FORCE: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (69 page)

Case

The sound of his name, his
real
name, on her lips was more than he could bear.  He hadn't been called "Casey" in years.  He couldn't remember the last person to say his real name.

Maybe it was her.

Lexi was in his arms again.  Lexi's lips were against his again, and it was like five long years had meant nothing.  This was how it was supposed to be.  Kissing her was exactly as wonderful as his dreams had remembered.  He knew her, his fingers remembered every curve of her body, but they delighted in the new form that they took.  Because Lexi was a woman now. A beautiful, loving woman.  He couldn't get over how much her face had changed and yet remained the same. 

He kissed her with everything he had and he felt her strong, protective love wash over him again, wrapping him up and holding him tightly together.  He gravitated to her, his body pulled into her orbit.  She was like his instinct.  All he wanted was to rejoice that he had found her again.

But his brain would not shut the fuck up.

He screamed at himself to stop it but the hurtful, hateful words would not stop flashing through his mind.  Hating her had become a habit too ingrained to break.

"Lexi." He nearly choked when he said her name.  She lifted her cinnamon eyes from where they were fixed, reading the tattoo on his stomach over and over again, her eyes bright with tears.  Her fingers ran over them, feeling them carefully.  He knew what she was looking for, and the scars were still there.  The tattoos hid them from view, but they would always be there.

"Casey," she answered him, lifting her eyes and holding his gaze.

If he spoke any further, he was going to ruin everything. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.  Instead he lifted his hand and tangled it in the wild red curls that surrounded her head like a halo of fire.

She seemed to understand what he wasn't saying.  "You know where I live," she murmured, casting her gaze downward. 

He found it easier to speak when he couldn't see her eyes.  "I do," he muttered against her forehead, pressing his lips to her freckled skin. And then he stepped back, afraid of how far he would take things if he stayed much longer.

"Whaddya got for me?" he grunted in Ingrid's shocked direction.

She squeaked slightly and pulled out the wad of cash.  He quickly counted out her cut and fled the apartment without another word.

He needed to get his brain under control.  Focus, clear his head.  Because something had shifted when he saw Lexi again.  He didn't want to hate her anymore.

He wanted her.

He drove like a bat out of hell back to the clubhouse and practically threw the money into the safe. "Thorn!" he bellowed into the garage.

Thorn sprinted over, wiping his oily fingers with a dirty rag.  "Yeah, Case!"

"Go set up the targets."

Thorn blinked at him, and Case knew why.  It was broad daylight.  The sound of gunshots, even in this empty and abandoned corner of the city, was going to bring a lot more attention in the sunshine than it did at night.

But Case didn't give a shit.  "Go!" he barked, and Thorn dropped the rag on the floor and hustled over to the empties bin to grab last night's bottles for shooting. 

"You look like you've seen a ghost," J. remarked.

Case cast a quick look around the garage.  Crash wasn't anywhere in earshot.  "I saw
her,"
he muttered.

J. blinked for a moment, and then his eyes widened in understanding.  His best friend shot a quick glance over to the bunkhouse where Crash was emerging, wrapped in a towel.  "Pipe froze in his building," J. explained.  "He's going to be here a bit more than normal."

Case understood what wasn't being said.  Until he knew Crash's true feelings about Lexi, it was best to keep discussion of her at a minimum.  "He seems pretty down," J. continued in a tone so low Case had to strain to hear it.  "You know how he gets, just kinda muttering shit that you don't know whether you're supposed to answer or not."

"Not really," Case said, feeling a twinge of guilt.

J. arched an eyebrow at him.  "He does it whenever something's bothering him.  Just sort of talks to the air."

"Oh yeah, that," Case lied.

J. nodded. "Ever since the party.  I think he and your girl might be on their way out.  Mentioned something about being sick of pity.  But I'll tell you," he interrupted Case's involuntary sigh of relief, "I have never seen him so hung up on a chick before."

"Ready for ya, Case!" Thorn shouted eagerly.

J. shot him one more significant look as Case turned and grabbed his gun from the locked cabinet.  Just one more thing for him to worry about; his loose cannon brother falling for Lexi.  Should he tell him, warn him off now?

He stepped out into the parking lot, the gun resting easily in his hand.  Thorn was standing off to the side, looking so eager to please that Case couldn't help but laugh.  "Yeah sure," he said to the unasked question.  "Go grab yourself a piece.  Let's see how much time I'm going to have to waste training your ass."

"I've shot plenty of times," Thorn bristled.

"Rifles don't count, country boy.  We use handguns,"

Thorn looked like he wanted to argue further but thought better of it and scrambled off.

Case planted his feet on the cleared pavement and took a deep breath of the chill air, filling his lungs with the frozen scent of winter.  The sun was shining brightly, warming the roof of the clubhouse so that the air rang with the steady drip drip against the metal roof.  The rhythmic clanging steadied him as he raised his gun and cleared his mind. 

He squeezed the trigger and the bottle exploded into a million green shards.

"Damn," Thorn gave a low whistle of appreciation. 

Case threw back his shoulders and puffed out his chest.  "Didn't even need to warm up," he boasted, relishing the admiration in Thorn's eyes.

"My turn?" Thorn planted his feet. 

Case watched him critically. "Your left hand shouldn't grip too, it's just there to keep things steady."

Thorn looked momentarily irritated at being criticized.  "Like this?"

Case nodded, then paused, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.  The sound of cars was a constant background noise, but this noise of this car pricked Case's senses.  "Hold up," he warned, raising his hand and looking around, trying to find out where the noise was coming from. Something was wrong.  Wherever it was, it was coming fast. The screeching tires screamed around the corner.

And then the air exploded. The unmistakable, ear-splitting sound of gunfire.  The car sped past them, firing wildly and indiscriminately.

"Down!" Case shouted, tackling Thorn around the legs.

Everything seemed to slow down immensely and he was able to take in the sound of the tires as they screeched around the next corner, the sounds of the indistinct shouting of the shooter, the sound of Thorn's heavy, panicked breathing under him, the footsteps of his brothers as they raced to help.

Case covered Thorn and raised his weapon, trying to get a bead on the shooter.   He couldn't take the shot without exposing Thorn to the crossfire. And before he could roll free, the car was gone.

The silence made his ears ring.

J. was at his side in an instant.  "What the fuck, you okay man?"

Case nodded, still straining to see the car and where it was headed.  "I'm good," he finally grunted as the car disappeared along the waterfront.

"What kind of coward shit is this? " Crash bellowed from the garage.  Mac rushed over to Case and put a silent hand on his shoulder.

"They weren't shooting to kill," Case exhaled.  "Fucking amateurs, really."

"Who the fuck were they?"

"Fuck if I know. They didn't hit anything."  His heart pounding in his chest belied his calm words.

"Holy shit," Thorn gritted as he stood up from the pavement and took his hand from his cheek.

J. and Case turned.  J. shouted for Doctor D., while Case was still gaping at the bright red gash that had been opened up across Thorn's cheekbone.  "You were hit?" he asked dully.

"Think so...." Thorn was dead pale.  He kept touching his cheek and then staring at the blood on his fingers as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Doctor D. came puffing up, his proud beer belly bouncing heavily and his beard streaming over his shoulder.  "Shit
fire,
who the fuck is shooting at us?"

Case had started shaking his head at the doctor's question, but his confusion slowly dwindled as he began to realize.  "Our new business," he said slowly, as the doctor snapped on gloves.

The three men stared at him.  "You think this was over the pills?"

Case stared at the ground, his mind working furiously.  "Maybe pushing ourselves into this game this fast wasn't a wise move," he said slowly, hating every word as he spoke it.  Doctor D. was closing the gash on Thorn's face as the kid winced.  His grimace sent a bolt of guilt right into Case's stomach.  "Maybe I expanded too quickly....stepped on a few toes."

"Fuckers," Mac growled, his voice rusty with disuse.  Case felt a rush of gratitude to the older man.

Teach came flying out of the office, his long dreads streaming after him.  "Who's hit?"

Case nodded towards Thorn. "I'm fine," the kid called through gritted teeth.

"You're gonna have a badass scar," Crash encouraged him.

"Fuck, your sister is going to kick my ass," J. moaned.

"Shut up," Teach barked and everyone fell silent.  "I was in the office when it happened.  The fucking phone rang right beforehand."

"Who the fuck was it?" J. demanded.

Teach shook his head.  "Cowardly fuckers used a voice scrambler."

"Well what'd they say?"

Teach turned to Case and looked him in the eye.  "Have you been keeping tabs on where your pushers are selling?"

Case's heart sank even further.  "I..." he began, but Teach held up his hand in exasperation.

"Someone is selling where they shouldn't.  The exact words were, ‘Keep your little blonde bitch out of our territory.’"

"Little blonde bitch?  Who the fuck?" Crash looked at Case for explanation as Case wracked his brain. He felt like he was coming apart at the seams. 

"Ingrid," he said slowly.  His little go-getter.

"Well, Ingrid needs to be reined in...." Teach was saying, but Case's mind was already far away, the noose of guilt knotted tightly in his stomach.

"Did they say anything else?"

Teach nodded, looking him in the eye. "That's all, before I heard the gunshots.  I demanded to know who the fuck they were and they only said this was a warning.  And that they're watching."

Guilt knotted his insides.  "They're watching," he repeated dully.  "Who are they watching?"

"That dumb Ingrid bitch, I assume," Crash bellowed.

Case's mind raced as panic took over.  Lexi had been in Ingrid's apartment when Case had come to collect.  If Ingrid was being watched, then Lexi would have been seen.

Lexi.

Terror splashed in his stomach. 

Lexi

"Dad."

"Yeah."  He didn't turn his gaze from the TV.

"Dad!"

"What?" He was irritated, but I was too angry to care.

"Dad, do you remember the Ericssons?"

He punched the volume down on the TV and the quiet rang in my ears.  When he sat back heavily, I knew he remembered.  But he was a cop.  He wasn't going to admit anything. "Who are they?"

I stepped into the living room, deliberately planting myself in his line of sight. I had left Ingrid's apartment right after Case did.  I needed to talk to my father.  Face to face.

I planted my hands on my hips.  He made a dissatisfied grunting noise. 

"Casey Ericsson.  You remember him?"

"Yes, Alexandra.  I remember him."

"Do you?"

"Of course I do." His defensive tone softened slightly. 

"What do you remember?" I challenged.

He crossed his arms.  "I remember my eldest daughter's first love," he said softly.

I stepped back slightly, furiously blinking back the tears that his gentle tone had brought.  I hadn't expected him to be gentle. 

"And you remember what you did to him?"

He blinked.  "What
I
did to him?"

"I told you never to tell anyone.  And you immediately did."

He exploded in a sigh. "Alexandra, you have got to be kidding me.  I expected this kind of behavior when you were fourteen, but you're a grown woman now.  Surely you realize you did the right thing?  The caseworker told me it was one of the worse cases of abuse and neglect she had seen in her career."

I stepped back again, my heel bumping up against the entertainment center. 
One of the worst cases
.  The scars on Case's stomach, now tattooed over, but never truly gone. Wounds that would never truly heal, inflicted by the person who was supposed to love him most in the world.

"I know," I sighed bitterly.  "I saw."

My father leaned back on the couch, regarding me with that laser like focus that never failed to unnerve me and send me babbling like a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar.  "So you saw that you did the right thing in telling me."

"I know," I repeated, my voice barely above a whisper.  "But Dad, there's something I need you to do for me." He arched an expectant eyebrow at me.  "Please," I added hastily.

***

The house was quiet.  It took me a moment to realize that was what I was hearing.  Silence so deep it made my ears ring.

It had been a long time since I had done this, just lay on my tiny bed and let my thoughts drift.  My dad had said he'd do what he could and actually got right up off the couch as he said it.  I don't know where he ended up heading off to after he made the phone call, but he looked proud and pleased to have a mission.  The rush of affection I felt when I heard him pull away in the old station wagon took me aback.

My mom was out Christmas shopping in spite of the existence of online stores.  She had dragged a sullen Sarah and a skeptical Mary to the mall with her on the promise that they'd get something out of it.  I couldn’t believe they fell for that same trick.  I had done too many onerous chores, only to find out that my reward was the "sense of wellbeing that came from helping my mother." 

When she asked me to come, I swallowed, ready to lie and beg off.  But as my mind raced through my usual Rolodex of excuses, I found I couldn't come up with any that seemed compelling enough. 

I looked her directly in the eye when I said, "Thanks Mom, but I think I'm just going to stay here." 

She had stood in front of me and I swore she looked smaller than she had a second prior.  Her face twitched several times with unreadable emotion.  "Okay, Alexandra," she finally sighed.  "We'll see you later." 

I felt my hands tremble, wanting to take back my words and do my duty.  I stood in the hallway, watching them all go, torn between jumping for joy at the knowledge that I had said no to my mother without causing a national incident and calling for them to wait for me.

But when the door slammed shut and I heard the silence that remained, I knew I had made the right choice.  I slowly trod up the stairs and flopped face first into my bed. 

I could still smell him on me.  My skin had absorbed his scent, my smell mingling with his smell.  I breathed in deeply, inhaling that ambrosia and my heart swelled with my lungs. 

A thousand thoughts jarred my head, each one demanding attention first, but the loudest cry came from my body, begging for me to remember the feel of his lips on my skin.  I rolled over and touched my sides lightly, delighting in the slight tenderness along my ribs where he had held me too close.  There was a small twinge from my shoulder, reminding me of his teeth against my skin.  My scalp tingled, begging for the memory of his hands in my hair and my whole body broke out in goosebumps to be reminded. 

I heard the rush of blood in my ears, louder still in the silence. I opened my mouth and moaned out the frustrated desire.  My fingers wanted to go down, my hand wanted to be clenched between my thighs.  My whole core beat in throbbing rhythm, wanting more than a memory to sustain it.  My body wanted
him
. It was a need to great to be ignored.

When my fingers slipped down below my waistband and into the crease of my soft folds, the heat they found nearly scalded me.  I let one slide inside, slowly, just a little dip into the wetness that was growing slicker by the second.  The fantasies I had conjured of him were nothing compared to his reality.  My childish dreams were nothing compared to the meeting of the two of us as woman and man.

The tingling that each pass of my fingers elicited was both delicious and irritating, I unbuttoned my jeans, and slid them down my legs, marveling at how alive my body seemed to be.  The brush of the fabric against the soft hairs on my upper thighs was enough to make me moan again.  I flopped back onto the bed, feeling the softness of the sheets against my bare legs, bicycling them over and over again, entranced by the sensation, but desperate for more of it.

"Casey," I whispered, biting into my knuckle.  But that was the name of my childhood love.  This person, this
man
was something else altogether.  "Case."  The name slipped past my lips in a hiss of desire.

My fingers found their mark again, and this time it wasn't just an exploration.  I pressed frantically into the hardened pearl of my clit, tensing the muscles of my thighs to arch upward into my own hand.  My hips bucked upward higher and higher as I rubbed frantically.  The little darts of pleasure built and built into a crescendo.  I squeezed my eyes shut and raked my free hand over my breast, remembering his lips on my nipple as I tweaked the peak. 

The sudden wave that hit me was more violent and all-consuming than anything I had felt before.  My legs shot straight out as the bolt of pure lightning hit me and burned me from the inside out.  With a wordless, strangled cry, I lost myself in the waves of pleasure that washed over me like the sea crashing into the shore.  I twitched as it subsided and pulled my dripping finger free.

And then I squeezed my thigh muscles together and gritted my teeth.  Because it hadn't been enough.  My own fingers knew myself too well.  With them I could never experience the shock of Case's body next to mine.  This little session had done nothing to dampen the fire of my ardor, it had only fanned the flames.

Restless, I slid from the bed and padded to the bathroom, hoping I could cool myself down with a splash of water in my face.  My ears were still roaring with hot, desperate blood, a sound so loud it almost seemed to come from outside of me.

I paused and looked up in the mirror over the sink, catching a glimpse of my wide-eyed, flushed reflection as I did so.  The noise was definitely coming from outside of me.

In spite of being alone in the house, I still opened the door to my parents' bedroom with trepidation.  Feeling ridiculous, but needing to know, I went to the window and peered out over our front lawn and on to the street.

The snow had melted and refrozen all month, leaving dirty horned mounds where the plow had gone by.   The winter wonderland of the few days after the big storm were long gone, replaced with the dreary, gray chill of a normal Philadelphia winter.  The sky was a flat nothing, indistinct in a way that made you stare hopelessly into it, searching for a shape of a cloud.  Everything was colorless and dreary. 

Which is why I couldn't figure out why my gaze was fixed on the beat-up old Jeep with a bad muffler that idled across the street.  Its dull, flat paint job fit in with the dull flat world.  It shouldn't have stood out to me. 

But it did.  I stood at my parents' window for several pensive moments before I made my decision and started down the stairway, right before I ran back into my bedroom and put on my jeans, shaking my head at myself. When I opened the front door and stepped out onto my porch, the driver of the Jeep opened the door as well.

At first I thought he must have known what I had just been doing, and that I had been thinking of him while I did it.  The thought made me immediately blush before my brain shouted at me to stop being ridiculous.  There was no way Case could have known I was just touching myself to his memory.  He hadn't been summoned, genie-like, by me rubbing my "magic lamp."

We stood staring at each other for several long, chilly seconds before he finally opened his mouth.  "Are you okay?"

I blinked.  "Yes.  Why wouldn't I be?"

"Everything okay here?  Your parents and sisters, they're okay?"

I could tell the reason he was asking was desperately important to him, regardless of whether I understood why he was asking it.  "Yes they are."

"You sure?  Are they inside?"

"No, no one's here."

"Can you check on them?"

"Case?"

"Just check for me please, Lexi."  His voice rose slightly.

"Okay then, I'll go text them, hang on."  I darted quickly back into the house and grabbed my phone.  I didn't want to set off any alarm bells with my family, even though I didn't know what the alarm was.  Quickly I texted my father, "Hey Daddy, should I start dinner?" To Mary I typed a sarcastic little, "How's it going?"

My phone buzzed twice in succession.  First to arrive was Mary's angry, "You're a bitch," which made me smile.  Then my father's longer and incomprehensibly garbled.  "No Need 2 UR Mom said she + girls will B home soon Luv U."  What was it with older people and terrible textspeak?

I heard Case's footsteps on the porch and hurried back to the door.  "They're fine," I told him, searching his face, trying to figure out what had him so rattled.  I held up the phone.  "Just checked."

He let out a whoosh of breath, but then immediately grimaced.

"Case should I be worried about something?  Worried about you?"

"Don't worry about me."

I wanted to touch him again.  My body burned with my recent self-love and having him this close without touching him made the flames leap higher.  "I'm always going to worry about you," I muttered, lifting my hand to touch him.  "You need to learn how to deal with that."

I was trying to be playful, but his big hand caught mine fiercely and I gasped in surprise.  I saw a million emotions play across his face before he lifted my hand and pressed it fervently to his lips.  It was such a gentle, polite gesture from such a rough, imposing man.  I nearly crumbled from the shock of it.

"I just found you again," was all he said before his lips covered mine.