1. On the Clock #2
The locker room was empty, stripped of the noise and bodies that usually filled it after practice. We crossed the tile before Nolan finally set me on my feet.
He backed me into the painted cinderblock wall.
“The wall is freezing.”
Nolan stopped.
The teasing left his face. “Want me to stop?”
I looked at him.
After everything that had happened tonight—the cameras, Reid, the waiting, the phone call—this was the first moment that belonged only to us.
“I didn’t say stop.”
That was all he needed.
His mouth found mine.
It had none of the laughter from the field. Nolan kissed me as if he’d been holding something back all night and had finally run out of reasons to keep trying. My hands slid into his hair, and I pulled him closer.
His palms settled at my waist.
My shoulders pressed against the cool wall while the heat of him crowded out everything else.
He broke the kiss long enough to look at me.
“I can’t believe it. We actually did it, Piper.”
The disbelief in his voice got to me more than the phone call had.
I touched his face. “You did it, Nolan. You earned every single yard.”
His forehead rested against mine.
“I didn’t do it alone. I am going to buy you the world.”
I laughed under my breath. “I don’t need the world.”
“Too late.”
“You don’t even know what they’re paying you.”
“Still buying it.”
“Very responsible.”
“I’ve had an agent lecturing me about fiscal responsibility since I was sixteen. I’m allowed one bad financial decision.”
“One?”
His mouth curved against mine. “Maybe two.”
I kissed him before he could keep talking.
His hands moved urgently along my sides, shoving the straps of my dress off my shoulders as we shifted against the wall.
I should have cared about wrinkling the fabric Reid had obsessed over all evening.
I didn’t.
Nolan reached to my back, unclasping my bra in a single, fluid motion and pulling it free.
The overwhelming high of the night fed directly into this frantic, consuming physical need.
He dropped his head, his mouth searing against my breast.
I gasped, my bare back arching against the rough, freezing wall.
He sucked hard at my nipple, his teeth grazing and biting gently, sending a sharp, sudden heat straight through me.
The last traces of the field’s chill completely disappeared.
He pressed his hips flush against mine, grinding his thick, hard erection relentlessly against the thin fabric of my dress.
I lost myself to the rhythm, tangling my fingers in his hair as he pulled me under.
Everything about him still carried the energy of the call.
Not the cameras.
Not the contract.
The relief.
Four years of work had ended with him standing on that field beside me, and now the same man who had spent half the night pacing holes into the turf couldn’t seem to keep still.
“Nolan.”
He lifted his head.
The look he gave me made the rest of the room irrelevant.
My dress had shifted. His shirt was rumpled. Somewhere outside, his phone was probably vibrating itself off the bleachers while Reid tried to drag him back to the party.
Neither of us moved toward the door.
Nolan kissed me again.
I pulled him closer, until he was pressed flush against me.
His mouth broke from mine, and for the first time since we’d crossed into the locker room, he stopped moving.
“Piper.”
“I know.”
His forehead rested against mine. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“I don’t.”
That was enough.
The last of our laughter disappeared beneath a breathless kiss.
Nolan’s hands found the edge of my dress, dragging it up and off, and mine went to his shirt.
His shirt, his tie, and the remnants of Reid’s carefully planned Draft-night image ended up stripped away and scattered across the locker-room floor, leaving us completely bare in the dim light.
Neither of us cared where anything landed.
The cold from outside had vanished. So had the hotel, the cameras, Reid, and every stranger waiting to turn Nolan’s future into a headline.
There was only him.
And me.
Nolan drew back, glancing toward the trainer’s bench.
“The bench,” I said.
His mouth curved. “Come here.”
He took my hand.
That small gesture undid me.
For all the urgency between us, he still waited until I moved with him. I settled onto the edge of the heavy wooden trainer’s bench, and Nolan stepped between my parted thighs.
His hands came to my waist, his large fingers gripping my hips.
I pulled him closer.
He guided his cock to my wet entrance and pushed inside.
The deep, stretching friction of his erection sliding inside of me erased whatever clever thing I’d been about to say.
Nolan sank in to the hilt and stopped, drawing in a sharp, ragged breath.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
I caught his face between my hands and kissed him.
“Does that answer your question?”
“It helps.”
“Good.”
He kissed me again, setting a slow, deep, grinding pace. The rough scrape of his jawline stubble burned deliciously against my collarbone, but he was still holding back.
Nolan moved with a restraint that lasted about as long as my patience did.
I hooked my legs high over his waist to give him a deeper angle, tightening my hold on his broad shoulders.
“Stop thinking so much.”
“I’m trying not to hurt you,” he rasped, his chest heaving.
“You’re not.”
His eyes searched mine.
I dug my fingernails into his back and drew his hips forward, forcing him deeper.
That finally ended the argument.
The bench shifted beneath me as he abandoned his caution, his thrusts turning relentless and demanding.
My hands moved over his sweating shoulders, keeping me anchored as he pounded into me.
Nolan buried his face against my neck, groaning as our hips slapped together.
“God, Piper.”
I smiled against his hair, breathless. “That’s a little dramatic.”
“You picked now to make fun of me?”
“You make it easy.”
He lifted his head, still thrusting deep.
For one second, the expression on his face was so openly happy that I forgot about everything else.
No nerves.
No cameras.
No Reid.
Just Nolan.
“You feel so incredibly good,” he groaned, his pace quickening. “I could stay inside you forever.”
Something in the way he said it—the absolute raw vulnerability in his voice while he had me pinned to the bench—took all the teasing out of me.
“Then stay.”
His mouth found mine again in a bruising kiss.
I held him tighter, locking my legs firmly around him to take every inch.
“Don’t hold back, Nolan. Give it to me.”
Whatever restraint remained between us vanished.
The room narrowed to raw sensation, the searing heat of his cock sliding deep inside my wet walls, the heavy bench groaning beneath me, and Nolan’s voice whenever he gasped my name.
I matched him without hesitation, chasing the final high together.
This was the man I had watched work himself sick for four years.
The man who had taken every hit, every insult, every bad practice, every early morning and late night and turned all of it into the phone call still waiting outside on the bleachers.
He had spent the whole evening being told what his future was worth.
Right here, none of that mattered.
I didn’t need an NFL contract.
I didn’t need Reid’s party.
I didn’t need cameras recording the moment our lives changed.
I needed this.
Nolan.
His thrusts turned desperate near the end, losing all grace and surrendering to pure, urgent need.
“Piper,” he ground out, his entire body going rigid.
“I’ve got you.”
I clung to him, my nails biting into his skin.
The powerful, shuddering climax ripped through him first, and he finished deep inside me with a low groan. The intensity of it pushed me over the edge, sending blinding heat rushing through me.
It left me spent, content, and anchored to him—safe from whatever madness professional football was about to throw at us.
Nolan collapsed against my chest, his full weight pressing into me as he buried his face in my neck.
The final rush left us laughing under our breath, the kind of helpless laughter that came when there was nothing left to perform for anybody.
Nolan rested his forehead against mine.
For several seconds, neither of us tried to move.
Then he whispered my name.
“Piper.”
I brushed the damp hair away from his forehead.
He looked at me as if I were the only person left in the world.
“You are everything to me.”
The words stripped away the last of my laughter.
I kissed him once.
No joke this time.