by Aubrey Irons
“Landon-”
“No, no bullshit.” He shakes his head, a hand coming up to hold my chin as his eyes bore into mine. “No dancing around what this means or how this pertains to fucking work. I don’t care about any of that right now, I just want you. Period.”
I’m pressing my lips to his before I even have time to respond.
Clearly, the feeling is mutual.
Hands pull me close, slipping behind me and down to my ass. I moan softly into his mouth as he lifts me, legs going around his grooved hips as he picks me up and carries me through the house and through his bedroom door.
He closes the door with his foot as he moves us to the bed, setting me down. Clothes strip away, landing on the floor, tossed across the room, draped half inside-out across the bed.
I move on top of him, kissing him, touching him, feeling him. Lips sear together, tongues tease the other, hands drift across skin. I pull my mouth from his and slowly start to tease my way down his chest, sucking and licking as I go. Landon groans as I move lower, kissing over his abs, wanting to trace my tongue across every single impossibly hard groove of that athletic stomach but pulling myself lower.
I wrap my fingers around his thick cock, stroking him and wetting my lips hungrily as the soft, velvety skin rubs across the hot iron beneath. I lean forward and wrap my lips around him, taking him into my mouth. He gasps, hands cupping my cheek as I swallow him. I swirl my tongue at the silken underside of him as I bob my mouth up and down him, my eyes dragging up his body to watch him as he watches me with rapt lust.
“Get up here,” he growls, groaning as he pulls me away from him. I leave him with a final kiss on his crown before I move back up. Landon starts to turn us, but I shake my head and push him back with a hand on his chest.
“Shh, just lie back.”
I reach between us, stroking his cock and bringing it to tease against my dripping wet opening. Landon growls again as he starts to stretch for the bedside drawer.
“Leave it,” I say quietly.
His eyes dart back to mine. “Serena-”
I shrug quietly. “I mean; I’m not going to get pregnant or anything.” His eyes soften, but I shake my head and grin. “And I’m going to assume we’re both okay? I mean, I know I am.”
He nods, his hand skimming over my thighs. “I’m a very careful guy.”
“And I’m a very careful girl.”
“Except for right now.”
I nod. “Except for right now.” I lean down, my lips brushing against his as my hands slide into his hair. “I don’t want to be careful tonight. I don’t want to be careful with you.”
He groans and lifts his hips against me, the thick head of his cock nestling against my opening.
“Shit, Serena.”
“I just want to feel you. I need to feel you right now.”
And I do.
I slowly sink back, and he slips inside as we both moan.
I rock on his hips, kissing him, my hands entwined with his. The tempo climbs, and it’s a slow build, a glow that gets hotter and hotter. My breathing comes faster, my nipples grazing across his chest.
My bottom lip, caught between his teeth, the way his large hands envelope mine.
The way he pulses inside of me, and the way he fits in a most perfect way.
When we come it’s like a slow wave crashing over us, pulling us under until we’re left gasping and panting.
“I should-”
His hand catches me, pulling me back into him as I try and slide out of the bed.
“No.”
“Landon,” I smile as I turn to him. “I shouldn’t stay.”
“You should, actually.”
I shake my head. “I can’t. It’d be too confusing for her in the morning.”
“She sleeps in like a log on Sundays.”
I bite my lip, teeth raking across it.
I shouldn’t be considering this. I should be listening to the logic, and the self-preservation that says staying here with him is opening me up to more than I think I could take.
But then there’s the other side of me - the side that doesn’t want to leave his side, or his touch.
Not now.
I bring a hand to his face as I meet his eye and I nod, kissing him and slipping back into the sheets.
“Stay, Serena,” he whispers, pulling me into him, his lips grazing over mine. “Just stay.”
Done.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Landon
The coffee is strong and hot - my second cup - and I sip it as I glance at muted sports highlights on the TV.
The season’s about to start, and I realize I haven’t even been thinking about the game and the plays leading up to it like I always do. The thing is, that’s not really my job. It hasn’t been my responsibility to think about players and the new offensive maneuvers, and how we stack up against rivals since I was a player. I mean, yeah, working on the board of a pro team, you should definitely give a shit, but it’s not like it’s the job. My job is to keep the organization itself going, the rest of it is for the players and the coaches.
Except six years after retirement, it’s always the biggest thing on my mind, every damn year before the season starts.
Except this one.
I can hear Emily stomping around upstairs, letting me know she’s up. I’ve been up since seven a.m., when Serena slipped from my arms and from my bed, telling me she was stealing yet another pair of sweats and a t-shirt before she slipped away, presumably to a waiting cab outside.
That’s another funny thing about the now me vs. the me from my youth. The me from back then was up at noon at the earliest. Too many late nights, too many drinks, too many women. Meeting Sarah changed part of that. Meeting Sam Horn changed the rest.
The thought of bitter insights I now hold about him and Serena sit like bile on my tongue. I take a thick swallow of black coffee, letting it sear my mouth a little, but it’s not making the guilt of not telling her yesterday go away.
I should have told her.
Except it’s a fucked up scale. Not telling her is a shit move. Not telling someone something that big just isn’t right, and I already know it’s going to drive this wedge between…well, whatever the hell is going on with us. Because it sure as hell isn’t just “co-workers who sometimes have sex to blow off steam.”
That would make this easier.
Because then there’s the other option: telling her. But telling her breaks her. Telling her the truth I now know but wish I didn’t destroys everything she’s ever known about her life, her family, and her place in this world.
And I’d get to watch her face shatter and her heart break when she finds out.
You try to not shoot the messenger in that scenario.
The sound of Emily coming bounding down the stairs pulls me away from my brooding, and I chuckle as she comes tearing around the corner.
Jesus, I can’t even remember a time I was that animated before coffee.
“I’m hungry!”
“What’s up, hungry, I’m Dad.”
Emily rolls her eyes.
“Hey, you know where the cereal is.”
This is a new part of our routine. Of course I feed my kid, and of course I fix her things to eat ninety-nine percent of the time. But sometimes, when it’s something like cereal on a Sunday morning, I let her take over.
Self-reliance isn’t something I think a lot of people teach their kids these days.
“What if I don’t want cereal?”
“Well what do you want?”
She hesitates, chewing on her lip. “Cereal,” she finally admits.
I grin. “You want me to make it for you?”
“No, I got it,” she says dramatically, making this elaborate stage show of slumping her way back into the kitchen as I try not to laugh out loud.
My cell rattles in my pocket, and I furrow my brow at the office line on the caller ID.
“Morning, Don.”
“Landon, hey.
” Don’s voice sounds tired.
“What’s going on?”
“Listen, I’m sorry to call you at home like this, but, well…” He sighs heavily. “We gotta talk, Landon.”
I sit up a little bit on the sofa. “Sounds serious.”
“Yeah.”
Don doesn’t say anything else.
“Everything okay?”
“Not really, Landon,” he says awkwardly.
Shit.
“Okay, I’m coming in. Let me just call Serena and see if we can all meet-”
“We can do this over the phone, actually.”
I frown as I rise from the sofa, a cold feeling in my gut.
“Tell me what’s going on, Don.”
He sighs heavily. “I’ve looked at the projections the analysis guys drew up.”
Oh shit.
“Landon, I’m sorry, but I’m swinging the vote. We’re going to sell.”
The room blurs around me as I whirl, my hand tightening so hard on the phone I wonder if I’ll crush it.
“You can’t do that, Don,” I hiss through clenched teeth, shaking my head as I stare at the wall. “You can’t fucking do that.”
“Son, I know you’ve been working at this, and I gotta say, you and Ms. Roth did a hell of a job with damage control. But there’s just so much up in the air! Sam in the hospital, the team not even knowing about it, this damn mystery about Ms. Roth, losing Holden Cade right before training started.”
“We got a new quarterback, Don.”
The house phone rings in the other room, but I ignore it.
“I know, I know,” his voice sounds wearing, but he’s not breaking on this. “And he’s great, and you guys did a hell of a job on the bit for Rocky Mountain Soap.” He sighs once more. “But numbers are numbers, Landon.”
The house line starts to ring a second time, pulling my attention for a second before I hear Emily answer it.
“Goddamnit, Don!” I hiss. “We’ve known each other for too long for you to pull this.”
“Landon, I’m doing you a favor, you know. With your board seats, you’re going to-”
“Fuck the board seats, Don! This is about more than that and you damn well know it.”
“Dad?”
I whirl around to see my daughter standing in the doorway, wide-eyed and holding the house phone out to me.
“It’s the hospital. They say Grampa Sam is awake.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Landon
“Awake” is a relative term in hospital lingo. In this case, it means Sam showed enough brain activity that they partially brought him out of the medically induced coma, enough to see that things were looking good.
“He’ll be out for a while still,” Sam’s neurologist had said over the phone. “He’s out of the coma, but he won’t be awake awake for some time yet.”
“I’ll come down.”
“Usually we like to hold off on family visits until we can be sure he’s in the clear. Coming out of something like this is traumatic, as you might imagine, and patients can be easily confused or rattled - sometimes even back into a coma, by too many new stimuli. We even keep a bare minimum of medical staff in the room during this process.”
I’m in the car, roaring through Denver, but it’s not the hospital I’m heading towards. That’ll come later, with the neurologist promising to call me as soon as Sam was alert enough to see me.
So for now, I’m headed for the stadium. I’ve made a slew of calls from my car after getting off the phone with the hospital, calling Don back along with every single one of the board members. And Serena, of course. So that’s what I’m headed into - a boardroom full of cowards about to check out early from a fight just because it’s hard. That’s not the legacy Sam built.
In football, you know when it’s over, sometimes before it’s actually over. There are some score deficits you’re just never coming back from, some teams you’re just not going to beat - that rival quarterback that throws like a goddamn robot and that opposing receiver that’s untouchable. Point being, sometimes you just know.
This feels like that.
This feels like it’s the end, even if I’m about to barge in there ready for war. Because that’s also the game I love. You don’t just quit. You can be up against the toughest odds imaginable. You can have that feeling where everyone from the coach to the guy selling crackerjacks knows damn well that it’s over.
But you do not quit, and I sure as hell am not about to go gently into that good night.
Because I’ve got one ace up my sleeve. I’ve got one more hail mary of a throw I’m winding back on that just might save this team.
The only problem is, it’s going to destroy her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Serena
I almost run right into him as I dash around the corner of the hallway leading to the boardroom.
“Oh!”
My hands go up to his chest, stopping myself from literally crashing into him as I come to a stuttered start. “Hi,” I say with a small smile, the events of the previous night instantly going through my head like a slow-motion replay. I blush, staring up at the man who’s somehow gone from enemy, to one-night-fling, back to enemy, to a rival of sorts, to a friend, to….well, much more than that.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that whatever this is, isn’t just sex anymore.
Landon doesn’t smile back, nodding stiffly. “Hey.”
My brow crumples. “They’re not really going to, are they? I mean this is insane.” He hasn’t filled me in much with the brief, gruff phone call about the board’s decision, but it’s enough.
He shakes his head and looks away before stepping away from me, my hands dropping from his chest. “I don’t know, not if I can help it.”
“Hey, we can do this.” I step towards him, but he moves back a hair.
I frown. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He brings a hand up, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sam’s out of the coma.”
“What?”
My hand flies to my mouth, my eyes going wide. “Oh my God, Landon, you should go!”
“No,” he shakes his head. “He’s not awake yet anyways, and I still…” He glances at the boardroom door and then back at me. “I have to do this first.”
“We,” I say with a small smile. “Hey, we have to do this.”
“It might be better if you stayed out here, actually.”
He swallows, his eyes flashing over mine - something or some pain being held back behind them.
“What? Why?”
“It just might be better.” His jaw tightens. “Please stay out here.”
“Landon, no, this is on me too. Besides, I think a united front goes a lot better. They’re just scared, but whatever your plan is for getting them back in line, I want to be there.”
“Serena-”
“I’m coming inside, Landon,” I say sharply.
His eyes narrow, but he nods before he turns for the door. I follow.
The boardroom is silent and stony, and the faces of the men and women sitting at the table turn as we step inside.
An older, silver-haired man stands and nods. “Landon.”
“Don.”
“Look, son.” Don spreads his arms. “Landon, we all understand how you’re feeling, and believe me, I get it.”
“Do you?”
“With all due respect, Landon, try and remember that I’ve been at this table since before you were playing peewee football.”
Landon’s shoulders tighten under his suit jacket as he strides to the table and pounds a fist against it. “And yet, here we are! Sam’s awake, Don, you can’t possibly move forward with this now.”
Don sighs, dropping his head as the room murmurs. “He’s not in a coma, Landon, but no one knows what that means yet. We don’t know if he’ll really wake up. We don’t know if his mind will work. Hell, we don’t know if he’ll know what football is.”
�
��This is absurd,” Landon hisses. “You all should be fucking ashamed of yourselves.”
“You’ve both done a tremendous job, we all know that,” an older woman to Don’s left says, nodding around the table at the board.
Don clears his throat. “Look, no one is closing the Rattlesnakes down or anything. This team isn’t going anywhere. But we’ve got interested parties, and we need to act on that interest.”
“You’re talking about selling a legacy, Don! You’re talking about selling Sam’s legacy.”
“We have to assume Sam’s out, Landon, you know that.”
“And us?”
Landon turns at the sound of my voice along with Don and the rest of the board.
“I guess that means we’re out too.”
“You’ll both be very well rewarded for the work you’ve done to plug the leaks, Ms. Roth, I can promise you.”
“A reward that does not include twenty-four and a half owner shares, does it.” Landon’s voice is icy, and suddenly, what he’s saying starts to sink in.
Holy shit.
I know saying it was all about the money is a terrible thing to say, but it is how we got here. Whatever happened along the way, and whatever is going on with the man standing next to me, the goal when we started was one thing: money.
Don looks down at his hands. “It hasn’t been thirty-days, Landon.”
Landon swears as he pounds his fist against the table again, making everyone sitting at it jump in surprise. “And what happens to those owner shares, Donald.”
Don looks at his hands uncomfortable again. “It’s all…well, it’s all a little complicated, Landon, what with you holding Sam’s shares, and yet them only being voting-”
“What happens, Don,” he growls.
“Redistribution,” the older woman says timidly.
My jaw drops, and Landon whirls on her.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Alice?”
“Landon, it’s just-”
“You people are fucking vultures!” Landon spits. He jabs a finger across at the table. “Nice fucking timing, Don.”
“Landon, I assure you, this is nothing personal. It’s just numbers, and the numbers don’t lie here. And remember, you still have your board shares as well. You won’t come away from this empty-handed.”
