by Frost, Sosie
“You behave, rookie,” he said. “Elle is a nice girl. Too good for the likes of you. Keep your hands to yourself.”
Elle snapped another picture with a wicked grin. “Oh, I don’t know. He doesn’t look so tough. I bet I could take him.”
Again and again, if a benevolent god existed.
“Just give me the chance, Red,” I said.
Jack snickered. “Say the word, Elle, and we’ll take hot-shot here to the freezer.”
She considered it, tapping her chin with a manicured fingernail tipped in the same gold as our team’s colors. “I think he’s good where he is. Hit the showers, boys. I’ll take it from here.”
Orlando patted my head. “You’re in trouble now, rookie. Elle’s the most dangerous part of the team.”
Yeah. I was starting to realize that.
Jack winked. “See ya, tomorrow. Fresh start, Charming. Don’t forget the doughnuts.”
Right. Donuts for the quarterbacks and receivers, bagels for the offensive line, and I was supposed to carry half of the team’s bags to the field before practice.
Busy fucking morning.
Cole leaned close to Elle, his voice low. “Don’t rough him up too much. Piper will get pissed.”
“Don’t worry about me.” Elle raised the camera. “I’ve got a gentle touch.”
Gentle touch, dirty mind, and a mouth that loved to tease.
I’d never had a woman like her before.
And she sure as hell hadn’t had a guy like me.
I subtly tested the tape as she circled the goal posts, surveying the team’s work. I was stuck good. She liked that. I couldn’t move, but I gave her a charming grin.
“Elle, Elle, Elle…” Alone at last. “I knew you’d find me sooner or later.”
“You were easy to track down. There’s only two goal posts to check.”
“But you did check. Did you miss me that much, Red?”
She laughed. “You think I missed you?”
“Oh yeah. After what we did at the combine?” I wagged my eyebrows. “I bet you haven’t stopped thinking about me.”
“I’ve penciled time into my schedule specifically for Lachlan Reed related swooning.”
I hummed. “No need to swoon when you could have called me. After a weekend like that, I’d have run back to your bed. And you know how fast I am.”
“Not that fast.” She slipped closer to me. “If I remember correctly, you weren’t too fast…weren’t too slow. You were just right.”
I was hating the goal post. I shifted my legs. Didn’t help. My cock was about to bore a hole straight through the post.
“You asking for an encore?” I winked.
“Tempting, but…” Elle flicked a loose piece of tape sticking my ear to my head. “You look like you’re in quite the predicament right now.”
“What? This?” I laughed so she wouldn’t see me struggling against the damn tape.
Stuck. Pinned. So fucking close to her and unable to pounce.
“I’ve been in worse,” I lied. “This is just…a way for me to get a little sun after practice.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, see, this is helping me stretch out all those sore muscles.”
“Right.” Elle nodded. “I’ll let the trainers know you’ve invented a new regimen.”
“Yeah, gotta put in the work to look this good. You remember. In Vegas, you gave me all sorts of compliments…verbal and physical.”
“And I see none of it as gone to your head.”
“Not the one on my shoulders.”
Elle scoffed. “I don’t think anything goes to that head—compliments, thoughts, blood.”
“You didn’t complain at the combine.” I grinned. “Couldn’t. Your mouth was full.”
“And what’s the secret to keeping you quiet?”
“Easy. Sit. Spin. Grind. The usual.”
She took a picture, using the flash to blind me. “Were you this dirty in Vegas?”
“You’re right.” I blinked. Hard. “I apologize. Let’s get in the shower and clean up.” I wiggled. “Loosen this tape for me?”
“Nice try,” she said. “But I’ve been with the Rivets for four years now, ever since I was nineteen. I’ve earned the team’s respect, unlike cocky rookies like you. First rule I’ve learned…never interfere with hazing.”
“Because the rookie will get it worse next time?”
“No…” She leaned against the goal posts. “Because I enjoy it too.”
“Mm.” I squirmed before I was forced to buy the goal post breakfast. “I gotta say—I’m loving your whip-crack, sadistic streak. Where’ve you been all my life?”
“Trying to avoid charming rookies like you.”
“You’re not doing a good job.”
“Ah.” She shook her head. “You were technically a college senior when we met, not a rookie.”
“Is that why you didn’t call me after the draft? You knew I’d come to the Rivets?”
“I was afraid where else you might have come, Lachlan.”
I grinned. “Any place in particular you’d like?”
“Nowhere.”
“Edging, huh?” I asked. “You are sadistic.”
Elle’s smile was a quick chastisement. “Nope. I’m gonna make this perfectly clear. Now that you’re on the Rivets, you can forget about fooling around.”
“Red, that’s like asking the ocean not to be wet…or that perfect little secret between your legs.”
“Lachlan—”
“Why didn’t you call me? I left you messages.”
She sighed, taking a couple more photos as two cornerbacks jogged through the end zone and patted me on the head on their way to the locker room.
Elle shrugged. “We said everything we needed to say at the hotel.”
“We didn’t really talk at the hotel.”
“To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t interested in your mouth then.”
“I’m definitely interested in yours now.”
She rolled her eyes. “At least I left a good impression on you.”
“An impression? Woman, be glad there’s a goal post holding me back.”
“Oh yeah?” She lowered the camera and baited me with a wiggle of her hips. “Tell you what, Charming. If you can get out of the tape, you can have me.”
I thought better of thrashing, gnawing my hand off, or uprooting the goal post. The tape already cut off most of my circulation. I wasn’t risking anything happening to my hands, not after I dropped my share of passes this practice.
Instead I gave her a dimpled grin and a promise. “Nah, Red. Next time we’re together, you’re gonna beg for me.”
She laughed. “The next time?”
“Yeah, the next time. You owe me.”
“What could I possibly owe you?”
“You didn’t say goodbye when you left. Just up and disappeared. You gotta know what that does to a guy like me.”
“Did you want me to stay? Help you whittle a mark into your bedpost?”
“Baby, you are the mark in my bedpost. You’re the pinnacle. The gold—no, ebony standard.”
“Oh, Lord.”
I smiled. “Red, my bed is cold without you.”
“Might I suggest a blanket?”
“I’d prefer body heat.”
Click.
She took another picture, watching me squirm. Desperation in black and white.
Still, I gave the lady what she wanted.
“Enjoy it, Elle. Here. Let me flex.”
She giggled. “At least you’re a good sport about this. You know the hazing will get worse.”
“I’ll let them tie me up naked next time, provided you’re there to document it,” I said.
“Oh hell…I wouldn’t miss that. The team wouldn’t even have to pay me.”
“Fuck the team, we don’t need them. We’ll do it this Saturday night, just you and me.”
“You’re relentless, you know that?”
Couldn’t help i
t. I finally had her in my sights…and we had a lot to talk about.
“Let me take you out,” I said. “We have some unsettled business to sort through.”
“Enticing.”
“Legally binding.”
“Underwhelming.”
I sighed. “If your panties aren’t soaked, I must not be selling this opportunity right.”
“I’ll wring them out when I get home.”
That sass. She needed something in her mouth to silence it…or a man to worship her while she dished out the harassment.
“You really should go out with me.” Any attempt at sincerity was wasted as my erection smashed into the goal post. “We should talk.”
The camera lowered. She wove a hand through her hair, twisting one of the red locks over her finger.
Why did that look so familiar?
“Lachlan…I’m not the kind of girl you think I am.”
“The one I’m spending the rest of my life with?”
“Not even close.” She shook her head. “I’m not someone who spends a weekend with a complete stranger, indulging in hour after hour of remorseless, anonymous sex.”
“Good thing we’re not strangers anymore,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not that type, Lachlan…at least, not without copious amounts of alcohol.”
“Then drop the camera and grab a bottle of wine, cause I think we’ll have a lot of fun together.”
“I know I never said goodbye.” She took a breath. “And I never thanked you for the weekend. It was more fun than either of us should have had.”
“I’m the gift that keeps on giving, Red. Go out with me again so we can talk when I’m not…” I gave a tug. “Indulging the team’s traditions.”
Elle ripped a piece of tape from my shoulders. She hesitated, as if considering helping me escape. But that fantasy was too good to be true. She patted the tape over my mouth without the decency of a kiss first.
“Shh. It was a one-time thing, Lachlan. Not a mistake, but it wasn’t anything that can happen again. We’re working together now. I’m not on the field getting my head crushed by linebackers, but we have to see each other. A lot. Let’s not make this any more complicated than it already is.”
I laughed. The sound muffled in the tape, but she wouldn’t have listened even if I yelled it.
Jesus, she didn’t remember anything from our weekend.
Wow.
Well…it would be an awkward conversation when she finally decided to talk.
And a major life revelation.
Wouldn’t she be surprised.
Elle stepped away, taking one last picture. “Start at your ankles. The tape’s a little loose down there.”
I nodded, but she didn’t stay to watch the fun as I shredded through the tape.
I should have followed. Should have run after her. Shouldn’t have let her leave without telling her the truth and demanding another dinner, another night, another morning with her.
Elle thought our story had ended?
Hell no. Our fairy-tale was only beginning.
3
Elle
The sweltering summer afternoon was made hotter because Lachlan Reed was on the field.
I was starting my fourth season with the Rivets, and I’d never once gone boy-crazy. Most of the guys weren’t my type, some were already married, and the others were notorious bad boys. To protect my career, the closest I ever got to the players was through a four hundred millimeter lens.
Except this training camp was different.
It was like Lachlan stuffed a magnet down his jock strap. I’d tried to keep busy, but I crept further onto the field, parking my butt in the middle of the wide-receivers’ routes as I searched for him. I wasn’t very subtle. Even surreptitiously capturing pictures of the rookie tight-end twenty-yards away got me into trouble.
“You’re open, Elle!” Caleb shouted to me from across the field.
I peeked through the viewfinder in time to see three footballs spiraling through the air, aimed dead center for my forehead.
With a camera in hand, humiliation was always closer than it appeared.
I ducked, twisted, and collapsed to the grass before the balls plunked around me, much to the delight of the offensive line.
Jack and his two backups laughed. They reared back again, and, like some medieval general loading the catapults, Jack aimed for me.
“Fire!”
I pointed the camera and got the shot of Jack mid-release, his arm flexed and the ball just out of the frame. That gave me no time to hide. I spun. The ball spiraled right into my ass, and the dull thunk of pig-skin against my skin would entertain the men for the remainder of the day.
I could expect some great lunch-time conversation about the imbedded league logo that probably bruised my butt.
At least Jack’s photo would look good uploaded onto Instagram. He wagged another ball. Just fortunate it was regulation and not the Play-Maker’s special duo.
“Okay, okay!” I surrendered my spot. “I’m done.”
I lied. I snapped one more and hurried away. Uploading some of my morning pictures was a good excuse to duck back into the air-conditioned practice facility…if I didn’t melt on the way in first. The sun scorched the team. I chugged water, but the sweat poured off of me. I twisted my damp hair into a bun and surveyed the field for any other promising shots.
Peter, as head photographer, followed Coach Thompson for the morning. That was fine by me. I was still staying as far away from him as I could, even if Peter hadn’t said anything about the missing SD card.
Yet.
Maybe I had escaped without notice. That probably meant we desperately needed to clean the office. But if the clutter had hidden my tracks, I was ordering out for lunch today—the more styrofoam containers, the better.
But piling more trash on our disaster-area of a desk wouldn’t solve the problem. Sooner or later, Peter would realize the incriminating pictures were gone.
And I still couldn’t believe we had the photos. Every team we played had a folder. Offenses. Defenses. Special teams. Blitz installations. Trick plays. The images were from other teams’ practices, all date-marked before our biggest games of last season. I had no idea where they came from or how Peter got them, and I wasn’t about to Lois Lane this mess to find out.
If the league president, Frank Bennett, knew the intel we had?
Hell, if the loud-mouth Sports Nation reporter, Ainsley Ruport, thought something was suspicious?
There wouldn’t be an Ironfield Rivets anymore.
It wasn’t heroic of me to take the card, but I had to figure out what to do with it. Any, all, or none of the coaches might have been in on it. God only knew how long the team had been cheating and how many more photos they’d planned to take.
Until I had the full story and knew exactly who I could go to, the only way I could protect the players was if I kept my mouth shut.
And that was easy enough—for now.
I headed to the defense, but that crossed my path with the only douche on the team I tended to avoid. It was best to ignore him, but Bryon made it so damn hard. Sure, the team had trouble-makers—Jack had been the worst before he married Leah, though Lachlan would certainly fill his shoes. But men like Bryon were just trouble. He’d be one of the league’s greatest running backs…if he could stay out of jail.
Bryon whistled for me. “Hey, Elle. I’m ready for my close-up now.”
“Not without something slipped in my drink,” I said.
He posed, lifting the hem of his shirt to showcase his abs. “You sure? How ‘bout a picture, baby? Say the word, and I’ll give you a show.”
The hump of his hips wasn’t pleasant. That sort of gyrating would transmit six different diseases across the field.
“Sorry, Bryon.” I reached into my bag, holding up my camera lens. “I don’t have a big enough zoom.”
His middle finger was anything but gentlemanly. Didn’t bother me. The bigger t
he asshole, the smaller the prick.
I’d spent enough time with the team to grow accustomed to the usual alpha-jock behaviors. I knew when to duck out of the way of flying athletic supports, I had a sixth-sense on when to avert my eyes before the entire defensive line dropped their pants, and I definitely knew who not to photograph one-on-one. Over the last couple years, more and more guys ended up on that list.
Fortunately, the scariest men on the team were some of the biggest teddy-bears. I ducked into the defensive practice and joined a circle of linebackers, huddling before they drilled.
It was weird to drop to my knees in a group of six men, but ordering around Cole The Beast Hawthorne was probably a worse idea.
Still, this was an awesome shot.
“Let your hair down, Cole.” I aimed the camera. He scowled. That was fine—it added that menacing, defensive atmosphere I hoped to capture. “Pretend this is a game.”
Cole’s shoulder-length blonde hair remained firmly secured in the pony tail.
“Come on. This.” I gestured around the huddle. “Looks great. The linebacker core—all prepared for battle. Can’t ask for a better image.”
Paxton, our most senior veteran, grinned his toothy, handsome smile—always good for a photo, though his two gold front teeth usually reflected my flash. “Elle, baby, you just say the word, and I’ll give you all the modeling you could want.”
“I can’t afford your rates, Pax.”
“For you?” He flexed his biceps. “I’ll do it for free.”
“A session like that would melt the camera.”
“A wet dream come true, Elle.”
“And yet you’ll wake up the same way you always do—alone and…” I snapped a picture. “Sticky.”
“Jesus, have mercy.”
We were still missing one camera-shy, irritated linebacker. I curled my finger for Cole to approach.
“It’s not the same with you brooding,” I said.
“Yeah, Cole.” Sean, our third-year outside linebacker, took the opportunity to rest. He puffed hard, resting on his knees. “Take the pic. I need a breather.”
“Piper says you’re not really that beastly, Cole,” I said. The dozen pictures I had of him hugging his step-daughter on the sidelines proved it. “One picture. Sean, move in a bit.”