Page 66 of Hard Hitter

Raelyn rolled her eyes and reluctantly took the glass of wine from his hand. “Why are you here?”

Emerson glanced around. “It’s my best friend’s house. I was invited-”

“No, I meanhere.Next to me. What do you want? For real.”

He sighed and faced the large fire now. There were only a few others sitting around the fire, and their seats were far enough back that their conversation remained private. “I just want to tell you I’m sorry. Again. I know it probably doesn’t change anything, but I am. I shouldn’t have...I wish things had gone differently. You deserved better.”

“You’re right,” Raelyn agreed. “It doesn’t change anything, and Idodeserve better.”

Emerson scoffed, “Is that why you’re with All-Star? Because he’s so much better than me?”

Well, that humble sincerity dissolved real quick.

“I promise he is.”

“Oh please,” he sneered. “That bullshit about falling for you when he was a kid? That’s a fucking line, Rae. He’s on vacation with his fucked up arm, comes home, sees the girl he always wanted to bang in high school is available, and is willing to say whatever it takes to get you in bed. That’s all it is. It’s called a revenge fuck, and when you’ve healed him up, he’s going to fly back to L.A. and go back to banging twenty-two-year-old models.”

“Not every guy is you. Not every guy just cares about fucking whoever he can get his hands on. And now that you brought it up, wasn’t that intern of yours also twenty-two? Twenty-one? I think you might just be expressing what you’d be doing in his position. You two are not the same.”

“I never meant for that to happen, Rae,” Emerson groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. As ifhewere the one who’d been hurt by his actions. As ifhe’dbeen wronged and was over having this conversation.

“Right, you just slipped on some legal documents and fell into her vagina- penis first.” Raelyn took a gulp of her wine. “It doesn’t matter either way. I’m over it. I’ve moved on.” She tipped the glass back again, draining it completely, and handed it back to Emerson. “Thanks for the Noir. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get my boyfriend and take him home.”

“Let me know when you find out I was right,” Emerson drawled. “I promise to make you feel so good you’ll forget he ever happened.”

She wasn’t going to dignify that with a response, and instead headed back toward the shed to find Quinn.

She was only a few feet from the huddle of six or seven men when she heard Quinn’s voice. He had an arm around James’s shoulders, and they were leaning into the circle as though sharing secrets.

“...gotta amp up the dirty talk. Seriously, it works,” Quinn was saying as she approached. “When I do it, I’m just like talking to her like, ‘yeah, this is what I’m about to do to you and you’re gonna be fucking begging for more’. You should see Rae when I whisper shit like that,” Quinn gave out a groan. “Fuck, does her body respond.”

Raelyn stopped in her tracks and stared at his back, trying to ignore how great his t-shirt looked stretching over those muscles.What the fuck did I just walk into?

Another one of the guys chimed in, “Damn...I haven’t mastered that yet,” he admitted. “I feel like I think too much.”

James added, “Everything just sounds dumb in my head.”

Quinn waved his hand dismissively. “Just take charge. ‘Babygirl, I’m gonna flip you over and take you for a ride.’ I used that on Rae a few times and, I’m talking,instantwaterfall.”

Rae felt her face go red as she dropped her jaw and stared from a short distance. She had been getting ready to speak up but wasn’t sure she wanted to draw attention to herself after that, so she waited and listened for the right moment.

“Full disclosure,” Ethan, Brody’s younger brother piped in. “The first time I met Raelyn…” he paused and gave a low whistle. “Let’s just say you are one lucky man.”

“That ass though,” one of the men added.

How old are these assholes? Are we in a fucking high school locker room?

Quinn let out a mischievous and boastful sounding laugh, “Oh, I know. That view when I hit it from behind-fuck-it about does me in just seeing-”

“Seeing what, exactly?” Raelyn forced herself to cut in. She really didn’t want to hear the rest of that sentence. She didn’t want this entire group of men to hear the rest of that sentence. She stood with both hands on her hips, head tilted to the side, and an eyebrow raised in a challenging glare.

Raelyn thought he’d at least be humble enough to recognize he’d been busted and that talking about her like that wasnotokay. Not to a bunch of people he barely knew! However, when he was fully turned around, he was displaying his cocky, charm-the-pants-off-you grin. “Oh, hey baby. We were just admiring your...assets.”

He winked.

This motherfucking, cocky son of a bitch actually winked.

Raelyn glowered at him for several silent seconds. His expression refused to falter.

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