Rookie Mistake (18 page)

Wilshire Regent Condominiums

Los Angeles, CA

It was supposed to make it better. Sleeping with Allen was supposed to make me feel in control, make me happy. It was at least supposed to get me off, and it did, but I’m more wound up now than I was before. Whatever he did to me, it didn’t take.

I could fly to Indiana. Is that crazy? Are the Colts even at home this week? I have no idea. I don’t even know that Kyle would be happy to see me after the brushoff I gave him during the Combine. I disappeared in my obsession with Trey and I haven’t been able to climb back out. It’s no good, this thing between us. We can’t be in a room together without getting stupid and we can’t avoid each other forever. And I don’t want to. That’s the bitch of it. We were getting along too well before the Draft. So well that he became a fixture in my life and now that he’s gone I’m bereft without him. I miss him. I miss my friend and I miss the man. I miss the pieces of him that come together to make the mass of emotions and muscle that are my undoing.

I’m a goddamn chick flick without him.

My phone buzzes next to me on the couch. I check the clock, frowning. It’s after midnight.

“Hello?”

“Miss Ashford, you have a visitor. Mr. Domata.”

I stare at nothing, stunned. But then again, am I? Or did I know this would happen? Is that why I went out with Allen in the first place? Is that why I took him to a bar I know is constantly surrounded by media?

“Let him up,” I answer hoarsely.

I’m already in my pajamas. I think about changing quickly before he comes up, but I decide against it. I won’t change anything about what I’m doing. I won’t be thrown into a fit just because he’s here.

I feel nervous as I undo the chain on my door. My fingers are shaky, pulsing with the beat of my heart that echoes too loudly in my ears. Memories of the last time Trey was here flash through my mind. Memories of what I did when he left, what he asked me to do, flood my body. It’s a familiar sensation born of repetition. Habit. Need.

He knocks on the door once. Just once. Hard and certain. He knows I’m there. He knows I’m waiting.

I open the door slowly, stepping aside to let him in without a word.

He looks me over before he comes in, taking in my shorts and thin tank top. My complete lack of a bra or two shits to give about it. I watch him swallow thickly before brushing past me into the living room.

“Are you alone?” he asks.

I shut the door, throwing the lock. “I let you up, didn’t I?”

“The old guy isn’t here?”

“Who is ‘the old guy’?” I ask bitingly.

He looks around the room. Never at me. “The OC from the Buccaneers. He didn’t stick around?”

“For two days?”

“So he was here?”

“What does it matter to you?”

“You can do better than him, Sloane.”

“And I have.”

He looks at me now. He holds me steady in his gaze, his eyes intense. His calm is cracking. I haven’t seen it in months, but there it is. Nervous Trey. Anxious Trey. Wild Trey with so much emotion, so much passion that he can hardly stand to be inside his own body. So he hides inside mine.

That’s what he’s come here for tonight. I know it just looking at him. It’s in the air around us as he stands ten feet away, breathing slowly through his nose. He’s had other women, but now that I’ve had other men, now it’s too much. Now he wants this, wants me.

He’s such a selfish son of a bitch.

“Stop prowling around my apartment,” I demand, feeling my temper flare.

Trey frowns at me. “Prowling?”

“Yeah, prowling. You’re sniffing out the place like an animal searching for his competition. He’s not here. It was a one-time thing.”

“Trust me, I don’t see him as competition.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

“
I’m
an asshole?”

“Yes,
you’re
an asshole. What are you doing here, Trey? Shouldn’t you be out with some club whore catching crabs?”

He smiles, pointing at my face. “You’re jealous.”

“So are you.”

“Maybe I am.”

I laugh bitterly. “Maybe? What brought you over here? We haven’t been in the same room with each other in months. So what’s changed?”

“Nothing,” he snaps, cutting his large hand through the tension in the air like a knife. “Nothing has changed. I still want you, you’re still my agent, and we can’t do fuck all about any of it.”

“You should leave.”

“Don’t you think I would if I could? I wouldn’t be here if I had any control over any of this, but I don’t and it makes me insane.”

“I’m free to sleep with who I want, the same as you.”

“Are you?” he asks quietly, stalking slowly toward me. One step at a time. “Is that the truth, Sloane? Can you sleep with who you want?”

I shake my head, my heart in my throat. “Stop.”

“Answer me.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“Why? Are you worried what you’ll do?”

“You’re right,” I argue quickly, watching him devour our distance slowly. “Nothing has changed. We can’t suddenly do this again. You’re still my client. I’m still your agent.”

He’s in front of me, his body blocking out the light, leaving me in shadow. “Tell me you haven’t thought about it?” he whispers, his voice rich with the heady scent of whiskey and sugar. So bitter but still so sweet. “Tell me you haven’t thought about me over and over again since it happened.”

“No,” I breathe.

“If you can tell me that you didn’t think about me even for a second while you were with him, I’ll leave right now. I’ll go and I’ll never come back, because I’ll tell you a secret, Sloane. When I’m with those other girls, you’re all I can think about.”

“Is that supposed to be flattering?”

“It’s supposed to be honest. I can’t get you out of my head. Out of my system. So I’m asking you, did you get me out of yours?”

I can barely breathe. My eyes are latched onto his, my head tilted back to look up at him. My mouth lies open, desperate and un-denying because I can’t. If I’m being honest, and I always have been with him, I can’t deny it.

“Yes,” I answer breathlessly. “I thought about you.”

Trey lowers his head, his lips hovering over mine. “When you were with him?”

“Yes.”

He kisses me lightly. “When he kissed you?”

“Yes.”

He kisses me again, lingering. Tasting with his tongue. “When he touched you?”

“Yes.”

His hands take my hips. They’re searing hot on my skin, burning me alive.

“Are you thinking about him now?” Trey growls.

I shake my head faintly. “I can’t think.”

“What do you want, Sloane?” He kisses me again, delving his tongue inside my mouth in a slow rhythm that leaves no doubt in my mind what he wants. “Tell me what you want.”

I put my hand over his, over his throwing hand, and I drag it down my body. Across my abdomen. Inside the hem of my shorts and down to the direst desire in me that begs for him, and only him.

“I want you to play with me.”

He growls as he tackles me, his lips crashing against mine. He moves so fast it’s unreal, his speed almost frightening. He backs me against the wall, pins me to it with his massive body, his hand still in my shorts. His long fingers slide along the length of me, opening me. Testing me. I whimper in the back of my throat, into his mouth. It urges him on. It sends his tongue into my mouth, his finger inside me, and I’m squirming against the wall to get away from the overwhelming feeling that runs through me like fire.

He doesn’t let me escape.

“We’re gonna go slow this time, Sloane,” he whispers to me between kisses. “You’re going to call all the plays, have all of the control. You’re going to show me how to love you, but remember this; you get no time outs.”

He moves his thumb over my clit, only once. I gasp, burying my face in his chest.

“Do you want me to do that again?” he asks, his voice rumbling deep against my forehead.

I nod my head, my hands clinging to his shoulders.

“You gotta tell me, baby,” he reminds me patiently. “Tell me what to do.”

“Again,” I breathe. “Do it again.”

He does as he’s told. His thumb darts over the most sensitive part of me again and again, falling in rhythm with his finger. I ball his shirt in my fists, trying to hold onto him, gasping for breath as my body bucks and jolts with every touch.

“Faster,” I demand, my voice high and nearly unrecognizable, begging for more. More of him. More of this. More of everything.

His breathing is ragged, the hard contours of his chest rising and falling heavily under my head still pressed against him. “Talk to me,” he urges roughly.

“More,” I plead.

He adds a second finger.

I pull on his shirt as I lift my leg, unconsciously trying to climb him. He wraps his free hand around the back of my knee to hitch it higher. To open me wider.

“Faster.”

Trey moves faster, his breathing matching pace. I squirm against him, desperate to get away and closer at the same time. I’m strung tight, pulled in every direction and I cling to him to keep me upright. To keep this feeling that’s spiraling inside of me, coiling in my stomach and igniting in my veins.

I whimper, weeping, my fingers aching where they’re knotted in his shirt. My legs trembling. Finally I break apart with a scream that’s muffled in his chest as he wraps his arms around me, holding me tightly. He’s all that’s keeping me together, keeping me from shattering into a million shining pieces on the floor.

I release my fingers slowly, smoothing them over his chest as I lift my head to look up at him. He stares down at me with dark eyes that are both demanding and patient, his chest still heaving. This is his control. His natural born ability to be in the thick of the chaos, pulse pounding, body screaming, and still he’s able to hold strong. To keep his cool until the call is given. Until his power is unleashed.

“Take me to the bedroom,” I tell him, my voice hoarse but commanding, “and love me the way you want to.”

He sweeps me into his arms without a word, lifting me off the ground. He carries me to my bedroom where he sets me on my feet, strips us both down to nothing, and lays me out underneath him. The cold light of the moon is on his skin as he hovers over me, but still he’s radiant. Still he’s warm and golden, glowing, even in his ebony eyes that take me in. That drown me in their depths as he lowers himself over me.

It’s different this time, the way he consumes me. He’s not rushed tonight, not the way he was in the office. He’s slow and torturous. He leaves me breathless and strained, turned out from the inside until everything in me is there for him to see. Every need, every itch, every hidden thought. Too many of them are about him, and he knows it.

He kisses me as he drives inside me, stretching me. Groaning deep in his chest as he pushes me to my limits, giving me what I want. He gives me love, slow and steady. I memorize every agonizing moment. Every thrust, every brush of his skin. Every tender kiss and painful pinch, because I have no idea if it will be the last. And that’s what I truly want; I want this to last.

In the morning he’ll be gone. This will be gone, this moment and its meaning will go with it. With him. And maybe it’s nothing. Maybe we’re nothing but a handful of sweat soaked minutes that run out the clock to the last second, squeezing every play we can manage into the time we’re allowed, but when it runs out, that’s it. Game over. It’s a painful thought, one that pinches in my chest like a gunshot wound even as my body blows apart on a wave pleasure that takes him with me. That washes us away together.

Later that night when the time comes, when I know he’s going because the dawn is coming, I feel a desperate ache in my bones that I can’t ignore. I can’t escape.

I roll over on the bed, straddling him with my legs, waking him with my mouth, and I tell him to love me again. I tell him to go slow.

I tell him to do it like it’s the last time.