Touchdown: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (Pass To Win Book 1) (19 page)

It is only when I get home and collapse onto my bed that it dawns on me that not only did Ella run to Xavier to tell him about the strip club, but she also knew I was on my way and would catch them in the act.

C
hapter
4

Ryan

“
I
’m
a Yoga instructor”

I didn’t ask her what she did, but I’m glad she shared. I was on the fence about going home with her. But now that I know she spends her days working on her body and training it to stretch in weird and wonderful ways, I am sold.

Whiskey alone isn’t cutting it after a day like today. An evening of fun with a limber and eager blonde is exactly what I need to get back on my game. I close out the tab and lead her out onto the street. These kinds of after hours’ bars exist for hook-ups.

“Is your place close?” I ask.

“Just three blocks from here.”

“Great; we’ll walk.”

This hook-up is just what the doctor ordered. Not just because I’m not my usual charming self when I don’t get laid everyday but because I need to get that smoking brunette out of my head, and the best way I know to shake trouble is to have a bout of no holds-barred sex with a hot woman who is ready, willing, and able.

Yoga girl is all of the above. And it doesn’t matter that I can’t remember her name as long as it isn’t Aria.

The night air feels good and she’s up for walking, which I’m thankful for. I like a clear head both in myself, and the woman I’m going to have sex with. She lives in a walk-up that is, in fact, exactly three blocks from the bar. She is all over me the moment we enter the stairwell. She strokes my growing erection over my jeans, with almost too much enthusiasm.

“Whoa there, let’s slow this down,” I tell her.

The stairwell is damp and smells rank. I can hear the infamous New York rats scurrying across the cement landing we are on. I hope the state of the stairs is not a sign of things to come in her apartment.

“I don’t want to slow down,” she whines but she does, nonetheless, take her hand off my crotch.

We arrive at her door and she starts pawing at me again. I resist the urge to push her off of me. I may have been premature in believing this is what I need tonight. But I’m here, and she’s hot for me. It would be a shame to let the whole evening go to waste.

“Ooh, your muscles are so big,” she coos in my ear.

If I had a dollar for every time a girl told me that, I wouldn’t need to strip anymore.

“That’s right baby. Open the door and you can feel them for yourself.”

I really want to get out of the hallway and into her apartment. This building is like something from a novel, documenting the plight of immigrants in the 1940s.

She doesn’t turn any lights on but leads me straight to her bedroom. In one swift movement, her little black dress is off and on the floor. She has nothing on underneath and I am at full attention.

“What’s taking you so long?” She makes a move for my jeans.

“Take it easy, baby.” Did she ever tell me her name?

She crawls up onto the bed and faces me. She crosses her arms under her jutting breasts and props them up high to emphasize her cleavage.

“Don’t make me wait anymore,” she pouts.

I want her to stop talking, but I get her point. I don’t want to wait anymore either.

I join her on the bed and gently push her on to her back. I start at her high perky breasts and slowly explore my way down her flat stomach. She writhes and moans with abandon beneath me.

“Go down on me, go down on me. I need to come.”

This girl is ripe for the picking, but I’m not even close to ready to bring her to climax. I slow my route to her slit, and cup her breasts. Her nipples are as hard and peaked as the Himalayas and I pinch them with just enough pressure to make her yelp for more. She flings one of her long toned legs behind her head and rubs her wet pussy against my chest. With such easy access being granted, I have no choice but to go down and give her the release she has been begging for. She moans and yells so loud, I fear a neighbor will call the police. I hold her leg in place behind her head and roll on a condom with one hand and then thrust into her.

I feel my own release coming and with it, my misgivings over the exchange with Aria begin disappearing. What does it matter in the end? I will never see her again and under no circumstances will I ever open myself up like that to another woman.

I’m not sure when I fell asleep, but I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding a staccato drumbeat against my ribs. I had that damn recurring dream again. Correct that; I had that damn recurring nightmare again. It’s always the same. I wake up in the dingy small bedroom of my youth; the twin bed, film and band posters on the wall, stained ceiling. My mom and dad’s trailer, the only home I knew for the first seventeen years of my life. In the nightmare, I am right back there and the last five years have all been a fantasy. I’m still pale, skinny, broke, and most of all, clueless about girls.

I take in the unfamiliar surroundings, and breathe a sigh of relief that it’s not the trailer. Then I curse myself for not going home after the evening’s entertainment. Once sex was over and yoga girl was fast asleep in sexed-out bliss, I should have hit the road. But uncharacteristically, I fell asleep. Now, here I am, still in her bed, and she has her legs wrapped around me so tightly that it’s like waking up with a boa constrictor using me as a pillow.

Despite my desire to escape before she wakes up, morning wood is getting the better of me. Especially when I can’t help but recall how she flung her leg behind her head so I could have better access to her damp entrance when I went down on her. So yeah, last night was hot, but not so hot that I don’t regret staying the night.

She is starting to stir, which means it’s time to make my escape. She rolls onto her back and I allow myself a last appreciative look at her toned body before I jump out of bed.

Fortune favors me this morning and I am dressed and out of the bedroom without the yoga superstar waking up. Maybe it wasn’t so terrible that I spent the night here after all. I leave her a short but sweet note on the entry table, to thank her for an unforgettable experience. And I am out of there. If I remember our walk here last night correctly, I am only a couple of blocks from my favorite coffee shop and then two more blocks from my own apartment.

If you told me when I was seventeen and still living in my parent’s trailer that I would have a glass-walled steam shower in an apartment in Manhattan, I wouldn’t have believed it. My parents and I shared a bathroom and by the time I got my turn, there was no hot water left and never any water pressure.

If someone told me that my morning routine would include shaving and buffing my entire body, and I mean absolutely every part of my body, I would think the person completely insane. But things change, and for the better. My body is my business now and I have to take care of every aspect of it.

I love my apartment and I love that it is just me living here. It is a one bedroom, and has an open floor plan. The space isn’t huge, but it’s not like I will need a larger place. I intend to stay single and this place suits me perfectly.

I never bring women back to my place. I don’t care that it would only be for a night. This is my sanctuary and I don’t need some desperate chick showing up at my door looking for seconds, or worse, a relationship. I’m not saying that no one from the club or bar has managed to track me down, but I like to keep it difficult.

It’s already eleven by the time I finish in the bathroom. Now mind you, all that time is not spent on getting myself perfect for the club. When you work as late as I do, eleven is breakfast time. I whip up an omelet and some bacon. I almost always have an omelet in the morning. Not just because it’s the best food to cure a hangover and gets me fueled for the gym, but because it’s the one thing my mom would make for my dad and me on the rare Sunday morning when everyone was home. Her omelets consisted of as many eggs as she had and whatever was in the fridge. My friend Juan told me that his mom did the same thing only she called it, “juevos rancheros” instead of “omelets du jour.” It wasn’t until I moved to the city that I learned “du jour” meant “of the day,” or in trailer park speak, “whatever is on sale at the market.”

Alone in my kitchen, my mind keeps jumping back to the girl from last night. Not yoga girl from the bar, but the pretty bachelorette, Aria. My parents seemed to think that living in a trailer and making Sunday breakfast out of anything that was still edible was good enough. All I could see growing up were two people that worked themselves to the bone and had little, if anything, to show for it. I wonder what Aria would think of the trailer? She’s so privileged, she has probably never seen a trailer, except in the movies.

When I wasn’t yet seventeen, my friend told me about his cousin that was making six figures as a stripper. I knew then and there that stripping was my ticket out. I started hitting the gym, discovered tanning salons, and the rest is history.

The last five years have been nothing but easy money and easy women. I dance six nights a week and almost never spend a night alone. I know the ladies are just into me because of my looks and my reputation in the bedroom, but still, I never let a night end without the
woman du jour
being satisfied, often multiple times.

All those women, and it is a blue-eyed brunette, who is getting married in a week no less, that cast her spell over me. I wish I had never sat down to talk to her, but she was just too gorgeous not to approach. The second I figured out she was not the kind of girl who would be interested in one last fling before getting married, I should have left. Instead, I told her to come find me if she doesn’t go through with the wedding. What the hell? I guess I’m supposed to sit at home and pine away for her like a chick from a romance novel. But I’ve got news for her. That was a slip up. It was a moment of weakness and nothing more. And who can blame me for getting a little weak when I was lost in those blue, blue eyes.

I need to get moving if I’m going to make it to the club in time for my first dance. I shouldn’t have hit it so hard at the gym today but I was working the girl out of my system.

The club is packed for a Sunday. I need to start feeling it, and sooner rather than later. But sure enough, like always, once the music comes on, the performer in me takes over. I have some new moves for tonight and the ladies respond with screams of pleasure and a downpour of cash.

“You did good tonight, kid,” Mickey tells me after my dance.

It isn’t long before I’m back in my street clothes and am going to grab a drink at the bar in the club before heading home. The newer guys are still dancing for a thinned-out crowd.

“Thanks Mick,” I say.

“You were dancing the panties right off those dames.”

“All in a day’s work,” I reply.

I walk to the bar feeling pretty good about myself. It’s not that I don’t know I’m good, but a compliment from Mickey has long been considered to be an Urban Myth.

“Hey Theresa. Macallan 18, straight up.”

“I know your drink by now, Ryan. You’ve been ordering it since I started working here.”

“I just don’t want you to think I take your skills for granted.”

I sip my scotch and savor the smooth flavor, then I look down the bar to see what the action is and just about drop my glass. There is Aria sitting at the end of the bar. She is just as gorgeous as yesterday, except her eyes are red and raw as if she’s been crying.

I knew I shouldn’t have stopped for a drink.

C
hapter
5

Ryan

F
or a split
second I contemplate ditching my drink, turning on my heel, and walking straight out the backdoor. Sure, I’m the one who told her to come and find me. But that was only under the premise that her marriage didn’t work out. It was a moment of insanity on my part. I would have taken it back if I had thought she would actually take me up on it. Or if I had honestly believed that her fiancé was such a moron, he would just let those long legs walk out of his life without putting up a fight.

I am determined to maintain my cool this go round with her. I sit one stool down from her and give her a quick acknowledgement.

“I didn’t expect to see you back here. The Cosmos must be good if you’re slumming it at a strip club in the city, two nights in a row.”

Surprise flits across her pretty face, but she recovers quickly, and doesn’t take my bait for a fight.

“That’s not why I’m back,” she confesses.

Reason number one I should have given more thought as to how I approached her being here; she’s not even drinking a Cosmo but instead has a glass of red wine in front of her. The second reason and the one that’s actually important is that she’s here, at my club. This is the only place Aria knows that I will be. This is where I told her to come and find me if things didn’t work out with her fiancé.

I am not maintaining any level of coolness and I have no excuse. The only mistake Aria made is being the first woman to knock me off my game. Me telling her to come back last night isn’t her fault, unless of course the whole virgin in distress thing is just an act.

I know I should not let past experience cloud my vision. I also know that I shouldn’t jump to any conclusions. What I know most of all is that I should shut up and drink my whiskey. I am going to sit here in silence and let
her
tell
me
why she came here. It’s hard for me not to question her because I am desperate to know why she is here, but I manage to keep quiet.

I empty my drink and make a promise to myself that I won’t let something like this happen again. What can she want from me? She didn’t seem like the type to go in for drama. This leaves me with one conclusion; she must be here for the same reason that all women approach me. Aria wants a no-strings-attached night of unforgettable sex courtesy of Ryan Temptation.

I don’t typically concern myself with what women want. This isn’t as crass as it sounds. I do care about bringing women pleasure. I bring the women in the club pleasure with my dancing. I bring the women I have sex with the kind of pleasure they have only read about. I always make an effort to compliment, or at the very least, throw a smile at the women I come into contact with on the street. But, and this is a big but, I don’t care to involve myself beyond that.