"Look, Karl. If I wanted any shit from you, I'm convinced that I'd just need to squeeze your head. Sometimes I think you might have shit for brains. This is my team. What do you not understand about that?"
"I'm not here to pick a fight, Julianna. I'm just here to coach my team," he says, a bit chastened.
"My team, you mean. And call me Ms. Heaton. I think your time would be better spent with the water boy again this afternoon. Maybe you should go and prepare drinks for these players."
"Julianna, if this is about your father—"
"Spare me, Karl. This conversation is over," she says. She’s obviously not caring that everyone nearby can fucking hear her. She turns and walks 30 yards down the field. It’s obvious that Julianna and Karl have some prior beef, but I don't know where all the animosity came from. I wonder if they have a past with each other. It seems like they did. But then I see my linemen in formation and I realize that I needed to get my head back into this scrimmage.
The ball is snapped and I drop back into the pocket. I make sure I’m light on my feet, bobbing, weaving, and dipping behind the defense. I use every muscle fiber to dodge the opposing team and I scan the field, but I’m not finding any of my receivers open. Where are they? Fuck, it looks like they’re all being double-teamed. Ethan is a sneaky fucking bastard. And then I feel it, a blow to my body that’s as if I was being hit by the grill of a Mack truck. I mean it. What the fuck is happening? And then I see. It’s Ethan.
That fucking bastard. I'm sure he's trying to show off. It's his only chance of even making it on this team. I can see his icy blue eyes throwing sparks at me under his furrowed eyebrows. He’s biting down hard on his mouthpiece. If I would have had a clear shot to his face, and if I wasn't trying to win a spot on this team, I’d have liked to push my fist right through his mouth—mouthpiece or not. I have an almost uncontrollable urge to fight him. He came up on my blind side, hitting me in my ribs. Dirty fucking move, especially in a scrimmage game that is supposed to be touch football only. We were not wearing any helmets or pads. He could have given me a career-ending journey.
Fuck him. We tumble to the ground like two wild animals, toppling over each other. Our thighs mash against one another, twisting and turning like some sort of strange, aggressive pretzel.
When we stopped tumbling, Ethan is on top of me. I can still see his eyes flashing with anger and as blue as a lightning bolt in a storm. "Have you had enough?" he asks. "If you'd quit trying to showboat, I wouldn't have caught you in the pocket like this."
"Fuck you," I say. "If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't even be in this league. And aren't you forgetting this is a two-hand touch scrimmage?"
All he can say is, "I thought you needed some sense knocked into you.” He smirks at me but I can tell that my comment seems to hit him below the belt. I can see that he’s stunned, but honestly, I don’t give a shit. That motherfucker needs to hear the truth. He locks his eyes on mine without moving. I know it’s only for a few seconds, but it feels like forever. And then I feel something unexpected. My dick is hard. I try to shake it from my mind. It must be because of all this pent up aggression. Or maybe it's because Julianna's standing there on the side-lines wearing an outfit that makes me want to fuck the shit out of her. Yeah, that's definitely it. Julianna has been driving me wild all afternoon. But Ethan makes a strange face. His hands are on my bare chest and it’s only for a second. If I’d been looking in the other direction, I would have missed it. But there’s no mistaking it now. He tenses his shoulders and then quickly dismounted.
"Good job Ethan!" Julianna claps. "Way to nail him from behind. But remember, this is just touch football. There's no need for anyone to be injured over a scrimmage. Let's be smart about this, boys."
It looks as if Ethan blushes for a second at that statement, but it makes my jealousy flare. No fucking way was I letting Ethan steal the spotlight. He's nobody. I'm Colt fucking Stackford. What does Julianna see in him anyways? Every time she talks to him, I can feel my temperature rising, and I'm blinded with bitter, green flames.
Then I hear Julianna's voice again. "You look tired, Colt. Why don’t you come over here for a quick blow?"
"Excuse me?" I ask, nearly choking. What did she just ask me? Did I hear that correctly?
She smiles at me in a way that really makes my dick come alive. I jump against my pants, and then she says, "Get your mind out of the gutter, Stackford." But by the way she says, I knew she didn't mean that.
"I meant the fan," she continues. "It's hot out. Why don't you come over here and stand in front of it for a minute?"
I take her up on the offer and jog off the field. I stand near her, and notice how good she smells. My eyes trace the outlines of her hips, her ass, and her tits. I wonder if she’s just as feisty in bed as she is on the field.
"You know Ethan got lucky on that play," I say to her. "A few more seconds—hell, just a few more inches, and he wouldn't have gotten that sack."
"Yes, this is certainly a game of inches," she grins, looking straight at my cock. "And like I said earlier, when you get down in this area—"
Wait, is she running her hand over her pussy? Fuck, she is hot. I want to fuck her so bad I can barely stand it. Play it cool Stackford,
"In this area," she continues. "You just have to start pounding."
Is she referring to her pussy or to the field? I’m losing track. Desire was coursing through my body and flooding my brain. I’m losing the ability to reason.
"Ethan seems to have the gift of banging it in," she continues.
That's it. Ethan isn't stealing the spotlight right now. No fucking way. "You may think that," I said, "But most holes close on him before he can even penetrate them," I say. Then I give her a shrug and run back to the huddle.
Ethan
Who does Colt think he is? Sure, he can throw a football, but given a half second more, I would have won that scrimmage and Colt would have been on the ground. Hands down. And as much as I try to ignore it, his showboating on and off the field
gets under my skin. So what if he won? I've always told myself that if you want something bad enough, you go out there and get it. And that's exactly what I plan to do. Colt wouldn't know a thing about hard work. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has had just about everything handed to him, and that's always rubbed me wrong. Lucky bastard.
I picture Julianna standing on the field during the scrimmage, her tight skirt hugging her tight curves, and her breasts nearly spilling out of her blouse begging me to touch them. That woman is perfect. Just thinking about her makes my pulse buck like a bull. I've never wanted a woman so badly in my life. I picture that decisive scrimmage game again, and remembered noticing that her heels were sinking into the turf as she walked across the field, causing her to wobble ever so slightly, and I wanted to help her—maybe be near enough to breath in her perfume and give her a hand, but ultimately decided against it. She didn't seem like the kind of woman who would want me to walk her across the field because of her shoes, like a child being ushered across a street. No, she was unlike any other woman I had ever met before. Sexy. Self-reliant. Confident. She knows what she wants. She may have picked Colt, but she doesn't realize that she made the wrong choice. And if she thinks I'm going to give up, she is mistaken.
I pull my phone from the pocket of my recently tailored Armani suit and check the time. 7:16 pm. I realize I’m near Julianna's penthouse at the Time Warner Center and I decide to not waste another moment. I need to make a bold move. I walk across the street. A small florist shop is still open, its sign casting a neon glow, and I scan the buckets of flowers—blues, golds, whites, pinks, lavenders—peonies, carnations, orchids, tulips—the variety is dizzying. Then my eyes land on a far corner of the room, and I know I’ve made my decision. I buy the largest bouquet of flowers that they have available—an entire bundle of 100 long-stemmed red roses.