Chapter 29
DUSTIN
Psycho.
The Tigers organization was officially being run by a psychopath.
Jerry Bells, I hated to say it, was no longer in charge. He was a figurehead, but his granddaughter had him in the palm of her hand.
Everyone had cleared out of the locker room by now, and I sat on a bench, still in my towel, with my elbows on my knees as I wracked my brain for a solution to the now monumental problem I was faced with.
I didn’t think Jackie was capable of this type of evil treachery.
Hell, I didn’t think anyone was capable of being this two-faced.
Except maybe Fio. But Jackie was, and Fio was, and why was I surprised anymore when people acted so selfishly around me?
One more member of the team left with his bag, Jeremy Finnegan.
“You alright, LeBlanc?” he asked, pausing for a moment.
“Fine,” I grunted out.
“You look fucking morose,” he said.
My mind was spinning out of control, and I couldn’t tell why. I reminded myself that Cat had come to the stands to visit me for the game, and that made me smile.
I turned to him. “And you look like a crazy hobo,” I joked, trying to be light-hearted.
“Oh come on, man. Don’t take low blows on the regular season beard. I’ll shave it when the playoffs start. I promise.”
“You better. It’s bad luck if you don’t.”
“Aye aye, Capitan,” he said, in some combination of pirate speak and Spanglish. With Jeremy, you didn’t ask.
I stood up. “I’m just thinking about our next game. Go on, get out of here. I’ll see you at practice tomorrow.”
Taking a deep breath, I paused. The game had run late tonight, so most people were in a hurry to get out of the stadium.
Even Coach Slanch, who was almost always the last one out, had left.
I was wondering where Cat was. After I saw her in the stands, I texted her to come meet me in the locker room.
I walked into Slanch’s room, which he had left unlocked tonight. I thought about what I would text Cat when I next had the chance. How I would phrase the shit storm that was coming. And I wondered if there was any possible way out of it.
I didn’t even turn the light on in Coach’s office. Some spare light from inside the locker room sneaked in through the blinds. I folded my arms and tried to focus on the good things in my life.
There was hockey, of course. But I couldn’t believe Jackie was willing to take that away from me, essentially destroying our chance at a championship this year. And all just to prove a point about who is boss.
When I thought about the other good things in my life, there was one that stood out above all the others, though. Maybe even above hockey.
Well okay, not above hockey. But it was damn close. And it was her.
I swallowed hard as she popped into my mind, and I instantly noticed my dick twitch. Fuck. This wasn’t appropriate locker room behavior.
But it didn’t matter. The more I tried to block her out, the more space she occupied in my mind. It made no logical sense that I had found such a good girl from a one-night stand turned arranged marriage.
I closed my eyes and pictured her beautiful lips, her full hips, heard her sexy voice and heard her giggly laugh. With every beat of my heart, my cock grew harder and fuller and I stopped trying to block out thoughts of her.
Fuck it, I finally thought.
If they were going to pull this shit with me, might as well go full out. In love and war, there were no rules. And I was so damn in love right now.
With my towel still wrapped around my waist, I reached down below and fisted my now-erect cock.
In my mind’s eye, Cat had on her red dress, just like the first night—my most cherished memory of her. She got on the bed and rolled her dress almost all the way up her thighs, inviting me to come and enter.
As I ran my hand up and down my cock, I swore I could smell her, I had such a vivid memory of her. And then I felt a hand on my abs and a chin rubbing into my shoulder blade, and my heart thumped like a tribal drum.
I whipped around and saw Cat standing there, grinning.
“Well, hello there.”
She giggled. “Hello there.”
“What are you doing in this office?” I joked. “Players and coaches only.”
“You told me to come here,” she said. “And what are you doing here?”
“I mean it’s pretty clear what I’m doing here,” I shrugged, then took my hand off my cock, which stuck straight out at a right angle, poking her in the ribs.
“I wanted to surprise you,” she said. “Looks like I did. Once in the stands, and once again.”
This was the first one of my games Cat had come to, and she even wore my jersey. I felt my skin tingle all over as I held her jaw and kissed her hard.
“I just had a really disturbing interaction,” she said, grabbing onto my forearm.
“Was it life or death?” I asked.
“Um, no, I guess not.”
“Then hang onto it until after.”
She bit her lower lip. “Until after what?”
“Don’t try to pull the innocence act with me. Not gonna work anymore.”
“Oh,” she said, then glanced down, and slid a hand from the top of my abs until she was gripping my base. “I see what you mean. We’ve got bigger problems right now.”
I took her and pressed her up against the wall, then closed the door to Coach’s room.
“Hey,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about something I need to tell you.”
“Oh?”
“I love you. I do.”
“I can see that.”
“No,” I said, stepping back for a moment. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you. Marriage, fake marriage, whatever this is. I’ve lost track. I want you and only you, forever and ever. I’m totally in love with you, Kit Cat.”
Her eyes narrowed and grew soft in the darkened light.
“You’re not just saying that?” she whispered softly.
“No. Really. I wanted to tell you over some perfect candlelight dinner at the tallest building in the city, but you know what? Sometimes, you’ve just got to let something go. So that’s what I’m doing. I love you.”
I could tell she was thinking hard about something, and I assumed it was whatever she came in here wanting to talk about.
“I love you too,” she said simply.
I had other things on my mind too, but I pushed them to the back.
And then I pushed her back against the wall and we made out furiously.
I fumbled to get her shoes, socks, and jeans off as fast as I could as I leveraged my upper body into her to lift her up off the ground.
She was wet and ready, and when I reached a hand onto her clit she purred like a kitty cat, then licked close to my ear.
“Dustin, fuck me good, please,” she said, grinning.
I grinned back.
Like there was any other way.
She still had my jersey on, and I guided her over to the table and turned her body around. Twisting, she gave me one more kiss on the lips as she set one hand on my abs, then used the other to help me guide my hard tip inside her.
I bunched up the jersey so I could use it as a balance, and she let her upper body down to rest on top of the coach’s desk.
I was so hard, I went slow to start.
Every time I touched deep inside her, Cat would let out a moan. We kept on slowly like that until we found our rhythm together, and she wasn’t just moaning, she was screaming.
Part of me sort of hoped no one heard, but another part of me just didn’t care anymore. I was hers, she was mine, and we were husband and wife, and in love, and for this moment in time everything was perfect.
She gasped as I pulled out of her, then helped her spin around.
“Is this like, okay?” she murmured.
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Is your coach okay with you doing this on his desk?”
I laughed. “This is why I love you, Cat. Well, one of the reasons. You’re so by the book.”
She leaned back, and I helped her remove the hockey jersey she was wearing.
“So . . . is he?” she repeated.
I leaned in, then pushed my tip inside her, reveling in the soft moan that escaped her mouth. “No,” I growled in her ear. “He’s not.”
She wanted to protest—I think—but soon her thoughts were like mine, carried away to an island of pleasure and love where everything was perfect and right.
My skin tingled everywhere, and with every one of her moans I was closer to coming. I felt her clench on my cock, and her fingernails scraped my back and sides—my wife’s orgasmic trademark.
Our marriage might have started out as a convenient Vegas sham.
But the way her body felt underneath me when she came definitely wasn’t.
She knew how I liked it when she let me know she was coming, and that made me feral with lust. I clenched and pulled out, and came all over her stomach and breasts. Then, I laid down on Coach’s desk and joined her, holding her hand as we both came down from the clouds.
“What the hell was that?” she breathed.
“I know,” I said. “I thought we couldn’t get any higher after last time.”
“No,” she said softly. “You just came all over my chest. My husband comes in me, por favor. Remember?”
“Oh,” I said, glancing at her. I used the towel that had dropped from my waist and cleaned her up. “My bad, I didn’t think too hard about it.”
She sat up and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “It’s okay. It was actually kind of hot.”
We found Jenny in the parking lot to get Cat’s bag, then headed home. Thoughts weighed on me as we drove back to my place. She seemed to be thinking, too. I had been searching for a way not to have the conversation we were about to have, but it was unavoidable.
When we got back to my apartment, we plopped down on the couch.
“So,” she said. “Now would be a good time to tell you that I had a run-in with Jackie in the tunnel. And it was really weird. She was saying weird stuff about how ‘Spain has a great climate,’ so I’ll be able to benefit from that. Why would she say that?”
I held her hand and took a deep breath. “So I wanted you to be sitting down for this.”
“Oh boy.”
I could feel the nervousness coming from her.
“After the game, Jackie stopped me, and she showed me a video she somehow got a hold of. It was surveillance footage from the night in Las Vegas. It includes a snippet of us, after we got married, when we were really drunk, playing blackjack at a poker table and bragging about how we’re going to ‘cheat the system,’—your words—and how you’re my hot little Catalan Puck bunny for hire. ’”
She squinted. “Oh, yea. We did visit the blackjack tables, didn’t we? Damn. Well, that’s not a good look.”
“Ironic, considering we’re in love now for real.”
Her expression changed, looking hopeful. “So this isn’t a huge problem though, right? If she posts the video, we just respond together—we’ll do a periscope or something—and say that we were joking and that we’re in love. Which we are. Now.”
I mulled it over. It was true. Though Jackie had used scary words like fraud and prison time with me—she knew how to deliver a threat—Cat and I had moved beyond whatever words we had exchanged, whatever mentality we had during our Vegas one night stand.
“See, this is why I love you,” I smiled. “You’re the brains of this operation.”
“And you’re the LeBraun.”
“Not sure if that pun works, but I like where your head’s at.”
I never was one to believe in having it all, but I really felt it that night.
We were going to win the championship this year (I could feel it) and my wife loved me and I loved her.
We talked into the wee hours about how we could move to the same city.
I volunteered to move to D.C. for next summer, to her place, and then we could figure out the next move, with Chicago high on the list since I obviously played my home games here, and we liked being around each other.
That night, we slept more soundly than we ever had.
Then I woke up the next morning, kissed her goodbye so I could go to practice and she could go to the airport, and that was the last time I saw her.