RHINO: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel OFFSIDE!) (45 page)

Harrison’s still working through a list of curse words when we join him again on the bench.

“
You took your fucking sweet time about that.”

“
Sorry, Harrison. Topher was fucking around.”

“
Fuck you.”

“
That’s a grand you owe me.”

“
I’ll pay you if you do it again enough times that we win.”

“
You keep pretending you know how to throw properly and that might be possible.”

Guess what? By the end of the game, Topher owes me three grand. We fucking win. Nobody can believe it, least of all Harrison. He does a victory lap around the field and then fist pumps the air so hard I think he’s having a heart attack. I get two touchdowns in total, that catch and then a rushed play that nets me over sixty yards. Our wide reciever Benks gets the other, from a plumb pass out of nowhere by Topher who finally remembers how to play.

Everyone’s fucking ecstatic. Nobody can fucking believe it. The game ends 27-24 in our favor with three touchdowns and two kicked field goals to three touchdowns and a single field goal. It was tense, nail-biting at the end but we fucking did it.

“
You remembered how to play.”

Hunter throws his helmet to the ground grabs me by the waist and lifts me up into the air. I don’t know whether he’s going to kiss me or squeeze the life out of me but after a while he puts me down.

“
You're something else.”

“
You know, that’s exactly what your mom said to me.”

I see Topher coming over. “That was wild, English. Fucking wild.”

“
I told you we could do it.”

“
Shit, brother, I never doubted you.”

There is one person missing from this and I look for her and wait for her but she doesn’t come. Eventually, after Harrison has finished saluting the fans, the team have carried Topher and I both on their shoulders half the length of the field and Hunter’s made sure his mom’s not still sucking the opposition team’s cocks, we file back into the locker room where talk turns to celebration.

“
Where the fuck are we going tonight?”

“
Ask Topher, he’s paying for it.”

“
Three grand”, Sparks whistles. “That’s a lot of money for someone who isn’t even getting a paycheck this month.”

“
It’s a lot for the amount you earn.”

“
You two miserable motherfuckers can celebrate at home with soda. You’re banned remember? I don’t want a repeat of what happened two weeks ago.”

Harrison’s mood seems to have soured again.

“
We just won for the first time in two years. Against the Patriots. Are you fucking kidding me?”

“
I’m warning you, Topher. You’re on thin ice already.”

Topher waves his hand dismissively. “Whatever.”

He turns to me and lowers his voice. “You’re coming right?”

I smile. “Of course I’m fucking coming. I’m leading, remember? I thought you’d worked that out already.”

I’m the last to leave. I tell Topher it’s because I want to savor the moment out on the field for as long as possible, even though that isn’t the reason why. I don’t know if Topher realizes it either, but he leaves me to it. I tell them I’ll meet up with them later on, for them not to start the party without me and for Topher to put his card behind the bar. I tell them to make sure they buy good champagne, and I tell Harrison he’s got nothing to worry about. I’m going home, straight to bed, not a foot out of line.

I’m walking through the parking lot when I hear her voice, the sky already threatening to get dark. It’s what I’d hoped, but hadn’t entirely expected and when I hear her, my heart skips a beat.

“
Where do you think you’re going so soon?”

When I spin on my heels to face her, I’m not the only one with a smile across my face that could light up the darkest of winter’s nights.

Penny. And boy does she look every bit a million dollars.

Penny

Jasper drops his shoulders, puts his hands into lightly closed fists in the hip pockets of the jacket that hangs so beautifully on his perfect frame he could be modelling it, and leans casually against the car behind him.

“
You just can’t keep away, can you?”

I smile innocently, looking away momentarily and then back at him. This is that scene from a million romance novels and a million more film adaptations. I’m looking for reasons but I can’t find them. What am I doing here? I’m here because I can’t be anywhere else. Jasper pulls me magnetically towards him as though by divine right or inescapable force.

“
Thought you might need a lift home.”

“
Is that what this is?”

I nod. Jasper looks like he knows exactly what this is. I know that cocky fucker is playing with me. I don’t even know what this is, not yet. I mean, it’s me asking him but what I’m really asking him, I just don’t know yet.

“
And Topher?”

I watched Topher leave the ground, get in his car and drive away. “Topher doesn’t give a shit about me.”

“
He thinks you’re going to take him back.”

“
I’m done with football players.”

Jasper’s eyes go wide. “Really?”

“
Yeah. Football players, rugby players, big strong men, I’m over it completely.”

I’m stepping closer to him.

“
Maybe you just had some bad luck.”

Toe to toe, I have to crane my neck to look up to him. I like the way my feet look at least half the size of his. I shuffle them closer until they are touching. I want to climb on top and have him fly me away somewhere.

“
Maybe.”

“
Not all sportsmen are like Topher.”

“
What are you like?”

It’s been a week since I kicked him out, but a lot longer than that since I should have done. My relationship with Topher was in the dying stages at the start of this year. Somehow we’ve been keeping it alive, but most of the time we’ve been lying to each other. Topher to me, me to myself. Maybe I’m rushing into things, letting Jasper see me like this, letting him in, asking for a something I can’t even yet define. Maybe I just need to hold myself back from harm and then maybe, just maybe, I need to rush at this full blooded, forget about danger, and just have a bit of fun. It’s been so long since Topher and I fucked. So long since I felt like I had a boyfriend at all. Watching Topher play made me feel even more distant from him, like the last three years were crystallizing together in a way that made me see things clearly for the first time in the whole of the weird depths and twists and turns of our relationship. And then seeing Jasper run with that ball, the freedom he showed out on the field made me want that too. Plus, if I’m being absolutely honest, his ass looked way better in that lycra. Fuck Topher and what he did to me. If this is a revenge thing, so be it. I’m a big girl, I can handle myself. If I’m going to get kicked to the curb again, which something tells me I won’t with Jasper - even though I’ve clearly been wrong before - It’s better that I’m already on the curb when he does it, so there’s less distance for me to fall.

“
I’m trouble, Penny. You know that. I’m a bad boy.”

“
Maybe you just need to be tamed.”

“
It’d have to be by the right girl. Someone special, unattached.”

“
Who did you have in mind?”

“
My mind’s gone totally blank. Do you know anyone?”

“
Perhaps.”

“
Oh, really? What are they like?”

“
Shy, introverted, independent. Hot.”

I giggle a little when I say that.

“
She sounds incredible. When can I meet her?”

I shrug my shoulders.

“
You have to be careful with her. I think she likes you, but she’s fragile too.”

“
What do you think she likes about me?”

“
I don’t know, maybe the way your nose creases up when you smile. Maybe how your sensitive inside even though you don’t like to show it.”

Jasper smiles, creasing his nose up for me. “Sensitive inside?”

I nod.

“
She sounds like she knows me really well.”

“
She’s been watching you a bit, checking you out.”

“
Naughty.”

“
She’s just split up with her boyfriend. Maybe she’s just looking for a bit of fun.”

Jasper lets the words hang and there is nothing I want to do more than press myself against his powerful chest.

“
What would her ex-boyfriend say to that?”

“
He doesn’t get to.”

“
I like you, Penny.”

“
Are you a love them and leave them kind of guy?”

“
You mean do I hit it and quit it like you’ve read about me? Sometimes. Sometimes I do that but it depends on the girl, the situation. I don’t fuck people around, and I don’t get involved if I’m not serious.”

“
Like I said, this girl-.”

“
She’s fragile.”

“
Heartbroken.”

“
You have to be in love first to be heartbroken afterwards.”

I look away for a moment. Maybe he’s right. Maybe what I’m feeling isn’t the sensation of having my heart broken but maybe the sensation of being lied to, trampled on and utterly deceived time and time again.

“
What do you know about that?”

Jasper shrugs. “I’m sensitive inside.”

“
You want to come home with me?”

Jasper’s mouth goes wide in mock surprise.

“
Penny Grace Locke.”

“
I know, right? Didn’t expect that, huh?”

“
You’re full of surprises.”

“
Nice ones?”

“
If I kiss you now, in an empty parking lot in the middle of our training ground, someone might see us. Your dad’s probably watching us from the window of his office upstairs.”

“
I thought you liked taking risks.”

“
I like getting paid too. He might dock my wages another month.”

“
He might even give you a black eye.”

“
Maybe you’re the kind of trouble I need to avoid.”

“
I don’t think you’re able to resist me.”

I step inside his embrace, the warmth of his chest snug and inviting. I can’t resist pulling myself as deeply as I can into him and together we lean against the car, tightly wound.

“
I’m not the one asking you home.”

“
You don’t have a home to ask me to.”

“
A hotel room is still a home.”

“
Shut the fuck up and kiss me. For a player, you move like an iceberg.”

“
I was waiting for the moment, and besides which I’m not your average player.”

“
I’m not your average girl, either.”

“
Exactly.”

“
Kiss me.”

I’m playing with fire but I’m done looking at the sticks. I want to gather them all together, throw them into a pile, pour gasoline on the stack and set them alight. I’m horny. I’m really fucking horny and as much as I know I should I can’t hold myself back. I know Jasper’s playing it cool, and I know why too. He’s doing it because he wants me to admit that I like him. That I’m the one that’s not been able to resist, that he’s the best, the winner, the almighty and unstoppable.

I can feel his cock swelling against my leg even before he leans into me to press his lips against mine.

With his hands cupping my cheek, my neck tilted up and my whole body inclined towards his, tip toes and tightened muscle, he lowers his lips towards mine and my heart skips a beat in the seconds he leaves it before he slowly presses them against me.

He tastes of magic. Of salt and sex and the possibility of endless moments like this, of stolen kisses in empty worlds of just us two and nobody else. His tongue waits until invited and I gather it with mine and pull it into me, teasingly, lovingly, recklessly. I bite lip and muscle and drag my teeth over his tongue to suck and open up to him a little bit more than I probably should, the intimacy of the kiss overwhelming me, the gap in the passion of my previous relationship driving me on. In the half a minute or so we are connected, I feel alive in more ways than I have done at any other point in the last three years. I feel waves of desire ride through me I’d long since forgotten I was capable of experiencing. My lips tingle with pins and needle's numbness and goose pimples break out on the skin of my forearms. Where Jasper his his hand cradled still at the back of my neck, the hair there stands on end and I have to hold onto the thick muscles of his arm just to steady myself.

My vision is blurry for a moment. I have tears in my eyes, that could be for the waste of time I spent with Topher, the hundreds of moments of disappointment where my heart fell just that little bit further than I ever thought was possible or they could be for this moment and whatever might follow it.

“
I needed that.”

“
You’re welcome.”

Jasper smiles that broad smile down at me and I feel a million butterflies all flap their wings at once and flutter around my belly. This is how it starts. I know that. I knew that. I’m an idiot, probably. Jasper has a year here at the very most, and then he’s back home, out of my life, gone forever. What if this kiss makes me need him more than I can handle? What if after the first drop comes a thousand more and Jasper and I-? Fuck. I need to calm down. It was only a kiss after all.

“
Maybe we shouldn’t-.”

“
Of course we shouldn’t. You don’t go with players, and you are the boss’s daughter.”

“
I’ll give you a lift home, wave good bye, get back in the car-.”

“
Forget it happened.”

“
Exactly.”

I’m stepping away from him playfully.

“
Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

“
One kiss.”

“
One kiss?”

“
Make you want me.”

What am I doing? Am I really doing what I think I’m doing?

“
I already want you.”

“
Make you want me more.”

Jasper shakes his head. “Uhuh, you can’t do that.”

“
Doing it.”

“
You don’t even want to do it.”

“
Told you you couldn’t resist me.”

“
Penny.”

He pushes his way off the car and comes towards me.

“
Are you not tingling all over like I am? You don’t feel that? Look at your arms. I felt your body shudder when I kissed you. Imagine what it’ll feel like when we fuck.”

My eyes go to his dick instinctively and then I shrug casually.

“
I thought you read the papers”, Jasper says.

“
People make shit up all the time.”

“
Incredible, amazing, best sex I’ve ever had.”

“
But what did the girls say?”

The longer I resist, the better it will be. I’m torturing myself, and I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to go through with it and truly resist, but watching Jasper worry about the possibility of now not getting laid is so amusing it might be worth it.

“
Kiss me.”

I shake my head theatrically.

“
Now you’re going to resist me?”

I nod my head theatrically.

“
Ok, I’m going home.”

Jasper spins on his heels, digs his hands into his hip pockets again and begins to stride away. I watch his perfect ass twitch from side to side for a while before I gallop across the concrete to catch up with him.

“
Walking.”

I’m ahead, stepping backwards away from him.

“
Yup.”

“
The best player of the day won’t even treat himself to a taxi?”

“
I like walking, it gives me time to think.”

“
What are you thinking about?”

“
Oh, you know, this and that. Where to buy a car, which apartment to move into, one particular girl I like.”

“
Sounds serious.”

“
It could be. She might be playing me around though.”

I stop quickly and let Jasper fold into me.

“
You can’t stay the night.”

Jasper shakes his head.

“
We go home, we lie down, we have sex, we definitely don’t fall in love with each other.”

“
That a play?”

“
It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“
I don’t fall in love very easily.”

“
I can see that.”

“
Kiss me.”

I shake my head again but this time Jasper doesn’t take no for an answer. This time he lifts me up completely off the ground and pulls me into him passionately. It’s even better than the first time, and when he finally puts me back down on the ground, I know my mind is made up and resistance to anything but taking him home, pressing myself against him and having him fuck me hard will be impossible. I wobble a little and Jasper has to hold me upright momentarily.

“
We good here?”

I nod. “We can-. Fuck, let’s go before I regret it.”

My heart racing, we turn. Jasper pulls me into him and I allow my hand to slide down towards his ass and give it the  squeeze I’ve been wanting to since I first laid eyes on him. I can’t wait to get him home and do the same to that enormous swinging dick of his. I can be dirty in bed sometimes, not that Topher ever appreciated it, and Jasper, if he continues to play his cards right is about to find out by just how much. I’m super fucking horny right now, and I can’t wait to have Jasper slide that mammoth cock into my mouth, my pussy and anywhere else he feels like he wants to stuff it. It’s been so long since I’ve felt the warmth of a satisfying cock inside me and right now there’s nothing that’s going to stop me from getting it. That makes me gurgle inside with insane levels of happiness and nervous excitement. Nothing at all can stop us now.

“
What the absolute serious fuck?”

No. My heart skips a whole octave of beats. It skips so many I feel like my heart’s never going to start again. I drop my hand away from Jasper’s ass like lighting. I step away but already I know it’s too late. I know that voice and I don’t need to look to know who it is storming quickly across the parking lot to get to us. Why the fuck now? How is this fucking fair?

“
Dad.”

“
Are you fucking kidding me?”

“
What’s up, Harrison?”

“
Don’t you fucking what’s up me, Jasper. What the fuck do you think you are doing with my daughter?”

“
Dad. It isn’t what-.”

“
We’re just, you know, she’s giving me a lift home.”

“
Negative.”

“
Dad?”

“
You don’t think one asshole jock is enough. You’ve got to fuck the rest of the team as well?”

“
That’s way out of line.”

“
Button it, Jasper.”

I know Dad wants to protect me but I’m so shocked by what he’s just said I don’t know how to respond to it myself. Jasper holds up his hands and steps slightly away to show him the respect he’s commanding.

“
We’re not fucking.” I manage to spit out in anger.

“
No? So what was that film fucking kiss I just saw?”

Jasper and I look at each other and then back to Dad who’s shaking his head furiously. “Not again, not this time, Penny.”

“
Dad.”

“
Harrison.”

Dad jabs the air with his index finger. “You want to play, Jasper. You’ll stay away from my daughter.”

“
Are you fucking serious? Topher cheats on her and you keep him in the team. Penny and I kiss and you threaten to throw me out. Want to know who won that game today because it sure as shit wasn’t your prostitute fucking quarterback. You take me out you have no chance of winning.”

“
The team isn’t you, Jasper.”

“
No?”

“
Fuck no.”

“
Your a fucking idiot, Harrison. Pride is a dangerous thing. Step aside if you want Moxlin to do anything but drive themselves into the ground. I’ve been watching you, you’re past it, too old, too bitter, too fucking arrogant.”

“
Careful, Jasper.”

“
You think this team feel inspired by you? They hate playing here. You know that? You have every opportunity to change but you refuse to do so. It feels like you’ve given up already.”

“
Jasper, come on.”

“
No, Penny, he needs to hear it.”

“
I’m warning you, Jasper. Who do you think you are talking to me like that?”

“
The person that you need to listen to. The person that is going to change this team around, as much as that pisses you off. You’ve seen today that Moxlin can win when we play right and the players feel inspired and then fight for their right to be out there doing what they love.”

“
Penny, get in the car, we are done here.”

I look at Dad and then I look at Jasper. Jasper holds his hands up and takes two steps back.

“
Do whatever you’ve got to do.”