A strange look came over Jordan’s face. “Take your panties off.”
My eyebrow shot up. “What?”
Jordan took my face in his hands, looking me right in the eyes as he backed me towards the pedestal sink. “Take. Off. Your. Panties. Now.”
I pulled my eyebrows together, confused as I stared into his completely serious expression. And then I reached under my dress, and slid the flimsy fabric of my thong panties down my legs and over my heels.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, taking them from my hands and slipping them into his pocket. I yelped as he easily picked me up, perching me on the edge of the sink. “Let me explain how this is going to work.”
I watched, completely confused and completely intrigued as he rolled the fabric of my dress up around my hips, then stepped between my legs. My heart started to race as he unfastened his pants, letting them fall, with his boxers, to the floor, and his dick sprang free.
He hooked an arm around my waist as he lined himself up with my opening, but didn’t push inside.
“I didn’t get you this far for you to give up on me,” he said, meeting my gaze. “Not without us giving this a real shot. So… you can be as jealous as you want to be. We don’t have to tell anybody, because I’m not interested in messing up your career. But only if we’re together. Only if we’re serious. I want you, but we won’t play these games. We either are, or we aren’t. No in-between.”
I didn’t get to answer before he plunged into me with a firm stroke that made me cry out, not caring if anybody heard it. “Jordan!”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he muttered into my neck as he stroked me again. “Cheat on you, embarrass you, none of that shit, Nicki. I just want you. Can you understand that?”
“Yes,” I whimpered, hanging on to his shoulders as he slammed into me.
He hooked my legs around his waist and I locked them there as he angled his face toward mine. “Do you want me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you really?”
“I absolutely do,” was my half-breathless, earnest reply. I flinched, then moaned as he nipped my bottom lip, then pulled it into his mouth, sucking it hard as he pressed into me, deep.
“Then stop fighting it.”
He released my lip from his hold and then slipped his tongue into my mouth, swallowing my cries as he stroked. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, but tears of pleasure still dripped down my cheeks. Blindly, clumsily, my fingers found the buttons on his shirt, and I didn’t even bother with the tie before I haphazardly tugged it open, needing to touch his skin. My fingers ran over the ridges of his abs, up his chest before they settled behind his neck, holding on as he plunged deeper, faster, harder.
He picked me up, gripping my ass as he slammed into me. A shiver ran through me as he turned us, pressing me into the wall. Moments later, my whole body began to shake. He buried his face in my neck again, kissing, sucking, biting me there as I melted against him, clenching around him as I came.
I kept my arms tight around his neck as he finished with a growl. He took a few seconds to catch his breath, then moved his face to mine, devouring my mouth with a deep kiss that snatched away the last breath I had.
“You’re mine,” he said against my lips, then glanced up to meet my gaze. “Okay?”
I nodded immediately, surprised at how… relieved I felt at his declaration. I was thankful to have it not be up to me, to just… go with it.
“Okay.”
Fifteen
“You’re so damned stingy, ugh!”
I grinned at the pout wrinkling Nicki’s pretty lips as she flipped the covers back to climb out of bed. She stomped across the room, into the bathroom of our suite, where she slammed the door closed behind her, and I shook my head, turning back to the screen of my cell phone.
For about the tenth time in the two weeks that had passed since the Royal Ball, I’d woken up with Nicki in our suite at the Veil hotel, which was a Drake property. Drake hotel properties were already known for luxury, quality, and extreme customer satisfaction, but Veil took it a step further – privacy.
You needed a keycard to enter any of the ground level entrances, and the main entrance, to the lobby, was only accessible through the private underground parking garage. The hotel, their employees, and their guests were bound by non-disclosure agreements. If you didn’t sign, you didn’t come in. If you ran your mouth, you were paying for it, and if you had too much money for that to scare you, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that Lincoln and Braxton Drake would handle you otherwise.
People minded their own business at Veil, which made it perfect for me and Nicki.
Two Kings Return to Reign was the name of the article dominating my attention this morning, instead of Nicki. I’d woken up to hundreds of tags and notifications, expecting some bullshit, but was pleasantly surprised by Maggie York’s piece, highlighting the shared history between me and Trent on the field, and our current “plundering of NFL kingdom”, as she put it.
I didn’t want to jinx anything by getting too cocky about it, but I was – to put it lightly – fucking hype about TB’s return to the field, and the way it had been going. It wasn’t even like we’d had blow-out scores. We’d worked hard as hell for every win we’d earned since he came back, and honestly… that made me value them even more. Nothing worth having comes without a struggle. TB dropped that little nugget to me a while back, and it stuck with me, reminding me that the shit that came easy was usually temporary or not worth a damn.
Huh.
That was part of how I knew this thing with Nicki had to be the real deal. The girl was driving me nuts, and… I loved it.
I read a few more comments on the article – grinning at the positive, cussing out the authors of the negative ones in my head – then climbed out of bed myself, going to find her.
I heard the shower running before I even stepped into the bathroom. Nicki had been dreading this day for two weeks, because she had so much to do. Meetings with higher-ups, including her father, meetings with players about their progress and potential with the team, contract signings. Overall just a busy ass day, and she was already stressed about it.
When I walked in, she was perched on the stone tiled seat built into the shower wall, legs open. Even with the steam, I could see her clearly through the glass, with the stream from the shower attachment directed right at her sweet spot.
“Yo, what are you doing?” I called out, chuckling as I pulled the shower door open.
She groaned as she opened her eyes, to glare at me. “Doing what you won’t this morning.”
“You know I—”
“Can’t before practice, blah blah,” she finished for me, rolling her eyes.
I shook my head, taking the sprayer from her hand and hooking it back on the wall. “What’s with the attitude, huh?” She tried to look away from me as I hauled her into my arms, pulling her soaked body against me as I moved us out of the water. “Spit it out.”
Finally, she brought those pretty brown eyes to meet mine, then gave in, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I’m stressed. And horny. And you aren’t cooperating.”
“My bad,” I murmured into her neck, making her groan. “But you know I can’t before practice if I’m gonna be worth a damn out there. Tonight though…”
“I know, I know.” She took a deep breath. “That’s why I was handling it myself.”
“And who, exactly, told you that you could “handle” my pussy yourself? Huh?”
She narrowed her eyes at me, pulling her face into a scowl. “Ugh.”
“What’s the ugh for?” I laughed.
“Because!” She kept up the scowl as long as she could, but it only took a few seconds for her face to break into a smile. “If you were… anybody else, I’d be cursing you out right now, berating you about how you can’t tell me what I can and can’t do with my pussy.”
I put a finger under her chin, using my thumb to stroke her cheek. “But?”
“I
have no desire to say that to you, and it’s pissing me off.”
I grinned. “You don’t want to say it because you know who it belongs to,” I teased, slipping a hand between her thighs, and then up to her slick, wet folds. She immediately parted her legs, letting me in, and I pushed a finger into her. “Look how wet you are, nothing to do with a damn shower. She knows.”
“I can’t stand you,” Nicki whispered against my mouth as I brought my lips down to hers.
I eased her back against the wall. “You can’t get enough.”
She groaned as I pumped her with my fingers, then moved us closer to the spray from the shower. Suddenly, she shrieked and jumped away from me, frantically feeling the silk scarf carefully tied on her head. “I have a hair appointment this morning before my first meeting. I can’t get it wet before a touchup,” she scolded.
“My bad,” I said, pushing her into the wall again, and returning my hand between her legs. “I’ll chill, since you really do need that touchup. Can’t have your first two inches looking like the motherland while the rest looks like Mizani.”
Nicki let out a laugh that quickly turned into a sigh as my thumb pressed to her clit. “You remember me saying that to you,” she mumbled, then bit her lip in pleasure.
“Every eight to ten weeks,” I answered, as she dug her nails into my shoulders, hanging on as she moved closer to orgasm. “I remember… damn near everything about you.”
Her lips fell open, panting. She stared up at me for several moments, squirming against my touch, then brought a hand up to my face. “Jordan…”
“I’m amazing, I know,” I grinned, then dropped my mouth to hers. “Now, hush. Let me have a moment with my pussy before we have to go.”
Twenty minutes later, I was reclined in the back seat as Kendrick got me to practice. I’d handled Nicki’s horniness issue, but she seemed more stressed when I left her at the hotel, still scrambling to get ready for her day. I didn’t like that shit – not even a little – but I knew better than to say too much about it. While I would have been content to have her put in her resignation and just chill, I knew Nicki wasn’t about that. And Cole? Would be ready to throw hands at the suggestion.
She was a tough girl though, so I knew she’d be fine. Instead of worrying about her, when I couldn’t help anyway, I focused on mentally preparing myself for practice. There weren’t many games left in the season, and if we had any chance of making the playoffs, let alone the SuperBowl, we had to keep winning.
We were almost at the practice facility when my phone rang, and an international number popped up on my screen. I couldn’t help myself – I grinned like a big ass kid as I slid my thumb across the screen to answer it.
“Hey beautiful,” I said, still smiling.
“Hay is for horses, Jordan,” came the warm voice from the other end of the line. “But hello yourself, handsome. How is my baby doing?”
“I’m aiight. What about you? It’s been a little while.”
Too long, but I wasn’t going to say it. Mahalia – Halle – Logan wouldn’t care about my scolding anyway. She did what she wanted.
“I know, my love. I’ve just gotten back from Tanzania, and your mother is quite exhausted.”
I bunched my eyebrows. “Tanzania? What the f—what were you doing in Tanzania?”
“Kilimanjaro, of course,” she said, as if that were just an obvious answer. “Twenty-thousand feet.”
“Kili—as in the mountain?”
“Well, what else would I be talking about? It was very exhilarating. You’ll have to come with me, when your season is over. We’ll hike it together!”
“Mama, you’re sixty years old! What are you doing hiking twenty-thousand feet?”
“Well, being alive, of course. And excuse you – I’m fifty-eight. And… relax. Kilimanjaro was nothing compared to Everest.”
“Everest?! Where all those people died in that damn movie?! Are you trying to kill me woman?!” The sound of my mother’s usually soothing voice, bursting into giggles, did nothing to calm my sudden stress. “No wonder we haven’t heard from you in damn near two months. You’re out hiking the globe.”
“Well, that is the plan,” she said, when her giggles finally calmed down. David and I would like to fit in one more peak this year, before Christmas.”
I rolled my eyes. I should have known her little boyfriend, David – she pronounced it Dah-veed, since he was foreign I guess, but I called his black ass Dave-id – , had something to do with this. “Tell David I’m busting his head open if something happens to you.”
“David, Jordan says he’s going to hurt you if something happens to me,” she said, sounding a little faint, as if she’d taken her mouth away from the phone. “He says it’s a deal,” she declared, sounding normal again, and I tried not to smile. I gave old boy a hard time, but the fact was that he loved my mother, and I couldn’t do anything but respect that.
“As long as he knows,” I shot back, then glanced out the window to see we were pulling into the Kings facility parking lot. “Where are you now?”
“At David’s home in Nairobi, revitalizing. But I didn’t call to talk about me. I want to hear about you, my love, and Jessmyn. She didn’t answer when I called.”
“She’s probably sleeping. She had a big show last night.”
“What?!” my mother gasped. “I missed a show of hers?! Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Chill, mama. It was a last-minute opportunity, and you’ve been out of pocket. Trust me, Jess isn’t tripping about it. She’ll be excited to tell you though.”
The long sigh she released made me feel badly for her, but I was telling the truth about Jess being cool about it. We both understood our mother, and why she chose the lifestyle she did. As long as she was happy, we were good.
“Well, what about you? Anything notable, other than the fight you were in? David showed me a lovely article about you this morning.”
I chuckled. For a few seconds, I considered telling her about the development between me and Nicki, who she’d adored, but I opted against it. As happy as I was, it was still too new to tell my mother, who would be ready to plan an international wedding.
“I’m good, mama. Just glad to be on the winning team again.”
“Excellent. And that despot of a father of yours?”
I shook my head. My mother left my father when I was a teenager, and had only looked back for me and Jess. Back then, it felt like abandonment, but now that I was an adult, I realized my mother had been fed up for a long ass time before she finally pulled the trigger on their dying relationship.
She hid her hurt well, for years. While we were in private schools, with tutors, exclusive football and gymnastic coaches, Jack and Jill, all of that, she played the role of Stepford wife to a man who was never satisfied. His demanding nature didn’t stop at his children – it bled on to her too. Not that being demanding was necessarily a problem in itself – there was nothing wrong with pushing, expecting the best from the people around you. But with my father, it was never enough.
It didn’t matter if you made all A’s, you should have been valedictorian. It didn’t matter if you broke high school football records, they didn’t compare to college numbers. Jess made it all the way to Olympic trials in gymnastics, but it didn’t fucking matter cause she didn’t make Team USA. It didn’t matter that my mother was named “Sexiest NFL Wife” by Baller magazine three years in a row, beating out twenty year old women who indulged in surgery and weave, shopping for body parts like they were groceries. He didn’t care that she was an amazing mother to us, was known as the person to go to for planning a memorable event, or that she ran herself ragged trying to be everything.
Even as a kid, I could see that he treated her like trash, but in front of us, she handled herself with grace. I’d heard her private tears and didn’t quite understand them, because she never seemed ruffled. Even when he’d come home drunk, reeking of perfume, and later, when I recognized the smell, women, she didn’t se
em phased.
Until he made Hall of Fame, and instead of celebrating with his family, he ended up all over the tabloids for what they called an “Alcohol-Fueled Sex Rampage”.
My mother packed her shit while he was still hungover.
“He’s… himself,” I finally answered. Truthfully, I’d been avoiding my father for weeks, and had made it a point not to talk to him. I was high on our current winning streak, and had no desire to let his miserable ass bring me down from it.
My mother snorted. “Sounds about right.”
“Yeah. I hate to have to cut this short, mama, but…”
“Practice, I know,” she said, sighing. “I know there’s a time difference, I was trying to catch you before.”
“Yeah, I gotta go. Please be safe with this hiking stuff, aiight?”
“I will. David makes sure of it. You be safe on the field, my love.”
“I will mama. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I stayed in the car for a few moments after we hung up, processing that phone call. Hearing from her had lifted a weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying, because I’d grown so used to not hearing from her for long stretches while she jet-setted with David.
My father had been pissed when she left, and tried to stretch the divorce as long as he could. He kept her on a string for almost two years, until my mother said screw it, and started dating again. Unfortunately for my father, David’s money was much longer than his. He whisked my mother off to Vienna, Zurich, Hong Kong, anywhere she wanted to go in the world, but my father hadn’t been interested in taking her. The divorce was settled through lawyers while they were off traveling, and I was pretty sure they hadn’t stopped traveling since then.
To this day, my father hated that shit – which in my eyes, made it even better.
“Yo, you ready for this, nigga?” Trent asked me that same day, after practice.
I answered with a nod as I pulled my simple chain back around my neck. “As ready as I’m gonna be.” On the surface, it probably looked like he was just looking out for me because this was the last practice before a Thursday night game. But this wasn’t just any game.
Love on the Highlight Reel (Connecticut Kings Book 2) Page 18
