1. Tess #2
“You don’t even know what team hat they’re about to put on your head.”
“Don’t care.”
His hand found hers in the grass.
Across the stadium, the hotel lights kept flashing for a party that no longer mattered.
They had made it.
Camden’s laughter faded beneath her, but he made no move to let her go. Tess still had one hand caught in the front of his shirt, and when she shifted to free it, his gaze dropped to her mouth.
“You’re crushing my dress.”
“I’ll buy you another one.”
“You’ve been drafted for thirty seconds and you’re already spending the contract.”
His grin lasted only a moment before he reached up and caught the back of her neck. The kiss made her completely forget whatever joke she had been about to make.
Tess braced a palm against the turf beside his shoulder, startled by the change in him. A minute ago he had been laughing like a kid who had gotten away with something. Now his mouth moved against hers with the same restless force that had driven him across the field all night.
She kissed him back.
That answer seemed to be all he needed.
Camden rolled onto one knee, then pulled her up with him. Tess caught his shirt as her feet met the turf, but he kept one arm around her waist and drew her close before she could even steady herself.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Away from the field.”
“That narrows it down.”
“Somewhere Marcus can’t find us for five minutes.”
Tess laughed against his mouth. “That man will search the state.”
“Then we’d better move.”
Camden bent and lifted her before she could argue. Tess wrapped both arms around his shoulders as he crossed the sideline, leaving the football where it had fallen and the phone back on the bleachers.
“Your father is going to murder us when he figures out you vanished.”
“He can get in line.”
“You just became a professional quarterback. Maybe stop creating enemies.”
“I’ve had one job for the last four years.”
“Throw footballs?”
“Get drafted.”
He carried her through the side entrance of the athletic building, and the night air disappeared behind them. The corridor held the stale trace of detergent and old practice gear, familiar enough that Tess could have walked it with her eyes closed.
Camden pushed through the locker-room door.
The room was empty.
He set her down, but the space between them vanished in less than a breath before Tess caught his shirt and pulled him back. His mouth found hers again, and she backed into the wall as his hand settled at her waist.
The frantic stadium adrenaline instantly sharpened into a ravenous physical need. He pressed his hips flush against hers, the pressure of his erection grinding through his slacks against her soaked panties, the friction instantly making her desperate for more.
The hard surface pressed between her shoulders, the unyielding scrape of painted cinderblock grinding into her through the thin fabric of the dress.
Camden broke the kiss long enough to look at her, his chest heaving against hers.
“It happened.”
Tess smiled, her hands sliding down his chest. “I was there.”
“We actually beat the math, Tess.”
Something in his voice stripped the teasing out of her.
She reached for his face, brushing her thumb along the edge of his cheek. Four years of mornings before sunrise. Four years of ice packs, bad cafeteria dinners, film sessions, bruises, and nights when the scholarship money had barely stretched far enough.
All of it had ended with one phone call.
“You took the hits, Camden.” Her fingers slipped into his hair. “Bled for every yard of that turf.”
He kissed her again before she could say more. His hands impatiently dragged the straps of her dress down her arms, exposing her breasts as the fabric pooled at her waist. His fingers were quick, rough, unhooking her lace bra and letting it drop to the tile floor.
The scrape of his jaw felt like a brand against her skin as his mouth traced a path down her collarbone.
He latched onto her bare breast, his tongue teasing her nipple until she let out a sharp, breathless gasp.
At the same time, he dragged a hand up her thigh, his fingers slipping right beneath the silk of her panties to stroke her.
Tess let go. She twisted her fingers into his hair and allowed his urgent, absolute focus to take over, burning away whatever cold was left from the bleachers.
The kiss slowed.
Tess stayed against him, one hand at the back of his neck while the other held his shirt near the collar. The frantic edge had gone out of his movements, replaced by something primal that kept pulling him closer.
This is ours.
Not Marcus’s ballroom.
Not the sponsors.
Not the cameras flashing above the stadium wall.
This.
Camden rested his forehead against hers for a moment. “Would’ve folded without you holding the line.”
“You wouldn’t have.”
“I would.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And you stayed.”
Tess swallowed the answer that rose too fast and settled for tugging him closer.
Camden’s hand slid along her side, stopping at her waist. “I’m handing you the entire world.”
The promise should have sounded ridiculous in an empty college locker room with his phone abandoned outside and dirt marking the knees of his expensive slacks.
Instead, Tess believed every word.
She stayed close after his promise, one hand still curled into the front of Camden’s shirt. The locker room had gone quiet around them, the distant pipes and the faint buzz of an overhead fixture replacing the stadium noise outside.
“That’s a dangerous promise,” she said.
Camden’s gaze stayed on her. “I mean it.”
“Then stop talking.”
She pulled him down and kissed him.
Whatever restraint he had managed to recover disappeared. He pulled her closer, and Tess answered by slipping her arms around his shoulders. Their laughter faded, but nothing about the silence felt uncertain.
Camden pulled back slightly to search her face.
“Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“I don’t.”
The answer came without hesitation.
He kissed her again, slower this time, and Tess leaned into him until the wall at her back became impossible to ignore. She adjusted, and Camden caught the movement at once.
“Bench?”
“You’re learning.”
“That sounded almost complimentary.”
“Don’t ruin it.”
He grinned against her mouth and guided her across the room.
The trainer’s bench sat beneath the lockers, familiar from a hundred afternoons when she had waited for him to finish getting an ankle taped or a shoulder iced.
Tonight it belonged to another version of them, one with no practice schedule waiting on the other side of the door and no coach shouting for Camden to get back onto the field.
Camden helped her onto the edge.
Tess stopped him before he could create any distance between them.
“Come here.”
His forehead touched hers. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
That single word left no room for hesitation.
They had spent four years building their lives around alarms before sunrise, cheap dinners, long practices, bad weather, and the stubborn idea that all of it would lead somewhere. Now the future had finally opened in front of them, and Tess did not want to stand at the edge of it politely.
She wanted him close.
Camden kissed her, and she met him without holding anything back.
Her dress ended up bunched around her waist, his ruined formal shirt abandoned on the floor within reach.
Camden violently stripped off his slacks and boxers, kicking them aside.
He shoved her soaked panties out of the way and stepped squarely between her parted thighs, his thick, heavily veined cock completely hard in the dim shadows.
Tess hooked her ankles high over his hips.
Camden groaned, wrapping his hands tightly around her thighs to anchor her before driving his hips forward.
The blunt head of his cock parted her, and he pushed deep, sliding seamlessly into her tight pussy.
A shuddering breath broke from her lips, her fingernails instantly sinking into his broad shoulders as she felt her walls stretch exquisitely around him.
“God. Your pussy is so fucking tight,” Camden groaned, driving his hips forward in a relentless, grinding rhythm. He buried his face in her neck, his stubble scraping her skin as his chest pinned her to the wood. “Never pulling my cock out of you.”
“Then stay right there,” Tess gasped, clinging to him as the force of his thrusts rocked the bench, the sound of them echoing off the lockers.
Their whispered jokes gave way to quieter, dirty words neither of them would have said with an audience waiting outside.
Tess kept pulling him back whenever he tried to slow down, unwilling to let the draft-night adrenaline turn into caution between them.
Camden paused once, his face close to hers, his eyes dark with lust.
“I never want to let you go.”
Tess brushed her fingers through his hair, her body completely flushed. “Then stop trying to control every second.”
His mouth curved.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” She drew him closer. “You spent all night pacing that field like you could outwork the phone call. You got the call. Let yourself have it.”
Something in his expression shifted, the last of his patience completely gone.
The next kiss held none of the nervous energy from the bleachers.
He didn’t just kiss her—he devoured her.
It was simply Camden. No ballroom, no cameras, no sponsors, and no more waiting.
His thrusts turned punishing and violent, battering deep inside her, grinding relentlessly against her over and over until the pleasure spiked into agony.
Tess cried out, her back arching off the wood as her body completely surrendered to the climax, her muscles clenching violently around his shaft.
Camden chased her right over the edge. He drove his hips forward in one final thrust, groaning out a string of breathless curses as he finished inside her.
“Tess,” he groaned roughly, his voice completely wrecked. “You are my entire life.”
Tess held on to him and let the rest of the night narrow down to that.