Fearlessly Us (Steel City Legacy #3)

Prologue

DREW

Six Months Ago

“That was a really great goal you made today.”

The voice is low, sultry, and pure sex, just audible over the pounding bass of the music in the New Orleans nightclub where I landed with most of my team earlier tonight to celebrate our Super Bowl win.

I turn as a small hand sweeps across my lower back and look directly into the face of a heavily made-up blonde wearing the tiniest tank top I’ve ever seen and a skirt so short there’s no possible way she can walk without flashing the entire room whatever she has on underneath. If she has anything underneath at all.

In my experience, they often don’t, and that’s fine by me.

Leaning back against the bar, I rest my elbows on the cool, smooth mahogany surface, empty beer bottle dangling from my fingers. “Goal, huh?” I ask with a grin.

The woman takes a step forward, standing so close her tits are practically pressed to my chest, and she looks up at me, blue-eyed gaze full of heat.

“It was so hot, the way you just ran away from everyone. So…fast.” She runs her index finger down the buttons of my shirt, coming to rest just above my belt.

This is the moment my dick would usually get involved. The moment it would decide this woman is the one it wants for tonight. Always only for tonight. Never for tomorrow. No repeats. No feelings. Sometimes not even any names.

That’s the way I want it.

The way I prefer it.

Feelings are messy. Names are complicated.

If there are no repeats, there’s no risk that one day they’ll leave. That I’ll be left to pick up the pieces of a heart I’m not sure is even whole enough to crack.

As the veteran wide receiver of the Pittsburgh Renegades, I have it all. The money. The fame. An endless parade of women. At least, that’s what it looks like on the outside. But on the inside? Well, those are thoughts best left for a night that isn’t meant for celebrating my second Super Bowl ring.

Maybe my last Super Bowl ring.

I immediately shove the thought away—the idea of walking away from football making my palms sweat and my heart pound even as a tiny kernel of relief lodges in my chest. Tonight isn’t the night for teasing apart those complicated feelings.

Maybe tomorrow.

Or never. Never sounds good.

The woman standing in front of me seems like a good way to do never. Or at least she would be, if I could conjure a single spark of interest.

Come on, buddy, don’t fail me now.

I wince inwardly because when did I become someone who addresses his cock as buddy and begs it to get interested in a pretty woman who quite clearly wants me?

I’m always interested in the pretty woman who wants me.

I’m interested in taking her to whatever flat surface is available and spending whatever time I have making us both feel good.

If I’m feeling good, I’m not thinking big thoughts, and anything that keeps me from thinking big thoughts is my favorite way to spend my time.

Until tonight, apparently.

I would blame the alcohol except all I’ve had is one single actual beer and about twelve root beers, so it’s definitely not that.

Does winning the Super Bowl maybe come with a personality transplant?

I ponder this question as I glance around the crowded club.

My eyes find Tyler Hansley, the Renegades’ hotshot quarterback and one of my good friends, right in the middle of the crowded dance floor, dancing his heart out and grinning maniacally while waving so enthusiastically to his best friend Sophie he practically topples over.

Then I see my long-time best friend and teammate Cam Lowry, his back to the room as he kisses his girlfriend, Renegades’ Director of Sports Psychology Maddy Wright, like the world is ending.

Totally in character for those guys. So nope, looks like my personality is the only one that’s been transplanted.

Love that for me.

I snap back to attention as the woman’s fingers drift just a little lower. If my dick was hard, she would definitely be grazing my tip right now, but that asshole is stubborn tonight.

“So, any chance you want to…get out of here?” she asks. Eyes locked on mine, she drags her tongue over her lower lip in a move that does it for me one hundred percent of the time.

Until right this minute apparently, because my interest in this woman, or any woman actually, remains determinedly out of reach.

My brain searches for a way to let her down easily and maybe leave the club altogether in favor of my quiet hotel room and the book waiting for me on my nightstand when I’m interrupted by a voice from down the bar.

“Is there a reason you’re serving him first when I’ve clearly been waiting here for twenty minutes? I may not be a professional football player or a man, but having gone to kindergarten, I’m well acquainted with the way turns work, and mine was about six people ago.”

My lips quirk up in a smile at the voice that manages to be both authoritative and dripping with irritation, and I immediately glance to my left looking for its source who, it turns out, is someone I know.

Sort of.

Caitlin Parker, Tyler’s first cousin and one of Maddy and Sophie’s best friends, stands at the other end of the bar, spine ramrod straight and one hand on her hip.

Her golden-brown hair tumbles down her back, and the navy-blue dress she’s wearing molds to her curves like second skin, falling to mid-thigh and showcasing long, smooth legs that end in silver sandals with straps that crisscross over her feet.

The entire look screams taste, class, and a do not fuck with me kind of sophistication I find unbearably sexy.

And when my eyes catch on her toenails sparkling purple under the dim club lights, that little touch of whimsy for the badass lawyer has a grin spreading over my face, and the interest that escaped me earlier roars back to life.

For her.

Fucking someone so closely connected to people I know is the kind of complication I aggressively avoid, but there’s no reason I can’t enjoy the show as long as I’m standing here.

And what a show it is.

Caitlin glares with narrowed eyes at the bartender who, with his purposefully messy hair and black polo shirt with a popped collar, looks like he’s auditioning for king of the douchebros.

“Relax, honey, I’ll get to you when I get to you.”

I roll my eyes because has this guy ever even met a woman before?

Right on cue, I can practically hear Caitlin suck in a breath, her body coiling tightly as if she’s prepping to lunge across the bar and strangle this asshole.

“Honey?” she practically hisses, and when the bartender rolls his eyes at her, I marvel at the fact that he’s still standing, and that the daggers shooting out of Caitlin’s eyes haven’t struck him dead.

“Don’t be a condescending dick. And if you want to keep all your important parts attached to your body and maybe successfully bear children one day, I suggest you get to me right the fuck now. ”

The hand sliding over my cock pulls my attention away from Caitlin, and my entire body jolts like I’ve been hit with a cattle prod. I whip my head around, looking into the smirking face of the woman I had completely forgotten about.

I blame Caitlin’s purple toenails.

“So, what do you think?” the woman asks, moving her hand back up into a safer zone now that she has my attention. “I’ve got a hotel room a few doors down and there are a lot of hours until morning. Think of how much fun we could have.”

No.

The word slams definitively into my brain, but before I can say anything, my attention is pulled away again by Caitlin’s audible growl as the bartender, once again, turns his back on her in favor of a group of guys who can’t possibly be old enough to drink.

I’m in motion immediately, great goal woman forgotten.

“There you are, baby. I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” I say, sidling up to Caitlin and leaning against the bar.

I’m so close to her, the heat of her skin radiates into mine and her scent wraps itself around me.

The lavender and vanilla somehow manages to be both businesslike and seductive, and I have to restrain myself from burying my face in her neck to see what it smells like up close.

Smelling Caitlin Parker’s neck is the opposite of aggressive avoidance of complication.

“I’m not your baby,” she mutters under her breath with an exasperated eye roll, but her words are drowned out by the bartender, who is suddenly extremely interested in this end of the bar.

I’m not usually one for using my fame in any kind of overt way, but I have a feeling this is going to piss Caitlin off mightily, and for reasons I don’t entirely understand, the idea of getting a rise out of her delights me.

“Oh my god, you’re Drew Ellicott!” the bartender exclaims. “Your touchdown at the end of the third quarter was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen! How did you even hold onto that ball?”

I can feel Caitlin’s second eyeroll, and I ignore the question. “Hey, man. Seems my friend here has been waiting quite some time for a drink. Do you think you can do something about that?”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Yes, of course! What can I get you?” he asks quickly.

I turn to Caitlin, and when my gaze clashes with hers, electricity zings through my body for the second time in ten minutes, but this time it’s the welcome sort of zing.

Her gray eyes narrow as she studies me, and I have the strange, almost unsettling feeling she can see straight through to my deepest depths.

All the way down to a place I’ve never granted anyone entry before.

A place I don’t even enter myself unless my brain forces me to while I’m sleeping, which is why I so rarely sleep at all.

“What are you drinking?” I ask her, pasting a lazy smirk on my face to cover the discomfort suddenly roiling beneath my surface.

She levels me with a glare. “I can get my own drink.”