“Eli?” I say, taking a step toward him.

He looks up, then sighs, the sound long and agitated. He yanks his towel from around his neck. “What’re you doing here, Jenna?”

“I’ve been waiting to take you home. Michael and some of his linemen told me you just got here.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t tell me where he went during the time when everyone else was showering and getting dressed. “I can imagine what they said about me to the press.” He chuffs. “And every bit of it’s true.”

“What do you think they’re saying?”

“The usual. That I need to step up, be a leader, blah blah blah.” He shakes his head. “But I can’t see how they’d want anything to do with me anymore. I really fucked up today, lost the game for us with that key turnover. We never got back our momentum.”

I want to add something about how I might factor into everything that’s going wrong. Even if some of the guys aren’t blaming “the Curse”—at least not yet—maybe the way to solve all Eli’s problems is by calling off this fake engagement. As I watch him, I don’t see how I’m doing him any good at all. I’m never going to be able to pull him out of this funk.

I just make things worse with my sheer existence.

But I desperately want to make him feel better, and in spite of all my doubts, I walk over to him, hoping he doesn’t tell me to get out.

He only watches me approach, still hunkered down over his knees, that darkness in his gaze.

I venture a smile as I kneel in front of him, resting my hands on his toweled thighs. “Want me to beat up a few reporters for you? Fans, too? Because I will if it gets them off your case.”

“Believe me, I’ve done everything I can not to kick the shit out of the press because of what they’ve been saying about you lately.” He clenches his big hands, unclenches them. “And then there’s my dad. He’s been after me to ‘rethink’ being with you. Sometimes I want to—”

He cuts himself off.

“Tell him to leave you alone?” I whisper.

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“Why can’t you say that to him?”

Eli’s gaze is stormy. “Because he’s always pushed me to be the best. My success in the past is due to him, Jenna, and if I pay enough attention to what he’s saying now, maybe I’ll get some of my mojo back.”

It doesn’t escape me that Eli might actually be considering Bo Brennan’s advice to break up with me before the agreement ends. His confession is like a blow to the gut, but I take it.

“Your dad will be happy with you soon enough,” I say. “This engagement is almost over.”

When Eli suddenly throws his towel across the room, I flinch.

“Fuck the old man anyway,” he says.

Is he only being a rebel again? Or is there something that Eli might feel for me, just as I’ve started to feel for him? Damn, I hate to admit it, but it’s true.

I’ve started to fall for him.

But my realization means nothing, because Eli seems so torn that I only want to help chase away this awful mood of his.

I stroke his thigh. “It’s okay.” I lower my voice. “It’s all going to be okay. You’re going to bounce back for the next game, because you’re not going to tolerate losing. You never have.”

When he fixes his gaze on me, it’s the piercing color of blue ice. “Don’t make promises for me that I can’t keep.”

“Then I’ll make that promise. I’ll do anything I can to help you win again.”

“Maybe I should’ve told you not to make promises you can’t keep.”

But I can keep this one. I can make things okay for as long as I’m still around, whether it’s for a few more days until Eli realizes that I might be a curse, or for the duration of our agreement’s short remainder. I’ve made him feel better before, and all I want is to do it for him again, jinx or not.

With more confidence than I’ve ever had, I look up at my fake fiancé. At the same time, I tug at his towel. It falls away from his rock-hard thighs, revealing his cock, long and waiting for me to make it stiff.

“As I told you,” I say, “everything will be okay. Just sit back and see, Eli.”

I do what he’s done to me so many times—part his legs with my hands. He clenches his teeth as I lean my cheek against the inside of one of his sleek, muscled thighs. I rub my face there, feeling the crisp hair on his leg tickle my skin. My pussy comes alive with humming need, a tremor of desire buzzing my clit.

I’ve even been studying up in order to push him farther toward sensual rapture when the time is right. I’ve been waiting for a night when I feel bold enough to really make him come for me.

Now’s that time.

He must sense my new confidence, because he leans back, stretching out his legs, inviting me to go ahead. It’s the challenge in his gaze that does it for me, and he smiles for the first time in I don’t know how long. It’s not much of a smile, but it hits me in the chest like the tip of an arrow dipped in pretty poison.

I keep my cheek against his thigh as I reach to his cock, brushing my knuckles over the length of it, watching it twitch for me. I explore him some more, rubbing my thumb over his smooth head.

“I’ve never gotten a good look at you,” I say. “It’s always been so dark in the bedroom. And I’ve never told you to show me yourself like you ask me to show you my pussy.”

He likes when I talk a little dirty—I can tell by the rising temperature in his gaze and the shallow breaths he’s taking. As I wrap my fingers around his shaft, I swear I can feel a pulse.

I slip my hand along him, up, down, looking into his eyes the entire time. “Does this relax you?”

“I don’t think that’s the word.” He sounds hoarse, roughed up.

“Your muscles,” I say. “They must be sore from the game.”

“I wasn’t in the mood for an ice bath.”

“Then maybe you need a massage when we get home.”

“The only massage I need is the one you’re giving me right now.”

He’s getting hard, and that must mean I’m doing a good job. That spikes my confidence, too, so much that I lift his cock to explore underneath it, tracing him there with my tongue.

“Babe,” he breathes, slipping farther down into the chair. “God.”

I come to his balls, then lightly lick them. He groans, so I kiss his sac, loving the softness of him. So many things about him are hard that it’s nice to find a place that isn’t. I gently take one of his testicles into my mouth and massage it with my tongue.

“Shit, Jenna…”

I let him curse and grip the sides of the chair, and after I finish kissing and sucking, I playfully use a strand of my hair to tickle him. He curses some more under his breath, something about loving it when I wear my hair down.

His dick is completely rock hard now, throbbing in my other hand, and from experience, I know that he won’t last much longer. So I make good use of my research and push between his scrotum and cock, and he grunts. I nudge him again, rising up just in time to ease his cock into my mouth as he jerks, coming with a brutal spurt.

I take him in with more than one gulping swallow, and when I’m done, I sit back, my hand to my mouth. Salty, warm, sweet.

Eli.

In the next second, he’s pulled me off my knees and set me in a nearby chair, undoing my jeans, yanking them down my legs along with my panties. He gets rid of my boots and socks, then brings my legs over his shoulders and bends to lick my pussy up and down, separating me with his fingers so he can enter me with his tongue. As he fucks me like that, more intimately and intensely than ever, I can’t hold back my cries of ecstasy. They reverberate through the empty room from corner to corner, bouncing back to me with a force that rocks me hard.

Eli grinds my clit with his thumb, and that’s all it takes to fully ignite me, making me bust apart until my sight goes dark. The only thing that brings me back is Eli’s mouth as he takes me to another climax, then another, until I realize I’m not in the chair anymore.

I’m in his arms, blinking up at him as everything clears.

His eyes—they’re stormy again, and I dizzily wonder if it’s because of some emotion neither of us will admit to.

A heartbeat passes as he strokes my cheek with his thumb.

He breaks the spell, grabbing one of the towels he was using, then covering me up below my waist. His gaze has those dark clouds in them again, as if nothing happened in this locker room at all, as if there wasn’t some kind of link between us that only lights up when we touch one another.

“Best post-game massage I’ve ever had,” he says before helping me to my feet, giving my cheek another stroke, then turning to his locker to cover himself with his clothing. “I’m going to miss it, Jenna.”

And just like that, my heart plummets into my stomach and then everything feels like it’s dropping down a deep elevator shaft.

He’s already talking about ending things.

Like he can’t wait to be rid of me and this awful curse, can’t wait to go back to who he was before.

* * *

The last blow comes when Eli tells me that he’s meeting his father, so I drive to the only place I know where I’ll find my own comfort after all the shit I’ve been through today.

My real home.

But Dad has taken Mom out to eat at a gourmet buffet we’ve never been able to afford, even though she always pines for it when it’s advertised on TV. And Ivy…

Well, Ivy’s there, but she doesn’t give me the warm welcome I expect.

As I sit on my favorite couch—a second-hand piece of furniture that’s worn and cozy and I’ve missed like hell—my sister plants her hands on her hips and checks me out.

“What’s with your hair?” she asks.

I touch the front, where it was artfully highlighted. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It makes you look…” She shrugs. “You don’t look like the Jenna I used to know.”

“Used to know?”

“Hello? Stranger?” She motions at me. “You’re different, with different clothes, different makeup. I’ll bet those jeans cost you as much money as we used to spend on groceries for a week.”

I blush. “I just bought them because…”

Because Eli wanted me to look the part. And because it gets him hard when he sees me in—and out—of them. Yet that’s partially what Ivy is pointing out. I’m no longer a person—I’m like a character actress from Central Casting.

She piles on. “You never really come around anymore, and you seem to have taken to your phony fancy lifestyle real well. It’s like you’ve forgotten where you came from in the first place, with all those shopping trips you go on. I mean, you’re even one of those ladies who lunch.”

I shake my head. Doesn’t she know that I’ve been doing all this for the family? Yes, maybe I’ve started to enjoy the nice meals and clothes and sex with Eli a little too much, but…

“Ivy,” I say, “I can explain what’s going on.”

“All right.” She taps her foot on the floor. “I’m waiting.”

But I can’t explain now. I have a non-disclosure agreement that could lose this family a hell of a lot of money. It’d be stupid to blow it because I want to Ivy to know that, deep down, I’m still her Jen. At least I think I am.

“Just trust me,” I whisper. “Please, Ivy.”

She has to hear the plea in my voice, because she relents, her shoulders losing some of their teenage posturing. Then she takes out her phone and swishes her thumb over the screen.

“I’m not the only one who thinks you’ve gone off the deep end, sis.” She shoves her phone at me. “Look.”

With dread, I take it. No surprise—here’s another headline blaring out at me, but this one contains a word that I never in a million years thought would apply to me.

The Diva Takes a Dive.

Diva?

I bite my lip, thinking of all the words I’ve been called today. Diva. Stranger. Jinx. Bitch. As I read the article, in which an anonymous source claims that my reputation has taken a hit because of my diva-like behavior with the football wives, I set the phone down next to me on the couch cushion. Without warning, a sob rips through me.

The egg on my car. The Jumbotron. Ivy telling me I’ve changed. Eli brushing me off when I’m pretty sure I’m falling for him. And now this.

I cry into my hands, and the cushion sinks next to me. Ivy throws an arm around me, pulling me to her.

“I still love you,” she says. “So do Mom and Dad. We don’t care what they say about how the whole football team thinks you’re an entitled shrew and they hate you.”

“They invited me to a barbecue,” I say through my tears. Because Ajax actually did, and no one knows because the media keeps telling everyone that I’m a terrible curse, a jinx, a hateful diva. Now I’m even a shrew.

The fact that there’s an anonymous source leaking all this crap barely skims my conscience because the sobs are only going deeper into me, shaking me.

Ivy hugs me closer. “Don’t forget about Eli. He loves you, Jen, and that’s all you need.”

I cry harder, but my sister is there to comfort me, never knowing how wrong she really is.