Her pussy clenched around me, and she keened.
My balls tightened, and I felt my orgasm coming at me like a freight train.
“Fuck. Pepper. Come with me.” I used my thumb, and it was just the slightest touch she needed to send her tumbling.
She rippled around me, calling my name, and I gave in to the mind-numbing pleasure that beckoned, coming with her name on my lips.
My vision filled with her as it blackened at the edges, my cock emptying everything I had into her.
It took a minute to come back to my senses, but I immediately rolled us to the side, keeping us connected while giving her room to breathe.
We locked eyes. Hers echoed the wonder I felt like I’d just been shown a glimpse of heaven.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Better than okay,” she reassured me, biting her lip as she grinned. “I’m amazing. You’re amazing. That was…”
“Amazing?” I offered with a smile of my own.
“Absolutely,” she agreed. We stared at each other for about another minute before I found the strength to leave her and get cleaned up. Fuck, the house was cold.
When I got back to her, I slid between the covers, and she rolled me to my back, rising above me like the goddess she was.
Fuck. This woman owned me.
“Think that was beginner’s luck?” she asked with a smirk.
“Guess we should find out,” I answered, my dick already stirring to life.
So we did. Two more times.
After I’d stoked the fire, and the clock read four a.m., I pulled her sleepy frame against mine and reveled in the utter exhaustion my body felt.
“How do we do this?” Pepper asked quietly. “If we’re more than friends—”
“We’re more than friends,” I growled. She was mine. I’d told her that, and I’d meant it. There was no force on Earth that was going to keep me from her. “I’ll talk to your dad as soon as we get back to Seattle.”
She tensed. “You’ll lose your position. Your contract. Your dad’s land.”
I pulled her closer. “We’ll work it out.”
“Wait. Let’s just wait. We can keep it quiet.”
A shot of something ugly hit me. “You want to keep us a secret?”
She rolled in my arms, looking up at me with trepidation. “No. I don’t. Especially if you’re saying there’s an us. But I won’t be the reason you lose the land. Let’s wait until after playoffs, okay? Then you can negotiate your contract, and once you guys win, my dad would be crucified if he fired you over something as trivial as me.”
I brushed her hair back from her face. “You’re anything but trivial. And yes, there’s an us. And if you want us to keep it quiet, we can. I’m just not sure how considering you just screamed so loud I’m pretty sure we broke a few windows.” My smile was wide as she smacked my chest.
Then she got serious.
“Carefully. We keep it quiet...carefully.”
I didn’t like it, but I’d take her on any terms I could get her. All I had to do was get past her fears, and we’d be in the clear. Coach would understand. He had to.
And if he didn’t…
Fuck, that wasn’t an option. Because I wasn’t giving up my family’s land, and losing Pepper wasn’t an option.
Not when I’d just gotten her.
“Okay. Careful it is.”
Chapter 11
Pepper
Eric’s hands hooking under my knees. My spine pressed against the locked bathroom door at Club Thirty-Five.
Eric’s lips on my neck, his hand over my mouth to hush the moan trying to tear through me as he sent me into orbit in my bedroom.
My place.
His place.
Secret places.
Six weeks of stolen moments.
Each one hotter than the next.
Each one riskier than the next.
But I couldn’t stop.
We couldn’t.
And I was spiraling.
The sheets were warm and soft against my oversensitive skin. For a few moments, I simply laid there, letting the scent of the sleeping man next to me soak into my very being.
God, what was Eric doing to me?
He was like a drug I never knew existed and I was hooked after one hit.
I knew the risks.
Knew the stakes.
And yet, here I was, in his bed—again—his smooth sheets covering my bare breasts. The rest of my body tingled with a pleasant soreness and my mind? Well, normally it was logical and awkward and rapidly paced.
Now? Settled, fuzzy, calm.
He gave me a quiet mind.
I didn’t even know that was possible.
Maybe that was why I was terrified to open my eyes.
I knew that the second I did…the second I looked at him, I wouldn’t be able to push him away.
And I should.
He had more to lose than I did.
The family farm, quite literally. And I’d totally, utterly, fallen for his family. Every single one of them. They’d opened their home to me, included me, given me a sense of home I’d never experienced before but always dreamed of.
And how was I repaying them?
By sleeping with their son and risking his upcoming multi-million-dollar contract.
I’m the villain.
Brilliant. The argument and guilt-fest were the same every single time. As always, if my mind couldn’t solve a problem it would never stop working it until--
“You want to tell me what you’re chewing on?” Eric’s voice was husky with sleep and half-muffled by the pillow.
I snapped my eyes open, instantly rolling over on my side to face him.
His eyes were still closed and his long red hair was loose and mussed over his broad shoulders. I slid my hand across the bed, tracing the lines of the feather tattoos over his shoulders, and down his thick arms corded with muscle.
So much for pushing him away.
“How did you know?” I asked, continuing with my tracing.
“You’re always crunching something with that big brain of yours, Pepper.” He rolled over on his back, stretching every glorious inch of him. The sheet barely covered his hips, leaving his carved muscles decorated with ink, exposed. Also, it was morning so…
I may have trailed his tattoos a little lower than I should’ve.
A delighted growl rumbled from his chest, and he finally opened his eyes. Blinking a few times to clear the haze, he furrowed his brow when he locked gazes with me.
“What is it?”
I pulled my hand back, tucking it underneath my body so I wouldn’t have any excuse to touch him despite everything in my body begging me to.
“I’m not worth it,” I whispered, glancing away from his green eyes like the coward I was.
He tipped my chin up, forcing me to look at him. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m serious.”
He tucked his arm underneath the pillow and turned his body to mirror mine. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing? What we are doing?”
“What are we doing?” I asked, honestly not sure.
A soft smile played at his lips, but I could see the worry behind his eyes. “We’re…being us. Two unstoppable forces colliding together in one awesome explosion.”
I choked out a laugh. “Colliding. Explosion. So, basically, we’re doomed.”
He reached over and stroked the line of my jaw. “No. We’re not. We’re…”
I arched a brow at him when he couldn’t finish.
“I’m. Not. Worth. It.”
He had the audacity to look mad. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
Adrenaline filled my veins, so I rolled over, taking the sheet with me to wrap around my body. Unfortunately—or luckily—it left him completely naked and sprawled out in his bed.
Oh great Asgardian Gods he was delicious.
Almost enough to make me forget the risks, the farm, my job…all of it.
Alm
ost.
“Pepper,” he growled.
“No,” I said. “You don’t get to be mad.”