Page 23 of Ready to Score

Her first six months in Greenbelt had been spent firmly under the wing of an incredibly flighty bird. The only people she’d known were Caroline’s people, the only passions she’d cared about were Caroline’s passions. It had been a total mindfuck to find herself alone in a strange place and feeling like she hardly knew who she was anymore.

Franny’s first instinct had been to run back to the safety of her old life in Texas. But even that hadn’t felt completely right. She had a good job and a cute apartment and just enough willpower to try to stay and make it work. Just under two years later, Franny had made a good life for herself—even if it was lacking. It was only recently that she’d started to feel that itch for more than just good again. She wanted to feel hopeful and ambitious, and she wanted all the upsets that came with those things too.

It had been right there in front of her the entire time. The thing she’d loved but had relegated to hobby status because no one else seemed to understand its importance the way she did.

She needed football again. The thrill of it. The competitiveness. The heart. Getting out on that field every day and helping coach those kids—through their wins or their losses—was something she had lived without for far too long.

And if getting all that back meant that she had to use whatever flamed between her and Dunn to completely burn the other woman, so be it. It wasn’t as if the fight wouldn’t be a fair one. Jade was doing the exact same thing to her.

“If good old-fashioned dislike is passion, then I suppose it is,” Franny said with her tongue in her cheek.

She floundered for a moment, her mouth still open but releasing no sounds. Her argument was so flimsy that she barely had any way to argue it, even in her own head. The silence drew out until, finally, her name popped up on the display screen above their heads, signaling that it was her turn to knock down some pins.

The other girls were quiet, obviously letting her have it. But she could see by the looks on their faces that they didn’t believe her.

Which was fair enough, since she was lying her ass off.

Later that night, she lay in her bed in the dark, wishing for the first time that she’d put a television in her bedroom to distract her from her thoughts.

Her mind kept replaying the conversation from the bowling alley and the conclusions she’d come to. Her mind wasn’t changed in the end, but she was finding it impossible now not to focus on the other feelings she’d identified.

The spark, the heat, the passion. Whatever her rational mind was made up of completely dissolved after 2:00A.M.Anything that was left burned and ached to the point that she didn’t even see the point in pushing it down anymore. What for? There was no one here but her. The images that flashed behind her eyes were only for her to see.

Jade Dunn smiling at her. The smooth skin of her chest and shoulders extra golden because of the sunlight. Jade had a little scar above the knuckle of her index finger on her left hand. It was darkerthan the rest of her skin, shinier from the way it had healed. Franny imagined running her own finger over the mark, bringing it up to her mouth, and laying a kiss on it.

She sucked in a sharp breath, her thighs squeezing together tightly when the next frame in her mind became an image of her sucking on Jade’s finger. Just one, then two. Her tongue swirling around the hot flesh, her lips keeping them inside.

Suddenly, she could practically feel those fingers sliding into her panties. It was so real that Franny had to put a hand on her mound to make sure it was just her imagination running rampant. She was hot there, so soaked that she could feel it through her underwear just by pressing against herself a little bit.

The motion set her body alight. Her nipples hardened to stiff points underneath her little white T-shirt; even just the fabric brushing against them felt good enough to make her hiss.

Franny settled back into her pillows, closing her eyes and shutting out everything but the fantasy.

Jade’s fingers—hers—were soft as they circled her clit, and Franny’s thighs clenched imagining Jade’s soft, plump lips pressing kisses into her neck as she worked her over. She squirmed in her bed, trying to re-create for herself what it might feel like to have Jade on top of her, inside her.

It was a heady feeling, so much so that Franny could practically smell whatever perfume the other woman wore. As if she could feel her tongue brush against her lips. The weight of her, the sweetness.

It didn’t take much to send her over the edge. She’d been so worked up recently, so much tension wrapped around her body that a few fast circles around her clit and Jade’s name on her tongue were enough to make her come so hard she had to turn her head and scream into a pillow.

She kept her fingers underneath her panties, even after she wasdone. Feeling herself with soothing strokes and pets as she waited for shame to fill her. It was entirely unethical to think about your coworker like that, to masturbate to the thought of her. To call out her name in the darkness of your bedroom. Franny didn’t know how in the hell she was supposed to look Dunn in the face after what she’d done.

Still, when she turned over on her side, finally ready to fall asleep, her brain was far too hazy to fight off the image of the other woman curling around behind her, arm over her waist, breath against the back of her neck.

Franny figured she couldn’t be responsible for what her head dreamed up in such a vulnerable state. She’d had far worse nightmares than this, after all.

9

Jade hated sitting at the bar. The stools were uncomfortable and hard to sink into, and she always felt like she was being watched like a hawk perched up on one. It was a Friday evening, though, and everybody and their mama had decided to have their supper at the diner. Because Miri was the only one who she’d been able to rope out of the house, they’d been peer pressured into giving up a chance at a real table to a young family only to find themselves stuck at two of the open stools left at the bar.

The bar at Minnie’s Diner wasn’t actually a bar. It had the same high, rounded tabletop as one, accompanied by glossy blue vinyl backless stools. There was no alcohol to be found, though. No towering bottles of vodka and whiskey. There wasn’t even a beer tap. Just vintage refrigerators filled with glass soda bottles and a ridiculously large stash of salt and pepper holders.

She knew she was ornery tonight, but Jade had seriously considered saying, “Fuck it,” and just going home instead. But Miriam, being the absolute menace that she was, had taken her by the wrist and forced her into her seat.

“Mommy will buy you a milkshake after your supper if you quit pouting,” her best friend said, snorting around a sip of peach tea.

Jade picked at the paper that had come off her straw. “Don’t call yourselfMommy. It’s weird.”

“It’s only weird because it makes your repressed ass horny.”

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