Page 111 of For The Ring

I give him that one. “That’s exactly why.” Lifting his t-shirt up over his head, I send it to the corner of my bedroom while he presses kisses into my stomach and the underside of my breasts and then it’s my turn to fall to my knees, undoing the fly of his jeans and taking them and his boxer briefs off in one long motion after he kicks off his shoes and socks.

He clearly doesn’t want to test his knee, so after I retrieve a condom that I’m pretty sure hasn’t expired from my nightstand drawer and slide it onto him while he watches slack jawed, I simply climb into his lap and allow him to press up into me, my body more than ready for him, but still reveling in the sweet stretch of having him inside of me.

“So good,” he grits out when my ass hits his thighs and his palms span across me, guiding my body into a grinding rhythm, and it doesn’t take long until my eyes fall shut and my mouth falls open while every twist of his hips creates the perfect friction against my clit and he presses up inside me, hitting just the right spot.

“Yes, right there,” I manage, between the gasps emanating from the back of my throat, getting close again so quickly after his complete undoing of me against the door.

Then, his hips start to thrust up off the bed and I hold on for dear life as he finds the strength to push up off the mattress and deposit me back on it, leaving me on my hands and knees, ass in the air and when I look back over my shoulder at him he lets out a noise from deep inside that makes my entire body clench in anticipation.

“Your knee,” I protest, but weakly.

“Fuck my knee,” he dismisses, and then he’s filling me from behind, while he presses down at the center of my back, the other around to find my clit again and as he pounds into me, hard and fast, a punishing rhythm, and that’s when white hot energy crackles through every part of me, exploding behind my eyes and at my core, my hips mindlessly thrusting back into his while I collapse down into the mattress, only for him to flow, his thrusts suddenly uneven and short until he gives over to it entirely and we land together, a sticky, gasping heap of exhausted pleasure.

When I finally come back to myself, I’m still catching my breath with the soft cotton of my sheets sticking to my sweat slicked skin. I don’t remember rolling to my back, but I must have, and Charlie’s arm is thrown carelessly over my waist, his face half buried in the pillow and half into my shoulder. I glide my fingertips up and down the sinew of his forearm as our breathing syncs and then slows, both of us drifting into a doze.

But then my phone vibrates from my bag, across the room, where, somewhere in our mad dash to my bed, I dropped it on the floor.

“Don’t answer it,” he murmurs, his words like a kiss against my skin. “Rest.”

“If it’s going off it’s because it’s someone important.”

The vibration stops for a moment and then another before picking up again.

Charlie groans as I slide out from under his arm and he buries his head more completely into the pillow. Though, when I stand to walk away, he lets out a chuckle. “Never mind, stay just like that. I like this view very much.”

I’m already too far away from the bed to throw a pillow at him, so instead I just wiggle my hips, shaking my ass back at him and grinning at his bark of laughter.

This is how it’s going to be and I love it.

I’ll take the job with the Yankees. He’ll manage the Eagles. We’ll live here in this house and we’ll build a life. It’ll be different than what we originally planned, but at least we’ll be together. And no one will bat an eyelash at our relationship.

Because that’s what it is now, a relationship.

I love that man. More than I even thought I’d let myself love anyone ever again. I had my career and for a long time and I thought that was enough. And it would have been, if he hadn’t come back into my life. And now I can’t imagine a day without him in it.

My phone has stopped vibrating by the time I find it, bending over just right while I dig through my bag to give him a view that elicits a tortured groan.

There are two missed calls, but from different numbers.

The first was Stew.

The second was that Japanese number that I saved into my contacts asKN.

And while my phone is in my head, a text pops up fromKN.

I am told you are not with the Eagles. Please update?

Here we go.

I call Stew back first as Charlie slides from my bed into the bathroom to dispose of the condom and, before I can really appreciate that view, Stew picks up and skips the pleasantries.“You are a royal pain in my ass, you know that? Did you take the job with the pinstripes?”

“Not yet.”

“Yet. So you’re going to take it.”

“It’s not like I have another option.”

“You do,” he insists. “Or you will in about an hour. Someone leaked to Nakamura that Vinch let you go. His new agent called today to start negotiations on some of the finer points of our offer and, when you weren’t around to take his call, they freaked out. Ownership is in an emergency meeting. If you get down here now, I think we can spin this into something special.”

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