by Josie Kerr
“Yes, Tig? You have something to say?”
Tig turned to her and slid his hands around her neck, softly caressing her face with his thumbs.
“God, I love you so much, Charlotte.”
“What?”
“I love you. I love your fierceness. I love your kindness. I love everything about you, sweetheart.”
“Oh . . .” She did not speak for a moment, and Tig got a sick feeling in his stomach.
But then Charlotte smiled, big and wide.
“Tig, I love you, too. Your big heart, your selflessness. Everything about you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Tig drew her head towards him and slanted his face to kiss his fierce, kind woman, but she pulled away a fraction.
“Dammit, why is the Allman Brothers Band always playing when we’re having a moment? I’ll tell you one thing: they will have absolutely no place at our wedding.”
Tig laughed. “It’s a deal, Charlotte. It’s a deal. Now, hush your mouth and let me kiss you.”
Charlotte snorted. “Oh, now you start being bossy. Good luck with that, Kicker.”
“Charlotte.”
“I swear, Tig. . . .”
“Charlotte.”
“Tig,” she said, her voice growing softer and gentler.
“Charlotte,” Tig whispered in her ear.
“Yes?”
“Let me kiss you, baby.”
And she did.
“Charlotte, baby, relax. It’s just the crew. It’s no big deal.”
“It is a big deal, Tig. This is the first time that we’ve hosted everyone. I want everything to be perfect.” Charlotte’s eyes roamed over the outdoor dining room, and she blew out a breath.
“Maybe you need a little something to take the edge off,” Tig murmured in her ear as he rucked up her skirt to get at her panties.
Charlotte’s breath hitched when two thick fingers slid over her folds, dipping into her core and fluttering along her seam, building a delicious pressure that had her gripping the side of the table. Charlotte groaned as Tig rolled her clit between his forefinger and thumb, the calluses imparting a perfect, soft friction.
“Will you be satisfied with my fingers, or do you want my cock?” he growled in her ear.
“Cock, please.” Her voice buckled with a tiny bolt of pleasure. “Cock, please, please, please.”
Tig chuckled. He loved it when she was begging and needy like this. Quickly unfastening his jeans, he took his cock in his hand, and after tapping her ass a quick one-two with it and rolling on a condom, Tig slowly sank into her. He watched as her body consumed him, pressing in until his balls were nestled against her ass. They both sighed as he sank completely in, and then he started moving.
Tig rolled his hips against her as she ground back into him, his one hand pulling her hip back into his cock, the other playing with her folds and clit. Charlotte pulled at her blouse, tugging the neck and shoulder down and exposing her lace-clad breasts. She moaned and whined, Tig’s breathing heavy on her neck and in her ear as he watched her pluck on her nipples in time with the strokes of his fingers and the thrusting of his hips.
He thrust harder, harder, loving looking at her breasts jiggle and bounce. Charlotte’s breath hitched and she arched her back. Tig pinched her clit, hard, and she shattered to pieces with a sob. Tig moved his hands to her hips and pummeled her, took her, loved her until he was as spent as she was. And after, he pressed her neck, her cheek, her mouth with his soft, sweet kisses and hugged her close.
“Better?” he murmured.
“Oh, yeah.”
He slid out of her and smoothed her skirt down before adjusting himself and pulling up his jeans. Charlotte stood up on her toes and kissed him. He caught her and dipped her, and that was when their first guests arrived.
“Knock, knock. Is everyone decent?”
Charlotte and Tig looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“Oh my God, do you think they heard us?” Charlotte whispered.
“They just might have,” Tig spluttered. “Oh well. It’s not like they never got caught fooling around.”
“Well, they were teenagers. . . .”
“What do you mean, ‘teenagers’? I’m talking about the week before last when I was up there.”
Hattie and Neil wandered into the fully blooming backyard, Neil carrying a large box.
“We come bearing gifts,” Neil said with a laugh. He handed Tig the box with a nod and caught Charlotte’s cheek in a kiss. “You’re looking especially pretty today. You, too, Charlotte.”
“Oh, wow, Em’s going to lose her little bourbon-loving mind,” Charlotte exclaimed when she saw what was in the box.
“Well, we couldn’t be living in Bardstown and not bring bourbon, right?” Hattie said. She ducked under Neil’s arm and sighed contentedly.
Tig had never seen his mother so happy, and he was absolutely thrilled for her, especially since she had experienced such guilt for some time after Floyd’s death. But when Neil showed up at Charlotte’s old apartment and asked her to go to Kentucky with him, she decided it was time to start living the life that she had planned thirty years prior and put behind her the guilt of Floyd’s death.
“They’re very happy,” Charlotte said, slipping under his arm and looping hers around his waist.
“Yep, they are.” He leaned down and gave her a peck on the lips.
They heard what seemed like a dozen car doors slamming, and then the Brennans, the Doyles, and the Carmichaels burst into the small backyard in a flurry of beards, flaming red hair, and curls.
“Oh my word.” Hattie laughed and looked in wonder at the teeming mass of small children. Tig could see her mentally counting. Yeah, good luck with that, Mama.
“There are seven of them,” Charlotte leaned over to whisper in Hattie’s ear. “The five redheaded girls are Rory and Ashley’s, of course. The oldest girl there is Em and Mick’s, and the little curly-haired one is Colin and Bailey’s little girl.”
“You giving her the rundown,” Em grinned. “I’m always shocked at how insane this is when we all get together.”
“Hey, hey, hey, all.” Dig swaggered in with Ryan and another man. Neil blinked and looked at his glass of bourbon, making Tig bark a laugh.
“Neil, there are two of them. You’re not blind drunk. Yet.”
Neil shook his head and laughed. “Thank God. I thought they’d switched the bourbon with moonshine.”
Jason looked at his twin brother. “Ryan, we don’t look that much alike, do we?”
Ryan shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t think we do.”
“Trust me, you do,” Charlotte said with a laugh.
“Man, you have a full house tonight.” Dig looked around the yard. “Everyone’s here.”
“Junior’s not.”
Tig grinned at the cutman, who, after his blurted statement, snapped his mouth shut and concentrated hard on something in the bottom of his glass.
“No, he had to go out of town. Family business.” Colin rocked two of Ashley and Rory’s newest little girls while their parents helped themselves to the full dinner that Charlotte had prepared. “That crazy baby sister of his has gotten herself into some sort of mess. Again. He’s threatening to haul her down here for a change of pace, and it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea at all.”
“What’s her deal?” Tig mumbled around the last bite of hot dog in his mouth. He also had a hot dog in each hand.
Colin rolled his eyes. “She’s got bad taste in men is what it boils down to. Really bad. And she’s got a pretty volatile temper herself. Makes for a lot of drama.”
“Sounds like just my type,” Dig said with an eyebrow wiggle.
At the same time, Ryan muttered, “Good God A’mighty, keep her away from Dig.”
Everyone laughed except for Dig.
“Hey,” he protested. “I’m not that guy anymore. Usually.” And that statement prompted more laughter.
Tig hurriedly
changed the subject. “What’s the latest on those warehouse fights, C? You heard about any more of them?”
Since Tig shut down Tomás Sousa at the Round Robin, he had not gotten any more texts about warehouse fights, nor had he heard about any through the fighter grapevine.
Colin shook his head. “Not a peep, though I think Junior might have heard something. He was just about to tell me some news when he got the call about his sister.”
“Wow, so he must have taken off fast then.”
“As far as I know, he left straight from the gym and drove directly to see her. He texted me to say that he got to Newark safely and that he’d be gone for a few days, but he’d call me tomorrow to give me some news that I would find interesting.” Colin shrugged a shoulder. “Who knows, man?”
Rory approached the group with outstretched arms. “Let me take the babbies, Colin, so you can get something to eat before the bottomless pit here finishes it all.”
Tig made a face at Rory even as he shoved half of a hot dog in his mouth. “There’s more where that came from,” he mumbled. “Charlotte’s not going to let me go hungry.”
“Did I hear my name?”
Tig hugged Charlotte to his side, and she stretched up to kiss him. “I got hot dog breath, baby,” he said.
“No worries, I do, too.” And she kissed him long and hard, and their friends and family hooted and clapped.
“Everyone’s looking at us, Tig.”
“So, should we?”
Charlotte nodded.
Tig cleared his throat. “Thanks for coming, y’all. As you know, these past few months have been . . . interesting . . . to say the least, between Little Miss Perfect here coming into that bar in her high heels and pink suit and Mother Nature deciding that I really should be a fighter and not a peanut farmer. But one thing that was truly a no-brainer was the decision to ask Charlotte Markham to be my wife.” Tig stopped for a moment, his eyes bright from blinked back tears. “Whoo. Man. Colin, you said it was gonna be hard. I had no idea.”
“Yeah, that’s why they were both chickenshits and ran off and got married without telling anyone,” Em said, leveling a look at both Bailey and Colin, who just grinned back at her.
Charlotte squeezed Tig’s hand, and she continued. “So he asked me, and I said yes.”
The backyard erupted with cheering, kisses and hugs, and backslaps.
After everyone was gone, Tig and Charlotte lay in the grass and looked up at the stars when Charlotte blurted out, “No more condoms.”
“Yeah, I need to go and get some more. We used the last one during our pre-party festivities.”
“No, I mean, no more condoms, Tig. You’re safe, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I am, too. You’re not gonna stick your wick in someone else?”
Tig was insulted. “Of course not,” he scoffed.
“Well, I’m not gonna let anybody else stick theirs in me.” Charlotte licked her lips. “And I think that whatever happens, happens. We get pregnant, great—more babies. We don’t—well, then we don’t, right? So what do you say?”
“I say, we institute the ‘no condom’ rule right now, ma’am.”
“Ooh, great minds think alike,” Charlotte whispered in his ear. Tig laughed and took off his cowboy hat so he could better kiss the love of his life.
Boys Round Here – Blake Shelton
Sticker Peck Out – JB and the Moonshine Band
Rocket 88 – Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats
The Way I Are – Timbaland featuring Kerri Hilson
One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer – John Lee Hooker
Ramblin’ Man – The Allman Brothers Band
Drunk on You – Luke Ryan
How to Win – Nathaniel Rateliffe
I Could Kick Your Ass – Justin Moore
Kiss My Country Ass – Rhett Akins
She’s So High – Tal Bachman
You can find the Kicker playlist, along with the Second Chance Neighbor playlists on Josie’s Spotify station.
What’s Next?
If anyone told me even three years ago that I was going to be writing a romances, much less a sports romance series, I would have said that they had lost their damn minds. But you know, here I am, and here you are, reading a letter at the end of my first official sports romance. (I say official because Sweet Relief, although technically a part of the Second Chance Neighbors series, is really DS Fight Club 0.5.)
The DS Fight Club series is not about fighting, per se, but about fighters: their backgrounds, their relationships, their emotions. What makes these guys (and girls) tick? What in the world would compel someone to make a living of getting kicked in the liver?
You’re not going to see over-the-top violence of Cage Matches to the DEATH (imagine echoes here) in the DS Fight Club books. The fighters of DS Fight Club aren’t super-aggro Alpha young bucks; they’re guys ranging from their mid-forties down to their late twenties. Their bodies are breaking down. Maybe they’re just tired of getting kicked in the liver. They’ve reached the pinnacle of their careers and there is nowhere else to go but down. But, regardless of their age or their physical condition, they are all asking: What’s next?
And this is it. These are the next chapters in these fighters’ stories, and I hope you enjoy them.
Josie
Josie Kerr is transplanted West Texan living on the edge of semi-profoundly rural Georgia, a.k.a. the southernmost edge of the northernmost county in Metro Atlanta.
She has an M.Ed. in Secondary English Education, but discovered that she hated high school more the second time than she did the first, so she decided to meld her love of technology with her background in education and became an Instructional Designer. When not writing articles about how to fire someone without getting sued or why you should really not apply for jobs using your [email protected] email address, she writes steamy romance novels that feature grown-up Heroes and Heroines.
Connect with Josie:
Website: www.josiekerr.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorJosieKerr
Twitter: www.twitter.com/AuthorJosieKerr
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/AuthorJosieKerr
Spotify: www.spotify.com/AuthorJosieKerr
