Truly (New York 1)

“Excuse me,” May said. “I need to borrow him for a minute.” She grabbed his hand and pulled.

Ben followed her upstairs, past the TV in the living room. “Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll see.” They padded up the carpeted stairs to the bonus room on the top floor.

Ben found the remote before she’d even finished flipping on the lights. “You’re a goddess,” he said, his eyes already on the blue glow of the TV’s warm-up screen. “Help me find the channel.”

She did, and they sat side by side on the couch, their thighs pressing together but their attention entirely on the screen.

Almost entirely. Ben leaned forward most of the time, legs spread wide, elbows on his knees when things were going well, the palms of his hands braced against his kneecaps when the team required his full attention. At one point, he reached over and absently rubbed his hand up and down her thigh. “You lock the door?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Then there was a call he didn’t like, and he threw both arms in the air and flung his torso back against the couch cushions, his whole body a protest.

A few seconds later, he sat forward again, resuming his vigil.

May paid attention to every play, but beneath—between them both—arousal built. A player fumbled, Ben called him a fucking idiot, and desire contracted between her thighs, low and hot. He groused at the refs now and then, but the Packers were ahead, so there was a pleasant halfheartedness to it.

“Einarsson’s not playing his best,” he said.

“Don’t make me feel bad.”

Ben put his hand back on her knee. “It’s not your fault.”

When the Packers’ new quarterback threw away the ball, then sprinted after the opposing lineman to pull an open-field tackle from his ass at the forty-five-yard line, May said, “I’m going to marry that man.”

She meant it as a joke, but Ben didn’t seem to think it was funny. “Not fucking likely,” he said, and heat zipped through her, waking every part of her that had been anesthetized when she walked over the threshold into her parents’ house and back into her old life.

Her clit. Her heart.

Her defiant, unsatisfied self.

“Stranger things have happened,” she said. The Packers were ahead with twenty-three seconds left in the first half. Ben’s dark mood turned her on. His body, solid and real beside her. His presence. “I bet he likes tall women.”

Three seconds later, Ben had her underneath him. “Wait until I’m gone before you start running around with quarterbacks again, huh?”

“If you insist.” She found the hem of his shirt and pulled it out of the way so she could settle her hands over the divots at the base of his spine.

“I insist.”

He kissed her deeply, and she wanted to cheer, it was so exactly what she’d been hoping for. His tongue tasting of salt and beer, his arm braced against the couch behind her head. His anger transformed into movement, desire. No lies between them.

Ben’s free hand found her breast and rubbed her nipple through her jersey, but she pushed his hand aside and reached for her zipper. She didn’t need foreplay. Her pulse was beating between her legs, loud and desperate, and Ben was already hard. “You have a condom?”

“In my pocket.”

“Get it on.”

She unzipped her jeans as he tussled with his, raised her hips a few inches and shoved denim as far down his legs as she could. She spread her knees and said, “Hurry.”

“Will anyone come up here during the half?”

“Hurry,” she repeated, and he settled over her, testing her readiness with a fingertip.

“You’re not wet enough. Let me—”