Linebacker's Second Chance (Bad Boy Ballers) (14 page)

I cover her mouth with mine, drawing in her pouty lower lip. Her body is rigid, but her lips respond to me, pulling me in even as the rest of her hesitates. Lifting my hand to her cheek, I brush an errant lock of hair behind her ear.
 

It’s only then that her body responds, arms wrapping around my shoulders, tongue finding mine, body going slack against the chair. I move my hand down her back, and ever so gently, slip it under her shirt. At once, she stiffens again, squirming like she’s thought better of the whole thing. But she moves closer, like she’s drawn to me.

Like I’m drawn to her. Inexorably. Undeniably.
 

My other hand finds the top of her shorts, fingers crossing the silky smoothness of her skin to find the button, then the zipper. Pausing, I pull away and look at her again. She doesn’t nod, but she doesn’t back away, those eyes locked on mine.
 

To my surprise, she leans forward and kisses me again, and my hands move lower to work their magic.
 

Her shorts drop, and I rip the panties away.
 

She gasps when the air hits her.

Wearing only her red lace bra, she’s a perfect sight. The vision I’ve been dreaming of night after night since the day I left her. My fingers fly to the back of her bra and unhook it, letting her honey-brown breasts fall free. There’s another sharp intake of breath as my mouth and fingers find her dark nipples, teasing and playing, bringing Renata’s long-hidden desires to the surface of her skin. I flick my tongue over the soft swell of one nipple and then the other. Faintly, she groans, and I look up to her again, making sure to go slow, making sure this is something she wants as badly as I do.

“I want you, Renata. I don’t want that silly excuse for a woman. Rumors fly, and I know she’s already sleeping with one of the other guys on the team because I won’t put out.”
 

She gives me another version of the same look she had before. “You won’t put out? That’s a first.” There’s a smirk on her face, but it’s hard to take her seriously when there’s a pile of her clothes at her feet, and her bare sex is pressing into my jeans.
 

“I can’t. Not when you’re anywhere around.”

“Then tell me…why…” Her voice trails off, and she watches as I shake my head slowly.
 

For a second, she looks like she’s about to spring up and leave, but instead, she sighs and draws me closer in, her lanky arms around my neck, lips pressed against my ear. “Then I’m fine with you dropping Kinley after the engagement party, and I’m fine with a little fooling around. But if you want anything more, I expect an explanation.”

Fine with a little fooling around. I’ll take it for now.

I open my mouth to speak, but Renata takes my hand before the words can form, and places it between her legs. My cock jumps when she guides my fingers over her wetness, over her clit. Goosebumps rise on her flesh as I begin to circle that sensitive button I knew so well before.
 

“Look at me,” I say, and her eyes meet mine as my fingers fall into a rhythm, remembered and familiar. My fingers dart between her folds, finding the ridged place inside, massaging, beckoning as she begins to whimper. Slowly, I begin to move my fingers back and forth, tapping her g-spot softly with each thrust. Her sex throbs gently against my fingers, and she puts her hands behind her on the chair to hold herself up. There’s nothing I want more than to unleash my cock and impale her on my length until she’s begging for more. Instead, I move slowly, using my fingers, drawing her orgasm out of her. My palm rocks against her clit as I work her body, drawing her to the edge.

“Ohhh—” A moan escapes from a place deep inside, and I cover her mouth with mine as her walls tighten and pulse against my fingers. She pushes down, bucking against my hand. The heat spreads over her body, shivers rising over her skin, until I sense that her pleasure is complete.
 

I expect her to go. I expect her to waltz out and leave—and she’d have every right to. Instead, her hand reaches out and finds my cock. It’s like time stops at that instant, and everything starts to go in slow motion. She gets me to back up, and then she
kneels
in front of me, unbuttoning my jeans and pulling them down so that my rock-hard cock is exposed.
 

Her lips. Her
lips
. Touching my skin, finding the sensitive spot beneath the head of my cock, coaxing me like I did her a few moments ago. She flicks her tongue over the head, and she takes my shaft in fully, letting it hit the back of her throat.

In my days as a professional athlete, I’ve been with women—plenty of them. None of them compare to Renata, the pure pleasure of watching her, seeing her become the sexual goddess she usually keeps hidden inside. It’s a thing that happens with many women—especially the smart, professional ones—but when that woman is particularly special and she gives pleasure with such relish and abandon, it’s maybe the rarest and most beautiful thing a man can witness.
 

She slows her rhythm, tending to my cock with great care.
 

And then it happens. I come, the sensation like a jolt of white-hot lightning searing through me all at once. I don’t mean to let go inside of her mouth—but she swallows, her hand at the base of my shaft, like this is what
she
clearly intended. Even being near her is different than being with any other woman. This encounter made it even clearer that she was the one that I was intended to be with.

Later, after we’ve pulled on our clothes, and straightened mussed hair and shirts, the emotion lingers for me. But Renata seems distant, far away, almost like she’s sad or angry or deeply disappointed. I can list ten reasons why she'd be distant, but there’s no regret on my part.
 

This is just the first step in showing her that we’re right together, and that I
am
capable of change.

When she turns to go, she looks at me quizzically for one second. “You want to keep your job?”

“Yeah,” I sigh.
 

“And you want to be with me? And ditch Kinley?”

“That’s about right,” I reply.

“And you want to tell me
nothing
about what happened before?”

“Well, not nothing. But yeah, you got me. Not much right now. You gotta trust me. I can tell you in time—but there are things I need to tend to first.” I slip my hands in my pockets and watch her as she walks to the door.
 

“Okay.”

“Okay what?” I ask.
 

“Okay, I’ll try and trust you. And I’ll see you tomorrow night for that event with Kinley. Then we’ll talk and try to get out of this.”
 

The first time I got
out
of an engagement, I was a broken man, and maybe I still am. But this—this is something to be excited about.
 

I go for my next practice and try to push away the feeling that none of this is going to be as easy as it seems.

“I don’t want to go through with it.” Mack is on my doorstep
again
, and it’s the eve of his engagement party to a woman who doesn’t mean a thing to him. That would all be well and good if I hadn’t let him tear off my clothes and—well, everything we did.
 

There’s a signed contract. There are messages on my phone from Kinley and Eddie Davidson, reminding me that if we don’t go through with this, Mack is out of a job. And his reputation is permanently ruined.

“I don’t think we
can
relent on the engagement party, Mack. I said it when I saw you last… and I’m saying it now.” I pause for a moment, a deep heat coming to my cheeks. The last time I saw Mack, well—things had gone a little farther than I’d anticipated. I’d finally given in to the painful need I’d been feeling for him.

Two nights ago, I reconsidered everything. And I
knew
that this engagement wasn’t right.
 

Two nights ago, I went to bed, desperate for Mack’s body. I’ve never felt what it was truly like to be with him, to have him inside of me, see his face when he comes.
 

It was a good thing I slipped my vibrator into my checked luggage on the way from San Francisco, because I needed to come twice before I could fall asleep. The taste of Mack on my lips was intoxicating, damaging,
dangerous
.
 

Like a drug you can’t get enough of.

You know it’s bad for you. You know you’ll be longing for more once it runs out on you, once you’re sad and lonely, waiting for a fix that won’t come again.

That’s what he does to me.
 

I want to throw away everything, all the caution, all the barriers I have built up, for a chance to be with him. But I staked his career on this engagement—and long ago, it seemed like Mack made it clear he wasn’t interested in me at all.
 

His brother Jared told me that it would
always
be over between me and Macklin Pride—he wasn’t ready to get married, at least not to a poor farm girl like me. I try to remind myself of those hateful words when Mack catches my eyes.

Mack takes my hands, and a shock runs through me, activating that place of deep, deep longing. “We can always back out. Tell them I have the flu, and so do you. And then we disappear forever.”

I shake my head, and that conflicted feeling comes back to my body. “You’ll get fired. You’ll get kicked out on your ass and blacklisted from every other team in the league. You won’t be able to play again, not this season. You know what that does to a player…” My voice trails off. He’s looking at me like I’m his prey, like he’s the hawk that just caught a glimpse of me and couldn’t resist. I think of his taste on my lips, how good it felt to make him come, how sweet it was to let myself melt into his arms, how he played me like a musical instrument, how I came for him while he watched me with those predatory eyes.
 

“Doesn’t matter much to me, Ren. I don’t want to go ahead with the party if you have any hesitation about it at all.”

“You can’t do this to me, Mack. Not like this. I know you
think
you feel something for me, but what happened the other day, that was some long overdue… fun.”
 

“Bull
shit
, Renata.”

“What was that?” I stifle a laugh at his serious tone.
 

“I said that’s bullshit. You know it, and I know it.”
 

He bites one lip like he’s meaning to say something else, but the words won’t come. I wonder what’s hidden under the surface. So many people discounted Mack, said he wasn’t intelligent just because he was big and made of muscle and preferred the ins and outs of football to calculus. When I looked at him, I always saw something different—his skill and ability to calculate what was needed in a football game. And more than that, an uncanny talent for reading people, an empathy that never seemed in line with his size and strength. Both of those things seemed to have vanished when he started drinking so much.
 

But now, I see the man standing in front of me—closer to the person he was when I knew him in college. Closer to the man I fell in love with.
 

He’s still the man who left you, Renata.

Even still, I’m tempted to jump into his arms and tell everyone else to go screw themselves.
 

But the caterers are already here, and Kinley is due to arrive any second—along with the owner of the team. There’s nothing on earth I want less than this, but it’s the plan we made. It’s all written up in the contract, and there’s not much we can do at this point, as much as we might want to make it all disappear.
 

A stabbing guilt hits me. It was different when he was just the man who broke my heart, the party boy with the reputation for breaking hearts by the dozen. But that’s not the man I see standing in front of me. That’s not the Macklin Pride I knew in college--and from the moment I appeared, staring down at him, his whole act has changed. Like everything made a lot more sense for him as soon as I showed up in his life again.
 

That couldn’t be.
 

I keep feeling like I’m in limbo, a hell of my own creation.
 

I don’t know why Macklin left me six years ago, and I don’t know how the hell to get him out of an engagement he insists he doesn’t want. Hell, Kinley even went out and bought her own ring, quite likely accompanied by the other football player she’s sleeping with.