Play to Win

by A. C. Arthur

  “Portia?” he asked, his brow furrowed.

  He was everything she remembered and so much more. The scent of his cologne was spicy and woodsy tickling her nostrils until slithers of desire awakened a chorus of butterflies in her stomach. His shoulders were wider than she recalled, like a linebacker. His chest was muscular back when they were in high school, but was now more alluringly defined in the tight black t-shirt he wore. He was still much taller than her five-foot one-inch stature, the line of his jaw was strong. His complexion was a fawn hue, a mixture of his Black father and Caucasian mother. The color of his lightly trimmed beard and low-cut hair, was sandy brown, and the green eyes that were currently bearing down on her were full of brown flecks.

  “Hello Ethan,” she said, her voice much stronger than she was actually feeling.

  “You’re back.” He stated the obvious.

  “I’m working.” Why she felt compelled to provide a reason, she wasn’t quite sure.

  He raised a brow. “Your job is teaching Blow Jobs 101?”

  She managed a smile at the incredulous look on his face. It was just like high school all over again. He still thought of her as Plain Portia and she still looked at him like he was the Prince of Providence High and the star running back of the football team.

  But that was then. This was now and Portia wasn’t that teenage girl anymore.

  “I teach people how to find their pleasure,” she said, holding his gaze.

  “Really?” She hated that his gaze still seemed to question her and was shocked when he touched a finger to her bottom lip. “Can you teach me?”

  2

  Desire shot like an arrow and landed straight at its mark—between her legs. Portia shifted slightly, hoping the pressure her clenched thighs created would staunch the pulsating need that Ethan inspired.

  “Private sessions aren’t available.” She’d tutored Ethan in Algebra when they were in high school. Math had been her favorite subject and even though he was two grades above her, she’d been taking advanced classes while Ethan struggled with the classes on his general curriculum. Without her helping him to pass every quiz in that class, he wouldn’t have been allowed to suit up and play most of the games of his senior year and he’d thanked her for that profusely at the time, only to let her down when it really mattered. “And after this conference, I won’t be conducting any workshops for the next six months.”

  He was still touching her. She never allowed anyone to touch her, but this was Ethan. There’d been a time when she’d craved his touch more than living. For three years all she’d wanted was to be Ethan’s girl. Now, twelve years after she’d considered herself over that childish crush, his thumb had moved from her lip but still rubbed along the line of her jaw as he watched her intently. Too intently. Almost as if he were in awe that he was actually touching her. Well, that made two of them, but she had no intention of letting him know that. She cleared her throat and arched a brow seconds before he spoke.

  “Are you quitting?” he asked with a raised brow.

  Why was that so sexy? She was an adult now and she’d seen her fair share of men smiling, smirking, blinking their eyes or licking their lips to get her attention. Ethan had never needed to do any of those things, her teenage heart had been like putty in his hands. Why did he still have this effect on her?

  And why was she letting him touch her when she knew he didn’t like her. Or he pitied her as most of the older kids had during high school. Plain Portia who wore braces and plain dresses for two years straight. While her parents hadn’t been poor in the financial sense, Wayne and Judy Merin didn’t mingle with many people in Providence. Her father’s job as a lobbyist and her mother’s as her father’s twenty-four-seven assistant, kept them terribly busy. Sometimes even too busy for their only child.

  “I’m not a quitter.” Those words had become her mantra over the years, now she said them with a sense of pride. She hadn’t stopped tutoring Ethan when Cassidy Lewis approached her in the bathroom and told her she was making a fool of herself gawking over a guy that would never want someone like her. Cassidy had then gone a step further to emphasize what type of girl she’d thought Portia was by tugging on one of the stray strings from Portia’s sweater until it made a big hole on her shoulder, an impossible spot to cover for the rest of the day. She’d had a tutoring session with Ethan that afternoon and he’d pretended not to notice the hole, just as he always acted as if he hadn’t notice her other worn and dated clothes.

  With memories from her past bombarding her, Portia turned her face so that his hand fell away. She took a casual step back from him and then moved to the other side of the table where her props and notes were. “I’m actually on a book tour and I have many stops to make in the coming months. So I won’t have time for my usual classes.”

  She reached under the table and pulled out the bin she used to store her items.

  “You wrote a book?” The incredulous tone in his voice was so familiar and she bristled with offense.

  Pulling a wet wipe from the container she’d kept in the bin, she began cleaning her props, acting as unaffected as possible. Seconds later she glanced up at him. “Yes, I wrote a book. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “No. No, it’s not.” He shook his head as if to emphasize his denial. “I always knew you were smart.”

  Everybody knew she was smart. That was one of the biggest reasons the kids tortured her so much. For the life of her, Portia would never understand why children thought being smart was akin to having an incurable disease.

  “And talented,” he added when she couldn’t find the words to respond to him. “You’ve got a really…ah…enticing talent.”

  That wasn’t the worst a guy had said to her after one of her sessions. Her publicist had suggested the publisher hire a bodyguard to travel with her during the tour just in case someone got out of hand or wanted more than the lesson she offered for the entire class. Portia had declined. She could take care of herself. After all, defending herself against a guy who’d thought he could take something from her was exactly how she’d ended up with this career in the first place.

  “I’m really good at what I do.” While becoming an intimacy instructor was far from her parents’ dream of her going into politics, Portia was in no way ashamed of the multi-million-dollar empire she’d built within the sex entertainment industry. In fact, outside of the money she’d earned, shedding the shy awkward smart girl persona she’d been flanked with throughout her childhood, after that fateful incident her senior year in college, the sex entertainment industry with its uninhibited nature had empowered her in ways she’d never imagined.

  “I have to agree with you there.” He cleared his throat and gave a little chuckle before coming around the table and taking her wrists in his hands.

  Why did he keep touching her? And after all that had happened between them, why did she keep letting him?

  “I was very…uh, intrigued by your little demonstration,” he said.

  Portia didn’t want to intrigue Ethan Henley. Not anymore. “I have to pack up so I can head back to the hotel.”

  “I can drive you to your hotel.” He offered and stepped even closer.

  Ethan could drive her absolutely crazy if she let him! But that’s not what Portia was here to do. She was promoting her book and just passing through Alexandria. When the conference was over, she would stop in Providence to put her godmother’s house on the market and then she would be moving on. Again. Nowhere in those plans had she anticipated seeing Ethan Henley. “No, thanks. My publisher arranged a car service for me.”

  “I could follow the car to your hotel and we can have a drink.” If this wasn’t someone she’d shared many memories with, his offer would be creepy and she’d be doing everything in her power to get the hell away from him, but again, this was Ethan.

  His eyes had grown darker, his voice huskier and his thumbs were now circling over her racing pulse. No other guy had ever come close to comparing to Ethan in Portia�
��s mind. Even when she’d gone off to college and had allowed herself to be with other men, somewhere in the back of her mind Ethan still lingered. Now he was here, standing so close and looking as if he wanted to devour her. She could barely breathe with the weight of that thought. The girl that had left Providence when she was seventeen and a half would’ve thought Ethan was playing a cruel trick on her, much like the one he’d pulled when she was in the tenth grade. The woman and professional that she was now, recognized the look in his eyes, his posture, and the tone of his voice. He was aroused. She’d allow herself to bask in that truth later, but for now, she had to stand her ground.

  “Are you suggesting a drink or sex, Ethan?” She was pretty sure he was suggesting the latter and even surer that she wasn’t interested. She couldn’t be. Not again.

  He looked surprised at her words, but that didn’t slow his roll at all. Ethan pressed closer to her, so close she could feel his thick erection. That was really all the answer she needed, but of course Ethan had to speak.

  “We can have both.” The offer of a lifetime, or it had been once upon a time.

  By way of her tingling nipples and the dampness she now felt as the thin material of her panties pressed against her throbbing skin, her body screamed, “Yes! We certainly can!” But her brain insisted, “Hell to the no!”

  She swallowed hard a few times and then finally replied, “I don’t think so.”

  Where was this Ethan twelve years ago? When she’d desperately wanted him to ask her to the prom? She would have gladly given him a drink and sex that night. After watching so many of her mother’s classic old movies about teenagers in love and their high school romances, she’d longed for hers to become a reality. But Ethan had never turned into the Danny Zuko to her Sandy from Grease or the Jake Ryan to her Samantha from Sixteen Candles. He’d remained the star of the football team who hung out with other jocks and cheerleaders and barely gave her the time of day.

  Sure, he was interested in having sex with her now, but Portia wasn’t. She’d left that girl behind a long time ago and no amount of great smelling man with smoldering seductive eyes and a hard-on that made her mouth water, was going to change that.

  “I’m not interested.” A statement she’d made many times over the past years, but one that validated the self-assured, self-reliant woman she was today.

  To further state her claim, she pulled her arms away from his grasp and continued to pack her belongings. She didn’t look back at him, just kept moving and packing. The faster she got this done, the sooner she could get away from him.

  “How long have you been doing this?” He decided to speak again after standing there for a few moments of silence.

  “Five years,” she replied and clapped the lid down on the bin. She reached across the table to grab all her note cards. Some were further away than others, so Ethan picked them up and handed them to her.

  Portia looked up at him and then down at the cards in his hand wondering what he was thinking about what she’d done with her life. Not that it mattered to her, she just wondered. Taking the cards from him, she included them with the stack she already had. “Why are you here, Ethan?”

  Why now? she wanted to ask.

  “Work,” he replied. “I mean, a friend needed an emergency delivery, so I brought it to him.”

  “But you still live in Providence?”

  He nodded. “I left for a while. Went to D.C. to work. But I’ve been back in Providence for a little over a year now.”

  Back where he belonged, she surmised. Because every time Portia had thought of Providence, she’d thought of Ethan. There was no one without the other, which was a big part of the reason she’d never come back.

  “Oh,” she said and slipped the cards into her bag.

  Pulling the strap of the bag onto her shoulder, she bent down to lift the bin, but the top slid off and one of the “King Cock” dildos she’d used for her last demonstration fell to the floor. Cursing, she set the bin down and knelt to pick it up.

  “I’m glad you’ve come back,” he said the moment she wrapped her hands around it.

  Her fingers trembled as she attempted to look up at him. But what Portia saw instead was the thick bulge pressing against Ethan’s thigh. Her fingers clenched the dildo as thoughts of rubbing the bulge in Ethan’s pants filtered into her mind. She swallowed again, but it didn’t help. Damn her traitorous body.

  Ethan knelt down in front of her. He didn’t touch the dildo, but he grabbed her wrist and guided it back to the bin until she released it.

  “Let’s go back to your hotel.” It was a sincerely spoken invitation, whispered as he brought her wrist up to his lips to place a soft kiss on the spot where her pulse thumped.

  It was the sexiest thing Portia had ever experienced. And in her line of work, that was saying a lot. It was saying so much that her chest heaved with indecision.

  Ethan wanted her to say yes.

  He hadn’t seen her in twelve years and admittedly hadn’t thought much about her in that time. It didn’t make since why suddenly he felt it was so important that she agree and let him follow her back to her hotel. She was a part of his past. Part of the years when he lived at the Grace House for Boys because his mother walked out on him and his father when Ethan was six years old, and his mean, bitter father had eventually drank himself to death on Ethan’s fifteenth birthday.

  But he’d remembered her instantly. Well, after he’d gotten over the fact that this woman was standing in front of a room full of people giving a dildo the type of blow job Ethan had only ever dreamed of receiving. The memory of her mouth had come back first. He’d always used to stare at Portia’s mouth. She had full lips that weren’t too big for her pixie-like face. No, they always seemed to be just the right size by Ethan’s estimation. Today they were glossed and her eyes—hazel eyes, he noted as he stood close to her—were brighter than he recalled. Her hair was the same, yet different. Wild and frizzy curls was what Ethan recalled of Portia Merin. Today those curls seemed soft and sexy as they hung past her shoulders and down her back. So many curls in a dark brown and golden hue that accented her caramel complexion.

  Her body was also different, in an intoxicatingly delicious type of way. Portia was still a petite woman, but her curves had definitely filled out over the years. She wore what should’ve been a simple black dress, but the way the material molded over every line and curve of her body was mouthwatering. Her shoes were high heels and even the orange painted toenails were sexy.

  Yeah, he wanted to follow her home, like a dog following a bone. A part of him also wanted to know what or who had put that look of trepidation in her eyes.

  “That’s not a good idea,” she was saying as she stood up.

  Ethan stood too but didn’t back away from her. Sure, he was in her personal space and normally he knew the socially correct distance he should stand from a woman whom he was not sleeping with. He knew what to say and what not to say to women to assure them that he was not some random asshole trying to push up on them, or to make them uncomfortable in any way. His years in the Secret Service had taught him a lot of things like restraint and confidence. Other things, like common sense, he’d learned from living the type of life he had. Yet, he couldn’t seem to stay away from Portia.

  And she didn’t seem to mind. That was also a key point in what was happening between them. She wasn’t trying to move away from him, nor was she threatening to kick his ass if he didn’t back up. Ethan was encouraged by both facts.

  “Why?” he answered when he finally realized that she was responding to his comment about him following her back to her hotel room.

  “I don’t know—” she started to say and then stopped.

  Her tongue slipped out, swiping her lower lip quickly, but in just enough time to send an instant jolt of desire soaring through his body.

  “Oh, I think you do.” He reached out to touch her chin, just beneath the lip she’d just licked.

  Her skin was soft as he took a
chance and rubbed the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip again. Her eyes grew darker, the hollow between her neck and her collarbone pulsing as he suspected her heart rate had picked up a notch, just like his. This was insanity. He’d gone to school with Portia and there’d never been this type of arousal between them. Sure, they were just kids back then, but he'd been sexually active back then too, just not with her.

  “You obviously know what to do with those items in your bin,” he continued. “I’m just offering to be a live candidate for your instruction.”

  Ethan was offering a whole lot more than that. He wanted inside of her now. The urgency of that admission slammed into his brain, pressing the good sense he’d worked so hard to hold onto aside. He had no idea where Portia Merin had been in all this time, and that wasn’t the most important tidbit of information he expected to acquire by going back to her room. Was she married? Or otherwise committed? Those were big points in Ethan’s mind, points that should and could never be ignored. Yet, he hadn’t asked that question because he was mesmerized by her mouth.

  “I know my job,” she said before stepping away from him.

  She turned so that he had another glimpse of her delectably round ass and his painfully hard dick pulsated once more.

  “I remember you and the rest of your crew from Providence High,” she continued.

  This time, as if to make a point, she snapped the lid tightly onto that bin before lifting it into her arms and perching it on her hip. Now, why the hell was that so sexy? He watched people lift and unpack boxes on a weekly basis at the bar, but never had he felt as if he might shoot his shot in his boxers. This was a ridiculous situation and he should have simply kept walking past the door to this room, regardless of the sounds he’d heard. Yet, here he was. And there she was, standing a couple feet away from him, hair a wild mass of curls around her perfectly pretty face, lips pouty and inviting as hell.

  “More importantly, I haven’t forgotten what you and your friends did to me behind the bleachers when I was a sophomore and you were a senior. So you can just save your sinful smile and silky voice for the next woman. I’m not interested.”