Page 29 of Playing for Keeps

When I feel the vibration run through her, her tense, unshed passion communicates to me as she presses her lips to mine, parts them to allow a heady taste of her essence. And then all bets are off.

The answer is loud and clear how real this physical attraction is between us, the lust alive and rearing, making my cock strain, my pants tight. Our tongues mingle, our mouths ravenous, her hands on me, touching everywhere she can. I take my fill of her, drink in her beauty, her vibrancy, her sensuality, and let it all run through me and feed my raging blood.

Her ragged breathing mingles with mine and I separate our mouths, still close, and hold her face in my hands to look into those mesmerizing eyes. I want to say something, but my speech center isn’t working, my emotions in the red zone and my brain shut down while my cock is full of purpose. My chest heaves as I grasp for some control, something to hold onto that isn’t her, that isn’t like dynamite in my hands. Because deep down somewhere my sense of self-preservation is still at work.

“You’re a dangerous woman,” I breathe. She vibrates in my arms with the kind of sensuality that speaks to me, matching something in me like a mirror. A tremor runs through her as I nibble on her earlobe because it’s there and my body is following its own path. She feels hot and restless, like she’s balancing on that edge of danger and safety and that’s exactly where she wants to be, where she lives. One hair this side of the line.

“Not so dangerous,” she says, her voice a heady whisper. “Maybe a little naughty.”

“Naughty?” I want to laugh, but tension grips the muscles of my gut too tight, has me twitching, my cock like granite except it’s throbbing with life and putting up a fight against my self-preservation. “Naughty is too tame a word for you.”

“Trouble?” She goes back to drawing a line along my jaw with that red-tipped finger. Her face is flushed a pretty pink and that curl falls across her forehead, partly hiding one eye, making her look like the sexiest sex kitten I’ve seen since I used to paw through old Playboy magazines when I was a kid. Enough innocence and substance mixed with the sensuality to make her far more than trouble.

“Trouble’s not enough, either,” I say, raspy and parched for more. “Playing with you feels more like playing with dynamite.”

She tips her head back and stops touching me, moving on my lap to get separation then grinding so that I clench my jaw tight to stifle a groan—pleasure or pain, I’m not quite sure.

“Funny,” she says, “because I feel like I’m playing for keeps.”

Frozen for one second, staring at those eyes, my heart nearly stops before it stampedes in my chest. She shuts her eyes, blushes pink, and pushes off my chest as she scrambles off my lap to a stand.

“I think it’s time for me to go home,” she says, sounding sober and more like the Smitty I know from behind the microphone.

I stand and reach for her, because my raging heart and blood and cock heard what they heard and won’t let common sense or reason stop them, stop me, from taking her back into my arms, from kissing her again.

Even as her lips soften against mine and I taste that dynamite, feel the connection seeping and clawing into me, grabbing inside my chest to find my heart, she pushes away.

“Enough fun and games for one night,” she says turning away again. “You don’t want to get blown up, do you?”

Before I can think what to do or say, knowing I shouldn’t argue—because she’s doing me a favor, isn’t she? —I hear a commotion downstairs at the front entrance below and a loud, long whistle.

“Yo, Fontanna? You upstairs? You coming with?” It’s Gabe. I drove over with him. Either I go with him now or I go with Chloe. But she turns to me with a smirk that says no way I’m going with her. The moment is lost.

“Your friends are calling, big boy. Time to go.” She walks past me and once again I get the feeling that this isn’t right, leaving her this way, so I call out to the guys to wait a minute and I catch up with her before she gets to the stairs. Because I want the moment back.

“Wait a minute, Chloe. You—”

She puts a finger on my lips, stares at me with a purposely sultry look and says, “It’s been fun. I trust you’re not the kind of guy who kisses and tells.” Then she pulls from my arms because I’m not trying to hold her, not really, and heads downstairs, her heels clicking on the steps in a staccato rhythm like she’s dancing to some unheard music in her head. Whatever vulnerability, whatever emotional truth she’d shared is gone, taken back, locked down again behind enemy lines, inside the head and heart of the reporter.

And playing for keeps are empty words stuck inside my head with no home.

* * *

Losingmyself in football is what I do, what I’m good at, like all the guys on the team. Whatever else is going on in life, the field is the place we leave it all behind. And in spite of seeing Smitty on the sidelines of the practice field and at post-practice press conferences this week, we don’t exchange more than a look. I try like hell to match her professionalism. Her indifference. It shouldn’t be hard. She’s a damn reporter and she’s living proof why media is not to be trusted. Print, broadcast, sports, all the same. They’re just out for a story and people aren’t human beings to them, they’re subjects.

Why Chloe had wanted to seduce me Sunday night, I can no longer guess. Was there a physical connection? Hell yes. But was it enough to overcome the line between us as adversaries? Hell no. The only reasonable assumption for me to make is that she had an agenda, still has an agenda, and is waiting to play it out.

This week heading into the last pre-season game is finally at an end and I feel like a racehorse at the starting gate with the door stuck closed. The game is tomorrow and Coach hinted I might get some playing time. Finally. We’re all in the locker room to change after the light walk-through. I need a shower because it’s a muggy hot day in August and the sooty East Boston air is stuck to me in places I don’t want to think about.

In my shorts, I grab a towel from the shelf and head to the showers. Sean catches up to me, still dressed, his phone in hand.

“Fontanna, you gotta see this. My Twitter feed is blowing up about you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? And more to the point—who the fuck cares?” I turn away.

“The tweets are between the official Militia Twitter account—namely Cat Marini—and one sexy reporter—namely Chloe Smith.”

That stops me.