Offsides: The Originals (Seattle Steelheads Book 3)

by Jami Davenport

  If he got any stiffer, he’d shatter. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he pushed her away and held her at arm’s length.

  Zach, being a normal, healthy guy, stared at her breasts, like a kid anticipating the unwrapping of a Christmas present. After the last button, Kelsie slipped out of the shirt and let it fall to the floor.

  He licked his lips and swallowed. Not once, but twice. He sucked in a labored breath, and his loyalty to Gary warred with his attraction to Kelsie. She was so beautiful it actually hurt to look at her.

  “Kelsie. Please.” His voice came out hoarse and rough. He was surprised he’d managed to croak out the words. He forced his eyes away from her luscious body, but within seconds, he was looking again as she kicked off her shoes, unzipped her jeans, and pushed them down her long legs, stepping out of them. She stood before him, naked except for a purple lace bra and a pair of black lace panties.

  He blinked and nearly laughed. He’d totally expected her bra and underpants to match perfectly. Didn’t matter. She’d look fucking incredible in anything. Or nothing.

  Her gorgeous breasts rose and fell with each breath she took, hypnotizing him, pulling him closer to the point of no fucking return. A lock of her blond hair tickled the edge of her bra cup. He wanted to wrap that golden strand around his fingers and brush his hand against the creamy white skin.

  “What’s wrong? Am I still wearing too many clothes for you?”

  Too many clothes?

  Ah, hell, she was wearing far too little. At least too little for his shaky control. So why the hell was he resisting? This was Kelsie, the woman he’d lusted after since ninth grade. Unattainable Kelsie, with the incomparable beauty and charm. Kelsie, offering her body to him. To him.

  He’d never had a problem taking from women in the past, not that he did it often, but on occasion. Why the hell did it bother him this time?

  Pride? Fear? Or—

  Gary.

  Outside the house in the raging storm were Gary’s ashes. Inside stood the woman he’d picked over Gary on that fateful night.

  Scranton barked, causing them both to turn in his direction. Kelsie’s little foo-foo dog sat on his couch and watched their every move as if recording it for all time in his minuscule little pervert brain. Zach turned his back on the dog.

  “Now for you.” Kelsie looked him up and down, her eyes clearly telling him she was ready to give him what he’d dreamed of for almost two decades.

  His turn? Like he could even get his fingers to work if he wanted. He must have telegraphed the indecision. She moved forward, all fluid grace with creamy skin that smelled of flowers.

  Her fingers touched the skin at his collar, and he bit the inside of his cheek to stop the groan. She slid her hand down and unbuttoned his shirt with excruciating slowness. He held his breath until he thought he’d pass out from lack of oxygen. She pushed the shirt off his shoulders, and he shrugged out of it.

  God help me, and Gary, please forgive me. He was a weak, weak man, but he wasn’t the only warrior throughout history who’d sold his very soul for a woman.

  Their eyes met, and there was so much more there than lust. Or at least that’s how he wanted to see it, poor lovesick sap that he was. Her vulnerability called to his protective male instincts, and her sweet body called to everything else.

  She slid her fingers down his chest, with a soft and delicate touch, and he trembled. His lungs emptied of air and his heart fluttered like a fucking cherub’s. She bent down and those dream-a-thousand-dream lips of hers closed around his nipple.

  Damn. Damn him to hell.

  She licked the painfully tight nub then sucked. Licked then sucked. He groaned and buried his fingers in her hair. She sucked on his other nipple, then sank to the floor on her haunches. Unzipping his jeans, she hooked her fingers in the waistband and lowered them—briefs and all—down his hips and freed his erection—one very happy-to-see-her erection.

  One gentle shove and he sank to the couch, as if he were a ninety-pound weakling, not a two-hundred-fifty-five-pound NFL linebacker known for his toughness.

  She cradled him in her hands, ran her fingers across the velvety tip of his penis, then slid her fingers underneath to cup his balls. The blood in his brain rushed to his dick, robbing him of rational thought. He sucked in a breath and gripped the couch cushions, leaving finger impressions.

  Heaven clashed with earth as her luscious mouth touched the tip of his cock. It jerked, as if it had a mind of its own. He’d always been firmly convinced it did.

  Kelsie Carrington, his dream girl, had her mouth on his cock. He had to be hallucinating. Hell, whatever it was, he didn’t want to wake up. He wanted her any way he could get her. Because right now he couldn’t resist.

  He doubted he’d resist tomorrow night or the next either. He just hoped like hell it didn’t ruin his game. Maybe it’d improve it.

  Maybe…

  Crazy thoughts rattled through his sex-muddled brain, but one fact blasted through the fog like a ferry horn sounding across Puget Sound during a storm.

  His fantasy girl was offering herself to him and claimed not to want anything in return. This time he’d be the taker. He’d earned this.

  She’d been his fantasy his entire teenage life and some of his adult life. But in his fantasy, she’d come to him because she loved him and wanted to be with him forever. Together they became the family he’d never had. It hadn’t been just a quick fuck. It had been special to both of them. Something that bound them together for all eternity.

  He couldn’t do it. Not like this. He couldn’t destroy the last remnants of his dream for one night of satisfaction. The Kelsie who dwelled in his fantasies didn’t do one-night stands. She held to a rigid morality and insisted on commitment. Totally fiction, he knew, but his imagination wrote this story, and he wasn’t deviating from the plot it’d written. This old-fashioned novel required old-fashioned morals. There needed to be more, at least for him, even if the more only lived in an outdated fantasy. He couldn’t control her feelings and her actions, but he could his.

  Zach was fucking going to hate himself, but he did the noble thing—the dumb-assed noble thing he might live to regret for the rest of his days. He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back on her haunches. Ignoring her shocked expression, he shot to his feet, pulled up his boxers and jeans, and zipped them before he changed his mind. She stared up at him with lust-clouded, confused blue eyes.

  “I can’t do this. It’s not right.” His body, still numb with lust, couldn’t believe its bad luck, while what little of his brain was still functioning applauded his morality. He wanted her, but on his terms, and an outrageous plan started to take form in his usually practical brain. He wanted his cake and to eat it, too, even if that cake was a mirage that disappeared the closer he got to it. For a brief moment in time, his dream would be a reality—his reality.

  “It’s not right?” Kelsie blinked several times and regarded him through hazy eyes. Her clenched hands were still held out in front of her as if she’d been praying. To his cock. A cock that once again twitched with need. A cock he’d denied the pleasure of a lifetime.

  “No, this isn’t how I imagined our first time together.” Zach paced the floor. Once. Twice. Three times. He ran his hand through his thick hair. Then paced some more.

  “How did you imagine us, Zach?” Kelsie rose to her feet and pulled on her jeans and shirt and hugged herself.

  “I—I just thought it’d be special. Different.” He tried not to look at her, tried to make sense of this entire screwed-up evening.

  “And it’s not what you imagined?” she finished for him.

  He let her think that was true. Only he didn’t know the truth anymore. He still wanted restitution, payback for his brother’s death.

  “What do you want from me, Zach? What will it take for you to forgive me?”

  “I don’t know.” He had her where he’d always wanted her—at his mercy. Only it didn’t feel quite as good as he’d
always imagined it would. He was still raw from the anniversary of his brother’s death. Finally putting him to rest hadn’t brought the closure he’d imagined.

  He wanted something more, but he wasn’t sure what that something was.

  Every emotion he had was raw and on the surface. There were things…things he had to understand before he could figure out what he wanted. He deflected the question for now and asked his own.

  “What happened with you and Richmond? Did he abuse you, Kelsie?” The need to know was strong, even if he didn’t understand why he cared.

  “He did emotionally, yes, from the very beginning. He’s controlling.”

  “Did he ever strike you?”

  “Not much.”

  “What do you mean not much? What did he do to you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” She swept her hand across her forehead.

  “You can’t stay in your car anymore. Richmond was always a controlling prick. What if he comes looking for you?” As if she was any safer with Zach, but for very different reasons.

  “He won’t. He’s in prison.” She closed her eyes and hiccupped again. “At least, I think he still is.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Ruined dozens of people’s lives, stole their retirement, betrayed their trust. And I lived off that stolen money, never knowing it was ill-gotten. I should’ve known. The kind of money he was throwing around didn’t match up with his status at the law office.”

  “Did you help put him in jail?”

  “I was a witness for the prosecution, but I didn’t know much. I was oblivious to his business dealings. Even so, I’m sure he’s not happy with me.”

  He couldn’t let her go back to living in her car, no matter what it cost him. He’d abandoned his baby brother when he’d needed him most. He wouldn’t abandon Kelsie, but he hadn’t gotten to the point where he could completely let go of his anger either.

  “You can stay here.” She opened her mouth to protest and he held up a hand to silence her. “You can stay here in exchange for cooking and cleaning and, of course, you’re working on getting the house ready for the gala.”

  It wasn’t lost on either of them that he wasn’t resisting the idea of the gala.

  Her brilliant smile was his reward and his sentence. He’d be living under the same roof with her. He’d be sitting at the same dinner table with her. He’d be tripping over her ratty little dog. At the same time, he couldn’t have her.

  He’d be paying his penance, and so would she.

  Chapter 15—Offsides

  As a kid, Zach had avoided the principal’s office as much as he tried to avoid his father’s belt. Rarely did he have to sit in that stiff wooden chair while the fat, old principal wheezed like a guy in need of a good shot of oxygen. Zach became adept at flying under the radar and not catching anyone’s attention, especially his father’s. This talent served him well in his NFL career. He preferred to prove himself in the trenches rather than in television ads or Sports Illustrated.

  Yet here he was, called into the coach’s office at six fucking thirty a.m., the adult equivalent of the principal’s office. Even worse, Harris sat in a chair across from the coach, chatting with the man as if they were lifelong buddies. HughJack never chatted. The man’s endless energy didn’t allow for meaningless chatter. Derek sat in another chair, looking pissed that they’d dragged him into this mess.

  True to form, HughJack wasted no time. Zach’s butt barely hit the chair before he squelched the niceties and launched into the reason he’d called this meeting.

  “Your dislike of each other is affecting this team’s performance. Your very public argument in the locker room went viral. It’s trending on Twitter, whatever the hell that is, but the front office tells me it’s not a good thing.” HughJack wasn’t known for his IT prowess.

  Tyler cringed and Derek studied his feet. Zach wrung his hands and said nothing, even as a healthy dose of guilt clenched his gut.

  “I tried to stay out of it. Let you work these problems through yourself.” Coach skewered them both with an accusing glare.

  Tyler leaned forward, avoiding Zach’s gaze. “We’re working on it. Zach and I won’t sacrifice the team because of our differences.”

  HughJack looked skeptical. “How are you working on it?”

  Both men looked at each other. Obviously, silver-tongued Tyler was at a total loss for an answer as much as Zach was.

  “I, uh, advertised Zach’s gala on social media and website.” It sounded lame, and by the way HughJack puckered up his brow, he knew it.

  Zach snorted. “Beware of quarterbacks with websites.”

  “Fuck you. Just because I don’t do things the way you do them doesn’t mean I’m any less dedicated.”

  “You ever heard the saying that if you’re good at something, you don’t have to tell anyone about it, because they already know?”

  “Hell, yeah, they know, but I’m making sure they don’t forget. They’ll remember me long after you’re old, fat, and too feeble to toss a football around your backyard. There is a life after football, Murphy. You’d better figure out what that is because you’re getting to the end of your shelf life.”

  “That’s enough.” HughJack pounded his fist on the table so hard his Coach-of-the-Year trophy fell over. With a frown, he picked it up, examined it, and set it upright. “I gave you two selfish clowns a couple months to work out your differences. You weren’t mature enough to do it, so the women in your lives and I have done it for you.”

  “Women? What women?” Zach couldn’t imagine Kelsie getting involved in team affairs. Besides, she wasn’t the woman in his life—not really. Yeah, she lived in his house, was underfoot all the time, and nagged him about his messiness.

  Oh, God, had it come to that?

  “Your women. The ones in your lives. All three of them: Rachel, Lavender, and Kelsie.”

  “Oh. Uh, yeah, Kelsie is living with me.” Zach blurted without thinking first.

  Tyler and Derek both gaped at him, but HughJack didn’t miss a beat. “Maybe she’ll pound some sense into your thick skull.” HughJack’s eyebrows slammed together with that don’t-mess-with-my-game-plan glower. “Rachel, Lavender, and Kelsie devised a plan to teach you two knuckleheads to work together regardless of your personal opinions of each other. I didn’t like it at first, but, hell, after this last debacle, I’m willing to try anything.”

  This did not sound good. The terrible trio and the coach conspiring together?

  Tyler shot him a worried glance, and for once they agreed on something. They were screwed, really screwed. Even worse, Kelsie had betrayed his trust, and their new roommate status wasn’t even twenty-four hours old. She should’ve warned him about their female scheming so he could be prepared for this meeting, yet she hadn’t said a word during breakfast that morning.

  Harris sat back in the chair and rubbed his face. He blew out a ragged breath. “What kind of plan?”

  “Every Tuesday, you’ll meet and work on the gala. Together. No competition against each other. Just you and Zach. If the gala fails, you both fail as a team of two.”

  “But we—”

  HughJack cut Tyler off. “You’re the team captains. Don’t disappoint me. I expect you to put as much effort in this as you would any must-win game because this is a must-win for both of you.”

  “In what way?” Zach braced himself for an answer he might not want to hear.

  “Do I really need to answer that, Murphy?”

  Zach shook his head, feeling like a kid who’d been chastised for giving the wrong answer in class.

  “Working together, you’ll beat the amount of money we raised last year for the Seattle Hearts for Homeless charity.”

  “But last year was a record-breaker because that timber baron heiress paid huge money to have a date with Bruiser for the night.” Tyler’s face paled. He looked as if he was going to throw up.

  “Then you’ve got a lot of work to do. Seattle is crawlin
g with software CEOs and ancestors of timber barons.” He looked pointedly at Tyler. “Like you.”

  Zach stared at Harris, his mouth dropping open in surprise. “You have that kind of history?” His nemesis having ancestors who were Seattle timber barons somehow didn’t fit with the guy’s image.

  “How do you think Twin Cedars got built?”

  Zach shrugged, feeling stupid that he’d forgotten that simple fact. “I thought it was rumrunners.”

  “That, too.” Tyler didn’t take the least bit of offense. “And bootleggers.”

  “Regardless. Find new sources of donations.” HughJack pulled the conversation back to the issue at hand.

  “They aren’t that easy to find,” Tyler hedged. Zach noticed he dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand.

  “What if we don’t achieve it?”

  “You’ll be benched. Both of you for the first half of the first playoff game of the season or, if we’re on the verge of not making the playoffs, then the last game of the season.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “I wouldn’t? Try me. Call it tough love. I’ve had enough of your bullshit ripping the team apart. Keep your differences to yourselves. On the surface, you’d better be so enamored with each other that your teammates will think you’re suffering man crushes.”

  “They’ll never buy it. We can’t do this.” Harris clenched his jaw so hard Zach expected it to shatter any second.

  “I trust you boys to rise to the challenge.”

  “You’re nuts.” Harris’s angry look would’ve incinerated a lesser man.

  “You won’t be the first to claim that.” HughJack shrugged, glowering at the two angry jocks.

  Derek finally spoke up. “Coach, why am I here? I get along with everybody.”

  “You’re the mediator, the final word in any dispute, what you decide is law. Keep these idiots out of trouble.” He turned back to Zach and Tyler. “Your hatred of each other is killing this team. I thought about benching you both without this scheme, but now I have a way to do it and put it on both of you. Remember, this charity is very important to Veronica. Don’t screw this up.”