See? I was starting to understand football lingo. Of course, I still nicknamed all of our players, but no one needed to know that.
I read through the contract and sent a quick email back to Wes, highlighting the things I didn’t like. The offer was good, but it could be better. First rule of business, always be prepared to negotiate and never take the first offer that’s sent your way. My business-savvy husband taught me that.
Considering I was getting emails from my boss during my honeymoon, I’d say it was obvious work was about to get a bit intense for me. The New York Mavericks were in the midst of a marketing overhaul and rebranding, and since I was leading this insane task, my job would require more than a simple, forty-hours-a-week schedule. Late nights, gallons of coffee, and a shitload of frequent flyer miles were about to fill my future.
I had a feeling Kline wasn’t going to swallow this pill all that well.
My husband was understanding to a fault, but he had gotten used to me being by his side at the office for the early part of our relationship, and even after I had taken the job with the Mavericks and we had managed to find our way back to one another, my work hours were manageable. He’d been making a real effort to leave work at five o’clock, and I’d done the same. But my workload was about to increase tenfold. Who wants to hear that kind of news from their brand-new wife?
And if I was being honest, I wasn’t all that thrilled with the idea of less time with him either. I hated it, actually. But my career was important to me. The drive to pave out my own kind of success ran deep. I wanted, no, needed, to accomplish the goals I had set for myself.
Finding the right balance and some serious understanding on my husband’s part was going to be key in making it all work without one of us going crazy. We had talked about my soon-to-be demanding schedule and traveling with the team for away games, but with the craziness of the wedding, we never really had a chance to sit down and map it all out.
That conversation would come, but right now, in this perfect little moment, other things would have to come first. Big-dicked kind of things.
Before I got down and dirty with Kline, I glanced at the clock again, and knowing that it was six hours later in New York, I sent Cass a quick text message.
Me: How’s Walter?
Cassie: He’s great! Eating, shitting, pissing, and just doing his normal cat thing around your apartment.
My eyebrows rose at that response. I had expected something more like, “He’s a fucking asshole, but still alive.” Maybe he had finally warmed up to Cass?
Cassie: And I gotta say, the amount of kinky sex shit you’ve got stored under your bed is INSANE. My Wheorgie is definitely letting her freak flag fly.
Ugh. I debated telling her the truth about the giant box of kink under our bed. They were all generous and, no doubt, weird gifts from my mother. Since we got engaged, Kline and I had been receiving brand-new toys on the regular from Dr. Savannah Cummings. My crazy mother was convinced we needed to explore our sexuality together, in every possible way. Anal beads, ball gags, twelve-inch dildos, you name it, and it was shipped to our apartment.
Thatch found the box while helping us move in, and I swear to God, he wouldn’t shut up about it. Hell, he still sent me random text messages asking if I wear Ben Wa balls to work.
The thing my mother didn’t understand was that I didn’t need thousands of kinky toys when I had Kline. A vibrator was no match for his PhD in Sexual Prowess. I’d actually suggested he teach a course at NYU one night after sex. He’d laughed, but I was serious. The female population of Manhattan needed him. I brought it up every so often, but he wasn’t going for it. He said he was in charge of keeping exactly one pussy happy, and that position was all filled.
And, yes, I agree. I’m one lucky bitch. Don’t worry, I remind myself of this fact at least one hundred times a day.
Kline stirred a little in his sleep, one arm reaching out across the bed and stopping once it met the skin of my hip. For a moment, I just soaked up the sight of him. Hair in disarray and a few days’ worth of scruff peppering his jaw, my husband was so goddamn sexy I could hardly stand it. Over the past few days, we’d been doing nothing but climbing inside one another. The sex had been intense, crazy, and incredibly hedonistic. And I would ensure it continued that way for the duration of our honeymoon.
I set my phone down on the nightstand and decided it was time to give my husband a wake-up call. Remembering a conversation Kline and I had yesterday while we were lying under the sun, I decided to return the favor of him giving me a little striptease the night we skinny-dipped at ONE UN.