The Lie : a bad boy sports romance

by Karla Sorensen

  Again, that voice in my head screamed itself raw that I should be admitting I was Nick and that I knew she was Turbo while we were alone with no one to disturb us.

  “Why did you pick this building?” she asked as I fished out my keys.

  I grinned over my shoulder. “This is really bugging you, isn’t it?”

  “What kind of place did you have when you played in Vegas?”

  Once the door was unlocked, I pushed it open and laughed under my breath. “Basic. Looked exactly like every other house in my neighborhood. It wasn’t all that fancy, but I paid cash, and it was mine. That was all I needed to know.”

  Her eyes tracked over the black leather furnishings, the prints on the wall that someone else had picked, and then shook her head when she saw all the gleaming granite in the kitchen.

  “Well, now I see how shiny everything is,” I mumbled. “Thanks a lot.”

  Faith laughed. “What do your parents do again?”

  I paused by the island because … what had I told her as Nick? It was getting hard to balance them in my head even though she had zero reason to suspect I was him. Still … it made me want to proceed with caution.

  Or tell her the truth. She wandered slowly, the delicate tips of her fingers trailing over each shining surface.

  “My mom is a medical assistant.” Leaning against the island, I watched her make her way into the living room and look out the wall of windows in the direction of the famous Ferris wheel overlooking the Sound. “My dad works in concrete.”

  “Where do they live?”

  My gaze tracked every movement of her body, each careful step, each detail she seemed to absorb in my apartment, like she was trying to ferret out clues. Having her here, like this, was a big fucking step. We both knew it.

  “About twenty minutes from here.”

  She turned, eyebrows raised. “You’re from Seattle? I don’t think I knew that.”

  The roof of my mouth was bone-dry. Each small puzzle piece was clicking into place, forming the edges of a picture she couldn’t yet see. “Grew up with Wolves’ posters on my wall and everything.”

  She smiled. “Did you?”

  “I should probably admit that your dad was my favorite player.”

  Faith kept her slow wandering around the family room, studying books on the chrome and glass shelves. “You have excellent taste.”

  My eyes tracked down the length of her body. “I do.”

  Over her shoulder, she gave me a prolonged look because she heard the tone in my voice. I wanted her to.

  Leaving her position by the windows, she approached me, hands clasped demurely in front of her. “There’s nothing in this place that looks like you,” she said. “It doesn’t give me a single hint about who you are.”

  When she stopped walking, I could’ve reached out, slid my hands over her hips, and tugged her close, but I didn’t. It took a Herculean effort, especially with the way she was looking up at me, anticipation making her eyes glitter in the bright overhead lights of my shiny, shiny kitchen that I now hated.

  She was right. The apartment was soulless and empty. Nothing about it made me feel comfortable. The fact that it was the first place to give me true privacy with her was the only thing that made it salvageable.

  “It’s stupid, now that I think about it,” I told her, hooking a finger around the edge of her wrist and giving her a slight tug. She came willingly, hands sliding up my chest. I widened my stance, so she could fit neatly into the space between my legs. “My big return to the place I grew up. Thought I needed the nicest address to go with it.”

  Her smile was bemused. “I hate to break it to you, hotshot, but I don’t think anyone cares whether you live here or not.”

  She was right about that too. It proved absolutely nothing. Impressed no one. Especially not this woman in front of me, who would’ve been just as happy in an old building with brick and wood and character that felt like me. No matter what was happening in the locker room, I realized that I didn’t actually care to impress any of them. All I’d wanted was to feel welcome. The reason I didn’t was because of all the shit I’d pulled, no matter what my intentions had been.

  The one who made me feel welcome was Faith because she pried back the Walker the Wild persona, simply because she could tell it wasn’t real. Or that it wasn’t all that I was.

  In front of me, Faith smelled so sweet and clean, and my whole body vibrated unsteadily, want rushing fiercely through my veins. Everything about her was warm and giving, and more than anything, I wanted to see how that translated in bed. All the places she’d smell sweet and clean like she did now. All the places she’d be warm and soft, where I could pull her into my mouth, feel her with my fingers and hands.

  She’d take me. And I couldn’t wait to know what that felt like.

  “I know they don’t care,” I admitted, plucking her hand from my chest so that I could gently suck one fingertip into my mouth. I rubbed my tongue along the pad of her finger, and her breath caught. “I hate that I still feel like I have something to prove, even if they’re not watching.”

  “W-why do you think you do that?”

  “Sometimes, I get these awful impulses,” I told her quietly, “a devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other. I can see them clear as if they were real.”

  Faith listened quietly, her eyes wide and patient. Her gift, what she’d given now in both versions of herself, was understanding and acceptance without the chains of judgment. I wondered if she understood how rare that was. She was the most inherently trustworthy person I’d ever met, and still, I couldn’t bring up the words of honesty that I knew I owed her.

  “The day I signed the paperwork for this place, I couldn’t even tell you why I listened to one over the other.” I met her gaze. This was my admission of guilt, even if I wasn’t saying every single thing I should have. “In your mom’s office, I was so pissed off at how everything was turning out that first day. I think you know which impulse I followed then too.”

  “What did they tell you that day?”

  I hummed. “That someone like you could never understand what I’d been through, the things that ended with me in that office. That you’d look at me in the exact same way that all the rich scholarship boys did in college, like I didn’t deserve a spot on that field.”

  Even talking about it now, which I hadn’t planned to do, I could feel those same prickles of anger, at myself, at the impulses I told her about that led me to shove just a little too hard on the field, to rip my helmet off and get in someone’s face when they talked just a bit too much shit behind the safety of their protective gear.

  But instead of boiling over, it simply set my blood to a low simmer.

  Nothing I’d said made her back away. Nothing I’d admitted darkened her eyes or filled her face with pity.

  “I don’t really understand why you were willing to give me a chance after that,” I said, my palms skimming up the curve of her waist until my thumbs brushed the bottom curve of her breasts. “Most people don’t once they see what they want. What they think is the truth.”

  Her body arched slightly into my touch, the skin under her thin cotton dress warm and supple. I couldn’t wait to use my tongue there. “Do you still feel like you need to prove something to me?”

  The million-dollar question. Wasn’t that why I’d done all of this? Clawed my way into a position where I’d earned her favor, where I felt worthy of it. Every step of my career had been exactly like this. I did the thing no one expected of me, the thing they’d dismissed upon the first glimpse.

  Did I feel like I needed to prove more to Faith?

  I shook my head. “Not anymore.”

  Faith’s pink lips curled softly, and I couldn’t wait any longer.

  Cushioning her bottom lip between mine, I sucked gently until it pulled a soft gasp of air from her mouth. My hands slid down her back until the curves of her ass were under my fingers. She was pressed tight to me, my hips bracketing either side of he
rs, and against the softness of her stomach, I was so, so hard. Ready to rip and tear, to lay her out on that horrible shiny surface like she was a feast prepared only for my enjoyment.

  She arched her back, winding her arms around my neck. Our kiss turned quickly from soft, sweet sips to dark and wet and sucking.

  The slide of her tongue against mine had my grip tightening, the line of her dress riding up over her hips as I tugged it upward. Underneath her dress was lace, so fragile as I curled my fingers into the hem surrounding her hips.

  Her fingers shoved up underneath my T-shirt, raking the sharp tips of her nails against my stomach, and it was that sweet edge of pain that had me tug her underwear to the side until she broke away from our kiss with a shocked gasp.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I told her, ducking down to suck along the skin of her shoulder. Frantically, I pushed at the short sleeves, but they didn’t bare her to me like I wanted. Faith shoved away from me, hair and eyes wild, and for just a second, I braced for her to stop me, to tell me she couldn’t, that she didn’t know what she was doing here with me.

  But then she gripped the edge of her dress and tugged it over her head.

  Underneath was a simple lace white bralette, the matching underwear that I’d almost ripped clean from her body. I stood from the island, giving my shirt the same treatment, dumping it in a pile on the floor next to her dress. With her eyes wide, Faith traced the design tattooed on my chest, an ivy-covered cross.

  Heart beating viciously in my chest, I gripped her hips in my hands and started walking her backward toward my bedroom.

  “Is this the rest of the tour?” she teased.

  My voice came out a growling, angry command. “Later. Much, much later.” I took her mouth, pressing her against the back of the couch when I couldn’t go another inch without tasting her again. My bed was too far away. She met me with equal fervor and then some, her fingers digging into my skin, her tongue searching and hot and wet. My hands filled with warm flesh underneath the innocent-looking bra, and she trembled in my arms when I tugged it off.

  She toed off her shoes while I struggled with my belt and shoved off my jeans because there were way, way too many clothes between us.

  I fisted my hand into the soft, silky length of her hair and slanted my mouth over hers, again and again, while her toned thighs wrapped around my waist. All that was between us was the scrap of white lace.

  My thumb moved in tight circles on her chest, and she whimpered into our kiss.

  “You feel so good,” I breathed against her kiss-ravaged mouth.

  “Take me to bed, Dominic,” she begged. I bent at the knee and boosted my hands underneath her ass to carry her. It would’ve been so easy to take her there on the couch, but yes, a big bed was good.

  The bed dominated the center of the room, and I stopped at the edge, let her legs unfold slowly until her toes touched the floor. Our mouths moved over each other. Her hands were sliding over my shoulders and back while mine tangled again in her hair when I sucked her tongue into my mouth.

  She slid out of my grasp and backed up to the mattress, her legs closing together demurely. It drove me crazy. I prowled over her, pushing her knees apart with a rough hand, my tongue licking a line up the center of her chest, stopping to circle her breast, to blow lightly along her chest until her body shook.

  Faith tugged her underwear off, and I reached into the nightstand for a foil packet.

  For a moment, clutching the small square in my hand, I stared dazedly at her sprawled over the pristine white bedding. There was no way she was real, no way that somehow, I’d done enough good in my life to deserve someone like Faith laid out like this for me.

  For years, she’d been my best friend. And now, she was every fucking fantasy come to life as she arched her back, sliding her nimble fingers around me until my chin dropped to my chest.

  I covered her hand with mine and directed her until I had to yank those slim, strong fingers off before this ended way too soon.

  “What are you waiting for?” she whispered, sitting up to kiss along my chest, finding my mouth open and waiting and greedy.

  My hands were clumsy, shaky in my haste to cross this line with her, the most important person in my life.

  Tell her, tell her, tell her.

  I blocked out the voice with a vicious snap of an iron door in my brain because, at this point, stopping just might kill me. And in the way she moved against me, the way she pressed desperately into my hand when I brought her to a moaning, body-wracking peak, it might kill Faith too.

  Forehead pressed against her, her thighs snapped tight to my sides, I did nothing more than breathe her in when I carefully pushed forward, inch by delicious inch.

  She fit me so perfectly.

  Everything about her—the way she kissed, the way she filled my hands, the way her body responded to mine. This was no first time, no matter what our history said. I’d fight the truth of it until my knuckles were bloody because this woman wasn’t new to me. She couldn’t be, not with how good it was.

  I wasn’t sure if I believed in reincarnation, but if I’d ever lived another life, it was one spent with her.

  With each roll of my hips, each shift of hers, sweat gathered at the base of my spine and dotted her chest. I licked it off, and she cursed under her breath when I locked her hands down on the bed with mine.

  “More,” I urged her, moving furiously between her legs until the bed creaked ominously.

  “I can’t.”

  I bit down on her bottom lip. “Come on, sunshine,” I growled. “Give it to me.”

  Her teeth sank into the flesh of my shoulder, my skin absorbing her moans when I changed the angle of my movements.

  There.

  The angle, the speed, and her, everything rolled and burned together under my skin until I shouted her name with my head tossed back.

  She sobbed through a shuddering finish, and I sank against her body.

  I gathered her to me, pressing soft kisses along the sweet lines of her face.

  And when Faith’s mouth curved into a pleased smile, I knew how completely and utterly wrecked I would be if she ever left me.

  Faith

  “You haven’t packed yet,” I murmured drowsily. But instead of getting up, I tucked my hands under the pillow and buried my nose straight into it, the smell so fricken addictive that I worried I might steal the thing and take it home with me.

  Dominic hummed low in his chest, bracketing me with his muscular thighs as his hands slid along my naked back.

  It was truly amazing how relaxed one felt after two orgasms and a back massage from someone with really, really good hands.

  “I’ll throw some stuff together in the morning,” he said.

  “It is morning.”

  “Shhh, we’re not worrying about what time it is right now.” Dominic leaned down and trailed kisses down the length of my spine. “I don’t need to leave until seven, which is at least another five hours.”

  After our first round, he’d fed me cereal in bed, then tugged me on top of him for round two. I liked round two a lot because Dominic Walker was just as demanding from underneath as he was when he was on top, and it did good, good things to me.

  It was my very first experience with the kind of sex that could make you feel crazy, make you want to push yourself beyond the worst of exhaustion, simply to have more.

  With unerring accuracy, he pressed his fingers into a knot on my shoulders that had my hips tilting from the pressure it released.

  “Holy fracksticks,” I moaned. “Where did you learn that?”

  “Just doing what would feel good to me, I guess.”

  “Don’t ever, ever stop.” I blew out a hard breath when he released another knot.

  He gentled his movements, and I tried very hard not to pout when he slid back under the sheet and tugged me from my position on my stomach so that my arm was draped over his chest, my breasts pressed against his side. I set my chin on his chest and studie
d his face as he closed his eyes and let out a contented sigh.

  When would this gentle side of him stop surprising me?

  “You know,” I said quietly, “I misjudged you too.”

  Dominic’s eyes opened, that gaze locking onto mine.

  My fingers traced the edge of his bottom lip, a dangerous weapon in its own right.

  He propped a hand under his head so he could see me a bit better. “How’s that?”

  I kissed his chest, marveling at the softness of his skin over all the hard, hard muscle. “Even though we had such a good visit at the center that first time, I knew you weren’t as horrible as our first meeting suggested.” I paused to kiss him again, so he knew I was teasing. “Even with that, I was so sure I knew what would happen when you asked me out. I’ve known so many football players in my life. More than I can count.”

  “Uh-huh, let’s not talk about them right now.”

  His surly tone had me nipping his chest. He pinched my butt, and I laughed.

  “I would’ve bet everything I owned that you were going to take me to some obnoxious club, try to grind on me to terrible music, maybe cop a feel in the car and then pout when I wouldn’t sleep with you on the first date because you took me to an obnoxious club to grind on me in the dark.”

  Dominic’s chest shook with silent laughter. “How incredibly vivid your imagination is.”

  “I know.” I shook my head. “You’ve surprised me, Dominic Walker. In the very best way. I’m glad you asked me out.”

  He turned us so that we faced each other, our legs tangled underneath the sheets. His affection was so easy, so unrestrained, and he studied my face while he tucked my hair behind my ear.

  “Faith, I—” he started, his eyes searching mine.

  There was a look on his face that had my heart thumping, my tummy going weightless with anticipation. I was feeling some crazy things too, falling in love things, but I wasn’t sure we were ready to say them.

  Carefully, I set my finger over his lips. “We have more than tonight.”