Tackle (10 page)

She looked at me with disbelieving eyes, but I ignored them. I knew that deep inside Diana, there was a slut begging to be freed, and I had every intention of freeing it. She reached down and unbuckled my belt. "Your turn," she whispered. "Turn over."

I knew what she wanted – to give me the same pleasure I'd just given her, but that was the last thing on my mind. There was plenty of time for her to suck my cock – I intended to have her in my bed every night for months, but right now, I wanted to feel my cock stretching against the walls of her pussy, right now – while she was still recovering from the orgasm I had just given her.

"No," I growled. She looked surprised, but I grabbed her, picked her up effortlessly and unzipped the back of her dress, leaving her naked, except for a pair of panties that were lying somewhere on the stone patio floor. "On top," I demanded, flipping her over so that I lay back on the cushioned love seat with Diana's hips straddling mine. She had a devious, devilish glint in her eye now, and tugged my suit trousers off, letting my huge cock flop free. I helped her out, shrugging off the jacket and undoing the shirt.

"You're not wearing any underwear…" she blurted out in surprise.

"You sound surprised." I grinned. "Not what you imagined?" I laughed as she flushed red. "Don't worry, you'll have plenty of material next time."

She bent down and kissed the head of my cock, and it twitched in response. It was already as thick as it was ever going to get, and I wanted it inside her. She took it into her mouth, and I closed my eyes with delight, threading my hands through her soft long hair like she had with mine. I could let go, right then and there, but I growled, "No, not like this," and pulled her up by her hair, like she'd done with me.

She looked into my eyes, surprised, but I didn't give her second to reorient herself before pulling her up onto my chest. Diana yelped in surprise, but it only took a couple of seconds for her tone to change to one of excitement as I thrust the head of my cock in between her thighs.

"Oh…" she murmured.

I agreed. "Oh."

I reached to the side, searching for a box of condoms I'd stashed under a cushion earlier. I was nothing if not prepared. I found it blind, tore the wrapper with my teeth and rolled it onto my cock.

"Where did you get that from?" Diana asked – apparently no longer surprised by anything I did.

"I was a Scout," I joked, "always prepared…"

Diana reached down, grasping my thick shaft between her hands, and guided the head of my cock into her slit. She straddled me, sitting on my cock and slowly sinking down the thick, slick shaft. I groaned – this was what I'd been dreaming of for days, what I'd imagined when masturbating before bed, and then again when I'd had to deal with my morning wood.

She was tighter than I could ever have imagined, and her body was tauter, fitter and sexier than I'd even dreamt.

"My God, Diana," I groaned as she sank the whole way down the shaft, biting her lip sexily as she readjusted, her pussy stretching against my thick cock. She leaned forward, resting her palms on my broad shoulders, and began bucking her hips against me. I was on the edge – so close that I knew I could tip over at any time.

She could see it in my eyes, and I could tell she was determined to send me into a place of delirious oblivion. I grabbed her hips, needing to take back some control, but she didn't let me, rolling forward and up and sideways and down, forwards and up and sideways and down until I groaned with pleasure and writhed underneath her with delight.

"I'm going to cum," I whispered disbelievingly. I'd never lasted this short a time before in my entire life. Then again, I'd never fucked a girl of Diana's caliber before…

Diana took it as a challenge, gyrating her hips with furious abandon. I reached up and grabbed one of her pert, perfect tits, pinching her nipple until I heard her gasp. That was enough. I felt my ass and the muscles in the back of my legs tighten and constrict, and closed my eyes.

Diana noticed, and clenched her pussy tightly around my cock. It was enough to push me headfirst over the edge. My stomach clenched, my abs went taut, and my back arched as I thrust up hard one last time into the soaking wet slit between Diana's legs. I felt my balls tingle and release, and a pressure that had been building up between my legs for days and days disappeared in one glorious, beautiful instant.

I collapsed, and Diana lay on my chest, pleased with her work. "How was that?" She giggled. I stared up at her and groaned.

There were no words – what could I possibly say to describe that?

I answered honestly, once more drinking in her glorious green eyes. "Amazing," I whispered.

B
arcelona's stadium
– the Nou Camp – was like nowhere else in the world on game day.

At least that’s how it appeared to me – and the press box had the best seats in the house. To my left and right, tens of thousands of rabid, screaming fans in hooped maroon and yellow shirts stretched out in a giant oval dome as far as the eye could see. In one corner, the ultras banged drums and let off flares, creating a pall of red smoke that hung in a heavy cloud over the field. The place smelled of fireworks, pride and nervous excitement.

It wasn't just match day – it was more than that – today, Barcelona was playing their fierce rivals, Real Madrid, a team who they'd gone toe-to-toe with over the title for decades. It was one of the biggest rivalries in the sport – and definitely the biggest in Europe.

The atmosphere was incredible – certainly the best I'd witnessed since I'd moved to Spain. The noise from the chanting fans drowned out everything else, even rendering it hard to talk to the person next to me.

Of course, that was precisely the kind of time that my boss, Grant Adams, just
would
decide to call. My stomach sank as I pressed the green ‘accept’ button.

"Hello, is this Mr. Adams?" I shouted into the receiver, quickly glancing at the watch on my wrist.

"I've got Grant waiting for you, Miss Lopez. Please hold," a voice replied on the other end of the line. I had about ten minutes until kick-off, so I forced my way through the seats and went inside. The last thing I wanted was to have to shout down the phone to my boss! Luckily, the heavy steel and concrete structure of the stadium deadened some of the sound of the crowd, reducing the background noise to a manageable level.

"Lopez, is that you?" the gruff, irascible voice barked down the phone.

"Yes, sir – Mr. Adams, I mean," I stumbled, tripping over my own tongue. "How can I help you?"

"Pull yourself together, girl. Just call me Grant," he growled.

That had to mean something, didn't it? I felt like I'd received some kind of promotion – low-level beat reporters sure as hell didn't get to call Grant Adams by his first name…

"Sure thing, Grant," I said, feeling unbelievably bold. "How can I help you?"

"Your numbers are good, Lopez," he said, with a hint of baffled surprise in his voice. "I don't know what you're doing out there, but whatever it is – keep it up."

Was this just a pat on the shoulder?

"Um, thank you, sir. Grant, I mean."

"Stop babbling, girl," he growled.

Maybe not
…

"Yes sir—"

"This Rodriguez kid – the audience loves him. He’s popular in every demographic! You’ll never believe it, but it's not just women who want to hear about him," he said, sounding utterly baffled.

I could have told you that!
I thought, though of course I bit down on my tongue to prevent the outburst. Alex was a good-looking Latino soccer player – of course he was going to be popular with the millions of Spanish-speaking soccer lovers now growing up back home. And on top of that, he was an American breaking into a European sport. That was always interesting!

Adams started talking again, knocking me out of my dazed daydream. "Baseball's numbers are dropping. I've decided to move some slots around. You'll be commentating on the game today – live."

"I'll…" I said, stammering. "I'll be—"

"Commentating," he barked. "Pull yourself together. You're going to have to be a damn sight more articulate than this, understood?"

"Understood," I repeated. "And Grant – thank you."

The line was already dead.

I walked back into the press area, my stomach doing nervous backflips. Tim waved me down. "You've heard?"

I laughed anxiously. "Is it that obvious?"

Tim chuckled. "You look a bit green, but don't worry – we'll just pipe in the sound over the game. It cuts in to a studio at half-time, so you won't have to be on camera at all."

"I don't look that bad!" I protested. Tim merely raised an eyebrow. "Shut up, you ass."

"I didn't say anything," he replied. "Anyway – we don't have much time. Your seat's got a microphone hooked up already, so we'll just take the feed from that."

"How long have I got?" I asked.

Tim looked at his watch. "Oh, about three minutes." He smiled.

"Oh, shit," I gasped. "Thanks, Tim – I've gotta run." I took the stairs down to my seat two at a time and heard him shout a reply. "You'll do fine, kid." I sure hoped so.

I was almost at my seat when I ran in to the terrible two – literally. Fat Frank and his sidekick, Ken, were standing smack-dab in the middle of the aisle, blocking my path. "What the hell do you two want?" I grumbled, in no mood to take any of their shit. Certainly not right now, when I had a job to do.

"Now, now," Frank bellowed in a slight faux-Southern accent, "that's not very ladylike, is it?"

I tried forcing my way through the pair of them, but Frank may as well have been the proverbial immovable object – and right now, I was so nervous that I was more of a stoppable than an unstoppable force… "Please get out my way," I begged, checking my watch and seeing I had just ninety seconds left, "I've got a job to do. Can we do this later?"

"Oh," Frank smiled, still playing the Southern gentleman, "this won't take long. It's just that my friend Ken here and I, well, we've been hearing some rumors about you."

My stomach sank, and the fear must have been written on my face because Ken's eyes lit up. He was a bottom feeder, I thought angrily, the kind of man who preyed on human sadness.

Surely, though, they couldn't possibly know about my brief, blossoming affair with Alex? After all – we'd only slept together once, and neither of them struck me as the kind of journalists with such impeccable contacts that they'd have been able to find something like that out – at least not so quickly. It wasn’t exactly unheard of for reporters to sleep with the sports stars they covered – in fact it was the media’s dirty little secret. But ordinarily, reporters didn’t just cover one athlete, but whole teams. And Grant Adams words to me the day he sent me to Spain still rang in my ears.
"Don’t sleep with the boy, whatever happens."

Yeah. Right. I’d already fucked that one up…

"Oh?" I asked noncommittally. "Only good things, I hope?"

"Look at her, Frank," Ken wheezed, "she's hiding something from us – it's plain as mud." I'd thought my stomach couldn't sink any lower, but I was wrong – it practically fell through the concrete floor, down past the stanchions, and landed with the raucous fans below. I gulped.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I squeaked, "but if you'll excuse me, I really need to get to my seat…"

"Oh," Frank bellowed, his thick gut acting as a loudspeaker, "there's the heart of it."

My mind raced. Was he implying that I was rushing to my seat just to watch Alex play? It seemed a bit of a push. I decided to chance my hand – the worst that could happen was, well, the worst that could happen; then again, if they already knew about Alex then there was nothing I'd be able to say that was going to change things.

I put my foot down, literally. "Guys," I said forcefully, wresting back control over my voice and meaningfully checking my watch, "I've got about sixty seconds – and that means you've got thirty. Spit it out."

They glanced at each other, surprised at my sudden change of tone. Ken, the wheezing, slimy pond-scum that he was, was the first to break the silence. "We know you've been sleeping with him, you little whore," he sneered, sending my already tender stomach into conniptions and my mind into full-blown panic. "There's no way that someone like you," he said, curling his lip at me in a clear attempt to convey his disgust, "gets a gig like this without sleeping with someone at the top."

Someone at the top?
Something about that didn't ring true, but my mind was in such a state of turmoil that I almost didn't clock it. I glanced at my watch – fifteen seconds.

"My sex life," I said, turning red with embarrassment, "is no one's business but my own. And I certainly don't appreciate the pair of you discussing it in public like this. And if you think that I'm sleeping with someone—"

Ken cut me off, steam practically blowing from his ears. "Don't lie to us, girl. I do know how you did it – we all thought Adams was gay."

Adams?
Did they really think I was sleeping with Grant Adams, of all people?

I laughed with relief. "You guys are nuts, you know that? And you're out of time. But I'll tell you what – if you really want to take this any further, then we can ring Grant after the game and discuss this together. I'm sure he'll
really
appreciate the call…"

With that, I bodily forced my way between them, running to catch my seat in time. Behind me, Ken called out like a cartoon character, drawing curious glances from the Spanish media. "We're watching you, Lopez."

I fumbled the headphones on without a moment to spare. "And now I go live to Barcelona to meet the other member of today's WBC Sports commentary team, Diana Lopez."

I forced back my panting breath, making sure that I sounded completely natural through the microphone. "It's great to be here, Jack," I said, speed-reading the notes Tim had kindly left next to the microphone, "and it's a beautiful day here in Barcelona. How is it where you are?"

"It's early still, but it's already warm and humid," the mysterious voice chuckled down my headphones, and out to tens of thousands of homes across America. I had to give them props – I'm not sure that I'd get up as early as our viewers if I was still living in the States, just to catch a European soccer game. "How's our boy doing?"

"He's been on fire so far this season," I said proudly, "and believe me, he can do things with his fin—" I began, forcing an immediate save, "his feet that I've never seen before."

Christ, Diana, pull yourself together – if you don't want the terrible twins to find out about your affair, maybe don't confess it on national television!

The whistle blew on the pitch, and a furious, frenetic game of soccer kicked off between two of the planet's biggest sporting rivals – Barcelona and Madrid. It was end to end stuff, and the defensive side of the game was severely lacking – but that just made it a better spectacle for the neutral fan. There were chances at either end, but by halftime, the score remained stubbornly at nil-nil.

"What do you think, Diana – you've got the eyes on the game. Who’s best placed to take the game by the scruff of the neck in the second half?" my jolly companion spoke into my ears.

"I have to say, Jack, it's been the most fascinating game I've watched since I got here. These two teams are both titans in their own right, and they've both stockpiled some of the best talent in Spain – and the whole of Europe, for that matter. It's going to take a moment of magic to separate them, though…"

My headphones crackled. "And from what you've seen of Alejandro—"

I corrected him absentmindedly. "Alex."

Jack took it in his stride. "Indeed, Alex – from what you've seen of him, is he the man who is going to break the deadlock?"

My mind hadn't stopped racing from the moment the terrible twins had confronted me on my way to the chair. This was it – I'd made it further and faster than I could ever have believed, even just a couple of months ago. Here I was, commentating on a game of soccer on live national television, when just three months ago I'd been doing puff pieces for WBC's local television syndicates. Could I really throw that away for a guy? The risk that someone – particularly two creeps like Ken and Frank – might find out about us seemed too great, especially now they had warned me they were watching.

They were wrong – laughably wrong – about who I was sleeping with. But I knew the kind of men they were. They wouldn’t stop until they figured out the truth. And if they found out…then God help me, because Grant Adams certainly wouldn’t. He’d given me one order – don’t sleep with Alex, and it had taken barely a couple of short weeks before I was lying on his mattress, covered in his sweat…and desperate for another round with his thick cock.

If Grant found out that I’d disobeyed him, I wouldn’t just lose my job – he’d make sure I never got one in national sports again. I wouldn’t be the first to cross him, and I knew what happened to girls who did…

I sure as hell didn’t want to end up on a sports desk in North Dakota, that’s for sure.

I knew what I had to do – I had to cut the affair off now, while things were still young and before our emotions could get any more tangled. I didn't trust the way my body responded, hell – the way I responded around Alex. He was like a drug that I couldn't refuse, and if I kept seeing him, I knew that it wouldn't be long before I was addicted.

The sound of my headphones broke through the emotion of my sudden realization. "Diana?"

My throat was choked up, and I bit back on a rising tide of sadness. I croaked, "Sorry, Jack, the line must have cut out."

"No problem – I was just asking, do you think our boy Alex is the man to break the deadlock?"

I answered honestly, from the heart. It was, for all intents and purposes, a loving breakup letter.

"Believe me, Jack – this kid is more impressive than you know. It's not just empty talk out the on the Internet that he might be the guy to lead the US Men's National Team to the World Cup Finals next summer in Brazil. He’s earned it with the way he's playing. If he can keep things up, then he'll be a shoo-in for the captaincy. Everything I've seen over here tells me that he can be the one to ride a moment of magic."

Below us, on the field, the referee blew the whistle to commence the second half. I watched as Alex streaked forward, sprinting like a bullet out of a gun directly for the goal. The Madrid players didn't seem set – hadn't settled into the game, and they seemed baffled by what was going on. They belatedly started reorganizing their defense, but by then it was already too late.

Alex raised his arm, signaling someone behind him for the ball.

Jack screamed down the headphones. "It's Rodrigo, he floats a lovely lofted ball into the young American Alex Rodriguez, and – OH MY GOD! That’s absolutely magical. The young striker has taken that on the volley and thundered it into the back of the net!"