Three games. Three wins.
My offensive line had kept me from getting my ass knocked over all night, which was good because the Pittsburg D-line looked like they wanted me to be picking grass from between my teeth for the next week.
Normally, a win meant jubilation, a sense of relief, the knowledge that I’d fall into bed on Sunday night and sleep like the dead.
Instead, I found myself standing in my darkened kitchen, hands braced on the kitchen counter, body buzzing like someone had jammed a live wire under my skin. Without any lights on around me, I could see out into the dark night perfectly.
There were distant lights of the highway where it passed over the lake, boats floating out in the inky black water. And on the lower level of my next-door neighbor’s house, I could see a long, delicate string of patio lights lit and hung in large swoops from the bottom of her deck, converging on a tall pole that was at the far corner of her hot tub.
It gave everything a warm, soft glow, and from my perch, I could see just the top of her head as she reclined in the tub.
Her shoulders were bare, her arms extended out along the edge of the tub.
It wasn’t a live wire under my skin. It was Allie. And she generated a completely different kind of energy. It rolled off her like an uncontrollable, untamed force.
I wanted more.
I took a deep breath and rolled my neck on my shoulders, testing how my muscles felt. They were warm and loose after a vigorous treatment post-game by our staff masseuse.
Since our interlude at the hotel in Houston, I’d thought a lot about Allie. More than I should have been thinking about something that wasn’t football related, but because it hadn’t become a distraction yet, I allowed it. She was giving me space, treating me with polite respect when other people were around. Before the game, she always walked the field and wished the players a good game during our warm-up. When she reached me, I’d gotten no side-hug, no fist bump, no wide smiles or easy chatter.
But her eyes. They made my skin buzz recklessly because I saw the fire inside them that I felt burning through my bones.
And it was that polite respect that had me checking on Faith. She was snoring softly in her bed, face burrowed into her purple striped pillow. On her white nightstand, her star-shaped lamp cast her face in speckles of white and pink and purple. I sat on the edge of her bed and laid my hand on her tiny back just so I could feel the gentle rise and fall of her breathing.
It was something I used to do for months after Cassandra had died, when was just a baby. Because she was a constant blur of motion during the day, the quiet moments when I could just watch her breathe felt like precious pockets of time that I wanted desperately to freeze.
It never woke her because unless she was sick, Faith slept like a rock. I leaned down to press a kiss to her temple and slipped from her room, leaving the door ajar. As I walked down the stairs, I checked the app on my phone that I used to monitor her when she slept. Normally, I only used it when I was downstairs working out, maybe doing laps in the pool after a game and I wanted the peace of mind that she was fine.
Now I was making sure it was working so I could go proposition my new boss.
The sheer absurdity made me snort softly. But did it stop me?
Hell, no.
If anything, I congratulated myself on my genius because it was a perfect idea. The idea of Allie would likely become larger and larger in my mind until I’d wonder if I was making up the fierce heat that had combusted in that one perfect moment. Her ability to become a distraction expanded rapidly within the space of the unknown. Exploring this thing between us was the most logical way to control it.
As quietly as possible, I opened the slider onto my patio, leaving the lights off. The lights she’d hung over her own lower-level space gave me enough to navigate my yard. Thoughtful of her.
Once I reached the hedge separating our property, I took an admittedly creepy moment to look at her before she knew I was there. Her eyes were closed, her head still resting back on the edge of the hot tub as it had been earlier.
Slicked back and wet, her blond hair looked dark. Her face was bare of the makeup she’d been wearing earlier. And with the swirling water around her chest, no swimsuit visible, she looked naked.
Energy.
Electricity.
Whatever it was, Allie controlled it just by breathing. Maybe that should have had me turning back to my house, but I cleared my throat quietly and watched her sit up quickly in the water, eyes zeroing in on me instantly.
Not naked. Her strapless swimsuit was blue, the same color as her eyes.
Slowly, she sank back down in the water as I pushed through the hedge.
“Good game tonight,” she said quietly, mirroring what she’d said in the elevator a week earlier. I smirked and folded my arms over my chest. Her jewel eyes lingered on my tattoos. I’d never met a woman who could load the silence with so much visceral, pulsing force.
“Thanks.” I lifted my chin and waited for her to meet my gaze again. Not to be rushed, Allie took her damn time. “I had an idea just now.”
“I hope you didn’t hurt yourself in the process.”
I licked my lips so I didn’t laugh, smothering the smile instantly. That was why I was here. Exactly that. She wasn’t afraid of me. Didn’t elevate the idea of me to some god-like place that was so common for professional athletes. Most guys loved it, sought it out. It was why they did stupid shit like cheat on their wives in public places and not think about the consequences of getting caught. Because they thought they were above it all. That high was as addicting as any drug.
But I didn’t want that. I never had.
Allie looked at me and saw Luke. Not Luke Pierson, professional quarterback.
And maybe that was a drug of its own for me because I was standing in front of her, willing to take this risk.
With a deep breath, I walked forward until I could prop my hip against the edge of her hot tub. “I have a proposition for you.”
Her face didn’t change, except for the slow lifting of a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Yes?”
“I don’t know about you, but what happened in that hotel room felt too good to ignore.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “And believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Me too.”
“What if we make another truce?” I tilted my head to the side and thought. “Maybe truce isn’t the right word. A suspension of our professional boundaries within a certain agreed upon amount of time.”
Her lips twitched at my delivery. “And this suspension would get us, what, exactly?”
I turned so I could brace my hands on the edge, wet from the water surrounding her, the air thick and hot from the temperature of it. “Activities of the non-professional variety.”
That did it. Heated her eyes to match whatever she was sitting in. It didn’t seem possible that she wasn’t increasing the temperature of the water just from whatever was running through her head.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“My weeks are insane during the season, so I’m thinking one night a week. The only night when I can relax.”
Her smile was instant.
“So Sunday nights then?” she asked, folding her arms under the water.
I pursed my lips. “Unless we have a Monday night game. Then you’re on your own.”
“I can manage that just fine,” she purred.
Now I did laugh. “You are dangerous, Alexandra Sutton.”
Her face went uncharacteristically serious. “Not to you.”
To me most of all, I thought. But I kept it tucked safely in my head.
“Game nights,” she repeated.
“Unless I’m concussed or have a broken limb,” I amended.
Her lips curved. “I could be gentle.”
I lifted my finger. “You just told me you weren’t dangerous. Liar.”
“And everything stays downstairs,” she added an amendment of her own.
“Care to clarify?” I asked carefully, sure that she had a very good reason for asking.
“I like your daughter,” she said quickly. “But I don’t want her accidentally walking in on us in your room.”
“Neither do I.” I raised an eyebrow. “But she can walk downstairs too.”
Allie licked her lips and stared intently at my face. “I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, but I feel like bringing it upstairs, into the spaces that we live most of our lives, changes things. Makes them more serious.”
I nodded. It wasn’t coming out the wrong way to me. I understood exactly what she meant. My bedroom was my personal, private space that I didn’t share with anyone.
I’d never considered sharing it with anyone. And the scariest part, the part I refused to unpack in my thoughts, was that I could picture her in my bed with stunning clarity.
In my silence, she nibbled on her lower lip briefly before she spoke again. “Maybe it’s an arbitrary line. I don’t know. It just feels … like an important boundary.”
Maybe it was arbitrary. Maybe it wasn’t. But I understood what she was saying. Hotel rooms and couches felt different than the beds where we slept each night. Which was why I agreed.
“You’re quite a negotiator,” I said in a quiet voice. I didn’t want to spook her after something like that, but the fact she’d been thinking about my daughter spoke volumes as to what kind of woman she was.
Allie stood, water sluicing down her absolutely insane body. It was entirely possible I was drooling, so I clenched my teeth together to keep my jaw from popping open. The bottoms of her bikini were small, cut high on her long legs, and tied together by only a thin string on either side of her hips. The top could hardly contain her breasts, which, I knew from my limited encounter with them, would be a generous, overflowing handful, even for me. She was backlit by her strings of lights, giving her skin a flawless, golden glow.
At moments like this, it didn’t seem possible that she was real. She must be a figment of my imagination, created by the part of my brain that wanted to stare at someone beautiful, someone sexy and confident. My hands shook from the need to reach out and touch her.
“Do we have a deal?”
I straightened and held out my hand. “We do.”
She glanced at my hand and smirked. “I think we can do better than a handshake to seal the deal.”
Allie exited the hot tub gracefully, picking up a fluffy white towel that was slung over the top of a patio chair. Standing there waiting for me, where I was frozen in place, she patiently toweled off her hair, then wiped it down her arms.
When she bent over to dry her legs, I almost swallowed my tongue. Allie stood and wrapped the towel around her, knotting it tightly before cocking her head. “Are we going in?”
I strode forward, not wanting a repeat of the hotel where I felt like I was chasing after her. Once I was standing in front of her, towering over her, I fisted my hand in the knot of the towel, so my fingers were underneath the edge of her swimsuit top. Her heart was hammering as I walked us backward, my hand refusing to let go of the material, the soft, wet skin under my own.
“I feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter,” she teased as I reached behind me and shoved the slider open into her lower level.
“Good,” I said once she’d cleared the door. I tugged her forward and placed my mouth next to her ear, licking the edge with the tip of my tongue before whispering, “because I am absolutely going to devour you, little lamb.”
With both hands, I ripped the towel off and threw it somewhere. The slider door shut with an awkward clunk, and I backed her against it.
My mouth found hers hungry and hot, her tongue wet and cool, and I ate at her lips with a ferocious, lupine drive to take and take and take. The buzzing I’d felt earlier was nothing compared to this, to having her under my hands and mouth, to being able to sink my fingers into the luscious curves of her ass.
This was raw and unchecked, and I wanted to let my head fall back in a howl when she clutched at my back and dug her nails in. Short, hard puffs of air from my nose were the only reason I hadn’t passed out, but the thought of taking my mouth away from hers made me feel like I’d incinerate from the inside out.
The sharp edge of Allie’s teeth nipped at the tip of my tongue, and the bright, visceral tug of pain it gave me made me press into her so hard, I worried that I might hurt her. Step for step, though, she matched me.
Against the front of me, her hips moved restlessly, seeking the same thing that I was. Blinding pleasure, feral release, an unleashing of what we were both capable of.
The front of my T-shirt was wet from her suit, so I ripped at the back of it where it hooked together, unable to find a way to get it off her. Finally, I broke my mouth away and glared at it as if it had done me personal injury.
Which it had. Anything keeping me away from Allie Sutton’s chest was officially out to ruin my life.
“How the hell do you get that thing off?”
Allie laughed. She bit her lip and looked up at me through her long, black lashes. “Come on, I’ve been told you’re good with your hands. You can figure it out.”
I growled, tucking my fingers in the front. Allie’s chest heaved with labored, deep breaths, her eyes daring me. With one hard tug, I yanked it down, groaning when it was rucked around her waist, and she was finally bared to my eyes.
I bent down and kissed, licked, then when she gripped the sides of my head with both hands, I sucked. My fingers gripped her back as it arched sharply away from the glass.
“I love Sunday nights,” she gasped, and I chuckled against her soft, warm flesh.
I leaned back and went to untie one string from the side of her suit over her hips when her doorbell chimed violently.
“No,” she moaned. “No, no, no.”
My forehead dropped into the curve of her neck while my breaths came out with the force of a runaway train. This could not be happening again. I wanted to howl all over again. The kind of desperate, grieving howl of a man who’d just tasted heaven and then had it ripped away with one stupid doorbell.
The bell went off again, and Allie whimpered. Or maybe that was me. Even with the distraction, my hands didn’t stop moving. The tips of my fingers dragged up the line of her spine and around her side to the warm, full weight of her breast, which I tested with my entire palm.
“You evil, evil man,” she whispered.
Ding, dong!
I growled into her skin. “I hate whoever that is.”
With gentle hands, Allie pushed at my chest, and I backed up slowly. Very, very slowly. With narrowed eyes, I watched her tug her swimsuit top back up into place.
“Let me just see who it is.” She glanced up the stairs. “It’s not like I get many visitors, especially on a Sunday night.”
“I’ll come with you,” I said instantly.
She looked at me curiously. “Why?”
I found myself shrugging uncomfortably. “Just in case.” Her slow, sweet smile made me roll my eyes. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll stay out of view.”
Allie nodded and picked up the towel off the floor from where I’d flung it. Silently, I followed her up the stairs and waited just out of view while she carefully glanced out the window.
“Holy shit,” she exclaimed, flinging the door open to reveal a tall, thin young woman with messy red hair piled on the top of her head and suitcases on either side of her. “Paige, what the hell are you doing here?”
“I told you to get my guest room ready,” Paige said with a laugh, embracing Allie tightly.
Allie turned mid-embrace, giving me an apologetic look. I held up my hands and walked back down the stairs as quietly as possible.
“I missed you,” I heard her friend say, just as I cleared the steps.
“You have the worst timing known to man, Paige,” Allie said, and I smiled as I walked out the slider.
It was either that or weep.
And I had to be honest, weeping would probably come in about five minutes when I laid in bed.
Alone.
