Broken Play

by Tracey Ward

  “Can you be a good girl?”

  She chuckles, breathless and throaty. Hoarse from the cries that rippled through her throat and into my mouth. “I’ll try.”

  I push three fingers all the way inside, curling them to hit her in that soft pillowy place inside that starts her shaking. Once my thumb hits her clit, she’s finished. She’s flying.

  I feel myself uncoil right along with her. I’m not cumming, but I’m relaxing. I’m riding out her wave that pulses on my fingertips, so damn warm and sweet, and I feel my anger fade away. It’s stripped from my mind and replaced with the soft cries coming from her throat that fall around me like snowflakes.

  I watch her come apart. Her voice echoes into the night when she curses my name adoringly over and over again. She’s everywhere; in my ears and eyes, and I can’t get enough of her. I’ll never be finished with her.

  When she relaxes, when the pulsing has calmed and she looks at me with fresh tears in her eyes, I can hardly stand it. I can’t imagine anything more beautiful than her kiss-swollen lips and her deep, dark eyes. Her pink cheeks and her sly, satisfied smile. I asked her to be real once, to drop the seduction shit because I thought it was an act, but I see her clearly now. This is her. This is real and raw, and if this is what she needs from me, she can have it all. Every inch of me whenever she wants me because I need her. I crave her.

  Slowly, she unbuckles my pants. I push her skirt out of the way as she pulls my cock free, angling it at her entrance. I take a deep breath – one last attempt at sanity.

  “I don’t have a condom,” I force out.

  She shakes her head, tears flying from her eyes. “I don’t care.”

  “Mila.”

  “I don’t care.”

  She pulls me closer with her legs.

  I close my eyes. I slide inside. I lose myself in her as I search for her. The real her. The crazy her. The wild her. The calm, sweet, funny, irreverent her. I stare into her eyes as I fuck her and I look for every piece of her, even the ones I don’t like. Even the pieces that make me so angry I want to walk away forever, but I know I won’t because there’s her smile. There’s that electricity that she feeds into me that makes me feel like I’m alive for the first time in my life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MILA

  January 14th

  Hyatte Regency

  Green Bay, WI

  There are no words to describe how I feel when Tyus is inside me. I don’t even know if I’m alive. I don’t know if I’m breathing; living or dying. I don’t know if I’ll survive it.

  I don’t know how to live without it.

  All my life I’ve done everything to the extreme. I take things too far. I let them go too far. But nothing will ever feel like enough with Tyus. Nothing will ever be the same after he fucks me, and it’s true every single time. My reality is changed with every orgasm. Every gasp. Every moan. Every time he touches me, I’m molded into something new. It’s a beautiful feeling.

  It’s also utterly terrifying.

  My hold on the world is tenuous. I understand that. Half the time it feels like it’s flying away from me, carrying me on a rushing tide I can’t control. The other half, it feels like it’s at a standstill. Like the world has stopped moving and life is suspended until further notice. I hate that feeling the most. Whenever I feel it, the slowdown, I do whatever I can to speed things up again. I push life forward with all the force I can muster, and that’s exactly what I did when I went to the club that night searching for some strange. I was trying to push past the feeling that Tyus gives me – that slow feeling.

  Two months later and I’m still learning. But I’m trying harder than I ever have before, and I don’t feel as wild as I used to when things get to be too little. I’m starting to enjoy the smallness of a moment. Like the one I feel coming right now as Tyus sighs above me, moving deep inside me. This moment is monstrous, the way I love it, but when it’s over, it will shrink. It will get small and fragile, so tiny I can’t bear to touch it, but I’ll deal with it. I’ll let Tyus handle it in his big, gentle hands, and he’ll make it feel right, the way everything does when he’s around.

  “Faster. Faster. Faster,” I hiccup. My voice is punctuated by every thrust as he dives inside me. “Fuck me faster.”

  “Easy, girl,” he grunts.

  “I don’t want easy. I want it hard. I want it fast.”

  His hand comes to rest on my chest over my heart; heavy and warm. “I’ve got you, baby.”

  He doesn’t go any faster, but the feel of his hand on my heart warms me. It sends a thrilled shiver through my body that I know he feels in his too. The soft grunts he gives with each thrust turns feral. Animal and excited.

  “I’m cumming,” I breathe.

  He buries his face in my neck, sucking on my skin in a way that makes me feel like a meal. Like I’m feeding him as he fucks me, and it sends me over the edge. I hug him with all the strength in my entire body as I cry. I cry with pleasure and pain and sorrow and joy. With a chaotic rush of emotions that flow through me, up out of me, and away on the night air on a long exhale that feels like it drains all the air from my lungs. I’m left limp. Empty. But then Tyus is filling me. He’s kissing me, breathing new life into me, and I feel the pressure in my core building again as he brings me back to the edge of my sanity. He pushes me the way I pushed him, forcing me to shift and change and mold to him in a way I’ve never done before. It hurts. Fuck, it hurts so bad it brings tears back to my eyes, but I embrace it. I revel in it.

  “You’re my girl, Mila,” he tells me gruffly as he drives inside me. “You’re my girl.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t fuck anyone but me,” he reminds me, because he gets scared sometimes too.

  “Yes,” I purr happily.

  “You gonna cum again, baby?”

  “Yes. Please. Yes.”

  He shifts his drive. He fucks me deeper. He sends me outside myself as he fills me to the brink with his body and soul.

  I collapse like a star. His body, his strength, is all that sustains me in that moment. He has to breathe for me. His heart beats for me. His body warms me, hurts me, pleases me. For one sharp, shining moment, he owns every part of me. My heart. My soul.

  He has my love, broken and misshapen as it may be.

  ***

  “What time do you need to get up?” I shout to him from the bedroom.

  I hear him spit out toothpaste into the sink. “Six!”

  “Ugh,” I groan unhappily, but I set the alarm. I do not have to get up at six and I will not.

  I pad barefoot and naked through the bedroom to the bathroom where Tyus is flossing. He’s nuts about his teeth. He always scowls at me when I brush mine real quick and head to bed without a full cleaning the way he does, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s good at picking his battles with me and my teeth should definitely not be one of them. There are far bigger fish to fry.

  I hop up on the counter to watch him work. The counter is cold under my ass, against my bare crotch, but it sends a delighted shiver through my body. Tyus is wearing his workout shorts but his chest is bare. There are thin red lines streaked down it from my fingernails. They’ll be gone by morning. I never dig too deep, I have a little self-control, but right now they’re my marks on my man, and there’s something irrepressibly sexy about that.

  “What time are you and your dad doing breakfast in the morning?” he asks between flossings.

  “I’m supposed to meet him in the lobby at nine.”

  “Must be nice to sleep in.”

  I smile brightly. “It’s why I schedule all of my classes after nine. I don’t do mornings.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” he chuckles. He glances at my phone on the counter next to me. “What’s the score?”

  “I told you. I’ll let you know the final score when it comes in.”

  He nods, his eyes intent on his teeth, but I know where his head really is. It’s on the game going on right now between the Seaha
wks and the Falcons. The winner of that game will be the Kodiak’s opponent in the Conference Championship. Assuming the Kodiaks win tomorrow’s game against Green Bay, which I know they will. I have faith in my man. He’ll bring it home for us.

  It’s a testament to how focused he is that he’s eying my phone and not my naked body as he flosses. He’s been stressing the outcome of the game in Seattle all night. There’s a TV set up downstairs in the banquet hall just for the guys on the team to watch the game on together, but Tyus told them he just wants to hear how it plays out. Instead of watching it, he spent the last hour making love to me here in my room, away from Daddy and the team. It’s the only thing I could think to do to distract him, and it worked until he got tired, dehydrated, nearly pulled a hammy. When he said his head was starting to hurt, I called a time out. Coach Allen wouldn’t appreciate me wearing out one of his stars this close to game time, so I told him I was finished. It’s a lie, he knows that, but I think he appreciates the break.

  He does what he can to sate the insatiable inside me, but there’s only so much he can do. He doesn’t hear me when I tell him it’s an itch that never stops asking to be scratched, but it doesn’t mean I can’t function and it doesn’t mean I’m going to go looking for foreign fingers to scratch it the second his back is turned.

  Relationships, I’m finding out, are complicated. They take a lot of talking and a lot of listening. A lot of understanding and a lot of patience when you can’t understand, but the important thing is that you try. And I am. I’m trying the hardest I ever have for him and it’s been a really good couple of months. In every aspect of my life except for school.

  I fucked off a lot this term. I spent almost every night at Tyus’ and rarely made it all the way back to campus for my morning classes. And if I missed the morning, what was the point of going in for the afternoon? Most days I didn’t go to school at all, and my grades definitely tell that story. I always made it to work, though, and I’m hoping Daddy will give me credit for that at least. I’m nervous, though. About so many things.

  My phone vibrates on the counter next to me. Tyus immediately looks at me expectantly, but I shake my head. “It’s Mama. Not the game.”

  “Shit,” he mutters.

  Ronda and I are packing your daddy for the game tomorrow, she texts me. What color jersey should he wear?

  It’s away game. We wear white.

  What number?

  Doesn’t matter.

  Then why does he have so many?

  It’s a big team.

  This is all so confusing.

  Make him pack his own bag.

  He’d fill it with whiskey and bratwurst. That’s a terrible idea.

  I smile because she’s right. Daddy can run a multi-billion dollar company without breaking a sweat but he’s hopeless when it comes to the little things like cooking, clothing himself, and basically surviving. He went straight from his mother’s house to his wife’s with no reason to learn how to work a Crock Pot anywhere in between. The nights I’ve spent with Tyus watching him cook and laughing as he tries to teach me, tell me that I’m probably headed down the same path.

  “What’s funny?” Tyus asks. He tosses his floss in the trash before coming to stand in front of me. I open my legs wide to let him in. His hands are large and dark on my thighs as he caresses them slowly. “Is your mom talking shit about your dad again?”

  “It’s almost constant lately. I think she’s watching a lot of Rosanne re-runs. She’s getting sassy.”

  “Sass runs in your family.”

  I set my phone down, giving him my full attention. “I’m bitchy, baby. Not sassy.”

  “I don’t understand the difference.”

  “It’s a Southern thing. You’ll learn.” I drape my arms loosely around his neck, pulling him closer. “I’ll teach you.”

  He literally laughs in my face. “I’m from Texas. You grew up in L.A.”

  “I don’t get your point.”

  “You’ll learn.” He kisses me once, softly. “I’ll teach you.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t have to. It sounded good.”

  He kisses me again, deeper this time. Slower. He tastes like mint. He makes me feel like fire. I’ll never get tired of Tyus. He’s delicious and sweet. Mean in a really funny way that I think I need. And I’ll never find another man who can put up with me the way he does. I’m not an easy person to know, but Tyus took the time. He made the effort and I try to reward that as often as I can because that’s new for me. It’s scary and nice and everything in between. We’re a little overwhelming sometimes but we’re both learning to ride the tide and make it through to the other side together. My therapist is proud of us.

  I’m seeing her again. Not because Tyus asked me to – he didn’t and he doesn’t even know I’m going – but because I want to. Because after the close call we had at Constellations where I almost destroyed everything I’d been growing to love, I felt really afraid that I was going to go too far for real. Not just in an abstract, maybe-someday kind of way, but in a very real, this-is-happening-right-here-and-now kind of way. It didn’t scare me straight the way I thought Dubai had, but it scared me awake. That night made it very clear that Tyus does have limits and I can cross them and I can lose him. And I never want to do that.

  We weren’t supposed to be a real thing like this. I wasn’t supposed to care as much as I do because I convinced myself in the beginning that there was nothing special about him. Hot – check. Funny – check. Great lay – check and check. But so what? I should have walked after that itch was scratched; no harm, no foul. No one would have known and he would have moved on with his career while I kept up my job and my studies with no one any the wiser. But that’s not how it went down and the fear I pushed to the side as a Future Mila problem has startled to settle in. We’re a real couple now and we can’t hide forever. What happens when Daddy finally finds out about us? Will Tyus be done playing by then? Will it affect him at all or will it ruin him? Does he worry about it too? Am I going to lose the team after all? Will I lose my job at the DAK? Sloane said she didn’t want anyone that was going to fuck with the players, but Tyus isn’t one of theirs. Can I get away on a technicality?

  It’s what I’ve done my whole life, but something tells me this time is different because Tyus is different. He’s more than I thought he was and the risk is greater than I wanted to admit, and there’s no going back now. I can’t let him go. The only thing to do is keep moving forward with my heart in my throat and hope to God we both make it out unscathed.

  Tyus’ hold on my thighs tightens painfully. He’s pushing down on my legs hard, his body leaning into mine, and I think he’s trying to push me back against the mirror. I laugh against his mouth as I put my hands to his chest to slow him down, but he doesn’t budge. He weighs heavier on me, his face slipping to the side of mine. I hear a strange grunt pass his lips. It’s a sound I’ve never heard him make before. It’s not excited or aroused.

  It’s afraid.

  “Tyus?”

  “Mmmmiiila,” he slurs.

  I push on him hard but he doesn’t budge. He’s leaning on me so much I don’t know how he’s still standing. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to hold him up. “Baby, what’s happening?” I ask nervously.

  He doesn’t answer. His chest rises and falls rapidly against my hands. His heart thrums wildly into my palm.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper as calmly as I can. “It’s alright. We’re okay. Whatever it is, we’re okay. You’re okay.”

  The pressure on my hands lightens. Lessens. He moves his hands from my thighs to the countertop on either side of my ass, bending at the waist to lower his face toward my lap. He doesn’t touch me, though. He puts his weight on his arms and arches his back like a cat stretching in the sun.

  I stare down at the back of his head, my hands still hovering in the air where I held him. I’m afraid to move. I’m terrified to ask, “What’s happening?” />
  His head shakes slowly. “I got dizzy. It felt like the room was spinning.”

  Gently, I touch the back of his head. “Are you still dizzy?”

  “It’s fading. Just give me a minute.”

  I give him three. I count them. I watch his big strong body hunched over like a broken marionette for three stress-filled minutes before I finally breathe a sigh of relief. He stands slowly, straightening his spine until he’s an oak; tall and proud.

  His face is pale. His eyes are half-shut. He doesn’t look at me, not right away. He searches the room first, like he’s looking for what fucked him up, but he doesn’t find it. Finally, his eyes meet mine and he gives me a wan smile.

  “Baby, don’t look so worried,” he consoles me. He touches the side of my face tenderly. “I’m alright.”

  I put my hand on the back of his, holding it to my face. “That was weird. What was that?”

  “I told you. I got dizzy. It was like I was drunk.”

  “Why did it happen?”

  “It doesn’t last long. It’s fine. It’s over.”

  My body stiffens. “This has happened before?”

  Tyus sighs. He takes his hand away as he backs into the center of the room. “Once or twice.”

  “Since when?”

  “I don’t know. December?”

  “What?” I jump down off the counter to come closer to him. “This is the third time in a month?”

  “Calm down, baby.”

  “No. I won’t. What does your doctor say? What do the trainers think it is? Are you okay to play tomorrow?”

  Tyus looks at me in silence.

  It sends me right off the deep end.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?!” I demand. “You haven’t seen a doctor or told any of the trainers?!”

  His shoulders sag. He looks away. “It’s nothing. I looked it up. It’s probably something called vertigo. It’s an inner ear thing. It causes headaches too. It’s why I’ve been getting them so much lately.”

  “Where’d you find all this out? Web MD?”