Authors: Zoe Dawson
Tags: #romance sports, #short read, #collections and anthologies, #coming of age, #contemporary romance, #holiday, #erotica
Monster Man (5 page)
But what could he
do?
Cat opened her eyes,
stretched, and smiled. “Hey, where’s my coffee?”
Shane returned her
sweet smile and walked down to the kitchen to pour her a cup. On his
way back upstairs, he had to pause at the top. Emotions were swamping
his chest, and he didn’t want to go in there and spoil
anything. Once he had himself under control, he entered the bedroom
and gave her the cup.
“I should get
out of here soon and let you get ready for the game this afternoon.”
“I do have to
get to the stadium. You have time to finish your coffee.”
She sat up in bed.
“This has been a wonderful weekend, but I’ve come to the
conclusion that…well that I can’t continue like this.”
His heart froze.
“I’m
very fond of you Shane,” her voice thick, “I truly am,
but continuing this relationship is just courting disaster.”
“Cat….”
“No. Please,
Shane. Let’s just treasure this time we’ve had and end it
before it’s ruined by outside influences.”
He swallowed hard
around the lump in his throat. “We can still be friends,
right?”
Cat bit her lip and
looked away. “Of course we can.” She came off the bed,
settled on his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and held on
tight. Shane felt as if the bottom had just fallen out of his world.
###
Shane was slow off
the mark as he dove for the running back, and just missed him. He
should have made that play with his eyes closed. His heart wasn’t
in it. To compensate, on the next play, he rammed into the next guy
and the next, charging right for the quarterback. He hit him with a
punishing tackle. He got flagged for unnecessary roughness, but the
aggression felt good.
Then the play of the
game. They were tied, the opposing quarterback threw the ball, it
wobbled and Shane leaped, stole the ball out of midair, and started
running. Just before he was hit and taken down, time ran out. They
had won. Yet the elation he usually felt was absent as Shane went
down hard under a rough-hitting tackle.
###
Cat watched Shane
play from the owner’s box, feeling as if everything bright and
beautiful had just been snatched from her. Her mother would call it
sick at heart.
“Hi, Cat.”
Great. Dick
Samuels.
Just
what I need
.
“It looks
like you can’t take your eyes off Shane Bishop. I wonder why
that is?”
Cat sat up a little
straighter and turned towards him, seeing the knowledge in his eyes.
“What do you
want, Dick?”
“I want that
promotion, Cat. And you’re going to hand it to me on a silver
platter. Turn it down or you won’t have a job at all,” he
said and smirked. “I saw you and Shane doing the nasty during
the party. I know you broke the golden rule.”
“You are such
a stinking little weasel.”
“Do as I say,
Cat, or all your hard work will have been for nothing.”
###
As Shane came off
the field, he pulled off his helmet, holding it by the face mask. The
heaviness returned, settling between his shoulder blades and weighing
on his heart.
He looked up toward
the owner’s box and met Cat’s eyes through the glass.
Something was wrong. He could tell by her stiff body language.
As soon as he got to
his locker, he called Cat’s cell. She answered on the first
ring.
“What
happened?”
“Dick saw us
at the fundraiser. He threatened to tell Harding. He wants that
promotion, and he’s happy to tell all in order to get it.”
Shane gritted his
teeth. “He’s not getting away with this.”
“Shane, please
don’t do anything drastic,” Cat said.
“I’m
going to Harding.”
“Shane, no!”
He ended the call.
He barged into
Harding’s owner’s suite without knocking. And he’d
already decided to skip the pleasantries and go straight to the
issue. “Catherine Everhart and I are involved, and if you don’t
like it, I’ll be the one to walk.”
“What are you
talking about?” The white-haired, bespectacled Harding looked
confused.
“Catherine
Everhart. If it comes down to someone losing their job on this
franchise, it’s not going to be her.”
“The hell you
say. I pay you $8 million a year, boy. You’d give all that up.
Why?”
Shane walked to the
desk and slammed his helmet down on top of the polished wood.
“Because I want to be with her.”
“You do?”
Cat whispered behind him, and he turned to see tears streaming down
her lovely face.
###
Shane turned and met
her eyes and her heart rolled over. He had that penetrating,
black-hole look in his eyes. Walking toward her, he gathered her up
in his arms and kissed her, right there in front of Harding.
Shane turned around
and lasered back in on Harding. “It’s your choice. She
stays or I walk.”
“Ah, what the
hell, it was a stupid rule I made when my daughter worked here. I
didn’t want her getting involved with a football player.
Besides,” he gave Cat a direct look, “I can’t do
without my new Director of Community Relations, now can I?”
Cat looked up into
Shane’s eyes. Monster Man was hers in all his untamed glory.
She believed, with everything in her, that they were headed into a
bright, beautiful future. “I want to be with you, too, Shane.”
With his arm across her shoulders, they left Harding’s office.
He stopped her in
the hall and pulled her close. His warm mouth touched hers and Cat
melted into his embrace. He was the man for her, and she was through
kidding herself. Now they were free to explore their relationship out
in the open.
“I think you
scared Hardass.” she said when he broke the kiss.
“They don’t
call me Monster Man for nothing.” He kissed her again. “There
is nothing more important than you, my wild Cat. Let’s get out
of here and find us a surface.”
*******
Stalk Me Online:
Don’t miss my
next installation of the Forbidden Plays series in an upcoming boxed
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Hot Read
Lizzy
Jordan has been working for the Wildcats franchise for a number of
years and has maintained a professional distance from the big, hunky
football players. That was until Texan Tyler Davis joined the
franchise. But Lizzy is eight years older than the fresh-faced Rookie
of the Year. But that doesn’t seem to affect the hawt gazes he
keeps throwing her after that unexpected, completely naked encounter
in the locker room—
totally
by accident. After seeing his buffed body in the buff, that cocky
cowboy attention he’s paying her with his crystal blue eyes has
everything to do with him seeing her as a desirable woman and Tyler
proving he’s all…man.
And, don’t miss my new romantic erotica serial that will be out in 2015!
Shameless Fantasy
You think you know what you
want
?
You don’t know
shit
.
I know what you
need
.
My name is Nick Bottecelli and you wouldn’t know by looking at me that I have a Ph.D. in Psychology.
I used to be a
certified sex therapist, but now I own a very exclusive club that
caters to fantasies. Any fantasy you can think of, I can make it
happen. Want to be dominated and fucked? Easy enough. Want to have
sex with a dashing stranger you just met in a bar? Piece of cake. Any
fantasy you can dream up, I can make better—for a price.
I will blow your
mind, and I guarantee you will want to pay me over and over again
because I am the king of making all your fantasies come true.
If only that were
true for me. My fantasy is all about taking the woman I can never
have. My business partner. And while I may imagine all of the ways in
which I would love to fuck her over and over again, she has made it
clear… no mixing business with pleasure.
She thinks I am a
tamed savage. But, I am the cunning beast to her beauty and the
animal in me is stalking her, readying for my chance to strike. She
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Zoe Dawson’s Book List
Romantic Comedy
Going to the Dogs Series
Fetched (companion novella to Hounded)
Handled (companion novella to Groomed for Murder)
Tangled (companion novella to Leashed)
Captured (companion novella to Collared)
New Adult
Hope Parish Novels
A Perfect Secret Series
Urban Fantasy
The Starbuck Chronicles
Zoe Dawson is the
alter ego of multi-published, bestselling author Karen Anders. Karen
started her career because her grandmother gave her a book to read.
That book made her fall in love with romance and started her on the
trek to get published. She achieved that goal in 1996 with the
publication of Jennifer's Outlaw for Silhouette. Even with many books
under her belt, she can't wait for that next idea, that next
exquisite sentence and, of course, the next hero and heroine who fall
in love.
Stalk Me Online:
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Dear Reader,
Thank you for embarking on this journey with me. It's been fabulous to
write this book for your enjoyment.
If you haven’t done so already, please consider leaving me a review. It
helps me out tremendously. Thank you. Please feel free to message me
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Best, Zoe
