Coach's Daughter

The slap I deliver across his chiseled face is a reminder to the both of us. Furthermore, it’s a rebuke for trying to trap me. For using his influence to steer my life in a direction I didn’t choose myself.

The sharp sound rings down the empty, carpeted hallway.

He doesn’t react how I expect.

I expect him to call me crazy or recoil in shock.

But without missing a beat, Eric surges forward, grabs both of my wrists and walks me backward, pinning me to the wall. Hard enough to make me gasp. His mouth moves open and hot down my neck, then back up to breathe my name heavily into my ear. Cutting sideways to my mouth and kissing me roughly. Possessively.

Eric’s tongue rakes over mine, his thumbs pressing into the pulses of my wrists, hips locking me between him and the wall. Rocking into me, letting me feel the huge outline of flesh behind the belt of his dress pants. The kiss is blatant, sexual. Frenzied. And it pulls me along in its swift current, demanding participation.

Lord, oh lord, he tastes good. Our kiss has this perfectly suctioned pull and push, give and take, and before I know what I’m doing, I’m opening my mouth in shameful invitation, moaning for more of his invasion. Rubbing my breasts on the front of his crisp white button-down, growing lightheaded when my nipples coil.

Just when I’m beginning to wonder if a woman can climax from a kiss alone, Eric breaks away. Frames my jaw in his hand, squeezing lightly, tilting my face up. I’ve never been more physically vulnerable in my life than in this moment, caught between this athlete in his prime and a hard place, my body weakened from the kiss, jaw cradled in a hand big enough to equal two of mine.

“Are you calm now?” he asks through labored breaths.

The word calm turns my vision red at the edges and I start to struggle, shoving at his chest, only to have his hips scoop me up and flatten me again, this time with that hard, male appendage pressed up tight between my thighs. And he’s still holding my jaw, not in a way that hurts, just in a way that leaves no doubt about who is in charge. God help me, my panties turn sodden. The fight goes out of me and I whimper, rubbing my sex against his, toes curling in my sneakers.

“We don’t hit, little girl,” he rasps in my ear. “You use your words.”

Those words—little girl—should make me want to throat punch somebody, namely Eric, but they don’t. They steal my breath. The way he speaks to me is disciplinary, like I’m a child, but I definitely don’t feel like one. I feel like more of a woman than ever. His tone and chastisement make me feel feminine and coveted and sexy. What is happening here?

“Now I’ll ask you again.” He sucks the sensitive spot just beneath my earlobe. Sucks it long and hard enough to make me pant, my eyelashes fluttering. “Have you calmed down?”

“Yes,” I whisper, unevenly. “Yes.”

“Next time you slap me, angel, you’ll be sucking me off from your knees before the sting wears off. I’ll find a way to make that temper work for both of us. Is that clear?” I think he’s going to back off, but he fists my hair, instead, pulling my head back and slowly licking all the way up my exposed throat. “I’m going to give you this later,” he says hoarsely, bucking his hips once and catching my sharp cry with his mouth. “But right now, angel, we’re going to talk.”

I don’t think I regain consciousness until we’re halfway down the hallway.

Our fingers are interlocked and he’s guiding me toward the luxury boxes, located on the same floor. He opens the door of a box owned by a famous beer company, pulling me inside. The space is air conditioned, smelling of expensive leather, lavishly furnished. The arena where people will chant Eric’s name is spread out below, quiet, but impressive. When I was a kid, I thought the arena was a magical place, but as I grew older, it became a synonymous with my lack of power. My lack of control over my own life.

That’s what I’m thinking about when Eric sits down on the leather couch and pulls me into his lap. If my posture is stiff, I blame it on the view. Blame it on the reminder I got in the conference room of how decisions are rarely mine to make.

Why then do I like being manhandled by Eric so much?

Isn’t his authoritative treatment the same as being told what to do?

How can I loathe one and crave the other?

“Greta,” Eric says, threading his fingers into my hair and gently tilting back my head. Holding me just like that, gaze on the ceiling, his breath in my ear. “I don’t want to make you agree to anything against your will. How do I make you mine? How do I make you need to be mine?”