Page 17 of Dirty Ruck
I suspected I couldn't stop him anyway. If it wasn't here, it'd be somewhere else. Better that it be somewhere I could keep an eye on him, and the other guys if they got involved too.
"You really are the best." He kissed my hair. "I don't think any other woman would say yes to a medieval torture chamber in the basement. You know, it doesn't have to be all about torture. We could have fun down there too."
"That sounds more like my kind of thing," I said. "You might even convince me to help set it up. We could have a swing, and a wall of vibrators."
"I knew there was a reason why I bought this place." He grinned. "It's perfect for both of those things. Fun for the whole family."
Chapter Seven
Jay
"Smashers win!"
The whole stadium went crazy, cheering and shouting. The noise echoed through my ears, conflicting as hell.
I loved winning but the sound was overwhelming. Overstimulating.
Music.
Shouting.
Applause.
It was a lot.
Atlas patted my shoulder and followed me as I trotted to the locker room. "Good game. You were on fire tonight."
I took a moment to grin before throwing myself down on the nearest chair and tearing at the laces on my boots. "Thanks, you too."
"Atlas is right." Dallas sat beside me and started to pull off his own boots. "You were on point."
"Thanks," I said awkwardly. I wasn't used to praise. When it came, I struggled to deal with it. Was it sincere? I always wondered, even when I had no reason to believe it wasn't. These guys especially had no reason to bullshit me.
I managed to say, "You too. That try you stopped right before the end of the first half made all the difference."
We were down at that point. If the opposition made that try, coming back would have been that much more difficult. Instead, we stopped beating ourselves up and played harder.
Dallas shrugged modestly. "It made some of the difference. You know what they say, a team is bigger than one person." Like always, he was the first one to strip off and head for the shower. He was always in a hurry to get back to Chelsea. If he could find a way to become permanently attached to her, he'd do it.
"Yeah, but sometimes it takes one person to turn the shitshow around." I yanked my boots off and grabbed the toes of my socks to pull them away from my feet. As if they were toxic, I dropped them on the floor beside my boots. Took a sigh of relief at having bare feet. Sweaty and smelly, but still bare.
"What Jay said." Storm pulled off his shirt and threw it aside. "You did good. You all did good. We're playing better than we ever have."
"Even me?" Atlas teased.
"Let's not go nuts here." Storm rolled his eyes, but he was trying not to smile. He stepped out of the rest of his clothes and grabbed a towel.
I tried to avoid looking in the direction ofhisnuts. He was an attractive man. I'd never be into him that way, but that didn't mean I couldn't look once in a while. It was hard not to; he was a chiselled, sweaty football god. Of course, everyone here was.
Everyone, as far as I was concerned, except for me. I was just Jay, no one special.
"It's too late," Frost said, breaking through my thoughts. "We're already nuts around here." He grinned and headed towards the showers, behind Storm, giving me a perfect view of his firm ass.
"He's not wrong," Atlas said. "Crazy is the word. Not in a bad way."
I didn't pretend I wasn’t watching him undress. I couldn't have stopped myself if I wanted to. He was in a category all of his own, all hard muscle and firm skin, scarred here and there. Mostly, according to him, from childhood mishaps.
I believed it. We were the kind of guys trouble had a way of finding. Okay, a lot of the time we invited it in.
