Earning It

by Angela Quarles

  And it’s gripping my cock.

  Fuck.

  “Pepper,” I moan.

  “Luke,” she says in a sing-song tease. Then her eyes darken. “Please tell me you have a condom.”

  Chapter 12

  Luke

  I’m off her so fast, I could’ve set a new record if jumping upright, shucking jeans, grabbing a condom, and rolling it on were a sport. I toss the blanket to the far end of the couch.

  She strokes up my inner thigh with her foot as I edge the last of the condom down. Wham!’s “Careless Whisper” plays as the credits roll behind me, and I smile.

  I stretch out over her again and raise the edge of her skirt. I trail my hand up her leg to where I long to be. Whoa—my fingers touch the bare lips of her pussy. I jerk my head up, and she nods to the side with a glint in her eye. I glance over. A dainty pool of blue fabric hangs off the edge of her coffee table—she’d shucked her panties while I’d been preoccupied with the condom.

  I grin back at her. “Wicked girl.”

  She arches again, but there’s a hint of vulnerability there, and I hate to see that. I brush my lips across hers while I stroke her—she’s wet for me already, and I growl into her mouth I’m so fucking turned on. I’m also relieved as hell, because I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out before I drive my cock into the hot, tight heat of her.

  She gives my bottom lip a nip, and that does it. I clamp her hands over her head with one hand and thrust into her, fast and hard. Ah God, it feels like an answer to be inside her again, but fuck if I know the question. All I know is that I’m merging with Pepper and all the feelings she evokes in me, amplifying that sensation.

  If being around her is like seeing color for the first time, being inside her is like tasting, feeling, hearing, and swimming in color. Being caressed by it. Yeah, like Daffodil Daydream. And, Jesus Christ, I never want to leave.

  I cradle her face and kiss her deeper and harder and find a rhythm inside her that has her squirming and panting beneath me. She’s popping up her hip with each stroke of mine, and too soon my balls tighten and a heat coils in my lower back. I’m not gonna last long. Fuck.

  Desperate, I change my angle so that my thrusts are grinding my pubic bone into her clit, and she whips her legs around my waist and makes these urgent, mewling sounds, vibrating against my lips. Not. Helping.

  My mind’s gone so primal, I can’t even think straight, much less how to stop myself from exploding inside her before she comes. But the gods of horny-ass men are smiling down on me, because in the next instant, she tears her mouth from mine, bites into the muscle on my shoulder, and convulses around me, her hot pussy clamping down hard on me.

  A fierce, primitive joy rushes through me, and I pound into her once, twice, and then detonate inside her with an orgasm so powerful, I thrust my head back and my mind goes blank.

  When I’m aware again, I’m sprawled on top of her, my mouth somehow unerringly having found her beauty mark. We’re both breathing heavily, and she has her arms and legs squeezed tight around me. My heart’s pounding so hard against my chest, I’d worry if I didn’t know I have an excellent heart.

  But I can’t smother Pepper. Even in the foggy, mushy bliss that is my mind right now, I know that’s not good.

  I cradle her and somehow make my muscles obey and coordinate enough for me to turn us on the couch so that she’s on top of me. I love that she’s still got a death grip around me, but worry seeps in when her head seems to be resolutely faced away.

  I stroke the hair from her forehead. “Hey. You okay?”

  She nods against my chest, but she still doesn’t look at me. Worry now has a strong foothold in my gut.

  She shoves upward and says, all rushed, “I gotta go.”

  “Sweetheart. We’re at your place.” I try to keep calm, but my heart rate has picked up. Fuck. Did I mess up with her again? “Do you want me to go?”

  “Yes. No.” Finally, she looks at me, her eyes bleak. “I don’t know,” she whispers.

  I know she enjoyed it—her orgasm was proof. She’s nervous, unsure, and I can’t have that. My heart does a weird wobble.

  Her arms are tense, delicate columns on either side of me. I rub my hands up the sides and cup her face, stroking her cheeks with my thumbs. “I’ll go if you want. I’ll also stay. I’d love to. I want to. But I also don’t want you worried.”

  She visibly swallows. Her gaze searches mine, the struggle to voice what she wants playing out in her eyes.

  Then she says it.

  “Stay.”

  The wobble in my heart morphs into a victory dance. Hell, it might even be glowing and shit.

  Pepper

  I tuck my blanket under my arm, grab my medical bag from the back seat, and hip-bump my car door closed. Today is the game against Galway New York, and I’m here in a dual capacity, which has me feeling a little on edge, as if I can’t figure out which slot to slide into.

  I’d be mad at myself for giving in the other night to this attraction we feel, but it seems futile to keep resisting. Maybe I can find the right balance and not sacrifice my professionalism for a relationship.

  The sweltering Florida sun warms my skin as I thread through the cars in the parking lot and head for the field where Luke’s team is playing. It’s different from where they practice, because apparently the regulation field is almost twice the size of a soccer field. I can’t help it—as soon as I clear the concession stand, my gaze darts around the field looking for his now-familiar shape.

  My heart beat kicks up a notch as soon as I see him stretching his quads on the sidelines. Behind him, big sports drink coolers are lined up on a table like an army. Most of the people bunched around him are dressed to play, though a few people are already spreading blankets. Luke’s team is wearing their brand-new gold and black uniforms with Sarasota Wolfe Tones and their emblem on the front and Langfield Corporation on the back. The New York team, in maroon and white, is on the other end. Just looking at them, there’s no doubt they’re elite players.

  I pick a spot near the table and set down my bag. Luke’s gaze is on me as I snap out my blanket. Call me a romantic sap, but instead of using my car blanket, I brought along the blue one we’d shared watching Deadpool. I hate that I’m a twenty-nine-year-old doctor, and yet I feel like a teenager with my first crush. The truth is, dating was never a high priority once I went to college. I was so focused on my grades so I could get into med school that I didn’t have the time or emotional energy to spare. Which only intensified as I worked through med school and then my residency and fellowship.

  My lesson started in high school after my accident. What I hadn’t told Luke was that in trying to please my parents, I’d caused others harm. But there’s more to it than that—it took me a while to realize that I’d been an emotional wreck as a teen. My confidence and self-esteem were non-existent. My anxiety always in the background. They let their general disappointment in me show with their silent judgment. Especially with my “histrionics.”

  I’d been so mired, I made a poor decision. I wasn’t honest about my injury. After that, career, and career only, was my sole focus, and I worked hard to never let my emotions cloud my judgment.

  Dating was something that would happen later in my life, I always figured. When I had time. When I’d “made it.” There were moments when I almost quit. Doing sports medicine might have started out as an atonement, but my fascination with the human body genuinely spoke to me. If it hadn’t, I would have quit.

  Phil was my first serious relationship, and it only happened because he was a patient first and I thought I was in a place in my life when I could date. And then I crossed the line with him by writing him a prescription for pain meds—hence my probation.

  But unlike Phil—who I think deep down I always suspected was a narcissistic jerk—Luke is turning into someone I’m beginning to see has so much more. I started out believing he was a jerk, but he keeps proving otherwise.

  I flush, think
ing about our recent night together. I woke up in the middle of the night tucked into my bed with him curled around me. I couldn’t help compare it to the time I woke up on the couch after a grueling day during my fellowship to find Phil, who was pretty much living at my place by that point, had come home from his game and was sleeping on my bed.

  That morning over omelets, I asked Phil why he didn’t wake me. My neck had a crick in it from sleeping at a bad angle. A stupid part of me was hurt that he didn’t carry me to bed, or at least wake me up. He just gave me a look and said it wasn’t his responsibility to make sure I was comfortable—it was my fault for falling asleep on the couch.

  Fresh hurt washes through me. I should’ve broken up with him then. It’s not that I feel like, because I’m a woman, a guy should have scooped me up and rescued me from a bad crick. No. But because I’m a frigging human being whom another human supposedly cared about? Hell, yes.

  So, yeah. Luke carrying me to my bed? Five points to him, for damn sure.

  Before I can sit down, awareness prickles my neck. I glance over my shoulder, and he’s filling a cup with water from the jug closest to me. He keeps his eyes locked on mine, and heat flushes my skin. His gaze dips to the blanket I brought, and when they rise back to mine, his gaze is hooded. A shiver rocks me, knowing he’s also thinking about what we did under that blanket. Or at least, what we started. I later found it draped carefully across the back of the couch.

  “Dr. Rodgers, may I have a moment of your time?” His voice is professional.

  “Of course.”

  He lifts his arm to the side, motioning for me to precede him toward the concession stand.

  During the short walk, his presence behind me is like a physical pressure. I round the corner, and strong arms circle me and pull me back against a sizzling wall of strength. Immediately I’m in tune, humming against him. Luke smells wonderful, his soap-clean skin warmed by the sun. This feels so simple and so right, I’m reassessing everything I thought about relationships.

  “Kiss for good luck?” he murmurs in my ear. “I had to get you to myself.”

  Shivers race up my spine again at his silky soft voice. I turn in his arms, and his intense, green gaze latches with mine. That gaze tells me that if we were anywhere else, something a whole hell of a lot more than a kiss would happen. My stomach clenches with desire, and I rise on my tiptoes, anticipation making my breath come out in irregular puffs.

  He brushes his lips against mine, his hands framing my face, and somehow we keep it family-safe. But as he pulls away, he gives my lower lip a little nip.

  My mind and body finally slot into a groove as he walks away to take the field. I can do this. The heady, heady idea scares and thrills me.

  Luke

  Galway New York is good. Really good.

  It pumps us all up. We’re gonna need every edge we can muster, which makes me even more grateful that we ate clean for a full week leading up to this match. Playing against a top-notch team is exactly what we need—this is real competition. They not only have a coach, but two assistant coaches, and more than half their team is Irish.

  And because I am a guy, it gives me an extra push having the woman I want to impress and whom I’m sleeping with watching from the sidelines. And her being a sports med doc? Even more so. She, more than most, understands the workings of the human body and how we push to utilize it to the best of our ability. I must be pushing to one hundred percent right now. Folks say shit like giving 110 percent, but that’s bullshit. The trick is to train so hard you can perform at the level required to excel while at seventy percent. Better endurance that way. Today, I’m as nervous as the first day of BUD/S, knowing my performance was all that kept me there. I had no margin for error then. And I don’t now. Because despite the beatings my dad gave me, he was right about one thing—trailer trash like me have no margin for error.

  Everything changes in the third quarter. Normally the game is played in thirty-five minute halves, not quarters, but we made a concession to the Irish players from New York who aren’t used to the heat and humidity down here. New players with fresh legs and lungs replenish their ranks. As the quarter wears on, it’s becoming clear—these aren’t just new players, they’re the first string. We’ve been playing against their second string this whole time.

  Mark’s already sporting a broken finger, but he’s still playing. However, Romy got sidelined with a pulled hamstring, so we’re playing one down.

  At the end of the third quarter, one of their forwards catches a wicked-fast pass. I could hear the smack from here as it hit his palm. He deftly tosses it to his hurley and starts a solo drive down the center of the field. Paolo shoulder charges him, but the forward recovers and nimbly bats it to another of their men. Mark flies off the ground—arms at full stretch—in a diving block but narrowly misses. He lands with an oof and bounces back to his feet. I’m soaking up all of it—the trajectories, the layout—and assimilating it with how they’ve played off each other in previous drives.

  I know my teammates—I trust them. And that might give us an edge too, depending on the cohesiveness of their team. With trust, we can take risks. When you don’t have that? You play it safe, only doing what’s expected.

  So I’m ready when their forward tries to get past. I twist and block him, but hear and feel a slight pop in my knee. We’re all shoulders and footwork, the scent of fresh churned grass and dirt filling the air, along with the crack of our hurleys meeting, but I use my height and size and steal the sliotar from him. With a decisive thwack, I send it straight down the field out of our territory. Fuck yeah. Winning means squat if you’re not competing against the best. Plus it feels good to take New York by surprise.

  I’m feeling great, my muscles are warm and thrumming, and my cardio is handling the sprints on the field. I flex my knee and feel a twinge of pain, but it’s not bothering me much. Nothing to take me out of the game. The whistle blows for the end of the quarter, and we jog to our side of the pitch. It’s hot as Hades in the Florida sun, and we all beeline for the water jugs lined up on a table.

  Our setup feels a little Bad News Bears compared to the kind of field and bleachers New York is used to, but I can’t seem to care. I pull off my helmet, sip my water, and dump another cup over my head.

  And because I can’t help it, I make my way over to Pepper, even though I must stink with sweat.

  “You guys are looking great out there.” She grins at me from where she’s sprawled back on that blue blanket of hers. Our blue blanket, a little known sappy part of me pipes.

  Seeing her deliciously laid out below me has me thinking all kinds of thoughts about what we can get up to after the match. “What do you think of the game?”

  “It’s hard sometimes to get the hang of what’s going on. Sometimes I’m expecting a hockey move, and then someone does something only allowed in rugby or volleyball. I have no clue who’s winning. So you can score by putting the ball through the goal posts and also into the net?”

  “Yeah. Through the posts is a point, and in the net is a goal, which is worth three points.”

  “Conor’s scored three goals, and New York one, but I wasn’t paying attention at first to the ones through the posts. Are you winning?”

  “Nope. Tied, Galway 1-8 to us, with 3-2. The first number in those scores are the number of goals, the second are the points. We’re only keeping up because Conor is a machine the few times we can get near the net.”

  Paolo whacks my shoulder. It’s funny that he thinks he can budge me or take me by surprise. “Great save there, man. Sorry I let the sliotar through.”

  “We’re getting a good read on their offensive weaknesses, though. Did you notice how the center forward always fakes right when someone comes up to challenge him?” We’d done this analysis at half-time, but with the new players, we need to adjust.

  Eamonn, our goalie, joins us. “And the right forward is limping slightly. Left ankle, I think.”

  “Good to know.”

>   The whistle blows again—Aiden’s uncle is one of our refs. The others run out, but I take a sec to throw a weighted glance at Pepper, a promise of what to expect later tonight. A slight flush stains her neck. Message received. We’ll have to endure the after party at the Butt with the two teams, but after that? I grin and jog to position, the twinge in my knee minimal.

  The match resumes, and our offense is doing a good job keeping the sliotar downfield, but they’re failing to deliver. I keep my joints limber as I wait on the far field and keep an eye on the sliotar and the players’ movements.

  Suddenly, the sliotar explodes toward our end of the pitch, and their center deftly traps it and begins a drive toward our goal. We adjust our positions and move to intercept. A forward catches a hand pass and heads to a gap to my right. When he draws near, I plant my foot and pivot to shoulder charge him. A shooting pain spears into the side of my knee, as if someone’s driven a damn spike right into the flesh and bone.

  Agony explodes through me, staining my vision red, and the ground rushes to meet me. My cheek and side hit the dirt. I buckle forward and grab my knee. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  A whistle blows. I glance over, and the fuckers have scored a goal off me.

  Chapter 13

  Pepper

  My heart trampolines into my throat and lodges there. Luke’s on the ground, clutching his knee. I grab my bag and race onto the field. The whistle blowing for the goal seems to chase me, echoing in my ears. Shouts, footfalls, and more whistle blows become glaring, competing with my own personal feelings as they beat time inside me with each footfall. I can’t mentally latch onto anything. Shit.

  Concentrate. Ruthlessly, I shove my personal worry for Luke into a section of my brain and lock it down. Cool detachment settles like a soothing blanket over my mind and, one by one, the various noises snuff—a trick a fellow doctor taught me. I reach Luke’s side, and the thump of my knees hitting the ground is in perfect rhythm to the medical scenarios now scrolling through my brain.