He laughed, that cocky baritone always at my expense. I forced him away from the field. He followed me to the tunnels leading from the grass to the locker room. The practice facility was too busy for this kind of talk—coaches and staff and players beginning their workouts. Half the team funneled between the field and the recently renovated, two-story weight room. I had to keep my voice down. That only encouraged Jack to tease my temper.
He stretched his arms, every motion bulging muscle on top of muscle. “Think we could talk inside? I’m kinda bruised from the accident. We could sit in the spa tub together.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Would you prefer the hot tub in our honeymoon suite?”
I poked a finger into his chest, instantly regretting touching his heated, fiercely defined body. A shiver trembled from the tip of my finger all the way through me, centering in a very wrong place.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I said.
Jack glanced me over, amused. “I got us out of trouble.”
“No. You got you out of trouble. You put me in the middle of all of this!”
He provoked me with an impish arch of his eyebrows. “You’re not breaking up with me, are you? Come on, Kiss. I’m a great catch.”
“I don’t want to be your fake girlfriend.”
“So…you wanna be my real girlfriend?”
“Screw you, Jack. Can you be serious for ten seconds?”
“Who says I wasn’t serious, Kiss?”
Enough of this. “For like, one minute, can you possibly think about anyone other than yourself or your little play-maker?”
He took offense when I pointed at his mesh shorts. “Hey. Don’t call him little!”
“You could have gotten me fired today!”
I held his stare. His blue eyes practically crackled, bright and full of energy. It might as well have been plutonium. He was too dangerous to let near.
“You told a lie that might have cost me my job,” I said.
“Did Jolene fire you?”
“No.”
Jack groaned and headed to the locker room. “Then what’s the problem? Just relax, Kiss.”
I was not letting him get away. The last time I challenged him at the practice facility, I’d chased him through the halls and into the steam room. He’d dropped his towel and exposed not only himself, but the entirety of his offensive line. I still couldn’t look those men in the eye.
I grabbed his arm and forced him to pay attention to me. “The problem is you lied to the league president. He wants you out of the game, and he’ll do anything to get his way.”
Jack’s glance cut through my indignation. Hell, his stare penetrated me completely, like he tore through my clothes and surveyed everything mouth-watering beneath. But his appraisal wasn’t another way to flirt.
He looked at me like he planned to strip me down.
Like he wanted me.
A couple more seconds under his dominating stare, and I might’ve let him.
Why the hell did I face him instead of yelling at him over the phone? I wasn’t prepared to confront a man as handsome or frustrating as this trouble-maker with his wandering, mischievous eyes.
“So…you came here…” His voice lazily murmured, as though he knew the shivers it’d cause. “Because you’re concerned? You think I’m going to get tossed out of the league?”
“Yes.”
“And here I thought you were paid to worry about me.”
Bastard. “My career depends on your career, Jack. On your behavior.”
“Why?”
“Because if you get thrown out of the league, I’ll lose my chance to be fast-tracked to a partner in Jolene’s firm.”
“Well, sorry I nearly killed myself in a car accident last night, Kiss.”
He made me sound heartless. I took a breath. “Look, Jack. I know you like to play these games, but that’s over now. You told the president you were a changed man because of me. If you get expelled from the league for doing something stupid or immoral now, I’ll lose more than my job. You’ll ruin my reputation too.”
Jack didn’t understand, didn’t even try. “Why do you care what people think of you?”
“It’s my job?”
“No. You’re supposed to care what people think of me. So what if people call me a jerk? So what if I go out to a party?”
“It matters because it’s going to reflect on me as a person. I’m supposed to be your long-term, committed girlfriend.”
“Then break it off.”
He tried to leave again. I followed, taking two steps to his every stride.
“Then Frank Bennett has every reason to force the Rivets to cut you. This relationship is the only way you stay in the league.”
“That so?”
“Yes. And that means you have to calm down and lie low for the duration of…whatever this is. Do you understand? This is your last chance.”
He stopped, deep in the tunnel separating us from the action of the field. His arms crossed. Every tattoo practically pulsed with the heat coursing under his skin. It radiated from him, pressing into me, stealing my breath. I looked up to meet his gaze as he stepped closer.
His voice lowered, a deep, grumbling promise of suppressed wildness. “Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not. I’m protecting myself.”
“This is a dangerous game, Kiss.”
“But it can work.” Was I really trying to convince him of his own stupid idea? “People will believe we’re a couple if you behave yourself. I mean…we have a close, professional relationship already.”
Jack laughed. “This isn’t my definition of close.”
“Because we work together while fully clothed?”
“Takes the fun out of the meetings.”
“Well, there’s our story. It’ll make sense that, over time, our relationship developed into something…more.”
“Like booty calls?”
“Like love, you freak.”
He grinned. “Right. Love. I can buy it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Have you ever even told a girl I love you before?”
“Have you ever fucked a stranger without exchanging names?”
“No!”
He shrugged. “Guess opposites attract.”
I’d grind my teeth into dust before the day was out. “I’m setting ground rules.”
“Kiss—”
“First, you don’t call me Kiss.”
He shook his head. “Nope. Pet name. I like it better than Darling.”
I was losing the big picture. I exhaled. “Fine. Call me whatever you want. But you will follow these rules.” I pointed at him. “You are going to behave at all times. You will not embarrass me. No acting out, no late night parties, no womanizing, no doing anything that would constitute cheating.”
“What?” His eyes widened. “So I can’t go out with my friends. I can’t meet women. I can’t have sex with anyone…” A sly smile encouraged every thought I didn’t want him to have. “Unless you plan on fulfilling those needs?”
I ignored the implication. “That was my next rule. No screwing with me—literally or figuratively.”
“Why the hell would I agree to this?”
Did he have any blood left in his head? “Because you want to keep your job. You want to win a championship and make that hundred million dollar contract. This is the only way. Get through this season without incident, and we’ll see what happens.”
He set his jaw, the hard angles clenching as tightly as the muscles in his chest. “Fine.”
“It’s for your own good. I’m keeping you on a leash.”
“Only if you promise to toss a collar on me too.”
I didn’t trust Jack’s tone, as if the arrogant trouble-maker already lured me to his bed and had his way with me.
Wasn’t going to happen. No way, no how.
And I hated myself for even imagining the briefest of fantasies.
“Will you promise to behave?” I asked.
He stepped closer, his voice low, tightening everything deep inside me. “You promise to punish me if I don’t?”
“Be serious…” This was never going to work if he got me so flustered.
Jack edged me close to the wall, his gaze hot and entirely too familiar. “I’ll agree…with one condition.”
“And what’s that?”
“I want to see if we have chemistry together.”
“I…” My hands pressed against the cool cement, the only relief I had from the heat suffocating me in Jack’s oppressive shadow. “We can pretend.”
“You can’t pretend a connection. It’s gotta be real. We gotta feel it.”
His body moved close. Too close. I might have reached out, touched the sweat-dazzled muscles that he’d worked and pumped and strained in practice to build a body of utter perfection. I wished he had a shirt on. It was too difficult to focus on him while his feral form raged inches from my own.
I took a harsh breath, sinking deeper against the wall. It didn’t protect me from him. It didn’t stop the twisting heat in my belly. Low. Raw.
God, why did he have to be an attractive jerk?
Jack’s voice heated like caramel and burned just as hot. “If my job rides on this, and your reputation is at stake…we gotta make sure it’ll work, right?”