18. Brady
brADY
The bottle of wine is too expensive. I knew it when I bought it, and I know it now, standing on her porch with the label sweating in my palm.
The whole week has been a blur of her. Her hand on my forearm correcting my guard. Her palm flat between my shoulder blades, saying, Here, keep this tight. Her laugh in my ear at something stupid I said about Cruz’s protein shakes.
And the drills. God, the drills.
Monday she’d been on top of me in mount, rolling her hips forward for the drill, and I’d felt her—the heat of her pussy through the thin fabric of her shorts and mine.
The deliberate grinding into me, absolutely intentional torment.
I’d gotten hard so fast it was physically painful, and instead of pulling away she’d rocked her hips into me harder, leaned close to my ear and whispered: You should feel how wet I am right now.
Tuesday she’d done it again. Slower that time. More deliberate. Her ass grinding against my cock through our shorts while she held my shoulders pinned, and I’d groaned loud enough that Cruz had looked over. She’d smiled down at me like she knew exactly what she was doing.
Wednesday I could see the wet spot on her gray shorts when she climbed off me. Dark fabric between her thighs, impossible to miss, and she’d caught me staring and hadn’t looked away. Just held my gaze while my hands shook and my dick throbbed. All I could do was try to remember how to breathe.
Thursday she’d rolled her hips in a slow circle on top of me and I’d grabbed her hips without thinking, pulled her down harder, and she’d moaned—quiet, but I heard it. Felt it vibrate through both of us. Then she’d leaned down and whispered: Tomorrow night. My place. Just you and me.
I’ve jerked off thinking about it every night this week. About her weight on me. About the heat of her. About that wet spot on her shorts and what it would feel like to touch her there, taste her, be inside her.
The text last night sealed it.
A location pin. 8 PM. Just you and me.
I knock before I can talk myself out of it.
The door opens and the floor drops out from under me.
She’s barefoot. Hair down, soft around her shoulders. Black leggings and a thin gray T-shirt that hangs just right off her collarbones. No makeup that I can see.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” My voice comes out rough. I clear my throat. “I brought wine.”
“I see that.” She takes it from me, glances at the label, lifts an eyebrow. “Fancy.”
“I didn’t know what you.” I stop. Start again. “I wasn’t sure.”
She smiles at me, the kind of smile that doesn’t have a joke in it, and steps back. “Come in.”
I follow her down a short hall into a small living room. Lamp light. The couch is gray, soft-looking, with a folded blanket over one arm. There’s music playing low, something with a woman’s voice and a guitar, and the whole place smells like her shampoo.
“Sit. I’ll grab glasses.”
I sit. I sit too straight. I make myself unclench my hands. Try not to think about her on top of me, grinding down while I held her hips and tried not to come in my shorts.
She comes back with two glasses and the bottle already opened. The way she moves—slow, comfortable in her own body, no rush—almost undoes me before she even sits down. She pours. Hands me mine. Tucks her legs under her and angles toward me so her knee just brushes my thigh.
“To Friday,” she says, lifting her glass.
I clink mine against hers. “To Friday.”
The wine is good, though I barely taste it. I’m too busy trying not to stare at the way her shirt drapes over her chest, remembering how her tits felt pressed against me through her sports bra every time she leaned down during drilling.
“How’s the cut going?” she asks. “Two weeks out, right?”
“One and a half. On pace. Coach has me at one fifty-eight this morning.”
“That’s nothing. You’ll walk it.”
“Yeah.” I swallow. “Hopefully.”
“Not hopefully.” Her knee presses a little firmer. “Brady, you looked sharp today. Your slip-counter combo? You finally stopped overrotating.”
Heat climbs the back of my neck. “You noticed that.”
“I notice a lot.”
I know she does. I felt exactly how much she noticed every time she ground herself on me this week.
She talks. I talk. She asks about my opponent and I tell her what I know, southpaw, kicks like a mule, gases in the third.
She nods at the right spots. Her eyes don’t leave my face.
Every time I look at her she’s already looking at me, and every time she catches me she doesn’t look away. She just lets it land.
By the second glass I’ve stopped sitting like I have a rod up my ass. The blanket’s bunched between us. Her bare foot has migrated up onto the cushion and her toes are an inch from my thigh.
“You’re easier to talk to than I thought you’d be,” she says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re quieter at the gym. With the guys.”
“I’m not quiet.”
“You are.” She tilts her head. “Especially this week.”
Because I’ve been thinking about nothing but her pussy grinding on my dick and how much I want to flip her over and make her scream my name in front of the entire fucking gym.
I take another sip, my eyes find her mouth and I look away.
She sets her glass down on the table. Slow. Deliberate. The wine sloshes once and settles.
“Brady.”
“Yeah.”
She shifts closer. Her thigh slides against mine. Her face is suddenly very near, and her hand is on the cushion between us. I can smell her, that warm clean skin smell underneath the shampoo, and I have not breathed in a full second.
“I’m going to kiss you.”
My cock jerks.
“If you don’t want me to, say so now.”
She waits. She actually waits, eyes steady on mine, not pushing, not moving, just giving me the space to decide.
One second. Two. Three. Four.
I don’t say a damn thing. I couldn’t if my life depended on it.
Five.
She leans in.
She does it slowly, so slowly it’s almost cruel. Her hand comes up and her fingertips brush the side of my jaw and her breath ghosts over my skin before her lips find mine, and I close my eyes a half-second before contact like I’m bracing for a punch.
Her mouth is soft. Just a press. A question.
And something in my chest, a leash I’ve had a chokehold on for weeks, slips.
The sound that comes out of me is embarrassing. Small and broken and grateful all at once. I hear it, and I can’t take it back.
She makes a small sound back, like finally, and her thumb strokes along my jaw.
That’s it. That’s the line.
I am over it before I know I’ve crossed.
My hand finds the back of her neck, fingers weaving into her hair, and I haul her into me.
The polite kiss ends. My lips part in invitation, she gasps and I feel her surprise.
She registers that the careful man on her couch is gone, and I should pull back, I should slow it down, but my blood racing for my cock, and her tongue is in my mouth, and I am done.
I drag her onto my lap.
She comes with a startled laugh that turns into a moan halfway through.
Her knees plant on either side of my thighs.
The wine glass is somewhere, the table maybe; I don’t care.
My hands are on her hips, and then her ass, and I pull her down hard against me and let her feel exactly what she’s unlocked.
Just like she did to me. Every day this week. Making me feel her.
“Brady,” she moans.
“Yeah.”
“Jesus.”
“I know.” I kiss down her throat. Bite down gently, where her pulse is hammering. “I know, angel. I know.”
This is what I was afraid of. This right here.
The second somebody gave me the door I was going to come through it like a freight train, and now I have her in my lap and she’s already grinding down on me the way she did Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
My hands are already shaking with how much I want to take.
I fist a handful of her hair at the nape and pull, just enough to tilt her head back, and her throat is right there and so is the soft, surprised gasp she makes when I do it.
“Okay?” I say into her skin.
“Yes. God, yes!”
I pull harder.
She moans. Her hips roll down. Her hands are clawing at the hem of my shirt.
I let go of her hair long enough to yank my shirt off over my head, and then hers, her bra going with it. I get my mouth on her tit and bite the soft curve of it—she actually whimpers.
“Brady,” she moans.
“Lay back,” I order.
“What?”
“Lay back. On the couch. Now.”
She blinks at me, eyes darkened, lips swollen, and then she does as she’s told. She climbs off my lap and lies back on the couch cushions, looking up at me like she’s not entirely sure what she’s gotten herself into but is going to ride it out anyway.
I hook my fingers in the waistband of her leggings and drag them down her legs. Underwear with them. One pull. She lifts her hips to help and the sight of her—naked, hair messed, throat already pink from my mouth, pussy glistening—damn near finishes me on its own.
This is what I’ve been imagining all week. What that wet spot on her shorts was hiding.
I undo my jeans with one hand. Push them and my boxer-briefs to my thighs. I don’t even fully undress. I can’t slow down for it.
“Shit, I haven’t got a condom,” I manage.
“We do blood work. We’re clean. I’m on the pill. It’s fine, just—”
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Yeah. Please. I need to feel you bare.”
That word out of her mouth.
I get a hand under her knee and push it up toward her shoulder, open her up, and I line up and sink into her in one long stroke that makes her arch off the cushion and grab at my forearm.
“Fuck, Brady—”
I’m braced over her, breathing through my teeth, trying not to come from being inside her for three seconds. This is what I felt through our shorts. This heat. Imagined this tight, wet grip. “Fuck, angel. Hold on.”
I pull back and slam home and she cries out and her nails go into my shoulder and any pretense I had about being careful with her dies right there.