Page 56 of Dirty Player
“Aw…hell. You’re doing it at my place now? Stay off the furniture.”
I hadn’t planned on being on it. At least not for long. I still wiggled my eyebrows as I pushed past him on my way to my locker.
“Dick!” he shouted and turned toward his own locker on the far side of the room.
Because we were men, and we thought with that part, and in the locker room everything went, I reached down and grabbed my semi-hard dick and shouted Beaux’s name.
“She likes it, though, you know? I think it’s good for her.”
“Damn, Powell,” one of our defensive linemen groaned. “That’s just nasty.”
“You’re nasty,” I shouted back. “Hale can take it.”
“Oh the innuendo in that one. The things I could say,” Rudolph muttered, earning another round of groans throughout the room.
“Don’t fuck with the quarterback,” someone else shouted.
I thought it was the safety, Smith, but I turned back to the locker when I saw Hale’s cheeks had turned bright pink with embarrassment like Shannon’s did. I might have gone too far, but the safety kept talking.
“Quarterback’s pissed off at you and you won’t get the record for tight end receiving touchdowns this year.”
“I wouldn’t fuck with his record,” Hale said.
I turned to him, the fact that I’d forgotten all that lay in the palm of my hands…all that rested in his had been momentarily forgotten while my judgment became clouded with pussy.
“Swear to fucking Christ, Powell, I wouldn’t pull that shit on you, no matter how much you piss me off. Don’t fucking hurt her. You do and I’ll kick your ass, but that shit won’t filter onto the field.”
I examined him then. It was the most serious I’d ever seen him, most determined about anything. Beaux was always so fucking laid back it was hard to trust him, but I couldn’t find a single part of him that didn’t seem one hundred and ten percent honest about his statement.
Something grew between him and me in that moment. Respect.
I needed it from him like I needed to give it to him, and that would earn his trust, both on and off the field.
“I hear you, kid,” I said.
I dropped my shorts and wrapped a towel around my waist. I only had a few minutes for a quick scrub-down before I could be at Shannon’s when I told her I would be.
I didn’t need to spend any more of it bonding with the men.
***
She answered the door to the condo as soon as I knocked, her hair disheveled and flying out behind her, and a little breathless. None of it matched the fury flashing in her eyes that she tried to hide as soon as I stepped in.
“Beaux called, said he and the team were going out tonight. Did you plan that?”
I grinned. “Fortuitous, I think, but no, I didn’t. Is that why you look ready to strangle someone?”
She groaned and moved toward the kitchen. “No. I’ve been on the phone with my friend Melissa all damn day because Patrick’s being a douche-nugget about my furniture.” She yanked the cork out of a wine bottle and filled a glass with deep red liquid. “Sorry, you want some?”’
“I’ll help myself to water. Who’s Patrick?”
“My ex.”
My head was buried in the fridge when she muttered the word. When I looked back, she was swallowing the wine like she was in a college chugging contest.
“Hey.” I walked to her and took the glass from her mouth, smiling as she leaned forward to get one more drop and then licked her lips to get any remaining ones that fell. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head and looked over my shoulder. “That’s not why you came here. Not to talk about that.” Her brow wrinkled and she looked at me. “Why did you come here? This morning…I thought—”
