RHINO: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel OFFSIDE!) (49 page)

Topher has been talking about moving on for a long time. He threw that one at me too, like somehow I’ve been in control of his career path.

“
I stayed for you.”

I didn’t make Topher stay. He was offered a contract and he accepted it. We weren’t even official then. He’s had every chance to leave, and he’s chosen not to, and besides which, I told him if he wanted to I would have supported him. Dad too. Dad was always willing to forgive Topher, right up until the last time he fucked up. He somehow had a soft spot for the quarterback who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. A tiny dick at that. When Topher used to fuck me, he would barely touch the sides. I had more pleasure fingering myself than sticking that pencil dick up inside me, for all of the twenty seconds he was capable of fucking, but that’s all in the past now, I’m a new girl and I’ve moved on.

He’ll move at the end of the season, if he can find a team to take him. He might even move half way through it if he can’t cope with the pain of not being with me.

Fuck him. I shouldn’t even be thinking about him. I’ve thought about him enough over the last three years and look where it’s got me. Here, single, three years older and no better at all for it. I can’t believe I even said yes to his marriage proposal. I can’t believe I was that dumb.

No, I should be thinking about Jasper instead. That ass, those eyes, the smile that makes me gooey. They won again. I should have been there to support them, but I just couldn’t face seeing him again so soon and not knowing whether I’d be able to control my emotions. I kind of sent him away after we fucked, for the very same reason. I got scared after the moment was over, of enjoying the emotional connection too much. Of depending on the afterwards as much as the act itself.

I watched it on TV, I didn’t even go to the game. The first home game I’ve missed in God knows how long. I expect Topher fucked someone else after it. I hope Jasper didn’t. It was the night he came here so I guess he had me on his mind.

Two wins out of four. 2 for 2. That’s the best start to a season we’ve had for four years. Jasper was the star of the show again even though Topher spent a long time refusing to pass to him. Our English transfer got a touchdown again, rushed a bunch of yards, showed his versatility by playing in two offensive positions, and basically dominated the game from the moment Dad finally decided to bring him on. We won 14-7 against a team that we’ve not beaten for six years. Dad can hardly believe it. He’s still reluctant to sing Jasper’s praises, but he’s coming round little by little. ‘Dominant’, ‘forceful’, and ‘completely untouchable’ were some of the words used to describe his performance. ‘Is this Englishman able to pull off the impossible dream?’ was the headline from another paper.

Impossible dream. I’ve seen weird things happen over the years in this sport, but I’ve never seen anyone like Jasper. I don’t think anyone has. I can understand why people don’t like him. He’s badly behaved, he’s foul mouthed, he’s covered in tattoos that don’t have much meaning, but he’s dedicated and talented and he cares more about winning than people think.

Dad didn’t want him here in the first place, but he’s going to realize soon that he can’t do without him. I wonder if I am too.

A week and a half without him is about as hard to handle as the same time away from my team. I’ve already told Dad I’ll be back in for tomorrow, that my bout of flu has cleared up, I’m back to full strength and I’m thinking clearly, even though none of that is true.

I miss Jasper, which is a dumb thing to say. I miss his cheeky smile, how prominent the veins that run down his forearms are, his shit jokes and his massive cock. I think I miss him even more than I realize and maybe it’s that more than anything else that’s pushing me back towards him.

The team can run for a while without me, but I know Dad needs me too. The team need me, perhaps even Jasper needs me. If his appearance here is anything to go by, maybe it’s true that he does.

We’ll see. I’m expecting the same as always and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Cockiness, arrogance, and inappropriate flirting.

If anything, I’m the one that’s going to be weird. I just hope I’m not too weird. I hope I can hold my own and keep my cool. I hope things are just natural between us, like they always were, and I hope, whatever else happens, that us fucking doesn’t ruin the friendship I feel like we’ve been developing together. I like our meetings in the Irish pub, the looks, the banter, the sexual tension so thick you’d struggle to crack it with a mallet, and I wouldn’t give that up for anything. Alright, I might give it up for another go on that incredible cock of his, but if those two things can happen without me getting hurt, that would be absolutely ideal.

Fuck Jasper and forget about Topher. If Moxlin keep winning this really could be an incredible season. One might not be enough, however, for either the team or me.

I don’t think once is ever enough for anyone with Jasper and as incredible as that fuck was, I know the next one, if it ever comes, will be a hundred times better. Short skirt, huge dick, back of the car, or bottom of the field. I’ll let Jasper decide that. When I’ve realized I can’t resist, I wonder how often we’ll be able to keep ourselves away from each other.

The last thing I want to do is let him know I like him. I know I’ve kind of ballsed that up already by taking him home and showing him my bed, but this little window of avoidance, as difficult as it has been, is definitely going to work in my favor. I can’t undo what we’ve done, I wouldn’t want to, even if I could, but from now on, I’m playing miss super-hard-to-get.

Jasper’s going to have to use his A game if he wants to get me, because right now, this shit is serious. I need to know just how committed he is, to work out exactly how committed I can let myself be too. Jasper’s going to have to work just as hard to get back into my panties, as I am to resist him. Huge cock and undeniable perfection or not, I’ve got to be super careful how I play this.

Dad always told me that good strategy is the key to winning football games, it just so happens it might be the key to winning over Jasper too. I just hope he’s not been studying his play book too hard.

Ten.

Jasper

The rain has been coming down so hard here it’s been impossible to train properly for the last few days. We’ve got a waterlogged field that looks like a giant swimming pool, and a back up mess that’s so churned up from overuse and poor maintenance, that if you stand in one place for too long you sink down into the earth halfway to your knees. This is apparently normal for Moxlin weather although what isn’t apparently normal is the fact that our training ground, which is also our professional game day field is exposed to the elements. Almost all if not every team in the rest of the AFC and the NFC, college teams, work teams, professionals and amateurs all over America have some kind of roof system in place. A covered field or a way to make one. Moxlin Tigers don’t, and their excuse? Not enough money.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. First the wins, which have come as a surprise to everyone but Topher and I, then that shit with Penny, both the fucking awesome fucking and the not so fucking awesome strategic avoidance plan that she put into place afterwards, and now the weather. Honestly, this is worse than England. Every time it looks like it might stop, every time there is a break in the clouds to let a smidgen of blue sky peak through, and we all think it’s safe to finally get out there without risking serious injury, it clouds over again and empties out so much water you begin to wonder where it’s all coming from.

It’s getting me down, but it’s not the only thing either. I’ve been sick with some kind of weird bug that’s got me pining after someone I shouldn’t care about as much as I do. Penny’s got into my head, and she won’t leave me alone, and right now there is nothing I can do about it. She won’t take my calls, she pretends like she’s not at home and she hasn’t been into work for almost ten days. All I get from Harrison is the cold shoulder, and a refusal to talk about it. I guess I can’t blame him either, that day in the parking lot Penny gave him every reason to grumble.

She could really be sick, but I doubt it, and it wouldn’t give her a reason for avoiding me either. The only conclusion I can come to is that she’s already got what she wanted from me, and right now she feels embarrassed, either because she wants it again and doesn’t know quite how to ask for it, or that she doesn’t want anything at all to do with me, which would be super weird but not the first time it’s happened. I guess I’m so good that some girls don’t want to risk ruining perfection.

We train anyway. Under the torrential rain and the advice of a husky mouthed owner who doesn’t seem to care about his star players twisting their knees on slippery mud. He’s been more animated since we won although he clearly still hates me. Even more now because he thinks I’m fucking his daughter. The thing is, I wish I was, but right now I’m just as lost as Topher. That’s the other thing about this whole thing that’s making me feel uneasy. Maybe she feels guilty about what we did and wants to get back with that fucking jerk. Topher’s just as confident about the possibility as he’s always been, and even though that brazen idiot stepped out again after last weekend’s win, he still thinks that somehow Penny’s going to take him back. Like I said, it’s got me off my game, and I’ve never been off my game my whole life.

The rain smashes down around us as we take to the field. Harrison wants us to practice the new plays he’s drawn up and then run through a selection of the rest of them that won us the previous games. It’s cold, muddy and hard as fuck to see. I’m used to this kind of weather, but the rain’s not sinking as quick as I’d like through the grass, and everything through the narrow grill of my helmet looks hazy and clouded.

I’m two yards off the pace, reluctant to spin too hard, and Harrison picks me up on it as the ball goes long over my head and way out of my reach.

“
What the fuck, Jasper?”

I pick myself up off the ground, thrown there by a late tackle meant undoubtedly to test my mettle. Some of these guys are still sore that I’m here at all, let alone making the team win again and every training session they like to make me aware of that. Late tackles, high tackles, punches, studs, kicks, I’ve had it all.

“
Never played in rain before?”

“
Fuck you.”

We go again, a bunch of times. Mud flying, water spinning off the turf like a sprinkler system. We are shit, all of us. Topher can’t throw straight, the offensive line can barely stand up, Jackson won’t run, Caulder refuses to play for fear of aggravating an injury he picked up at the start of the season and I do all I can and more to get us looking at least half as decent as we played last weekend. It isn’t just the weather though, and it isn’t just me either. There’s someone missing and it’s a clear as day it’s having an effect on all of us. Perhaps we are all in love with Penny and nobody’s admitted it because she’s Harrison’s daughter and she’s always been with Topher. Maybe everyone sees her as this untouchable team icon, always there in the background, the link that holds Moxlin together, but completely out of bounds.

I don’t know whether I’m in love with Penny, just to clarify that statement, but I do know that something weird is going on with me. I’ve never been in love with anyone in my whole life before, so I have no idea what it’s meant to feel like in the first place, I just know that normally I wouldn’t care so much if a girl gave me the cold shoulder, I’d just move onto the next, but with this one, I’m not thinking about the next. I’m not thinking about anyone else, period.

Penny. How the fuck can one girl make me need her so much? Maybe I’m just lonely here. Maybe it’s because I’m home sick. Maybe I just haven’t settled in and all of those things are making my thinking screwy.

“
God damn it, Jasper.”

Harrison’s play sheet goes skidding across the mud until Sparks traps it deftly by his boot and tries to hand it back to our manager who does nothing but push past him, wrestle the players off the pile they’ve made on top of me and pull me to my feet.

“
What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“
The fucking rain, Harrison, I can’t see.”

“
Clean your fucking eyeballs. You want me to clean them?”

“
No thank you.”

“
You know this play?”

“
I know the play.”

“
So why the fuck are you running more slowly than Jackson’s grandmother directly into the defensive line?”

The rest of the morning isn’t much better. The rain doesn’t ease up and neither does Harrison’s mood. He switches my position and even though I manage to link up with Topher and catch two touchdown passes, plucking the ball out of the air on one of them with basically just my fingertips, he still berates me for playing worse than the eye-less, skeletal corpses of a long line of dead and world famous footballers, none of whom I’ve ever heard of.

Finally, as though to add insult to injury, when the training session comes to an end, the sun comes out from behind a storm cloud and the rain stops in seconds, like someone’s just worked out how to fix a leaky tap.

I’m sore. My knees hurt, my left ankle is swollen where I’ve turned awkwardly on it, I’m disappointed with my game, and fucked off that Penny still hasn’t made an appearance, or had the decency to return my calls at least.