Chapter Sixteen #2
She shook her head almost immediately, a small, quick movement. “No.” A beat passed, and then her eyes found mine again. “Do you?”
I let out a long breath, deciding. A smarter man would have said no. He would have rolled up the mat, thanked her for joining, and dipped out of there. He would have walked out of this room and never looked back.
But I was apparently a very dumb motherfucker when it came to this woman.
“I feel like shit after the game on Sunday,” I admitted.
“And before you say what all my coaches and teammates have, I know it’s not just one player who earns a loss like that.
It’s not all on me. But part of it was. I had four drops.
Four. So many that Coach pulled me to ride the bench and get my wits about me.
It was a poor showing and I’m ashamed of it. ”
Emily’s brows furrowed. “I’m sorry. That has to be really hard, when you don’t perform as well as you know you can.”
I nodded. “It’s brutal.”
“I know it’s not the same, but it happens in dance, too.
I’ll run a routine perfectly at rehearsal and in my room, landing every twirl, kick, jump, and tumble.
But sometimes, when the stadium noise and lights are so loud, I just…
stumble. I miss something. I fuck up — no matter how hard I practiced. ”
“How do you deal with it?”
She shrugged. “I just keep going. I pretend I meant to do it, make every misstep an intentional move. I find the next beat and join right back in, and before I know it, I’ve found my groove again.
” She paused. “I know it’s not as easy for you.
With a dance, no one really knows you messed up unless they’re entirely focused on you, or you show it on your face somehow.
But in a game like the one you played Sunday, all the eyes in the stadium are on you.
They see your every move — good or bad.” She swallowed. “I can’t imagine how hard that is.”
I lifted one shoulder. “It’s hard,” I admitted. “But it’s also incredible. When you get it right, when you snag the ball out of the air with one hand, or pull it into your chest against all odds and secure the first down…” I shook my head. “It’s fucking magic.”
Emily’s smile mirrored mine, her eyes floating down to where she was picking at the fraying rubber on her mat. “I have no idea what I want to do with my life.”
The words hung heavy between us, her throat constricting like they’d hurt coming out.
“I’m twenty-nine. I’m the oldest member of the squad. And let’s be honest, I’ve got maybe two more seasons before I’ll be too old to achieve the look.”
“You’re stunning, Emily.”
“I’m also old.”
“Twenty-nine is not old.”
“It is in dance.”
“Then they’re fucking stupid, because you’re the most beautiful person on that field every time your sneakers touch the turf. You steal the show. You…” I laughed. “God, Emily, you make it impossible to look away. Trust me, I know. I’ve tried.”
She paused, eyes slowly finding mine as a smile curled on her lips.
“I’ve noticed.”
Again, the words sat like an anchor dragging the sand between us.
After a moment, Emily sighed, her eyes on her nails again. “I always thought I’d have it all figured out by thirty, you know? Have the job. The house. Maybe the husband and the kid. I watched my parents have it all so effortlessly, I just assumed that was how it was.”
She flicked a piece of her mat away.
“You love this,” I said. “Dance. I’ve seen the way it lights you up. You beam when you’re on that field, when you’re in rehearsal.”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But I have an expiration date. And then what?”
“Whatever you want. Keep dancing. Find a new studio. Go on Broadway.”
She laughed.
Then, a thought came to me, a memory of the flag football jamboree.
“What if you taught?”
Her brows crested. “Taught what, exactly? How to fuck around so much in your twenties that you end up jobless and broke by thirty-one?”
“Dance,” I said, not entertaining her deflection. “I saw you with the girls at the football event this summer. You were so good with them. You loved helping them, and the way you talked to them and made them feel seen… that’s rare, Em.”
That earned me a smile. “I like that,” she said. “When you call me Em.”
There it was again — the shift in the air, the charging of electricity.
“Yeah?” I asked, nostrils flaring. My heart kicked up the pace in my chest, the pounding of it thundering in my ears.
Nothing had happened.
But my body knew before my brain did that I was about to do something reckless.
“Should I say it again?”
I reached out, finding the strings of her hoodie and toying with them between my fingers. The moment I made the connection, Emily’s next inhale stalled in her throat.
Stop.
Don’t do this.
Her eyes dropped to watch my fingers playing with the strings before she slowly dragged her gaze back to mine.
It was heated now.
She was meeting my dare like it didn’t scare her one bit.
“You’re fucking beautiful, Em,” I said roughly, twisting the strings over my fist once.
It gave her no choice but to lean forward, and I mirrored that movement, slowly decimating the space between us even as every alarm in my head blared for me to stop.
But it was no use.
She had me under a spell — willingly, if I was being honest.
And we were alone in a small, dark room where it felt like nothing and no one else mattered.
“You drive me mad, Em. You and the filthy words you say, the way you’ve carved yourself into my brain, the way I can’t stop thinking about your smile, and your laugh, and your sweet little hand on my cock.”
Her breath caught when I rolled the strings again, tugging her closer.
“I want you, Em.” My next breath was a low, guttural thing. “So fucking badly. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“You want to be my undoing, don’t you? You want to be the very thing that kills me.”
I twisted the strings again, and we were so close now that our lips brushed, our warm breaths dancing between us.
“No,” she said, surprising me.
And then she crawled right into my lap, eviscerating any space left between us, her hips grinding against me as her arms slipped around my neck. Her hands wove into my hair and tugged, forcing me to look up at her.
“I want to be the very thing that makes you live.”
I kissed her.
I couldn’t not fucking kiss her — not with her sweet hips in my hands, her lush mouth right above me, the dare and promise dancing in her eyes. There was no other option but to press my mouth to hers.
The moment I did, my entire existence shifted.
It was like an earthquake ripping through the foundation of who I was, the way her mouth covered mine so perfectly, the way our lips pressed warm and firm.
We held that bruising kiss for only a moment before she was opening her mouth and I was, too — our tongues searching, teeth nipping, hands roaming.
We were ravenous, like starved predators who finally got their kill.
I held her hips tighter when she rolled against me, and both of us let out a moan when she dragged against my cock.
I was hard the moment she climbed into my lap, but now, it was almost painful.
I wanted her so badly my body didn’t know what to do.
I hadn’t had an erection this hard since I was a horny teenager.
And that’s exactly how she made me feel.
I was emboldened and careless, driven so mad with the need to feel her against me that nothing else mattered.
“I hate you for invading my mind the way you have,” I cursed against her lips, wrapping my arms all the way around her as I bucked my hips up to meet her desperate writhing against me. “For making me dream about these lips, and those eyes, and this sweet fucking ass.”
I gripped her cheeks hard and forced her to rub against me again, and she shuddered, breaking our kiss so her head could fall back in ecstasy.
“Well, you have me where you want me now,” she managed on a breath. Her eyes were drunk with lust when she gazed down at me again, and this time she took control, her hands planted on my shoulders as she dragged herself against me long and slow. “What’s your next move, Boss?”
My nostrils flared, blood roaring in my ears as I pulled her mouth back to mine again. I kissed her harder, sucking her lip between my teeth and biting just hard enough to make her cry out with a deliciously wicked smile.
“I’m going to make you come.”
“Like this?” she breathed, rocking against me again.
“Just like this.”
My touch turned punishing then. I didn’t relent, didn’t slow, didn’t let her take the reins again. I held fast to her hips and drove up against her clit, sucking and kissing down her neck and over her collarbone.
“You want to, don’t you?” I teased, sucking the lobe of her ear into my mouth. She moaned when I breathed my next words. “Look at you. Writhing in my lap. Rocking against my cock like you want to ride me.”
Her nails dug into my shoulders, her movements turning more frantic and jerkier.
I smirked against her lips, kissing her hard as one hand held fast to her hip and the other traveled under her hoodie.
I shoved the thin fabric of the bralette she wore beneath it out of my way, palming her with a satisfying whimper breaking from her lips as I did.
“That’s it, Em,” I encouraged, nipping at her lip. “That’s my filthy fucking girl.”
“Fuck,” she breathed, her head tipping back again as she rocked and bounced and used me. And goddamnit, I loved being used by her. I never wanted it to end. I never wanted to forget the way she looked completely uninhibited — skin slightly flushed, lips parted, eyes pinched shut.
The thrill coursing through my veins was palpable. I knew at any moment someone could walk through that door. Someone could see us together, catch us like this, and it’d all be over.
But I couldn’t stop.
Not with her making those sweet little noises, her nails clawing at my back, her pussy grinding against me through the fabric that separated us.