Tackled

  "Say that again."

  I missed hearing the way she says my name.

  "Colton," she repeats. She grabs a handful of my t-shirt and pulls me to her, her back against the side of the truck. When my hard cock presses against her thigh, she groans.

  I pause, feeling guilty for even touching her after that asshole mauled her with his hands. She might be traumatized. I'm sure this isn't the way I'm supposed to handle something like this. "Cassie, I don't know—"

  She looks at me, her eyes flashing, like she can read my mind. "Don't you dare tell me you're feeling bad about touching me because some dickhead grabbed my boob. Seriously, if you treat me like I'm some fragile little thing for even a second, we're going to have a problem —"

  I kiss her again. I don't know how long I kiss her – minutes or hours, it doesn't matter – I don't want to stop kissing her. I want her body against mine forever.

  Then, I pause long enough to tell her what I've realized. "I need you, Cassie."

  Not I want you.

  I need you.

  She whimpers, palming my cock over my jeans. "I need you too," she says. "I need you inside me now."

  I pull up the sides of her skirt and hook my thumbs under her panties, dropping them to the ground. My hand goes between her thighs, and when I touch her, she's soaked.

  "No, Cassie," I say. I can barely think straight when my fingers are where they are like this, but I want to make her understand what I couldn't say before. "I need you. Not just like this, I mean. I fucking need you. Like, I don't want to let you go again need you."

  "I know," she whispers, "but if you don't shut up and put your cock inside me right now I'm going to come on your fingers."

  "Damn it, Cassie."

  She fumbles with the button on my jeans and yanks them over my ass. When I start to take them all the way off, she shakes her head. "Now, Colton."

  Reaching under her hips, I pick her up and pin her against the truck, guiding my cock inside her slick pussy in one swift movement. The sound she makes when I enter her is low in her throat, like a feral animal, and it ignites something in me that makes me want to fuck this girl into oblivion. She wraps her legs around me, her hands at my neck, and moans as I thrust into her. "Harder, harder," are her only demands.

  I pull her hair back as I fuck her, turning her face toward me so I can kiss the hell out of my girl. I catch her lip between my teeth and kiss her so hard, I think I taste blood, except she pants, "Don't stop," when I hesitate.

  She's tight and wet and whimpering in my ear, her breath short. This isn't what I envisioned when I thought about making up with her. I wanted to fuck her slowly, tenderly, bringing her to the edge with my tongue again and again before finally being inside her.

  This is just straight up fucking.

  "I missed this," she whispers, squeezing her muscles so tightly around my shaft that I groan out loud.

  "You missed my cock," I growl, pulling her hair harder and she leans back against the top of the truck, her hips bucking against me, and she makes that sound again.

  "I missed your cock."

  "You missed coming with me." I fuck her faster, bringing both of us closer to the edge.

  "I missed coming with you," she says. Her voice is strained.

  "You missed me coming inside you," I moan. As soon as I speak the words, I'm know I'm about to explode in her.

  She whimpers loudly. "Yes, yes, yes," she cries out. "I want to feel it, Colton. Oh God, I'm going to come."

  "Come for me, Cass," I urge her, thrusting harder. I feel myself bursting the second I speak the words, not even able to wait for her. Groaning loudly, I pump my cock into her tight pussy.

  She screams her orgasm, her hands gripping my shoulders as her muscles shudder around my cock, pulling everything from me.

  She looks at me with wide eyes, the hair around her forehead damp with sweat, her chest heaving as she tries to catch her breath. I slide out of her, feeling her wetness on the inside of her thighs and my cock immediately twitches at the thought that I'm going to be dripping out of her.

  Screwing her did nothing to dampen my hardness. When I reach down to pull up my jeans, she stops me. "Don't," she says. "Take everything off. Please."

  "That's what you want?"

  "Take your damn clothes off, Colton," she demands. But I don't. I reach for her blouse and tear it off her like I did before in the tutoring room, buttons scattering all over.

  "That was a perfectly good shirt," she complains. She arches her back just a little, her breasts on display.

  "That asshole put his hands on that shirt."

  She giggles.

  "That's funny?" I ask.

  "No," she says. "That's what Sable and I were calling you."

  "That asshole?" I ask. "Seriously?"

  She shrugs. "I thought you had a naked girl waiting for you in your room. And that you told everyone what we did."

  "You know naked girls throw themselves at me all the time," I say. "Fact."

  She rolls her eyes. "Okay, conceited."

  "I'm a celebrity."

  "I liked you better when you weren't talking."

  "I can shut up," I say, pressing my cock against her again.

  "You should take me up into that truck bed and fuck me now."

  I rip her skirt off. Literally. I unzip it and when I tug it down her hips it doesn't immediately fall off, so I just tear the whole thing from her body.

  "You're going to have to get me new clothes if you keep tearing mine apart."

  "No." I yank my shirt off and throw it on the ground, then discard my pants.

  "No?"

  "I think I'll just keep you naked."

  46

  Cassie

  "I think I love you." Oh, holy shit, I can't believe I blurted that right out. Who says that when someone says, "I think I'll just keep you naked"? That is so not the right response.

  I stop and look at him, panic probably written all over my face, because that's exactly what I feel right now, just like I'm about to have a heart attack. Those are words you definitely can't un-say.

  He's looking at me weird. Shit, he's looking at me really weird.

  And he's not saying anything.

  I open my mouth again and then I suddenly can't stop talking. "I haven't been in love before, so I could really be wrong and I mean, maybe the horrible feeling I've had in my chest is just indigestion or stress, either is totally plausible. And the smart part of me knows that you're a player – I mean, a football player, not just a player… although there's that, too, because really, you are a celebrity, and there are going to be a lot of women throwing themselves at you – and you're too young and you're leaving next year and I'm here. And you're cocky. I mean, good God you're arrogant. And stubborn. I told myself it makes no sense, but –"

  "Shut up, Cassie," he whispers, bringing his lips down on mine. I kiss him with everything I have. "I'm in love with you."

  "You don't know that," I say. "It really is way too soon to know that and –"

  "Will you just stop talking already? I'm thinking about you and not football, for fuck's sake. I've spent a bunch of nights up here the last two weeks up here, trying to sleep without you. I can hardly eat."

  I raise my eyebrows. "Something's definitely wrong with you."

  Of course, "hardly eat" probably means a half a pizza for a snack instead of a whole one.

  "And when I sat outside your house, it –"

  "Whoa, whoa, whoa." I put my hand up. "You sat outside my house?"

  "Not in a stalker way," he defends himself. "I didn't have binoculars. You know you can see through your living room window from the street at night. It's not safe at all."

  "That sounds exactly like a stalker, you freak." I slap him on his very hard, very muscular arm.

  "I was making sure you were safe," he says, giving me a what-did-I-do-wrong look. "I mean, I did a crap job of that. If I'd have been looking out for you during the day, I could have followed you to the
athletic center and – damn it, Cassie, I don't want to watch you through a window."

  "Great. It's super that you don't want to creep around outside my bedroom window."

  He pauses and takes a deep breath, his wide chest expanding even more. "I'm telling you that I don't think there's any other explanation for the fact that there's been a giant knot in my stomach for the past two weeks other than I'm in love with you. Plus, I want you around all the damn time. When I'm not around you, everything sucks. So I'm in love with you and that's all there is to it. You're just going to have to live with it."

  "You have such a way with words," I say, as he picks me up and carries me to the back of the truck.

  "Please," he grunts. "Your 'I love you' speech wasn't any more eloquent than mine."

  He hoists me up into the truck bed and I scoot backward across the mattress, my back on the pillows. Colton crawls over me, his face above mine, and his cock goes between my legs immediately.

  "Eloquent," I say. "Big word."

  "Learned from the best," he murmurs.

  This time, when he enters me, he takes his time. His eyes lock on mine and they never waver as he rocks slowly inside of me. I think I could stay like this forever and be happy. My heart feels like it's going to burst.

  When I finally come, after he's fucked me until I'm a puddle of mush, it's with his hands on mine, fingers interlaced, looking at him. When he comes, it's with "You're Mine" on his lips.

  * * *

  "Oh hell," Colton groans before we even open the door. "I know that voice. Brace yourself."

  Doreen's laugh is audible even through the front door, and I hear Tank's and Sable's muted voices.

  "It's about time!" Doreen calls. "There's food on the table. Breakfast for dinner!"

  There's a cornucopia of food on the table, to be precise. A stack of pancakes a mile high, mountains of eggs, bacon, and sausage, and enough pastries to open a bakery. Colton puts his hands on my hips, pulling me back against him, and whispers in my ear. "You already had sausage, didn't you?"

  "Shut up," I hiss, slapping his hand. "Your mother is right there."

  "Get in here and eat before all of this gets cold," Doreen gestures to us to join them as Tank and Sable pull out folding chairs around two card tables set up in the living room. Our kitchen table is definitely too small to host this spread. I'm half-expecting Tank's folding chair to collapse underneath him. Are folding chairs rated for football player weight or do they make special steel-reinforced ones just for them?

  "Eat up, boys," Doreen orders. "You need stamina for the game." She eyeballs Colton. "And if you're going to give me grandchildren."

  "And, there it is," Colton says.

  I choke on the sip of orange juice I'd just taken.

  Doreen spears a pancake with a fork and puts it on my plate like she didn't just mention Colton impregnating me. "I always tell the boys to wear condoms, but that doesn't apply to you anymore, Colton."

  Sable giggles and Tank snorts. Beside me, Colton grumbles. "Shit, ma. It was awkward enough when you were sending me condoms in the mail. Telling me not to wear them is over the line."

  "I'm just saying that you can't go wrong with a nice little accidental pregnancy," she says.

  I think the bite of pancake I just took went right down the wrong pipe. I'm going to aspirate on pancake in the middle of dinner.

  "No more, ma," Colton says in his I-mean-business voice.

  "I'm glad the two of you are together, that's all I'm getting at. And you two, too!" she adds, with a glance at Tank and Sable. "Lord knows why it took you weeks to get over that stupid argument about the thesis," she says with a sigh. "If he's ever that stubborn in the future, Cassie, you can send him right back to me for an attitude check."

  A laugh bubbles up in the bottom of my throat. "Yes, ma'am."

  "Traitor," Colton whispers. He reaches down and squeezes my thigh.

  47

  Colton

  Nine Years Later

  "Can I take over here?" I hear my wife's voice from a foot away and look over from where I'm lying on the massage table to see her talking to the masseuse who's been working on me for the past hour.

  "What are you doing here?" I ask, my voice low. We're in the training room, only a curtain to separate us from the rest of the room where there are other players getting taped up, being massaged, or taking ice baths. "Don't you have papers to grade? Why is your hair in pigtails, Dr. King?"

  Cassie shrugs. "I'll do the ol' random grade assignment thing," she jokes, even though she wouldn't do anything like that. I know how seriously she takes her job as a university professor. She's up for tenure this year, and she's anything except careless with her work.

  She doesn't respond to the pigtail question. Instead, she leans over me, her hands moving across my lower back. "Roll over."

  I flip over onto my back, my head turned toward her as she runs her hand over my chest and down my abs.

  And my cock is immediately rock hard.

  That's what she does to me. After nine years, she touches my bare chest and I'm instantly hard.

  Although that's happened less lately, between long hours working and twin five-year-old boys – and a fuckton of stress.

  "Adam and James are sleeping over at Jonathan and Sable's house tonight," she whispers before I can even ask. "They wanted to have a sleepover with Rael and Emily. We'll return the favor and take their kids next month for their anniversary. You've been stressed out about the playoffs and you're too cranky for me to handle lately."

  After we graduated, Tank went to play for a team in Colorado, but two years ago he got traded and came back to Texas. He and Sable ended up together, but not immediately. There were a couple of rocky years there where both of them played the field. But when Sable got engaged to a European billionaire, Tank went and got her back. Or, more accurately, he picked her up and carried her out of the middle of her engagement party, put her in his SUV, and drove away.

  Sable's parents went absolutely bat-shit. A big brutish football player does not walk into the middle of a Pierce engagement party and carry out the fiancée. The photo of Tank with Sable on his shoulder was plastered across the cover of every national magazine for a week.