Love Hard (Hard Play Book 3)

by Nalini Singh

  No real pressure; it asked her to make the choice.

  Shivering and consigning rational thought to the morning after, she went back down, though she felt a bit ridiculous with her legs half hanging off the edge of the bed. But Jake seemed to like the view, his eyes on her as he tore open the sealed box and threw it on the bedside table after removing one flat packet.

  Her panties grew even more damp.

  Dropping the packet beside her thigh, he finished undressing.

  Juliet stopped breathing. She’d seen him all but naked on the shoot, but it was different here, in the privacy of her bedroom. With the smell of him all around her and his eyes saying she was his favorite candy and he wanted to steal the entire box so he could eat her up.

  Her besocked toes dug into the carpet, her hands fisting on the sheets.

  Taking his thick length in a fist, he stroked once.

  Juliet moaned.

  He smiled, slow and devastating, as he ripped open the condom packet. As she watched, her breathing shallow and fast, he sheathed himself with slow deliberation. Her panties were so damp by now that she was self-conscious when he slid them off her legs, but Jake’s attention was on other matters.

  Gripping her under her rounded thighs, he hauled her forward until her hips were at the edge of the bed, then he spread those thighs wide and looked down.

  Unable to take the intensity of the connection, she glanced away and to the side.

  “Jules. Look at me.”

  Teeth sinking into her lower lip, she nonetheless obeyed his command. Though why the hell was it so hot that he’d demanded her participation? He didn’t move until their eyes had reconnected, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm as rapid as her own.

  “Are you wet enough?” He bent to kiss the inner curve of her knee.

  Juliet nodded; any wetter and she’d be dripping.

  But Jake lifted his head and broke out that dangerous, sinful smile. “Let me check.”

  He’d dropped to his knees and put his mouth between her legs before she could respond. Juliet’s brain exploded, her eyes rolling back in her head. Giving in, she just rode the waves—rode his talented, talented tongue—and was wrecked by the time he rose back up and lifted her legs to spread her wide open all over again.

  Eyes locked with hers once more, he stepped forward until the head of his cock nudged a part of her body that felt as if it had melted. Her thighs quivered as he began to push into her, the friction a delicious ache.

  Juliet couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.

  Jake stopped moving.

  Chest heaving, she forced her eyes open. “You’re annoying and aggravating in bed too.”

  This time his smile creased his cheeks and stabbed her in a place he had no business intruding. “You like me this way.” He taunted her playfully, pushing in an inch deeper. “Stay with me. I want to watch you come on my cock.”

  Desperate for him, Juliet maintained the intimate link as he worked his rather large erection into her body. She was tight after her unintended celibacy, but he didn’t hurt her. He’d made very certain she was slick enough to take him. And take him she did; he filled her up until she was shuddering from the sense of completion.

  But of course he wasn’t done.

  Leaning down to brace himself with one hand on the sheet, her legs wrapped around his waist, he closed his free hand over her breast and tugged once again at her nipple as he began to move. Three long, easy strokes before his rhythm altered.

  If everything else had been slow and maddening, this was hard and deep and raw. His hand clenched on her breast and his eyes locked with hers as he began to move faster and rougher, his breathing uncontrolled and harsh.

  “Fuck, Jules!” he groaned, his neck muscles taut as his back stiffened.

  His primal pleasure ignited hers. There was no more thought, just the scent of Jake in her lungs, the feel of his big, strong body powering into hers one last time before he collapsed on her, the musk of sex in the air.

  She came so hard she nearly blacked out.

  16

  It’s the Quiet Ones Who Have Alllll the Moves

  Juliet wasn’t sure what she’d expected afterward. Maybe a bit of awkward fumbling to get dressed, followed by an even more awkward goodbye, but after withdrawing from her, Jake lifted her in his arms and shifted her so she was lying fully on the bed. Juliet was still stuck on the fact that he’d lifted her in his arms when he returned from the bathroom to lie down naked next to her.

  Both their chests heaved, their breathing short and harsh.

  She wore only her newly raunchy bra and her flamingo socks. Cheeks hot, she pulled the cups back over her breasts. That made her feel better even though she was naked, naked, naked, in every other location except for her feet. Those silly socks had her wanting to grin—it was ridiculous that they’d had brain-liquefying sex while she wore them, but it made her feel as if it had been far more than a physical act.

  Jake raised one knee, his foot flat on the bed. The defined muscle of his thigh under a dusting of dark hair made her want to lick her lips, as if she hadn’t just come so hard that her lights had blown. He was just so pretty. The kind of pretty that made a sex slave out of a usually sensible woman.

  So was it any surprise that when he turned to her with a lazy glint in his eye and put one hand on the side of her cheek, she let him turn her head toward his and kiss her? The kiss was slow and deep and unhurried, flicks and licks and tasting.

  Juliet turned fully into him and he seemed more than okay with that, pushing one tautly muscled thigh between hers while fisting his free hand in her hair. She’d thought it would end with a kiss, but oh, it didn’t. It was slower this time, his rough-skinned hand stroking over her softness with open appreciation and his mouth a lush caress on hers.

  She didn’t even care that, the best foreplay of her life or not, she was tender from the first time—it had been a while, okay. She wanted him, wanted this. He let her explore him as she wished, as generous with his body as he was every other way in bed.

  But when he nudged his hand between her thighs and rubbed all the right things with just the right pressure—after saying insanely hot things like “Slow or fast?” and “Move my hand how you like it”—she gave up and held on for the ride.

  He felt even bigger inside her the second time around.

  She was a jellyfish by the end, a soft squishiness of postorgasmic bliss. Jake took his time getting up to take care of the condom, as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him too. She watched him come back into the room, all bronzed skin and muscle and that stunning ink, and couldn’t quite believe he’d had his hands all over her—and that she’d had hers all over him.

  She lifted her foot. “It’s hot.”

  He tugged off one sock, then the other… and dropped a kiss on the top of her foot.

  Butterflies took flight inside her as he walked around the bed to lie down next to her again.

  “That’s just made the problem worse, hasn’t it?” he said.

  She nodded, strands of her hair stuck across her face and her skin damp with perspiration. They might’ve scratched the itch, but in doing so had turned it into a chronic ailment—because now they knew how good it could be between them.

  No, not good. SPECTACULAR.

  “I didn’t know sex could be like that.” The unsophisticated words slipped out past all her sex-addled filters.

  Instead of laughing at her, Jake said, “That was not normal.”

  Phew. At least he was discombobulated too.

  Silence.

  Until she started to feel uncomfortable for the first time since this began. Shifting a little, she managed to tug a soft fleece blanket over her body. “What happens now?” Her heart clenched even though she knew not to expect any kind of ugliness from Jake—he’d never been that way, and she didn’t think he’d changed, not with what she’d seen of him.

  He was no Reid.

  “I have to go home,” he said ver
y deliberately. “We need to think about this.”

  She wanted to quip that there was nothing to think about, but the fact that she was lying naked in bed with Jacob Esera and wanted to jump his bones again told her she’d be a big fat lying liar. The scorching chemistry between them…

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s sensible.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that. Sensible. Like an old grandma. But she felt tentative, not knowing where to go or what to say. Sleeping with Jake hadn’t been in her five-year post-Reid plan. It hadn’t been in any plan.

  Jake’s dark gaze held hers, but he didn’t say anything further before getting up to dress. Her eyes lingered on the sculptured lines of his body for a moment before she made herself get up and grab her robe from where she’d thrown it over a chair the previous day. Printed with red hibiscus blooms and green foliage against a black background, it was a silky mid-thigh-length thing from Everett’s autumn collection four seasons ago.

  He’d gifted it to her after she worked seven days in a row to secure a critical supplier.

  And she couldn’t keep fiddling with the belt forever.

  Turning on her heel, she left Jake to finish dressing and walked out. She was making a cup of tea when he exited the bedroom, his hair messy from her hands and a few small marks on his neck from either her mouth or her nails. Heat kissed her skin, but she kept it calm, channeling her professional self. “Drive safe.”

  A curt nod before he picked up his keys. “I’ll call you.”

  Because this was Jake, she thought he probably meant that, but he’d come to his senses soon enough. Because while she’d been in the kitchen, she’d glanced at her phone and seen an alert that said she’d been mentioned in a recent media article. It had been nothing bad, simply a reference to Everett’s upcoming campaign with Jake and his teammates—but the reporter had noted that the campaign was being coordinated by “former cricket WAG Juliet Nelisi.”

  It was a potent reminder that the tabloids would never let her live down her past. And Jake had both a kid and a squeaky-clean reputation to protect. Some of his sponsorship deals would likely fall over if he was linked to a scandal, but even worse, it’d hurt his daughter—children heard things from parents and repeated them in the schoolyard.

  Juliet respected Jake for his fierce protectiveness toward Esme. She knew what it was like to grow up without a defender, understood how much hurt could be done to a small heart by a few thoughtless words.

  Never would she hold his desire to protect his daughter against him.

  “It’s all right, Jake,” she said gently after she’d opened the front door for him and he’d stepped out. “You don’t have to call.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Someone will catch us if we do this again, and that wouldn’t be good for either you or me.”

  Any contact with a sports star, much less a sports star of Jake’s caliber, would bring the tabloids knocking on her door. They’d throw up old accusations of her being a “gold digger,” would reprint those pictures of her falling out of nightclubs at Reid’s side. She had a different life now, and if she kept her nose clean for a couple more years, maybe the tabloids and women’s magazines would forget her.

  Jake frowned, grooves in his forehead. “Jules—”

  Shaking her head at him, she smiled softly before closing the door. The sense of loss that came with the action shook her. It’d pass, she told herself as the quiet of her home settled around her again. She’d loved the quiet after leaving Reid, loved the peace, loved knowing no one would hurt her with thoughtless words or actions in this sanctuary.

  Today, for the first time, the quiet felt empty.

  Jake stood outside Juliet’s door for long seconds before he could force himself to move. Everything in him rebelled against just leaving after she’d shared her body so generously and sweetly with him. Jacob Esera didn’t do that.

  He didn’t generally stay overnight with women, but that was because he wasn’t about to leave Esme with his parents all the time. It was different on nights like today, when Esme was with her cousin and his parents had plans to do grandparent-grandkid things the next day.

  Then he’d stay with his lover, wake up the next morning, make her breakfast. Because he didn’t do one-night stands. The small number of relationships he’d had since Calypso had been relationships. He’d never gone into a single one thinking it’d just be sex—a conscious decision on his part.

  His life, who he was, meant sex was available anytime he wanted. To a lot of women, the simple fact he played professional rugby was aphrodisiac enough; they didn’t care if he had two heads or sacrificed baby goats in his spare time. But as evidenced by Leo’s constant presence in the gossip media, that sex came with all kinds of consequences, and Jake wasn’t into that. He preferred to take his time, choose lovers who treasured their own privacy and would respect his.

  He could smell Juliet on him as he drove away. Lush and aroused and sweet. The latter had surprised him—that sweetness inside her. She’d never been sweet that he knew, but she’d been Calypso’s friend, not his.

  He squeezed the steering wheel against the memories of two teenage girls laughing together in the sunshine, both in school uniforms. One with silky, straight blond hair, the other wearing a messy black braid, their smiles equally bright. Calypso, soft and plump and gentle; Juliet, all sharp angles and striking bones, a hardness to her.

  Calypso would never change from that gentle young girl; she lived in the same past as the teenage boy he’d been. Because despite the way some of the magazines tried to play up his “devotion” to his “first love,” Jake wasn’t stuck in the past. He’d grieved Calypso and he’d done it hard, but he didn’t cling to her. The brokenhearted boy had grown into a strong, confident man, and that man lived in the present. The same present that held Juliet.

  Someone will catch us if we do this again, and that wouldn’t be good for either you or me.

  She was right. She was thinking. He had to do the same.

  Because this wasn’t just about his need for privacy. He’d caught glimpses of how the media hounded her after the Reid saga; was it any wonder she wanted to stay away from another athlete who’d inevitably draw the same intrusive attention?

  Better he let her go so they could both live their lives in peace. Even if the time they’d spent together felt as if it had altered something fundamental inside him.

  17

  Breaking News! Major Scandal!

  Jake didn’t sleep well that night, but he turned up to the team’s morning training run ready to go. This was a deliberately public training session to celebrate the naming of the new squad; the public wanted to see them together as a group. Their actual training camp wouldn’t happen for another three weeks, and most of the squad would return to their home bases in the interim.

  New Zealand’s top coaches had realized at some point that superfit athletes couldn’t get any fitter beyond a certain point. Overtraining could actually lead to injury. The camp would be as much about mental strength and how to use that strength to win the game as anything else.

  Today, however, the squad jogged up one of Auckland’s volcanic cones in the lingering fog, and while everyone bitched and cursed, they all made it up without problem. The view from the top was breathtaking, the sun’s rays breaking through the clouds to bathe the city and its various waterways in pale golden light.

  Hands on his hips as the team took a moment to appreciate the view before they dropped for a punishing set of push-ups, Jake found himself thinking of another kind of beauty altogether: Juliet.

  Pastry maker. Businesswoman. Allergic to sports. And wearer of flamingo socks.

  He only had pieces of her, and now he’d never learn any more. His gut grew hot and tight, the taste of wrongness in his mouth.

  “Drop!”

  Jake snapped into focus, dropping to the ground to begin his first push-up. But even as he made sure his form was flawless, his reps perfectly in time, a part of his brain remained dedicated t
o its quiet cataloging of Juliet, the woman who could jerk his chain faster than anyone else on the planet. The woman with whom he’d had the most phenomenal sex of his life. And the woman with whom he forgot to be staid, serious Jacob Esera and became a younger man with far less weight on his shoulders.

  The way down the mountain was easier, and he ended up beside Danny. His brother might be the youngest member of the squad, but he was as disciplined and determined as any of his older teammates. Yeah, Danny could party, but unlike Reid Mescall, the youngest Esera brother limited his big nights out to the off-season.

  During the season, the entire squad ate clean, slept solid hours, and maintained strong bodies capable of brutal bursts of speed. Even Leo followed the team rules—he went out with a different woman every evening, but you wouldn’t find any photos of him in the clubs after a certain time of night; underneath his womanizing surface, the man fans called the Lion was one of the best second five-eighths in the world.

  “You see Boo and Sweetiepie this morning?” Jake asked his brother.

  Danny had first put on the squad’s iconic black jersey at age nineteen. He’d signed a major sponsorship deal six months later. As a result, he had far more money than most twenty-two-year-olds. Despite that, he hadn’t gotten his own place, preferring to stay with Alison and Joseph when in the country.

  Not to say that he was in his old room; no, Danny had his own apartment above the villa’s detached double garage. He had privacy to come and go as he pleased, and their parents weren’t the kind to monitor his movements anyway. It worked.

  Jake himself hadn’t moved out until Esme began to go to school. He could’ve never continued with rugby without his parents’ support, much less made the national squad at age twenty-one. Ísa and Sailor, parents of an eleven-month-old at the time of Esme’s birth, had also helped by passing on their own experiences and talking with him and Calypso in the late-night hours when they got up to settle a restless Emmaline.