Page 102 of Cross-Checked

They want to be there for me.

The realization hits me so hard that I tear up. They know I have their backs, and they want to have mine too.

“I mean, I do still have five seats at my table.” I let the admission slip out, even though I hadn’t intended to say anything.

“I’ll take one,” McCabe says next to me, and gives my knee another secretly supportive squeeze.

“I will too,” Colt says.

“Me too,” Drew adds.

“Me three. Or four?” Luke adds. “Haven’t gotten to dust off my tux in at least a month.”

“Having to dress up in a monkey suit for some fancy event isnotthe motivation here,” Zach says with a sigh. “But I’ll take the last seat.”

“Who else is going?” Luke asks.

“Wilcott and his wife. And your parents.”

He leans back and tilts his head so it rests against the back of the booth, letting out a big sigh. “I didn’t know I was signing up to hang out with my parents,” he groans. “Walsh, take my spot instead?”

“No can do,” Walsh tells him. “Marissa’s coming out with the kids for the first two games.”

“I suuure am,” she slurs, reaching her head up to plant a sloppy kiss on his cheek. He just laughs and shakes his head as he looks down at her fondly.

“Besides, you have the best parents,” I remind Luke.

“You just think that because they’re notyourparents.”

“I think that because they’re awesome.” I want to tell him a bit about my parents so maybe he’ll appreciate his own, but I’maware enough to realize that I have no idea what his childhood was like any more than he knows what mine was like.

“You only think they’re awesome because you don’t have to see your nearly seventy-year-old dad making out with your mom every chance he gets.”

I laugh. “There are way worse problems than your parents being married for almost forty years and still being very much in love.”

“Well,” McCabe says next to me with a chuckle, “this is going to be fun.”

Fun is not the word I’d use to describe how I’m feeling about this event. However, now that I know they’re all coming with me, I feel slightly less sick to my stomach about having to go.

“I’m never . . . wearing . . . a dress . . . again.” The words leave my lips on ragged breaths between kisses where McCabe has me pushed up against the door of my hotel room.

The way he fingered me in the back of the cab on the way to the hotel, bringing me almost to orgasm, then pulling out right as we arrived at our destination, has me desperate for release.

This is a dangerous game we’re playing, making out in the back of a cab and sneaking around in the hotel when we could easily be caught. Thankfully, I gave him my second room key before we got out of the car, and we headed up separately, both managing to make it here without anyone seeing us. Whether he can get out of here tomorrow morning without getting caught remains to be seen.

“I love you in a dress,” he says, pulling back to look down at me. The pure need I see in his eyes has me clenching my thighs. “Easy access to your pussy is my favorite thing. The way youwere dripping all over my hand”—he licks his lips—“I just want to taste you now.”

He drops to his knees, sliding his hands along my thighs, up and under my dress, then pulling my thong down my legs so I can step out of it. Pushing my dress up to my hips, he loops one arm inside my thigh and brings my leg up so my calf is resting on his shoulder. Then he leans in and breathes deeply, the act making me whimper. “God, the fucking scent of you,” he all but growls. “You smell like sex. Like you can’t wait for me to make you come.”

“I can’t.” I’m so turned on, I’m having trouble catching my breath. “I need you.”

“I need you too,” he says, those green eyes flicking up to meet mine. “Not just like this, Alessandra. Ineedyou ineveryway. Sometimes it feels like I don’t know what I would do without you in my life.”

I stare down at him, on his knees before me, thinking that it’s too soon to feel that way, that we don’t know each other well enough yet. But even though I keep telling myself this, the truth is, I feel the same. I don’t want to go back to my lonely existence, where I used work as an excuse to avoid relationships.

“This . . . with you . . . it just feels right. It feels like this was meant to be,” I tell him.

He lifts my leg as he shrugs out of his suit coat, tossing it to the side before leaning in, running his tongue from the bottom of my slit, all the way through my center, and up to my clit, where he circles it before looking up at me again as I moan. “Maybe thiswasmeant to be. We met at the wrong time, under the wrong circumstances. We should never have ended up here, together.” He presses another kiss to my clit. “And yet we did. Because this is where we were always meant to be.”

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