me now, not with his typical confidence but with a hint of hesitation. As if he’s afraid I might change my mind about allowing this to happen if given time to come to my senses.

  I smile. “Maybe dinner first next time.”

  He crawls onto the bed to hover over me, searching my facial features. “You know I would do that for you all night.”

  I skate my fingertips over his sexy jawline. “And I would let you.”

  He leans in to press a soft, leisurely kiss against my lips before pulling away with a heavy sigh. “Until next time.” He reaches for his discarded T-shirt.

  I grunt with disapproval as I watch that stunning torso disappear behind a veil of crisp white cotton. With a gentle pat against my calf, he strolls for the stairs, flicking at the spare key hanging off the banister. “Don’t forget this is here.”

  “Do you have any more keys I should know about?”

  He laughs. “No, unfortunately. And you really should change your locks.”

  “Worked out for me rather well this time, don’t you think?”

  With a smirk and one last, longing gaze down the length of my naked body sprawled across my bed, followed by a quiet curse, he disappears down my steps.

  It’s a long while before I force myself up to dress and return to my task.

  Twenty

  Shane’s front door creaks open at seven on Sunday morning, as I’m digging a particularly stubborn weed from my garden bed. Memories of yesterday are still firmly emblazoned in my mind, so when I look up to see him standing on his front porch in navy track pants, running shoes, and nothing else, my heart rate goes from zero to sixty in a blink.

  He trots down his steps and heads toward me, his chiseled arms lifting over his head in a series of warm-up stretches. It’s the perfect day for a run, the sky clear, the temperature comfortably crisp. It reminds me that I haven’t gone for one since I moved here, this house swallowing up my time and energy. I’ll need to start again soon and get myself into a routine.

  For now, though, I just need to keep my wits about me.

  Shane comes to a stop on the other side of my picket fence to loom over me. “You’re up early on a Sunday.”

  “Wanted to get a head start on the day.” The truth is I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned half the night, thoughts of my neighbor keeping my body wired with need and my mind spinning with wandering thoughts. “Isn’t it a little early for you, though?” Those twenty-four-hour shifts must be deadly for his internal clock.

  “Cody and I have a busy day ahead of us. We always visit my parents on Sundays when I’m not working. I wanted to get a run in before he wakes up.” He grabs an ankle and pulls it behind to loosen his hamstrings.

  And I do my best not to notice his sculpted abdominal muscles, or how his pants hang low on his hips, or the deep, muscular V that begs to direct my attention south to the notable bulge tucked inside.

  God, how I love track pants for the lack of modesty they afford.

  He catches me staring at his crotch, and his full lips curve into a knowing smirk. Those lips that were buried between my thighs yesterday afternoon.

  How are we supposed to act around each other now?

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, as if reading my mind.

  I shove the hand trowel deep into the soil, severing the weed’s root. “About you helping me paint my room?”

  He chuckles. “That’s honestly all I intended to happen when I came over.”

  “Uh-huh.” I give him a doubtful look. “I thought we agreed to take things slow.”

  His hands go up in surrender. “Hey, you’re the one who flashed me.” His voice has dropped to a low timbre. I feel it in my chest.

  “That was an accident.”

  “Uh-huh,” he parrots.

  I laugh and toss a weed at him. “Shut up.”

  He catches it in the air and leans over to drop it into the yard waste bag.

  And I stare shamelessly at his naked chest.

  “You don’t regret it, do you?”

  “No.” Though it’s going to make a simple kiss good night seem laughable going forward.

  “Good.” A secretive smile touches his lips. “So, Tuesday night, two old friends from high school are going to grab a bite at the Patty Shack, right?”

  “Just two old friends?”

  “Might be a bit of a stretch.” He winks. “But it’s not an outright lie and no one can say otherwise.”

  I’m far more okay with this plan than I expected to be. “Sounds good.”

  I watch him go, my focus on how those pants hug his hard, round backside, and a part of me wishes we hadn’t been interrupted. I would probably still be able to feel Shane inside me this morning.

  Cody’s teacher or not, I look forward to that delicious ache.

  But sex changes things. Even yesterday afternoon’s escapade has changed our dynamic. I feel proprietary over him—that he is somehow mine.

  Perhaps it’s a delusion. Given what he said to me at Thursday’s parents’ night, perhaps not. But there’s no need to rush this. We’ve technically waited thirteen years.

  Shane turns left and heads along the sidewalk past my house, his pecs jolting with each pound of his foot, his facial features stony and determined. That is, until he turns my way and flashes a smile, followed by a lazy wave. He doesn’t slow to see if I return it.

  My heart sings.

  With one last heave of my bed frame to center it against the wall, I step back to admire my newly finished bedroom. I knew the silver and plum bedding would complement the paint color beautifully because I had the paint sample with me at the store. However, I wasn’t so sure about the accents—the charcoal-gray, faux-fur mat, the dove-gray cushion, the pastel watercolor prints—until now. They’re perfect.

  With a sigh of satisfaction that I’ve finished another room in my perfect little dilapidated home, I amble into my cramped bathroom to start the bath, hoping Epsom salts will leach the ache from my muscles. While the water’s running, I set to folding the heap of freshly washed laundry. I didn’t get around to grocery shopping today, but at least I have clean clothes ready for another week of work.

  I’m folding and humming to myself when the now-familiar rumble of Shane’s engine sounds. I dart to my window without a second’s thought, eager for a glimpse of Shane. I saw them leave before noon today and it’s almost nine now.

  A warmth fills my chest at the sight of the two of them strolling up the walkway side by side, Shane’s arm slung over his son’s shoulder, Cody with a football in his hands, peering up at his father as he chatters away. I can hear his boyish voice and Shane’s deep, throaty one through my cracked window, but I can’t make out what they’re talking about.

  Suddenly, Shane looks up to my bedroom window.

  I don’t jump back this time but instead pretend to fuss with my new curtain rod.

  “Hey, Scar! You need help painting tonight?” he hollers.

  I slide my w
indow open all the way and lean out, mentally adding “window screen” to the list. “I’m actually done.”

  His lips twist with disappointment, and I realize my error. “But I could use help moving my bed.”

  The returning grin is wide and devilish. “I can definitely help you move your bed.”

  “Hey, Ms. Reed!” Cody chirps his standard greeting.

  It suitably distracts me from Shane’s dirty insinuation. “Hi, Cody. Are you ready for your math test tomorrow?”

  His face falls.

  “What math test?” Shane peers down at his son. “You told me you didn’t have any homework.”

  “I don’t! It’s a test.”

  “Studying for a test is homework.” He frowns. “And I gave you two extra hours to play your PS4 because you lied to me.”

  “But I didn’t lie.” Petulance fills Cody’s voice.

  “Do I need to check with your teacher from now on to make sure you’re telling me the truth? Because I can. She lives right next door.”

  Cody studies his shoes instead of looking his father in the eye, his previously cheerful mood diving into sulkiness.

  Shane sighs. “You’ve lost your gaming until Friday.”

  Cody’s head snaps up. “But—”

  “Not another word or it’ll be two weeks,” he warns severely, checking his watch. “Get inside and get cleaned up fast. I can’t stay up late to help you. I’ve got work in the morning and I’m beat.”

  Cody scrambles into the house.

  “I’m not going to earn points with the kid if I rat him out, am I?” Part of me regrets mentioning the test. But is it wrong that a fresh spark of desire surged through me, watching this new stern, disciplinary version of Shane?

  “He knows what he did was wrong.” Shane reaches back to rub his neck. “Rain check on moving that bed?”

  The playfulness is gone from his voice, but I smile anyway. Cody might not pick up on his father’s coded language but if any neighbors were listening in, they’ll surely have something to gossip about. “Sure. Have a good day at work.”