by Serena Bell
I’d laugh, except I’m too busy loving the hard heat of him against my palm.
He shucks his pants and briefs. He’s uncut, the foreskin pushed nearly all the way back by how swollen he is. My mouth actually waters. This is kind of crazy to me, how actively I want him. Like want to touch, want to taste, want him in me. I’ve never been an unwilling participant, but I’ve also never been one to command anyone to fuck me or hurry up. I reach for him again, wanting him in my hand, or maybe in my mouth, but he pushes me away.
“Next time,” he says.
He kneels between my legs and kisses my navel, then scoots up over me to take a nipple in his mouth. He pulls it deep and the sensation shoots straight into my core. He could make me come again, easy.
“Ty, please.”
He tilts his head to one side. “Not yet,” he says. “I’m in charge. You can be as tough as you want everywhere else you want, but I know what you need right now.”
I whimper.
He uses one hand to part my folds and the other to slide himself against me—not inside, just against my wet, swollen lips. And then he strokes over me, the same not-too-hard, not-too-soft touch as before, his mouth tight over my breast, his other fingers toying almost idly with my nipple, and I come again, calling his name.
Then he pulls a condom on and lines himself up at my seam, and I wait for him to push in but he just holds still there until I can’t stand it and I slide down the bed on my elbows to try to get what I’m craving. To try to fill myself up with him.
“You want something?” he inquires.
I groan and collapse back on the bed and then—only then—he plunges into me. He’s big and I’m tight from the long celibate spell and from coming twice, but I’m also wet as sin and he slides home, deep, easy.
“Oh, Christ,” he says.
“No, just my—” But I don’t finish the sentence because he’s taking his last fraction and jamming his pubic bone up against mine and it’s entirely possible I’m going to come for a third time before he’s done with me.
“I’m gonna do this as slow as I can,” he says, to no one in particular, and I feel this wild surge of pleasure and joy, not just where our bodies are joined, but because being with Ty Williams is ridiculous fun.
He does it slowly, pulling out, pausing, thrusting back in, just as deep. Deeper. Oh.
He keeps that pace for a few thrusts, but I can tell it’s not easy for him, and he’s getting faster, and I’m lifting my hips and pushing back against him, that last little pull almost too much where I’m sore and swollen, but also just right, faster and faster, almost ragged now, and I can feel the moment when he finally completely loses his rhythm, his hips askew as he powers into me, his long, strong body rigid and trembling as he lets go inside me. But it’s his face, lined with concentration and pleasure and something close to pain, that gets to me, finally, my chest nearly splitting open with that strange too-much surge of emotion, my body wringing the last bit of release from him.
Chapter 34
Ty
I open my eyes to a room flooded with light. My new condo. I’m lying in my bed, naked. Memories from last night flood me, and I reach out to hook an arm around Iona and draw her close, but she’s gone.
I sit up and listen carefully.
No one’s showering or cooking breakfast in the next room or even quietly turning the pages of a book on the couch.
I get out of bed and slowly prowl the perimeter, hoping to find her curled up somewhere. Or staring out a window, killing time till I wake up.
She’s gone.
And I’m suddenly gripped with a totally unfamiliar sensation: panic. Because maybe she has sex like that all the time, but I don’t. It didn’t just feel like two bodies. It felt like two selves. Like a conversation, almost. And I want more of it, the way I always want more from her.
When was the last time I let myself want anything from any woman? Or from anyone at all?
Players leave all the time in the PFL, and when they leave, they’re gone. They walk out of your life and into a vacuum, and you might never see them again.
And, for me, at least, women come and go. There’s a rhythm to it: Meet, snare, score, say goodbye. I don’t stop to think about it, not anymore. It’s the way it is; they know it and I know it.
You can’t let yourself get too attached. If you screw up and do—
Like I did with Mack—
Life will find a way to smack you down for it.
That’s what I’m thinking about when the front door opens and Iona comes in, carrying a paper bag and a tray of coffees from Starbucks.
Air rushes into my lungs. “Oh,” I say. “Hey.” Trying for casual.
“Did you see my note?” She sets her spoils down on the coffee table and goes and gets a slip of paper from the kitchen table.
Grabbing us some breakfast. Back soon. Keep the bed warm.
I shake my head, not willing to tell her where my thoughts had gone.
“I wasn’t sure what you like,” she says apologetically. “So I got you a maple bar and a chocolate donut and a cheese Danish. I figured there’d be something in there you could tolerate. And I didn’t know how you took your coffee, so I left it black, figuring you could doctor it here and that would be better.”
My heart is pounding, just now beginning to slow down at the sight of her, still dressed in the clothes she’d come to me in last night, smiling a little sheepishly as she holds out the paper bag and my cup of coffee.
I don’t care what kind of pastry I eat for breakfast, or whether my coffee is doctored the way I like it—skim milk and one sugar. I take the bag and the coffee from her and set them down on the counter that divides the small kitchen from the rest of the living room, and then I reach out and draw her into my arms. And I hold her there. For a moment, I don’t even have designs on her. I just want to keep her where she is, to stop time and delay the inevitable. The moment when she is going to leave—leave the Grizzlies, leave the team, leave the corps, leave me.
But it’s impossible to have Iona in my arms and not want more from her, especially when she tilts her face up to mine and smiles at me. I lean down and kiss her. Her mouth tastes like chocolate and coffee, and she kisses back, lifting her arms up to wrap them around my neck. I hoist her up and carry her back to the bedroom, lay her down crosswise on the bed.
“You got dressed,” I complain.
She laughs. “It would have been awkward, getting coffee and donuts naked.”
I strip her out of her clothes, kissing her everywhere as I bare her. Her skin is smooth and warm, and I love all the different textures I find—the slickness of her mouth, the round softness of her cheek, the cool smoothness of her throat. Her breasts are soft as silk until I kiss toward where her nipples have stood up, taut, like they’re waiting for me. I suck one, then the other, and she lifts her hips and makes little helpless noises.
I kiss my way down, teasing under her breasts and into her navel, and lower, until I can part her lips and kiss her between her legs.
“Coffee’s—getting—cold,” she says breathlessly.
“If you care, I’m not doing this right.”
“I—don’t—care.”
I tease and lick and circle, my hands on her thighs so I can feel the muscles tightening as I drive her higher. She clutches my head and rubs my hair and digs her fingernails into my arms.
“Ty—”
“Mmm-hmm?” I hum it against her skin.
“Don’t stop.”
I don’t even dignify that with an answer, just lick in narrowing circles until my focus zeroes in on her clit, and she comes with a long, low moan.
I shuck my clothes and reach for a condom, but she stops me. “No. Let me.”
I’m standing close to the bed, facing it, and she turns her body around on the bed, lies on her stomach, and cups my ass in her hands, drawing me close. I watch, my mind blown by the image, as she circles the head of my cock with her tongue. Holy shit. The touch is
just right, firm and insistent, and then she opens wide and takes me in, and I have to use all my powers of concentration to hang on. I don’t want it to end too quickly. I want to make it last.
She takes me deep, swirling her tongue back and forth under my head, licking up and down my length, nudging me against the back of her throat.
“That’s so fucking good,” I tell her. “Just like that, baby.”
She grabs me harder and pulls me deeper, and it’s only the fact that I want to be inside her in a different way that keeps me from losing it. I pull out of her hot, wet, amazing mouth. “Lie back.”
Sheathing myself, I climb over her and do it slowly this time. Long strokes. All the way in her, all the way out, watching her face. Her eyes flutter and close on the in stroke, open in awe on the out. I could watch her all day.
Well, maybe not all day, because she tips her hips just a little, and something new about the angle squeezes me in a different way, and without meaning to, I fill her, deep, deeper than I’ve been yet, and she cries out, pulsing around me. And that does me in. A man’s only got so much patience, and she’s stolen all of mine, and now her body’s milking me, and I come so hard it’s almost painful.
We lie there awhile. My hands linger on her body, stroking quietly, because I can’t get enough of her skin. After a few minutes I throw out the condom and clean us both up with a warm washcloth. She laughs when I do.
“What?” I demand.
“It doesn’t fit. The big, mean linebacker and his warm washcloth.”
“That’s why stereotypes are shit.” I settle next to her, and finally, finally, I get to try out the twisty curls on her head, tugging them one by one and watching them bounce back.
“I love your hair,” I say.
She lifts up and kisses me. Sweetly, not like she’s starting us up again, but like she just wants to say thank you.
“Ty.”
There’s something in it, in the sound of my name, that makes my chest hurt.
“I got a call this morning while I was out getting breakfast. From the head coach of the Brawlers.”
D.C.’s team. My head goes muzzy.
“They want to offer me a three-year linebackers coaching contract at twice what I’m getting here. And O’Brien is headed for retirement as the defensive coordinator, in about that timeframe—”
No!
But I’m not surprised. Not really. She’s so good, and it’s good PR for any team to hire a woman.
And I’m not surprised she’d be interested. Just—
So sad. Really, really damn sad.
“Cross is headed for retirement, too,” I point out.
She sits up. My mouth waters at the sight of her, but before I can reach for her, she slides off the bed and begins gathering up her clothes. She puts her bra and panties back on, and I watch, because even though it was more fun in the other direction, I love seeing the fabric cup the parts of her where I’ve had my hands and mouth. I love seeing her hands glide over her skin.
And I’m all too aware that I might not get to watch her like this again. That this is borrowed time.
She pokes her head and arms through her T-shirt and says, “It might not be so bad for me to get away from this situation. We’re always going to be watching our backs and trying to keep it on the down low, and it’s probably going to affect my chances of getting another contract next year, and even if I get the contract, they’re going to be waiting for me to fuck up—”
I want so bad for it to not be true, but she’s dead right.
“If it’s almost inevitable that one of us is going to end up somewhere else eventually, and we both know this isn’t—I mean, Sally was just—”
We both know this isn’t forever.
Sally was just kidding when she brought up marriage.
I know my face betrayed me when Sally said that yesterday. And Iona has been completely honest about not wanting to put her career on the line for anything less than a serious, committed relationship.
I don’t do serious.
I don’t do committed.
I don’t, for fuck’s sake, do marriage.
I can’t help feeling like I knew it was going to go down just like this. Like I’ve been here before, even though I haven’t. “So you’re thinking you’re going to take it. The D.C. job.”
“I’m thinking it might be the best. For everyone. It’s a good position, but it’s on my terms, not their stupid sell-me-out-to-Baltimore bullshit. I’ll be near my old friends, it’s good money—”
But I’m here.
I don’t say it. For all the reasons I’ve already mentioned.
We never made each other any promises. Except the ones we didn’t say out loud. Not to take anything away from each other. Not to get in each other’s way. Because what brought us together, what made it impossible for us to stay away from each other, was knowing that we’re the same. That we love this game with a crazy passion, that we’ll fight to belong to it. We’ll fight the people who say we can’t, we’re not good enough, it’s not for us, we’ll cross the country as many times as we have to, we’ll walk away from other temptations.
I’d never take that away from her, just like she’d never take it away from me.
So I say, “I am so fucking psyched for you, Iona.”
And I am.
“They gave me some time to think about it.”
“You might get some other offers, too. You could weigh them. Although—D.C.—that’s so great.”
“You could come visit,” she says.
“I will,” I say. But I won’t, because watching her walk out the door once is going to be more than fucking enough for me.
For the very first time between us, it feels awkward. Like there’s nothing to say and nothing to do. I get out of bed and pull on my shorts, and then we wander into the living room.
“Breakfast?” I ask.
She shakes her head with a sweet, sad smile. “I should probably take it to go,” she says. I hand her her coffee—cool now—and she picks the chocolate donut. I walk her to the door and hold both her hands in mine. I kiss her, and suddenly, she clings to me.
“Ty,” she says, “you’re the best man I’ve ever met.”
And then, while I’m still too choked up to say anything at all, she lets me go and slips out the door.
Chapter 35
Ty
We take an early lead against Arizona, then lose it in the second quarter.
This is it. Our last chance at the playoffs. And it’s one of those mind-fuck situations, because even if we win this game, Atlanta has to lose its game later today in order for us to get the wild card spot, and—well, that’s not going to happen.
But still. This is do or die, and I’m pretty much dying.
You can never say, It’s me when you play on such a big team, when there are so many factors that go into every win or every loss. But I know I’m not playing well today, and I can feel it pulling down O and Haight and—well, probably the whole fucking defense.
I haven’t slept well this week. Not since the night I spent with Iona, when I was dead to the world. Every night since then, I’ve lain awake, trying to stop craving her. Trying to stop thinking about what it felt like to be inside her, in her mouth, in her heat. Trying to stop wanting to tell her every little thought that crosses my mind.
Trying to stop wanting to call her and beg her not to take the D.C. job.
And maybe it’s that, the lack of sleep, or maybe it’s thinking about having to start fresh with another coach next season, or maybe it’s this fucking game and the fact that we don’t really control our fate, but I’m having trouble caring. I’m having trouble playing like I want to win.
I remember her saying, right after she got here, that I always played for someone else. Mack, O, anyone but me. And staring at her, at the hard lines of her scowl, I realize: For the past eight weeks, I’ve been playing for her.
The weight that’s been on my shoulders and chest all week gets a
little heavier, because I’m not sure how to stop playing for her.
We even the score with a field goal toward the end of the third quarter, but I blow my reads and let the running back pick up a long gain to start the fourth quarter, and then Martin unleashes the kind of long pass usually reserved for hail Mary situations. I watch, helpless, as the ball spirals out of the air and into the sure hands of Greg McCovern. On the next two downs, they march over us like we’re napping, convert once, and score. Fucking clinic. I feel like I’m watching the whole thing at a slight remove, like I’m watching someone else play my position.
Iona calls me over, her posture screaming frustration with me. “What the fuck was that?”
I stand there, staring at her, wanting her to say it again, wanting to watch her mouth as she shapes the word. Wanting to tell her all about missing her in plain sight. About not wanting to take anything away from her even though I don’t want her to go.
“Where is your head?”
With effort, I pull myself away from those thoughts.
“Focus,” she says.
I take a deep breath and get my head back in the game. Because she’s asking me to, and there’s not a thing I’d refuse her.
“You have to want to win this fucking game, Ty. You have to want to fucking win it for you.”
I’ve seen Iona intense, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look quite like this, fists clenched, face set in determination. And I realize: As much as she loves coaching, her whole body wishes it were out there on the field, doing what I’m doing. Playing the game. She wishes she could focus for me, win for me.
Like I’ve said, I can’t deny this girl anything. And especially not this. Because she’s going to leave, and my choices are, I can let her walk away with my will to win, or I can dig deep, the way she’s asking me to, and find it in myself.
It’s the last gift I’ll be able to give her, and it’s something both of us can take with us after this is all over. Because even standing here surrounded by a hundred sweaty men, steeped in the roar of the crowd, even with her scowling at me with my head bowed in shame, I can feel the pull between us, can feel what we’ve shared, and I want to give it a permanent place in my life, even if I can’t have her with me.
