Down by Contact - A Seattle Lumberjacks Romance (32 page)

“I’m gonna cum, baby, if you keep that
up.”

“That’s the idea, but I’d rather have you
inside me.”

“I’m all in, honey. Lead the way.”

“Good thing. You need to be all in. Get in
the back seat.”

He hesitated for moment, seeming to balk at
her authoritative tone then climbed into the back seat, falling in
a heap with his pants tangled around his ankles. Kelsie would’ve
laughed, but she was too horny. She crawled after him.

“Condom?” She asked as he leveraged his big
body onto the seat. He pointed toward the pants. She fished out his
wallet and found a condom. “You’re prepared.” Zach carrying a
condom around in his wallet didn’t sit well with her. Did he think
he might meet some anonymous woman somewhere that he’d need a
condom? Maybe that waitress? Surely he hadn’t planned on them
hooking up in the truck? Then again, maybe he had.

She tore off the wrapper and rolled it over
his shaft. He watched her. His thighs splayed, his head back
against the headrest, and looking every bit a man who’d surrendered
his body to her carnal pleasures.

Kelsie hiked up her skirt to her waist and
yanked off her panties. “Are you ready for me, big boy?”

“My big boy’s ready, and I’m ready.” His
brown eyes sparkled like hot fudge simmering on the stove. Only
this had nothing to do with Grandma’s house. She looked down, past
his thick neck and broad shoulders. His biceps bulged from all the
working out. Her gaze came to rest on his shaft, the condom
glistening with moisture. She smiled the smile of a woman who knew
what she wanted and what her man wanted and also knew they were
both getting lucky tonight.

Kelsie straddled Zach’s thighs and lowered
herself down until the tip of his penis just grazed her sex.
Gripping her shoulders to balance herself, she slid down onto his
thick cock.

“Oh, yeah, baby, that’s the way to do it.”
He grasped her waist in his hands, which almost spanned her
waist.

“See, out of the ordinary sex isn’t so bad,
is it?”

“Would you call this kinky sex?”

“If that’s what you want to call it, that’s
what we can call it.”

“I haven’t done this since high school.”

She wriggled on top of him and pressed her
crotch into his. “You need to get out of your conservative
box.”

“Why do I think you’ll be helping me with
that?”

“As long as I don’t distract you from your
mission of a ring.” Kelsie rose up until only an inch of him was
inside her and moved her hips in a slow, circular motion.

“Didn’t seem to hurt my game.”

“That’s because best thing to do is it get
me out of your system on a regular basis.” She panted as she moved
up and down on him.

“Hell, yeah. That’s the only way.” He sought
her mouth, and she gladly accepted his lips and tongue. Their
mating became a wild frenzy of slamming hips, panting, wet mouths,
and tangled hair. She could tell by how his cock twitched inside
her that he was close to coming. He knew it, too, and reached
between her legs to thumb her clit taking her over the abyss with
him.

Kelsie didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Not ever.

CHAPTER 22

Over two weeks later, the Jacks’ record was
five and five. They weren’t burning up the league, not like Zach
and Kelsie were burning up the sheets every night and every
morning.

For the majority of his life, Zach’s world
revolved around football, but now Kelsie had entered that orbit and
sometimes he couldn’t say whether Kelsie or football occupied the
majority of his thoughts. But his game wasn’t suffering, and that
was what mattered the most.

Or it should have been.

Funny how a guy didn’t realize how much he’d
been missing until he found it, which had a lot to do with why he’d
caved to her latest request just to see her smile. Zach never cared
much for family gatherings, so attending Thanksgiving dinner at
Derek’s house wasn’t his idea of fun. The place was packed, not
only with teammates who had no family in the area, but with various
family members complete with all the dysfunctional family crap that
happens on holidays. Not nearly as dysfunctional as Zach’s family
had been, rather a normal state of dysfunction.

Obviously, Derek’s brother-in-law Mitch
didn’t care much for Derek. Rachel and Lavender’s respective
fathers and brothers zoned out in front of football games. Derek’s
dad, stepmother, and sister were like a dream family for Zach.

Then there was Harris’s family. Now they
were interesting. All strong-willed women, and Tyler alternated
between ignoring them and kowtowing to them. Neither approach saved
him from their constant badgering. No wonder the guy had such a
healthy ego. A guy would either learn to be impervious to their
attempts to control his life or be turned into a sniveling coward.
Harris might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t a coward.

Actually, Zach almost felt sorry for Harris
after he met his two ball-busting, man-eating sisters. Freddie and
Estie, and damned if he knew which was which. They weren’t twins
but they might as well be. Close to six feet tall with long dark
hair and faces models would die for, they most likely turned heads
wherever they went. Zach noticed they didn’t bring husbands or
boyfriends, probably scared them all off. One was an attorney, the
other a financial advisor. If Zach knew which one did the financial
stuff, he’d hit her up for some advice, but he might get the wrong
one, and one of his personal rules was to avoid attorneys at all
costs.

Kelsie fit right in with the classy women,
plus, her girl buddies Rachel and Lavender. Left to fend for
himself, Zach started to skirt around Harris, who was getting an
ass-chewing by his sisters over something when one of them snaked
out a hand and yanked him into their little circle. Damn, that
hurt. The woman must lift small men for a hobby. Good thing he
didn’t qualify.

“Freddie, drop it. Murphy and I are working
on our differences.”

The one Harris called Freddie turned a pair
of blue eyes the same color and intensity as her brother’s on Zach
and pinned him. “You’re prone to telling us what we want to hear. I
want to hear it from him.” She jabbed a lethal red nail into Zach’s
chest.

Zach backed up a step and cleared his
throat. He just wanted away from these women with his balls intact.
“Ty and I are buddies.” He lied and refused to make eye contact
with the sister.

“See?” Harris wrapped an arm around Zach’s
shoulders and grinned at him. The guy had missed his true calling.
He should’ve been a con-artist.

Freddie narrowed her eyes. Her sister did
the same.

“So, buddy, whadaya say we grab a brew and
join the men in the family room? From the noise, I’d say the game’s
a good one.”

“Sounds good.” Together they bolted for the
door, leaving the she-lions standing behind them, claws still
extended and teeth bared.

They paused in the doorway, both glancing
back. Blowing out mutual breaths of relief, Zach followed Harris to
Derek’s well-stocked bar and hitched a hip onto the barstool.

Zach took a good, long swallow of the beer
Harris handed him. “Are they older or younger?”

“Older.” The quarterback downed his beer in
one long guzzle and opened another. Zach didn’t blame him. He’d be
in rehab with sisters like that.

“How did you live to puberty with them
around?”

Harris chuckled. “What doesn’t kill you
makes you stronger. Between Derek and me, there were three older
sisters. We lived on neighboring ranches. We did a lot of riding
and hiking, anything to get away. Lots of guy trips with our
dads.”

Zach glanced around. He didn’t see Tyler’s
father anywhere, and his mother was here by herself. “Where’s your
dad?”

For a brief moment, Harris’s guard slipped
on black ice and fell on its ass for all to see, but only Zach
noticed. “He’s not here.” The words came out choked, as if someone
were strangling the life out of the quarterback.

Harris’s answer should’ve been Zach’s clue,
but a rare moment of curiosity drove him to ask more questions.
“Where is he?”

“Dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Now Zach felt like the
insensitive ass he always was.

Harris shrugged one shoulder and fingered
the label on his beer. “Yeah, he died of a heart attack the summer
before my freshman year of college. Just like that. One moment he
was large as life, the next he was lying on the floor in the den.
Gone. It was pretty devastating. Lavender’s dad was my college
coach. Without him and my family, I’d have never made it.” Harris
met Zach’s gaze with true interest. “Where’s your family?”

Zach started to evade the answer, but Harris
had been honest with him and given him a little glimpse into what
made him tick. “My brother plays NHL hockey. The rest are dead, in
prison, or on the streets.”

Harris’s brow furrowed. He seemed to be
working through how to respond to that. Finally, he shrugged and
offered Zach a wry smile. “Family. Can’t pick ’em.” He held up his
bottle in a salute.

“Yeah.” Zach let the cold beer run down his
throat, relaxing a little. This wasn’t a high-society bash. He
could deal with these people, even though the women in Harris’s
family struck fear in his heart. At least the rest of the guests
seemed like average people. No pretenses. They were who they
were.

With a jerk of his head, Tyler wandered over
to watch the game. Zach followed him and squeezed onto the couch
between Derek and a rookie safety from Florida. Tyler settled into
an easy chair that one of Rachel’s brothers just vacated.
Obviously, it was every man for himself. You move, you lose.

He glanced around the room at the raucous
group, oddly comfortable with them. No one here judged him—not even
Harris. None of them cared if he used the proper fork or even if he
used a fork. He caught glimpses of Kelsie bustling around the
kitchen with the other women, all laughing and talking at once—pure
female chaos. He hoped they didn’t let her make the gravy. Her
gravy tasted like cardboard and chicken broth. Regardless, the food
smelled fucking fantastic. Kelsie wasn’t the world’s best cook so
Zach appreciated a good home-cooked meal.

He ran a hand through his hair and stared at
the game on television, not really seeing it. A million things
raced through his head. First and foremost should be his goal of
winning a Super Bowl. Yet, it wasn’t. It was Kelsie who occupied
his thoughts.

This past week, instead of concentrating
while watching game film he’d been scheming how to get her to
forget their agreement and stay with him after the season ended,
however short or long that season might prove to be.

At five and five, they were still hanging on
by a thread in the wild card hunt. Zach pushed Kelsie’s luscious
body into a compartment in his brain and concentrated on the game
on television—or tried to. After all, they’d be playing this team
in a few weeks. A very short few weeks.

He needed to be ready. Filter out all the
distractions and focus single-mindedly on football, like he used to
be able to do. Before Harris. Before this stupid gala. And before
Kelsie in her current incarnation as a nice girl.

And before he fell head over heels in
love.

* * * * *

Kelsie cuddled next to Zach and flattened
her palms against his broad chest. The hitch in his intake of
breath gave him away. He was awake. Scranton lay on the pillow next
to her head. She rolled up onto his chest and stared at him.

“Admit it. You enjoyed today.”

“Like I enjoy a tight end powering past me
to score a touchdown.” He squinted at her, his brown eyes hazy with
sleep.

“You did. When I looked in, you and Tyler
were debating some obscure football fact.”

“He’s a football trivia machine. Who’d have
guessed? I couldn’t stump him.”

“I’m sure there are facets to him that’ll
surprise you, just like there are with you. Neither of you show
your true colors.”

“That’s not true. I’m an open book.”

“Your book is padlocked and stowed in a
trunk.”

“You think?”

“Zach, you are the most private man I’ve
ever met. You’re a loner, but I don’t think you are by choice.”

“Then why am I?”

“Because you don’t want people to see the
sensitive guy hiding under all that masculine posturing. Just like
Tyler.”

“Tyler’s as shallow as that puddle outside
the back door.”

“That puddle is deceptive. Puddles are
murky. You can’t see bottom. You never know what secrets are
concealed under the surface. Step in it and you’ll see. After last
week’s rain, you could drown in that puddle.”

“Once the sun comes out, it’ll dry up
again.”

“Probably, but the sun never stays out for
long, does it?”

Zach stared at her in the dim light. “Why
are we talking about puddles?”

“We weren’t really talking about
puddles.”

“I was. I don’t know what the hell you were
talking about.”

Kelsie laughed. Zach liked to play the part
of the dumb country boy, but he was sharp as they came. “Why would
a guy who graduated with honors keep it a secret?”

“Are we still talking about Harris or
puddles? Cuz I don’t think Harris ever came close to a degree, and
the puddle hasn’t gone to college.”

Kelsie chuckled. “I might be referring to a
certain linebacker and what his nosy wife discovered.”

“Maybe that linebacker’s nosy wife shouldn’t
spend her spare time sticking her nose into her husband’s
business.”

“Cold day in hell that’ll happen.”

She wanted to ask him about his brother
again, about the etched marble stone in the yard, but she couldn’t
bring herself to do it. Not yet. Not with the season winding down
and the Jacks hanging on by a thread, but the team had Tyler and
Zach. By sheer force of will, both guys would carry the team on
their backs if they had to. She believed in Zach. He’d get the job
done. He’d get his Super Bowl ring. Thank God the stalker remained
absent. Neither of them needed that added worry.