Somewhere around midnight, the rookie party wrapped up and the strip club opened its doors to other patrons.
I didn’t notice at first. One second, Carter was on stage being hazed while I got to know Will Perry more. The next, I was sandwiched between him and Jaxson Brittain as the crowd thickened around us, and it went from easy to hear the two of them to damn near impossible.
The strippers took the stage, customers crowding the front row just as much as they packed the VIP tables in the back. Go-go dancers jumped up on the bar, and the lights flashed to the beat the DJ was spinning. People talked and laughed and whistled and yelled, all of them fighting to be louder than the music — which was a feat.
Even with his mouth right by my ear, I had to make Jaxson repeat himself at least twice when he tried to keep our conversation going. He’d been telling me ridiculous stories for the past hour, mostly about the shenanigans he and Vince got into during the preseason.
At about half-past midnight, I excused myself to the restroom, laughing at my reflection when a yawn stretched my mouth wide. I was ready to call it a night.
I searched the packed club for Vince. I didn’t know why, really, but I felt like I should tell him I was heading out. It wasn’t like I’d post any of the content that would be captured after this point, anyway, and the team was getting a little too rowdy for my tastes.
I smiled a little as I recalled how carefree he’d seemed all night. I sat next to him at the rookie dinner, our knees brushing under the table, my heart pounding in my chest every time I glanced at where his massive hands held his cocktail. I couldn’t look at those hands without remembering what they did to me, and that was a very bad image to conjure up in a fancy restaurant — especially when I was wearing a dress with only a thong on underneath it.
When we’d arrived at the club in a collection of limousines, I’d thoroughly enjoyed watching him get dragged on stage to be hazed.
I loved that he was laughing, that he was having fun.
I also loved that every time I looked at him across that club, he was looking at me, too.
I internally scolded myself as my neck heated with that thought.
His cut was healing already, the bandages removed, but the bruising, tender flesh reminded me of our night together in Atlanta. It had felt a little too intimate, him opening up to me the way he had. I was thankful Reya had texted me and interrupted us before I could lose myself too much.
It was easy to do with Vince, which was a very big problem.
The crowd had a heartbeat now, and I weaved my way through it, hunting for Vince to say goodnight. I knew he was far from turning in. It was his rookie party, after all.
I thought of what he told me about pottery that first week I was on assignment, how it helped him release stress, helped him re-center. I also noted that he hadn’t been able to carve out enough time to sit at that wheel since, and I knew it had to be wearing on him.
I was glad he was cutting loose tonight. He needed it.
I asked a few teammates if they’d seen him, feeling a bit helpless when none of them could point me in his direction. I was pulling out my phone to just text him that I was heading out when I finally spotted him.
My heart split in two when I did.
It wasn’t fair, the way my breath caught at the sight of him in a VIP booth with a woman straddling his lap. It wasn’t fair how my chest squeezed the life out of my lungs when I catalogued the scene: his hands on her ass, her hips grinding against him, his panty-melting smirk, her hands running the length of his chest as she rode him to the beat.
They were both fully clothed, but it didn’t matter. I felt like I’d just walked in on him with his cock in her mouth.
She was stunning — deep brown skin, a long, midnight braid falling down her slender back. She moved on him so seductively it was like the music lived within her, and Vince let his eyes crawl over her body as she did.
He didn’t look like himself.
I registered it even as bile rose in my throat. Something was off. He seemed pissed, almost… distant, not engaged, numb.
When his eyes slowly swept up to mine, they stuck, his jaw hardening.
Like he wanted me to see.
My nostrils flared, but I turned on my heel before my eyes could water, pushing through the crowd toward the door. I gasped on the first sip of clean oxygen on the outside, and then I climbed into one of the limousines, promising the driver none of the other players were ready to leave yet, and to please just take me back and then he could return.
Blessedly, he listened, and he didn’t ask a single question as I stewed in his back seat.
I shook my head over and over, laughing and then scoffing and then growling in frustration. I shouldn’t have cared. I shouldn’t have felt sick at the sight of him with someone else. This was what I wanted.
One time, and one time only.
Back to professionals.
And that meant I had no fucking right to be upset that he had another girl in his lap.
But it killed me. The betrayal swam in my gut like a virus the whole ride back downtown.
Once the anger subsided a little, disappointment scurried in to take its place. I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was exactly what I pegged him for. It didn’t matter that he’d fucked me against a mirror ten days ago, or that he’d watched me like he saw right through me when we were alone in the hotel in Atlanta. It didn’t matter that he’d opened up to me, that he’d let me see a little more of the man behind the show.
He had already moved on, his mission accomplished. He’d seen me naked, gotten his dick wet, and now I was just another conquest he could put behind him.
I’d told him as much that night in the restaurant, when he’d cornered me in the bathroom and told me he wanted me. I’d looked him right in the eyes and told him I saw him for what he was.
But even then, there was a small part of me that wondered if he was different, if I was judging him too harshly, if he’d prove me wrong in the end.
I knew now not to hold my breath.
When the limousine pulled up in front of the skyscraper I called home now, I climbed out and all but ran up to my condo. When I kicked off my heels, I looked around at the space — at the couch that wasn’t mine, the chairs that weren’t mine, the windows and the artwork and the stupid fucking fireplace that made no sense because we lived in Florida.
I was so homesick, I let the first tear fall free.
Swiping it away as soon as it fell, I grabbed my bag out of the closet and began packing. One night in my own house wouldn’t impact my job, and tonight, I wanted my bed.
“Shake it off, Maven,” I coached myself as I packed. “It’s fine. You are fine. Everything is fine.”
I almost believed it.
Until I strapped my bag over one shoulder and heaved my door open, only to find Vince standing in the middle of the hallway.
I halted, my bag swinging and nearly taking me forward with it before it slung back in place. Vince was stone where he stood, like a tortured god captured in statue form. It was like he was coming to get me and then had stopped himself, but then didn’t know where to go or what to do next, so he just stayed, waiting.
But for what?
We stood like that a long time before he started moving toward me, his pace slow, eyes never leaving mine until he was standing in front of me at my door. His gaze flicked to my bag then, and he swallowed, finding me once more.
“Where are you going?”
The spell was broken then, and I remembered the woman writhing in his lap. I chuffed a laugh out of my nose. “Home,” I said, then I let the door shut behind me, locking it and stalking down the hall.
Vince was on my heels.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
I growled, turning to shove him hard in the chest. “If you know, then why are you asking, you pompous prick?”
“Because I want to hear you say it.”
“Say what? That I’m disgusted by your public display of lust?”
“You’re not disgusted,” he challenged. “You’re mad. You’re jealous.”
I scoffed. “I am not—”
“You are. I know because I felt the same way when I saw you cuddled up in a booth with Brittzy.”
I blinked at that, letting it sink in.
Then, I laughed.
“You’ve got to be fucking joking me. So, what, you just found the first girl who’d let you grope her and took her to the VIP booth, hoping I’d see?”
His jaw locked, but he didn’t answer.
“Wow.” I laughed again, shaking my head and pushing the button for the elevator. “Real nice, Tanev.”
“Goddamnit, woman.” He snatched my bag so fast I couldn’t register it, and then his hands were on me, sweeping up to cradle my face as he backed me into the nearest wall. I gasped when we slammed into it, heart racing at the mixture of anger and passion ignited in his golden-green eyes.
“I don’t want to do this,” he choked, Adam’s apple bobbing hard with the admission. “I don’t want to play these fucking games with you. I don’t want to be in pain when I see you with one of my teammates because I don’t have the assurance that you’re mine, and I don’t want to try to make you jealous with some random fucking girl I don’t even know. This isn’t who I am, but it’s who you make me because I’m fucking crazy for you.”
My insides melted to mush at those words, at the sight of this confident, powerful man so raw and exposed.
All for me.
It was sick what that did to me, how my thighs clenched together and my pulse picked up a notch.
The last bit of my good sense hanging on was screaming as loud as it could for me to remember what I’d just been feeling in the car ride home, to remind myself who I was playing with here. But the screams were like the buzz of a fly — annoying, and then something I could ignore altogether because my heart was humming so much louder.
Vince read right through me, something shifting in him, too.
I didn’t mean to do it, but I didn’t have a choice.
It was a green light.
His forehead met mine on a sigh, one hand sliding to palm my throat, while the other ran the length of my body and hooked my hip.
“I thought I could be patient,” he said, his breath warm on my lips. “I thought I could wait it out, wait you out, but I can’t.”
He pulled back, but held me close to him as his fingers splayed over my neck. He lifted that hand until his thumb could run the length of my bottom lip, and I just stood there and let him touch me, trying not to black out from the rush of adrenaline surging through me.
The elevator dinged, the doors opening, my last chance to escape.
I let them close.
Vince’s eyes smoldered when I didn’t smart mouth him, when I didn’t shove him away, when I didn’t bolt for that elevator. His breath was as shallow as mine, and I focused on that hollow point in his throat as he unhooked my hip.
In the next breath, that hand was up and under my dress, cupping me as I gasped and let my head fall back against the wall.
“Look at me,” he husked.
It took all my effort to do what he said, to look into his eyes as he rubbed his palm up and then down, slowly firing me to life like only he could. I wanted to fight it, and I didn’t even know why. I wanted to clamp my knees together and walk away and tell him to go fuck himself.
But my body was a traitor, and I felt myself spread for him — thighs opening, beckoning for more.
The corner of his mouth twitched, the small smile of victory.
“There’s my girl,” he said, toying with the seam of my panties. My eyelids fluttered, but I kept my focus on him, on where his eyes were dancing more and more as I let him in. “There’s my fucking girl.”
When he teased me with just the tip of one finger brushing through my wetness, I sighed, his name rolling off my tongue without permission.
“Vince.”
“What is it, pet? What do you want to say?”
I rolled my lips together, fighting against the full body tremor that racked through me when he palmed me again, harder this time, rubbing me with the friction needed to start the fire I wasn’t sure ever stopped burning from the first night he touched me.
I whimpered, melting into him, and he took my weight greedily.
“Say it,” he whispered in my ear, his fingers toying with me under my dress, tuning me like an instrument only he could play.
“Please.”
The word leaked out of me like air from a dying balloon, and the smile on Vince’s lips curled up even more.
“Please what.”
“Touch me,” I moaned, wrapping my arms around his neck as I mounted him. “Take me.”
He captured that plea with a passionate, demanding kiss, one that stole my breath and what was left of my resolve all at once. His tongue met mine, his hands holding my ass as I writhed against him, desperate for that friction he’d given me with his hand.
The rubber band snapped.
I was off the wall before I could register it, Vince still kissing me hard as he swiped my bag from the floor and carried both it and me down the hall.
“I told you so,” he grumbled against my lips.
“Excuse me?”
He bit my lip, sucking it between his teeth on a grin. “That the next time I touched you, you’d be begging me to.”
I didn’t have time to scoff or pin him with a remark of my own before he set me on my feet in front of my door, digging through my bag until he found the ring of keys I’d thrown in there.
“Unlock that door,” he said, dangling them between us before he dropped them into my hand. “And then get on your fucking knees.”
