CHAPTER 3
It’s been ten months since the last time I went to Honeys.
Between starting with a new team, filming my off-season endorsements, taking trips back and forth to Montana, and avoiding Kitty, whose name I looked up in my phone the second I got home the last time I was at Honeys, it was a busy summer.
And then the season started.
It was my first year with the Aces but not my first year playing with Jack Dalton, though it had been years since we played together. Still, we found a rhythm right away. The entire team did, and we had an outstanding season capped with a championship win.
And now I’m on top of the world.
I’ve got a Super Bowl ring on my finger, bonus money in the bank, endorsement offers out the ass, women lining up at my door, and a permanent goddamn smile on my face.
At least that’s what people see, anyway. That’s the image I project to the world.
It’s all good. Life has its ups and downs, and I’m doing everything I can to ride the high right now. For example, at the parade last week celebrating our Super Bowl victory, I was so drunk I started tossing cans of beer and mini bottles of alcohol off the bus to anyone in the crowd who wanted one.
Yeah…more than one person put a stop to that. Candy only, they scolded me.
I roll my eyes again just thinking about it. I was just having some fun.
I’ve made good friends here in Vegas over the last year.
Jack and I are closer than ever—so close, in fact, that he invited me to his weekly family dinners that rotate from his house to his brother’s to his mother’s.
In turn, I’ve gotten closer with his brother, Luke, who also played for the Aces but just announced his retirement, and I’ve become friendly with his sister.
Kaylee Dalton is like a little sister to me, too.
Except she’s not. At all. In any way.
She’s fine as fuck.
I find her popping up in my thoughts at random times. It has to be because I’m just around her more than I’ve ever been. It has to be because she’s a new friend.
Although I’ll admit I don’t think of her brothers—also friends—as much as I think about her.
She’s only twenty-two-years-old.
I attempt to push her out of my head for the millionth time as the car drops my buddies and me at the front of the strip club.
For as much as I’ve tried, though, all the dumb things I’m doing haven’t been very effective in getting her out of my head. Drinking. Fucking. Partying. Celebrating our victory. Drinking some more. Fucking some more. Partying some more.
None of it manages to eliminate from my mind the twenty-two-year-old with the peachy ass and the smile that stuns me every time.
It has to be the challenge that’s so attractive. She has shown beyond zero interest in anything more than friendship with me, and that is never the reaction I get from women. I get the feeling she sees me as her brother’s meathead buddy, which, to be fair, is basically what I am.
Women chase me, though. It doesn’t go the other way around.
We talk every week at the dinner table, and while we tease each other and occasionally engage in flirty banter, she’s made no indication that she’s interested in me making a move.
I’d like to make a move…but then I think about my friendship with Jack.
You just don’t do that to your buddy’s sister.
He’s protective of her, which I get. He should be. Their father passed away a year and a half ago, and he’s stepped into that role for her.
I’ve made the vow to try to forget about her even though she seems to be on my mind more often than not lately.
A strip club should do the trick…right?
Kitty’s working, naturally. She walks right up to me when I make my way through the front door with my buddies.
“Ben Olson,” she rasps close to my ear. She’s wearing a short, tight dress and she dances with me, swaying her hips against mine to the beat that’s playing for the chick currently working the stage.
“Kitty,” I say.
“Care for another private performance?” she asks.
Kaylee’s face flashes through my mind again. Hell, I’d sure like a private performance from her.
But she’s not offering.
She’ll never offer.
I’m just the idiot who smashes beer cans on my forehead. I’m too old for her. I’m her brother’s friend. I’m a meathead who crashes into other meatheads for a living.
God, this is so stupid. I have to stop thinking about her.
“Yeah,” I say to Kitty against my better judgment.
I should’ve listened to my instincts.
She bypasses the private room and takes me directly out back behind the club. She bends over and sticks her ass in the air, clearly ready for a good time out here. There’s no foreplay with Kitty again. The girl knows what she wants. I’ll give her that.
Except…I don’t really want her. I should, I suppose. This has all the ingredients for a good time.
Hell, a stripper came onto me and took me out back behind the club. This is like living every man’s fantasy…again.
But I guess I’m starting to feel like this isn’t what I want out of life anymore.
I just don’t know what it is, exactly, that I do want.
Instead of trying to come to some deep realization behind a strip club, I do what I’ve always done.
I have to pump the monster a few times to get him ready for the big performance.
I jam a couple fingers into her pussy while I get myself warmed up, and she’s already there, like she lubed up before she spotted me.
Maybe she did. Maybe that’s not something I want to know and I’m a little turned off by it.
Still, she’s hot, and we’ve done this before, and hopefully she’s more well-versed in my intentions after the last time paired with the near-year that has passed since I saw her.
I roll on a condom once the big guy is ready then slide into her. I’m hammering away, enjoying my time out back with her even though it all feels so damn wrong, and my balls start to tighten as the familiar heat rips down my spine.
That’s the moment when a car decides to turn down the alley where I’m currently fucking a stripper.
And it’s not just any car.
No…the red and blue flashing lights tell me I’m about to be fucked, too.