Sure enough, Jarit Colson was trotting over to them, having left his teammates in the dust. Lord, could he move, like a big cat—purposeful, confident and utterly unafraid of any kind of rejection.
Well, he better start to get afraid and fast too.
“Macy, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Macy leaped to her feet, tossing most of her popcorn like confetti onto Nel’s head. “Jarit…”
All eyes focused on Nel, who was taking it quite well.
“Sorry,” lamented Macy. “I’m such a klutz.”
“Not in my book.” Jarit winked, and to Macy’s chagrin, Nel saw the whole thing.
“I’m going to get cleaned up,” Nel announced, a definite twinkle in her eye.
Macy grabbed her arm, holding her in place. “What for? It’s just popcorn.”
Nel arched an eyebrow and Macy released her, feeling like an even bigger fool, if that was possible.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt anything,” Jarit said after the perky redhead was out of hearing range.
“Really?” she said sharply. “Because it seems like that’s your specialty.”
His eyes focused, laser sharp. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. “If you’re expecting an apology for my showing up and making love to you last night, I won’t give one.”
Macy looked about nervously. “Please, I know people here.”
“And I don’t? So what are you, an accountant?”
“What was your first clue? My ‘Jackson Crunchers’ T-shirt?”
“I make no assumptions where you are concerned.”
She frowned. “You assumed you would get in my pants though.”
“Actually, I had no idea.”
“But you didn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity.”
“Nor did you,” he pointed out with a sideways smile that brought out his dimples.
“Stop that,” she demanded.
“Stop what?”
“Being so damn charming.”
“I will if you agree to have dinner with me.”
Nel was on her way back.
“I don’t date my neighbors. It’s a rule.”
“You just have sex with them.”
The statement, matter of fact, caught her wrong.
Nel gasped, well within range to see her friend slap the handsome quarterback.
If all eyes weren’t watching them before they sure were now.
“Macy, what in blazes?” demanded John Caruthers, the balding, handlebar-mustachioed head of the firm.
About a half dozen others stood behind him, including two vice presidents.
So much for her corner-office-by-age-thirty-five strategy.
Jarit took one for the team.
“It’s my fault. I was being forward.” He stared earnestly at the extremely shaken Macy. “Will you accept my apology?”
A tall man stood behind Jarit, somber looking. Was it Jarit’s boss?
It killed Macy that he would get in trouble. “It’s my fault too,” she said.
The tall man put his hand on Jarit’s shoulder. “Come on, playboy, let’s get you on the field where you can practice all the moves you want.”
There were chuckles from some of the men on both teams.
Crisis averted.
Except now Macy owed him something, which was a far worse calamity in her mind than having run in to him in the first place.
Jarit hadn’t felt so pumped for a game in ages.
Macy had slapped him.
Which meant she was anything but indifferent to his existence. Plus, he had done her a big favor and that would make her a pretty big heel if she tried to turn down an innocent dinner invitation.
He intended to celebrate his team’s victory.
And the defeat of hers.
The first half was close, a lot closer than predicted. Two touchdown passes by Jarit and a field goal with seconds to go put the half-time score at seventeen for the Eagles and twenty-one for the Crunchers.
It would have been twenty-one-all except for the one time Jarit had taken his eye off the ball to look at her, naturally.
Where are her allegiances? Jarit had been wondering. Had she cared even a little for his plight—third and short at the opposition’s ten-yard line?
Like an idiot, he had taken a sack. Did he want to lose the frigging game?
Kyle Bennett, the leading wide receiver and one hell of an estate planner the other six days of the week, had noticed the slip-up.
He seemed to be the only one, except for Macy’s friend, the cute redhead who didn’t miss a trick. What was her name? Come to think of it, they had never been introduced.
“So who’s the babe?” Kyle wanted to know, tossing him a sports drink in the locker room at half-time. “And if you say ‘what babe’ I will make sure this conversation takes place in front of the whole team.”
“She lives in my building.” Jarit took a deep swallow of the cool, green liquid. “I slept with her last night.”
Kyle whistled. “A man who takes love thy neighbor in a whole new direction. I like it.”
“No love, just…” Just what? Jarit knew sex inside and out and he’d dated plenty of women. This was different, as though it needed its own zip code.
“Don’t tell me the mighty Jarinator has fallen for a hundred-ten-pound brunette with laser-blue eyes?”
“What are you doing looking at her eyes?” Jarit demanded.
Kyle arched a brow. “Jealous too. Now I am really intrigued. So she must play all your little dark games, right? Ropes and chains and cuffs. Oh my?”
“There’s kink in her, for sure, but I wouldn’t call her a sub.”
“There’s a difference?”
“A kinky chick will do anything she wants. A submissive does anything you want, within limits, of course.”
Kyle shook his head. “This is way too complicated for me. Sex is supposed to be fun, not like a frigging merger and acquisition.”
Jarit patted his shoulder, laughing. “Amen, now let’s go out there and kick some pencil-pushing ass.”
Kyle gave him a high five. “Now you’re talking!”
* * * * *
The clock said ten seconds to go in the game.
The scoreboard showed the Eagles down by five. It had been like that for a lifetime.
Football was like this, very fast at some moments, ridiculously slow at others.
Jarit’s team had the ball.
“Is that enough time?” Macy asked, grabbing Nel’s arm. “They have to go so far down the field.”
“Your boy just has to air it out. No worries. Now if you wouldn’t mind, before my arm turns blue.”
Macy was mortified. “Oh god, I am going to kill you before this night is through, aren’t I?”
“I’ll live.”
Jarit had the ball. He was getting ready to throw it. Macy leaped to her feet.
“That’s it! Go! Go! Score a home run!”
Nel buried her face in her hands.
“It’s not a home run, you dizzy broad,” one of her company’s janitors yelled. “And you’re rooting for the wrong team again.”
The ball had made it into the end zone—a huge, arcing pass. Players bobbled for it, jumping like Harlem Globetrotters. Macy couldn’t see who had it as they went down.
The striped shirted referee dove into the pile, sorting the mess. Another one raced in holding both hands over his head in the shape of a goal post.
“That’s good, right, Nel?”
“It means the Eagles won,” Nel said. “Assuming you think that is good.”
Macy didn’t know what to think except that she needed to get out of there fast. She grabbed Nel’s hand, pulling her like a rag doll.
Jarit caught up to the two of them in the parking lot.
“Wait up!”
Nel rolled her eyes. “Here we go again.”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Jarit,” Macy said. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thanks, but we do ne
ed to talk.”
“My ride is leaving, I have to go.”
“Um, actually,” said Nel with a sheepish grin, “I was hoping to stay and do some shameless flirting.”
“I’ll take you home,” Jarit said to Macy.
She made a face. “With all that sweat on you?”
“There are showers here. I clean up pretty good.”
As if she didn’t know that already.
“Don’t talk about showers.” She thought of him standing under the water—the rivulets, the tiny drops off the edge of his cock, the tip of his nose, the flex of his muscles as he put the shampoo in his hair and the bubbles sluicing over him as he applied soap over his rock-hard abdomen.
He grinned. “You want to take one with me?”
“I want to go home to bed.”
“That can be arranged.” He reached out, touching her cheek, leaning forward for a gentle kiss.
“My cue to get lost.” Nel put out her hand for a quick introduction. “I’m Nellie by the way, not that anyone asked.”
Macy cringed, knowing she’d just added insult to all the earlier injuries. “Oh gosh, I’m sorry. Nel is my friend and our office manager, the best there ever was.”
Jarit extended his hand, unfazed. “I’m Jarit, and I owe you both big time for saving my butt back there.”
“Not half as much as she owes me,” said Nel, “but don’t worry, I’ll get her back the next time I act like a total spaz around a hot guy I like.”
“Nel!”
Jarit was trying not to laugh.
Nel, meanwhile, was hard at work making herself scarce, taking long strides across the asphalt.
“It’s not funny, Jarit.”
“Yes, it is.”
The smug look, the total way he was projecting himself, in control, able to push her buttons, was really too much. It was time to turn the tables, to show him what a woman could do with her sexual prowess.
“You think this is funny?” Arching up on tiptoe, she matched her lips to his. It was intended to be a get-even smooch but it left her in the most precarious place, unbalanced, pulse racing, heart palpitating.
She had told herself there was nothing special about those full, masculine lips, what they did to her, how they made her feel, and those hands of his and the lean body that fit so perfectly against hers.
Evidently she was wrong.
Stoic, impossible to read, he handed her his car keys. “What I think is, you should wait in my car until I’m done with my shower.”
“I’ll take your car and leave you.” She snatched them from his hand.
“And deprive me of another one of the best kisses of my life?”
So he had noticed.
“Please.” She rolled her eyes, trying to play it cool and savvy like Nel would have. Instead she came across like a dork. Not that he seemed to mind.
She could feel his eyes on her as she walked away.
I really will take the car. Let him catch a cab. It would serve him right.
Unfortunately she could not drive a stick shift. And then there was the other problem. She wanted more of Jarit Colson, the kinkier the better.
She wanted it all, starting tonight.
The question was, could she handle it?
The minutes passed even slower than the football game. She debated waiting in the car but it would have felt way weird. As a compromise, she leaned against it, the smooth, powerful metal of the fender so like the man himself, indomitable, with all that power under the hood.
Finally he came back to the car, squeaky clean in fresh jeans and a T-shirt, his hair dark and wet, his cheeks slightly colored by a day’s growth of beard.
It wasn’t fair that a man didn’t have to do anything to look gorgeous. At least not a man like Jarit Colson.
“I want to set the record straight,” she began. “I should not have kissed you before, it was inappropriate.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
She tried to resist, tried to stay back, but he was so close and he had that power about him, like some kind of magnet.
“And neither is this,” he said, taking her easily into his arms.
She tried to push him off, well aware of the hypocrisy of her action, given her earlier initiation of the impromptu lip lock. “Not here.”
“Why? We’ve nothing to hide.”
“I’m not hiding,” she insisted.
“Then stop fighting, unless you’re scared of how you’ll react.”
Macy steeled herself, determined to show she wasn’t afraid. But as he moved his hands up and down her rib cage, his lips hot on her neck, she remembered just how scary it could be with this man.
Scary and hot.
“Baby, tonight will be a whole other level,” he whispered. “Beginning with a couple of surprises I have in the glove box.”
She groaned, melting against him. This was not the time for weakness. She needed strength, resolve and the ability to say no.
“I should be getting home.”
“We will, eventually.”
Her spine tingled and her blood ran hot and cold simultaneously.
“Go on, touch me, you want to,” he said.
“No, I can’t.”
His eyes bore down on her. “Did that sound like a request to you?”
Her knees went weak. With a trembling hand she found his chest, her fingertips pressed. The sun was just about gone now, recessed behind the green of the ball field, behind the leafy trees and the snack shack that sold the popcorn she’d dumped all over Nel, her supposed friend who had as much as abandoned her to this man’s clutches.
“Did it?” he asked again.
Of course it didn’t. Nothing ever did with this man.
“No,” she conceded, rubbing her finger along the side of his arm, tracing the line of his biceps.
He laughed, a low rumble. “Get real, Macy.”
She knew what he meant. This wasn’t the kind of touching he had in mind.
“Someone could come along.”
“That’s not your concern.” He kissed her neck. “That’s the privilege of the submissive role—you get to relax and be. Now I want your hand on my crotch, right now.”
Macy shuddered with the scandal of it, the way he voiced the words. She let her eyes slide shut as her hand lowered. He moved a little bit away from her, giving her room.
Oh god, it was huge, bulging against his jeans.
“That’s what you do to me, honey. That’s what happens when I think of being inside you, controlling you.”
Her fingers tingled with the heat even through the thick denim material.
“Rub it,” he encouraged.
Her breath went shallow. He was so hot, so full. She could feel the pulsing veins and the stiff hardness like steel just below the surface of his skin.
“The question is, what do I do with you now that I have you, darling.”
Macy exhaled.
“Over the hood of my car, down in the grass, in the backseat of the car? So many possibilities.” He took hold of her breast, his hand under her T-shirt, molding, caressing the smooth globe of flesh. “Are you wet for me? Are you ready to be taken?”
He had her nipple, now swollen with the tell-tale signs of arousal.
Macy moaned.
“Are you?” He punished her for her delayed response with a smack of his hand.
He used the free one, the one not exploring and manipulating her breasts. The spank was like nothing she’d ever felt as the flesh on her ass reverberated, warm, ready and wicked.
“Y-yes,” she hissed.
“Then say it, spell it out.”
“I’m ready…to be taken.”
He released her nipple and kissed her on the cheek. “I think we’ll take a little drive.”
She stood there, unable to move for a moment until he took her hand, leading her. He helped her to the passenger seat, the one she’d been too afraid to occupy while waiting for him.
“Buckle up,” he said. “I li
ke to go fast.”
No shit.
Jarit Colson had a dilemma on his hands.
The woman sitting next to him, wide eyed and flushed, squirmy and shy all at once was the most amazing creature he had ever had in his car—hell, in his entire life.
And she was absolutely his for the night, to play with, to tease and titillate and utterly dominate in every conceivable, consensual way.
He could blow her mind, yes, but where would that leave him tomorrow?
A D/s relationship too quickly brought to a head could fizzle.
She could see him as some kind of manipulator, a Svengali. She could even hate herself for giving in and then he’d be left with nothing but a few hours of memories.
A few very hot hours, to be precise.
Hell, why was he thinking about a relationship, anyway? This was all about kismet, the fun of fate bringing them together one explosive moment at a time. That was the problem with domination. A Dom could become super-possessive, overthink his sweet prey.
“Open the glove box,” he said, pulling out of the parking lot.
She was trying her best to look confident, disdainful even. It made him smile.
“Go on, girl, nothing in there will bite you, much.”
“I know what guys are like. You could have something gross in there.”
Macy stared open mouthed as she flipped the small latch. What he did have stored away was a shiny pair of handcuffs and a clear plastic dildo, gleaming and new in its package.
“For now, take out the handcuffs,” he instructed.
She did so, editorializing. “Like I would touch anything else.”
“Just hold them, weigh them.”
“You happy?” she said, balancing one wrist-size circle on each palm, the chain clinking between.
He’d be happier to have them on her.
“Tell me what they make you feel.”
“Nothing.”
She’d shot her eyebrow up, which he had already figured out was a clue she was lying. Everyone had their little giveaways. Attorneys read them like second nature.
“So if I told you to put them on you wouldn’t be afraid?”
She took one cuff and enclosed her wrist, the metal clicking. “Does this answer your question? Do I look afraid?”
He licked his lips. She looked damn good in steel. Now if only she had on nothing else. “What you look like is a petulant child with a lot to prove.”
Managing Macy Page 4
