Most Valuable Playboy
When I look into her bright eyes, I see everything I could ever want in this life. She’s not going anywhere, because I’m never going to let her get away from me. I don’t want more than the two of us right now, and I know she’s the only one for me for the rest of my life. I know she’ll be here when my career is over, because she was there before it started. She’ll be here, because I can see forever in her eyes.
“I want to,” I say, and then I rest on my forearms, settle between her legs, and sink into her.
We both moan at the same time.
It’s so good. It’s so intense. It’s everything.
I take my time, building and pushing and savoring. I watch her, cataloging every intoxicating reaction. I love the way her lips part, how she breathes out hard when I swivel my hips, how her face is the picture of exquisite torment when I thrust deep into her.
She grabs my ass, and I slide her knees up her chest. I make love to her like that. With her pinned beneath me, saying my name, breathing my breath, kissing my lips.
Her gasps come faster.
Her noises grow louder.
Her moves become wilder.
She rocks up into me, widens her legs, takes me deeper.
Everything in me crackles. Pleasure snaps in my body. Desire flows hot in my blood. I’m dizzy with want, ravenous with the need to be as close to her as possible.
In seconds, she’s crying out in bliss, saying my name, chanting God’s name, calling out incoherent moans of pleasure, and sending a whole new wave of electricity sparking across my skin. As the aftershocks shudder through her, I rise to my knees, grab her hips, tug her down harder on my cock, and go wild, thrusting, pounding, letting go until the world slips into pure pleasure and my climax obliterates me, as I come inside the woman I love.
The woman I plan on loving for the rest of my life.
After, as I collapse on her then roll to the side, I find myself wondering how it’s possible to just know. To know with absolute certainty that you’re with the person who makes you not only happy, but better.
Because I know I’ve found the one I want. I don’t want her to doubt my love. I run my fingers along her cheekbone. “Hey, Violet. You want to know something?”
She turns to me, her cheeks rosy and glowing. “Yes, I want to know something.”
I wrap an arm around her. “You’re stuck with me.”
She laughs. “Is that so?”
“Yep. I don’t plan on letting you go. Ever, basically.”
“I can live with that.”
“You should live with me,” I say.
She arches a brow. “You’re already inviting me to live with you?”
“Vi, I plan on loving you for my whole damn life. I don’t need to mess around with stages and steps and taking things in some kind of orderly fashion. You’re an eighty-yard pass, and I want to get into the end zone with you.”
She rolls her eyes. “That sounds incredibly dirty.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Hey, do you want to know something?”
“I do.”
She runs her hands down my chest, over the planes of my abs. “Why did the football go to the bank?”
“Why?”
She wiggles her eyebrows. “To get her quarterback.”
I crack up. “You’ve got him. You’ve absolutely got him.”
“I’m keeping him.” She slinks a hand over my hip and around to my butt, squeezing. “After all, you do have the best butt in the NFL.”
Two days later, she wakes up with me on Christmas morning, and I give her one of many gifts. A key to my home. She already has the key to my heart.
Epilogue
A few days after Christmas
* * *
Ah, this is my favorite view.
“You can cut my hair all day,” I say, smiling like the cat that ate all the canaries as Violet snips my hair, trimming the messy strands at her salon.
“You dirty man,” she chides.
“You like me that way,” I say, setting my hands on her hips.
She stops snipping and gives me a look. “You can’t do that when I cut your hair.”
“But the rest of the time I can, right?”
She laughs. “Possibly.”
She finishes my haircut, and that evening, we go out on a date. Violet jokes that it’s the charity date she won from the Most Valuable Playboy auction. I don’t like to think about how the other dates from past auctions went. They were one and done. This date is the start of the rest of my life.
That’s why I make sure it’s different. We meet the whole crew at my favorite karaoke bar in Japantown, in the heart of the city. Trent and Holly wave from a table by the stage, since they arrived first. When Violet and I sit, Trent shakes his head, gesturing to us. “Still getting used to the two of you together,” he says, but he’s smiling.
Violet wiggles her eyebrows. “Let me help you with a little trial by fire.” She turns and kisses me hard in front of him. She’s loud, too, making lip-smacking sounds.
“Get a room,” Trent says, tossing a napkin at us.
When Violet wrenches away, she grins at her brother. “Did that help you? Or do you want to take a picture to hang in your home?”
“Damn. You two really are perfect for each other,” Trent says.
Holly runs a hand through his hair. “I told you so. They were meant to be.”
A few minutes later, my college buds, McKenna and Chris, show up.
The blond and bubbly McKenna wraps Violet in a warm embrace. “You guys are adorable. Also, I had a feeling he always liked you,” McKenna says.
“The feeling has always been mutual,” she replies.
More friends join us, and soon Trent, Holly, Jones, Jillian, Harlan, Chris, McKenna and Rick work their way through standards like “I Want It That Way,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Love Shack” and, of course, “Living on a Prayer.”
Yes, I let Jones have my song, because I take my turn with Violet. We sing together, belting out “Islands in The Stream.” We’re no Kenny and Dolly, but if you listen to the words, you’d be hard-pressed not to fall deeper in love. It’s one of the most upbeat, happy love songs ever written.
Which makes it perfect for two people who are disgustingly cute, as Jones shouts to the stage.
“No, they’re ridiculously adorable,” Jillian corrects.
That’s us. We’re those people on stage, singing a popular love song as if no one else is around, as if we’re going to go home and rip each other’s clothes off, then make pancakes together the next day.
Come to think of it, both of those things sound like great ideas, so that’s what we do.
Violet roots from the fifty-yard line in all my playoff games. She shouts the loudest and cheers the hardest when we win the wild-card round in an absolutely epic trounce. She goes nuts in the divisional round, and I’m running on the most exhilarating adrenaline I’ve ever felt when we kick ass with a fat victory.
But our quest splinters in the championship game against Los Angeles. It’s a tight match against our rivals, and we lose by three measly points.
Not gonna lie. It stings. It hurts.
But there’s always next year.
When I drive to the coach’s home a week later, Violet fiddles with her bracelets in the passenger seat, and I set a hand on her wrist. “Relax, baby. Greenhaven isn’t that bad, I swear.”
Violet shoots me a look that says you’ve got to be kidding me. “I’m not worried about the coach. I want his wife to like me.”