“Tell me you want this.”
His eyes were greener than I’d seen them yet. “I want this,” I told him, whimpering the words. “I want you.”
Our bodies rocked together, my breath leaving me from the force of his invasion. I gulped in air just before his mouth claimed mine with an urgency matching the fierce joining of our sex.
My body coiled tighter as each thrust pushed me toward the edge, but I didn’t let go of his precious face. I watched him watching me. The sweat building on his brow. The tightness of his jaw as he grew closer to his own release. It was all beautiful, and sexy, and… mine. For now.
“I’m crazy about you,” he grunted, each word in time with a stroke. The words were urgent, broken, as the music of our skin connecting filled the room around us.
I wanted to say the same, wanted to tell him more, tell him how I felt. That I loved him. But the words refused to leave my throat.
Instead, I pulled his head back down, trying to show him with my lips what my mouth wasn’t able to say. He kissed me back hard, his teeth scraping down my tongue, tugging my lower lip before he pulled away.
“I want to see your face when you come.”
It was as if his words triggered the reaction, and I screamed, my body shuddering, my fingers digging into the only thing I could hold onto. Him. He growled again, plunging harder and faster as my body quaked and shuddered.
“More,” he said as he fucked me with all the power inside him.
Yes. More.
I didn’t want this to stop, even as I shuddered through another mind-altering orgasm that rocked me to my very soul. His mouth was on mine again, devouring as he ripped me apart.
I cried out his name when he roared, and the pounding stopped, his face contorting into a mask of pleasure-filled agony.
His arms buckled, and I took his weight as he collapsed onto me, kissing his temples, tasting the sweat of his skin. When he tried to lift up, I wouldn’t let him go. Instead, I curled my arms and legs even tighter around him.
He didn’t protest but shifted until more of his weight was on his elbows, our lips softer against each other as the urgency was replaced by a tenderness that brought tears to my eyes.
“Thank you,” I said and felt him smile against my lips.
“The pleasure was all mine.”
“I mean it. Thank you.”
The smile faded as he looked down at me, all seriousness this time. “It was a shock, being confronted by that reporter, seeing that video, watching Mom and Nana’s reaction. But once the shock settled, I remembered who that girl in that video is. It’s you. Kind, sweet, gentle, funny, corny Eliana. The woman who agreed to be my girlfriend, then my fiancée because she has a caring and considerate heart. That woman is you. And I care about you, deeply.”
A tear slid down my temple, and he lowered his head to kiss it away.
“I care about you too,” I admitted. “And I also know that this will serve as yet another distraction for you. An embarrassment for you and the team. If you need me to go, I’ll understand, I promise.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“But what if there are other videos?”
“Then we deal with them. I need to know who the man in the video is. Name. Address. Any information you can provide. He needs his ass kicked, criminally, civilly, or by my hand, for recording you without your knowledge to begin with, then releasing the tapes.”
I nodded. It was so sad to be having this conversation when his cock was still connecting us.
We continued to kiss for so long that he swelled inside me again. He rolled away, but only long enough to change condoms and pick up something else.
Taking my left hand, he slid his grandmother’s ring on the fourth finger. “I don’t want you to take it off again.”
“I won’t.”
And with that promise, he made love to me — softly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kane
It felt like bags of cement were strapped to my feet as I trudged into the locker room the next day. Now that the shock had worn off, I knew the guys were going to give me hell.
But when I pushed through the doors, the men were standing there talking quietly to each other, then silence reigned as they realized it was me who had entered. My team turned as one. No one joked. No one laughed. No one smiled.
The way they looked at me, you might have thought there had been a death in my family. Maybe there had been. A death of dignity. Privacy. I guessed there were all kinds of death.
Ace led the charge of men who surged toward me. “You okay? How’s Eliana? I fucking want to kill somebody for what happened.”
The knot in my shoulders loosened as, to a man, they murmured their support.
They were tossing out questions, so I decided to tell them everything I knew at this point. Once I was finished, Luke said, “You’ll find the pussy behind this.”
“Damn internet,” Calvin added. “Anybody can hide behind a keyboard.”
I told the guys of Rhett’s idea for a public service announcement, and they all agreed to chip in to have one produced if Rhett backed out of it.
“I’m not backing out of shit.”
Heads snapped around. Yep, our boss was standing there. On one side of him was Coach Griffin, and the other side, Coach Delaney.
“I’ve actually given this a lot of thought in the past twelve hours or so,” Rhett continued. “We’re going to move forward with it immediately.”
A few of the guys cheered, then Blake Osbourne, one of the veteran players who was usually pretty quiet stepped up. “You have my full support, and I want to contribute to the cause. At the end, if you can add an “in memory” screen, I want to pay to have my sister’s name, Brenda, added. This was before the day of social media and internet, but something similar happened to her. Not video. But pictures. She ended up taking her own life over it.”
There was a long stretch of silence before another player stepped up. “I want to add Melanie to that list. Suicide too.”
Calvin spoke up. “Maybe add an “in honor” page? If so, add Renee.”
I looked around, and a fucking tear was dripping down every one of our faces as man after man named off someone they’d known who’d gone through a similar experience, although maybe not as public as ours had been. I couldn’t wait to tell Eliana about it when we got home.
Home.
It was so natural saying that in reference to her.
When it was quiet again, Coach Delaney stepped up. Last year, Bobby “Spaceman” Delaney found his name plastered over tabloids for many weeks. One of the best baseball players who ever lived, Spaceman found himself humbled by an enormous gambling debt that nearly destroyed his family. Nearly destroyed Katrina, his daughter. Our PR queen.