Love Hard (Hard Play Book 3)

by Nalini Singh

  “Tell me about your honeymoon,” she said to Charlotte afterward.

  As Charlotte regaled Juliet about the pleasures of sun and snorkeling and laziness, followed by what appeared to have been a lovely visit with the Samoa-based Esera grandparents, Jake spoke to Gabriel about the New York shoot. At one point, she heard him relaying the story about the female model and how Juliet had “spanked” the ad exec, and there was so much pride in his voice that she felt ten feet tall.

  The dinner that followed was as full of laughter and conversation, with Jake ragging his brother on his workaholic ways. “If you tell me you didn’t work the whole honeymoon, I’ll eat my manky old running shoe.”

  “We negotiated a contract beforehand,” Gabriel said, his arm braced on the back of Charlotte’s chair. “I got two hours a day to clear major issues. I picked up the phone again at my peril—my wife would not have been amused.” His smile was sinful as he looked at Charlotte.

  “Don’t you forget it,” Charlotte said, the softest blush on her cheeks. “He was very good about sticking to our contract,” she added afterward. “One day he actually forgot about his phone—to be honest, I worried he was getting sick.”

  Gabriel rumbled a response to Charlie’s tongue-in-cheek comment, and laughter filled the air.

  Juliet realized it would always be like this, whether she was with Jake and Esme alone or if they were joined by other members of the family or their friends. Family for the Bishop-Eseras meant support, laughter, ties that bound with affection and love.

  Buzzing after the lovely night, she felt lazy and sexy when they got into bed. Jake was feeling the same, kissing her all over, his hand stroking her curves with unhurried patience as he murmured naughty, dirty things that made her toes curl. But it was his breath that hitched when she took over the kissing and began to make her way down his body.

  In the mood to tease, she kissed him everywhere except where he wanted her mouth. His thighs were rock hard and gorgeous with muscle, his abdomen ridged, the hairs on his legs rubbing against her in delicious friction.

  Though she was torturing him, he didn’t tell her to hurry up.

  They were both having too much fun.

  His hand did fist in her hair, but he was careful to be gentle.

  When she finally closed her mouth over the taut, reddened head of his cock, his back lifted off the bed, his hand shifting to cradle her nape.

  “Jules.” It was a groan.

  Moaning, she stroked his thigh and drew him deeper into her mouth, enjoying giving him pleasure. Her core grew hotter, wetter, small pulses clenching her muscles. Until by the time he tugged her up his body and asked her to ride him, she was desperate to have him inside her.

  A gasp escaped both of them as she settled on him.

  Sitting up with her astride him, Jake wrapped his arms around her, his mouth coming to her own. She moved on him as they kissed and the way he held her, with such possessive tenderness, it thickened her throat and made her weave her hands into his hair. As close as two people could be, they touched and made love and Juliet began to believe in happy ever after.

  A month later and Jake was having the best game of his career.

  The lights of Eden Park blazed down on him, the field a rich green except where it was marked by the sponsors’ logos.

  That wasn’t to say it had been an easy game—in point of fact, it had been a bruiser. The clock had eight minutes to go, Jake’s team was behind by six points… and the ball had just hit Jake’s hands.

  Seeing a gap in their opponent’s defenses, he ran, always aware of all the players around him. Right before his body smashed into that of an aggressive flanker who had his head down to tackle him, he threw the ball in a sweet, sweet pass that landed in Danny’s hands.

  Even as Jake’s momentum crashed him into the defending flanker, he saw his brother’s winged feet fly. He came up from the tackle relatively fast, just in time to see that Danny was about to be tackled. Leo was to his back and right, but Danny did sometimes have a problem with his spatial awareness on the field.

  Already running, Jake yelled, “Danny! Five!” It was a simple clock reference—no need or time for complicated calls when play was moving this fast; their opposition would have no time to take advantage, not if Danny passed quick enough.

  The ball left his brother’s hands just before Danny went down in the tackle, the defender’s hit taking him out-of-bounds. But the ball was still in play and Leo, fast and powerful, was in the clear… all the way to the try line. Jake yelled with the rest of his team, fist pumping the air as Leo slid across the line, thumping the ball down in the area behind the goal posts.

  The whistle awarding the try and the resulting five points split the air.

  But the celebrations had to wait. With the clock rapidly counting down, Jake quickly set up the kick awarded to his team for having successfully achieved a try. If he managed to clear the goalposts, they’d get the two points they needed to win this match. The conversion kick, however, was always lined up with where the ball had been placed during the try, and Leo had slid across at a spot that meant the kick would be from an acute left angle.

  Wiping the sweat off his face using his playing jersey, Jake set the oval-shaped ball upright on the kicking tee, tilting it a fraction toward the right as was his preference. Then he breathed deep and shut out the screaming crowds, stopped seeing his teammates, and focused on the passion inside that drove him.

  Juliet and Esme. Twin flames deep in his heart.

  He moved back several steps, looked at the goalposts one last time in the silence inside his mind, pictured the ball flying through the posts in a perfect curve, then flowed into the kick. The ball flew in what seemed an impossible arc, one that meant it’d bounce off the posts, losing them the game.

  The entire stadium was hushed.

  The ball sailed through, the referee’s flags went up to signify a successful conversion, and the stands erupted.

  The final whistle went off at the same time and Jake was overwhelmed by his jubilant teammates, including an ecstatic Leo—who wrapped one arm around Danny’s neck and hauled him down for a kiss on the cheek. “Fucking insane pass, Danny boy!”

  Words were lost in the overlapping conversations, sheer joy ascendant.

  Jake looked up toward the area in the stands where he knew his family and the two pieces of his heart were watching, and though he couldn’t see them from this far away, he blew a kiss in that direction.

  Juliet caught that kiss, curling her fingers against her thundering heart. It was pandemonium in the private box behind the family’s seats. Gabriel had opened a bottle of champagne, the girls were yelling and dancing, and Sailor had found streamers that he’d let off before pulling his wife close for an ecstatic kiss.

  “You okay?” Alison touched her lower back.

  “I just… It’s so dangerous, the game.” She’d never truly understood the amount of force that came from two such powerful men hitting each other at speed. When Jake had gone down just before the try, she’d jerked out of her seat, her skin ice-cold.

  “It took me time,” Alison murmured. “But it’s their passion. If I stopped them, I’d kill a part of them.” She stroked her hand down Juliet’s spine. “Jake’s a brilliant player, rarely goes for brute force. He plays with intelligence and strategy.”

  Juliet nodded; she’d seen that on the field. Jake had scored tries in his career, but more often, he set up the try. It was as if his mind could see multiple steps ahead—even when all the pieces on the board were moving. “He’s really good,” she said, then flushed. “Sorry, I never properly watched rugby before being with Jake.”

  Laughing, Alison passed over a glass of champagne while behind them, Sailor started popping open beers for those who wanted them. Ísa and the girls already had glasses of bubbly pink grape juice in hand.

  “I still get a shock sometimes,” Alison said, “when I see Danny and Jake do impossible things on the field—how are these my b
oys? The same ones I picked up a hundred times when they were learning to walk.”

  Juliet could commiserate; she still hadn’t internalized the fact that Jake was her man. That the world continued to question their relationship didn’t exactly help. She had a firsthand demonstration of the public’s lack of belief in their relationship later that night, when Jake gave in to his family’s urgings to head out on the town with his team to celebrate.

  “Esme can sleep over with Emmaline,” Ísa said, sending the girls into paroxysms of delight.

  With this being a home game, which would be followed by a break, the men’s wives and girlfriends and partners were welcome to join in the celebration, and Jake laughingly told Juliet to put on her glad rags. His eyes were shining from the rush of the win, his hair wet from the postgame shower, his body all heat and skin—and more than one bruise, which he’d shrugged off.

  Juliet wasn’t so sanguine, but knew she had to get a handle on her worry if she was to be with Jake—and she definitely couldn’t use that worry as an excuse not to go out, no matter the urgings of her subconscious. Because the magazines were once again calling her a WAG, as if the rest of her life and her achievements held no value now that she was on Jake’s arm. Ugh.

  “Hey, Jules, how about this?” Jake, who’d been inside the walk-in wardrobe, returned with a sparkly silver dress in hand.

  It was ridiculously short and she’d only ever worn it once—on a girls’ night out with Aroha soon after her divorce. The slimy male attention she’d attracted had left her vowing to donate the dress to charity, but she’d liked the sparkly, pretty thing too much to let it go. “You realize I’m all boobs and ass in that dress?”

  A slow, sinful grin that melted her at the knees. “How about you put it on so I can decide for myself?”

  Lips twitching because the man was irresistible when he played with her, she shimmied out of her jeans and threw them on the bed, then tugged off her team sweatshirt. Jake watched with an appreciative glint in his eye, especially when she went to unhook her bra.

  His groan at her bared breasts made her thighs want to clench.

  34

  In Which Jake Has One Thing on His Mind (Lucky Juliet)

  Padding toward him, she leaned into his chest, her naked breasts pressed to his equally naked chest. He bent his head to meet her halfway, their kiss carnal.

  She shivered when she pulled back and tugged the dress from his hand. It fell over her head in a shimmer of sparkles and long strings of silver. The actual dress barely cleared her butt, but the falling silver strings made it an inch or two more modest.

  Turning so her back was to him, she swept her hair over her shoulder and to the front. “Zip me up.”

  He kissed a line up her spine instead, his hands stroking the backs of her thighs. “How about we stay in?” It was a rumble against her.

  Juliet wanted to jump on the offer, but this was Jake’s night to celebrate—and hiding wouldn’t rid her of the WAG label. It would follow her around like a bad smell regardless. “We promised Leo a ride, remember?” The other man had planned to catch a ride-share car so he could have a drink or two, but Juliet had volunteered to be a sober driver.

  Jake groaned but finished zipping her up.

  When she turned, he wolf whistled. “Damn, you’re hot, Jules.”

  Delight bubbled in her—where the lecherous glances she’d experienced the first time she’d worn this dress had creeped her out, Jake’s honest pleasure in how she looked had her sauntering over to the makeup table, her hips swaying.

  In no mood to behave, he came and stroked her butt and kissed her shoulder and whispered naughty things in her ear and generally distracted her into a breathless, panting mess who didn’t protest in the least when he slid his hands under her dress to tug down her panties.

  Pushing up her dress afterward, he slid into her honey-slick body, his eyes holding hers in the mirror before he bent his head to kiss that spot in the curve of her neck. She moved with him, adoring him for remembering her little pleasure spots and for giving them attention.

  “Jake.” A whisper that held so much love.

  “Mmm.” He began to speed up his thrusts even as his eyes locked with hers once more, his smile wicked. “You are so fucking beautiful.”

  Her heart, it melted right into his hands. Even more so when, after they’d both orgasmed, he cradled her against his body while he nuzzled her throat. Reaching back with her hand, she ran her fingernails lightly across the back of his scalp and thought, screw the magazines.

  Tonight she’d forget the world was watching and party with the man she loved.

  Happy and sated, the two of them were in a good mood when they walked into the chosen club with Leo. The lights were dim, the music bright, and more than one player had brought his wife or girlfriend. Juliet took it on the chin when most of those women gave her the stink eye—she couldn’t blame them, not when, according to a number of Reid-fueled articles, Juliet was a voracious raptor out to snatch every man possible.

  Thankfully the disapprobation wasn’t total. A tall brunette with slick straight hair came over to chat while Jake was distracted talking to a teammate—though he kept his arm around Juliet’s waist.

  “We’ve never met,” the other woman said, “but I worked on Everett’s deal in London. I’m with Jin, Beckstead, and Partners.”

  Juliet began to lose the knot in her stomach. “Lawyer or accountant?” The firm was a merged one, with two arms.

  “Lawyer, for my sins.” A diamond flashed on her left ring finger as she took a drink of what looked to be a rum and Coke. “Name’s Zuli. I’m Oliver’s fiancée.”

  Oliver, Juliet knew, was the team captain. A solid man whom Jake deeply respected. “Thanks for not giving me the death rays from your eyes.”

  “Hah!” Zuli’s laugh was high-pitched and infectious. “I don’t listen to that gossip bullshit. Most of the ones who do are the new girlfriends—fighting to cling to their man, all that rubbish.” She rolled her eyes. “My man better fight for me. I’m not going to scurry around behind him.”

  Zuli’s opinion on the death-ray-givers proved to be spot-on. The long-term girlfriends and wives were fine with Juliet, and with Jake and his teammates in such an ebullient mood, she ended up having a great time, most of it spent dancing with Jake or chatting with the women who didn’t see her as a threat. One of them even asked Juliet’s opinion on a small business she was in the process of creating.

  It was as she was coming out of the bathroom two hours into the night that reality bit. She was in the shadows, invisible from the dance floor, but she could see it clearly. Jake had been hanging around a high table to the back right of the dance area when she left, and he was still there—but surrounded by women.

  Juliet’s stomach jolted, cold burning her cheeks.

  A second later, she caught the way he shifted subtly back from a woman who was inching closer, his eyes flicking in the direction Juliet had gone. The woman persisted. Jake sidestepped her, only to be brought up short by another woman who was determined to bag Jacob Esera.

  Who was too polite to push her out of the way.

  Juliet strode out. Unlike Jake, she had no compunction in using her height and her elbows to get through the horde. The look of relief in his eyes when he saw her had her giving him one hell of a kiss before she turned to pin the groupies with her “the Vice-President-is-Not-Amused” look. “Shoo.”

  Nearly all left.

  Juliet smiled at the two that hovered.

  Paling, they skedaddled.

  Jake, meanwhile, had buried his face in her hair. “Why did you leave me alone? I need protection.”

  Her shoulders began to shake at the forlorn tone of his voice. “My big, strong man, scared of a few women?”

  “They had the hunt-and-bag look in their eyes.”

  Shifting on her heel, she brushed his hair back from his face. “Hunt and bag?”

  “Like I’m a trophy for their wall.” Snagging one
arm around her waist, he pressed her close. “No more bathroom breaks for you.”

  That was when she realized Jake was slightly drunk. Not much, but enough that his decision-making skills had to be a bit impaired—and still he’d looked for Juliet even when surrounded by all that willing female attention. He hadn’t lapped up the attention or basked in it; no, he’d been discomforted by it.

  Jake was no Reid and never would be, and she’d never ever forget that again.

  “I promise,” she said, with a nuzzling kiss to her adorably drunk lover. “I’ll protect you.” Just as she’d love him with everything she had inside her.

  The gossip blogs were filled with photos from the team’s night out, and with so many targets, Juliet got off pretty easy. A snap of her walking into the club with Jake’s arm around her, both of them laughing, and a couple of hazy ones taken inside the club. Labeled with Jake’s name and hers, with “ex-wife of Reid Mescall” next to it.

  It made her see red, especially as the gorgeous man she loved was lying asleep next to her, one arm around her waist as she sat up to check the news on her phone. Deciding not to let it color her mood, she flicked through a few other sites and was brought up short by what was purported to be a direct quote from Jake the night before, in response to the question: “Anything to share about your new relationship?”

  “I’ll tell you what—I’ve learned that being a vice president in a multimillion-dollar company means a hell of a lot of work. Jules does more in one day than most people do in a week. I’m amazed by her.”

  Wet heat burned her eyes.

  Putting away her phone, she bent down to kiss Jake’s cheek.

  He grumbled at her. “Coffee.”

  “Talk first. Did you tell some reporter you were amazed by me?”

  “Yes. Now give me coffee.” He pretended to bite the curve of her breast.

  Laughing at her morning grump of a lover, she peppered his beard-stubbled face with kisses before pulling on a robe and walking out to put on the coffee. She didn’t remember the tickets she’d been carrying around in her purse until she and Jake were in bed later that night.