Clothes fell away as we made our way to the bed. We fell into it as though onto a cloud. Every breath I took shook me.
His hand curved around my breast as his mouth went to the other. I arched into him. We tumbled across the bed, until he was on his back, and I was sprawled above him. We were laughing and shaking. I framed his face and kissed my way from his ear to his jaw before finally reaching his mouth.
He flipped me over and devoured me with tongue and tooth until I was lost and mindless, a limp, pliant body devoted only to his touch. He kissed me with fierce sweetness, with blazing loyalty. “I love you.”
I moaned, and then returned his kiss with fire. “And I you.”
His fingers, firm and steady, played down my side, and then slipped into my warmth, teasing me as I twisted beneath him, until I was hot and ready and dying for him. I nipped at his ear, and then trailed one hand between us, down the hard planes of his stomach and lower still, my palm moving with daring sureness. He rewarded me with a deep, shuddering groan, and pinned me to the bed. With one thrust, he buried himself deep inside me. A sharp noise of pleasure burst
out, and I could feel his smile against my shoulder.
He withdrew and then slid back in, slow at first, and then increasing in speed and force. It drove me mad with desire, and I rocked against him, helpless and wanton, meeting each thrust with my own, until I was wild with want and empty of thought. We were hot and fast, light lightning, a storm after a dry spell. We were the roaring ocean, the brightness of the moon, the inexplorable tide that tied them together. I let out a cry and clung to him, and he to me, and we were lost together.
Lost and found.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Work the next day was interesting.
When I stepped into the office, everyone started cheering. Design, marketing, finance, people whom I didn’t even speak to on a weekly basis. Jin and Mduduzi had noisemakers. Even Tanya leaned against the wall, arms crossed but a smile on her face.
“That was something,” Carlos said as I made my way to my seat amongst a sea of congratulatory cheers and pats on the back. “‘I stand with Tamar.’ I hope he proposed.”
I turned red. “Now you’re being ridiculous. But yes, it was sweet.”
Everyone groaned at that understatement, and grinning, I dropped into my chair.
The tide of public opinion ran swift and strong. It turned against the League on the hairpin of the interview, and was reinforced as the woodwork fell away to reveal other figures. The doctor I had spoken to publicly stepped forward to confirm our findings. A respected businessman, running for city council on the promise of better health care, worked it into his speech. Rachael Hamilton, whose name I’d refused to give in my original article, now stepped up alongside her boyfriend. And after they backed me publicly, the players flocked to my side en masse.
And the masses fell under the repeated sound bite of Abraham saying, “I stand by her and I am proud of her.”
And it was not so long before the League called a second press conference.
“Of course we take these allegations very seriously.” The commissioner of the NFL paused and looked around the room, so that we could all admire the gravity he’d etched into his expression. He did not seem pleased to be here, in our cold, snowy city, handling a PR mess that would lose people millions in the fallout. “Our first priority has always been the welfare of our players. We’ll not only be conducting our own investigations into the safety of the helmets and athletic gear used by our players, we’ve hired outside investigators.” He cleared his throat. “And the Leopards will no longer be going forward with the training facility as sponsored by Loft Athletics.”
* * *
Tanya called me into her office at the end of January. She was blunt and to the point, and since I had been expecting it, I was able to constrain some of my unhappiness. “You can’t report on the Leopards anymore, you know.”
I stared out the window at the endless sky, winter blue and bright. Far above, puffs of white lay in easy formations, while all the buildings that interfered were touched with the cold, unforgiving sharpness of morning sun. “I know.”
She shifted behind me, and Tanya rarely shifted. “You’re too close.”
My lips curved. In bed with the team, in fact.
But I still didn’t want to say goodbye. I loved this team, these players. I loved how they laughed with me and protected me and how they’d started to now call me “RB” for Rosenberg, which shouldn’t have made me laugh, but did anyways.
It would be a lot of work, learning a new team’s habits, getting them to trust me. I would have to overcome the fact that I was the reporter who had broken the silence, and that I was involved with a member of a different New York team. It wouldn’t be easy. It wouldn’t be quick.
But it would be worth it.
* * *
“I for one, am glad you won’t be covering the Leopards anymore,” Rachael Hamilton said as we piled on her couches, along with Natalie and Briana, who had just finished telling us about her honeymoon. “It made it feel a little awkward to just talk about normal stuff. Like there was a barrier.”
I grinned. “Like I was a member of the press, perhaps?”
“Why, yes,” she deadpanned. “That may have been it.”