Chapter Eight
Jacob
When I got back up to my hotel room, it was all I could do not to pick up my cell, call Natalie, and ask if there was any slim chance that she felt like spending the night up here with me because it was getting harder and harder to sleep without her at my side.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen plenty of her today. She sneaked into my locker room and we’d had insanely good, animalistic sex over that ratty dressing table they’d dumped in there for me. Watching her face contort as she came, hearing the noises she made as I made her come – yeah, it didn’t get much better than that. When it came to sex, it felt like the two of us had been made to go together, fitting like jigsaw pieces. I loved it.
Fucking Natalie was the best way to blow off steam after a fight – at least that’s what I kept telling myself. Because what other reason would I have for getting her into my locker room every night after I was done? Why would I slip away to her hotel room? If it wasn’t to get out the leftover adrenalin, then what was it for?
If I was being honest with myself, it was damn clear what was happening between us. I was falling for her. It had never happened to me like this before in my life, never felt as intense and mind-blowing and rationality-busting. There was a large part of me that was reminding my dumb brain that as soon as this tour was over, I had no guarantee of ever seeing her again.
As far as she was concerned, this was nothing more than a bit of fun for the two of us while we were on the road, something taboo to keep things hot while we were away from our real lives. I mean, if I could convince myself of that, it would have been great, but it was hard knowing that she might dump me as soon as this was all done with. And she would have been perfectly within her rights to do so. It wasn’t as if I’d led her to believe there was anything more here. At least, not intentionally.
“So, you’ve stopped seeing her, right?” Angelo had taken me aside a few days ago when I was at one of the afterparties, glancing around to make sure nobody was listening. I had, in fact, left her up in my hotel room to sleep off the unrepeatable stuff we’d just done to each other, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Of course,” I assured him. “You were right.”
Good,” his face hardened. “Because we spoke to some of your sponsors and they’re not into this whole…relationship thing. They don’t want women associated with your brand at all, if they can avoid it.”
“What?” I screwed up my face. “Why?”
“It’s just not their kind of thing,” he replied with a shrug, taking a swig of his beer and looking around the room. “Single, strong, successful – it’s an aspirational thing, I suppose.”
“Right,” I rolled my eyes. If any of my sponsors could see the kind of sex that Natalie and I were having, they would be falling over themselves to try and sell that, too.
“How did she take it?” he asked, and I could tell at this point he was just scanning for gossip. I shook my head.
“Yeah, fine, I guess,” I replied dismissively. “Is there anything else you needed to tell me?”
“No, no,” He assured me, and took the message and backed off, leaving me by myself once again. What I wouldn’t have given for Natalie to be there by my side, the two of us cracking jokes about the party and the people and the drinks.
She made me laugh so much, and sometimes her smartness scared me. It wasn’t that there weren’t plenty of clever people working in sports, just that her kind of eloquent, razor-sharp wit wasn’t something I came across that often. It was addictive. She was addictive.
I left the party not long after that conversation, after some perfunctory flirting with some random guests to keep it looking as though I was single and ready to mingle. I was glad that Natalie wasn’t there, because I caught the way she looked at me when I flirted with those other women and I knew it made her feel like shit to be rejected so obviously. I mean, this had half been her idea, but that couldn’t have made it much easier to handle.
Her editor had been in touch after she spotted the pictures on one of the gossip rags that made the rounds; Natalie denied everything and told her that there was nothing to worry about, strictly professional, the story was coming along great and thanks for asking.
I had dropped a few hints about wanting to see the story since we had started hooking up, but she had always been quick to shut me right down. I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to like everything that turned up in print, but I had to trust that she would represent me in at least a halfway flattering light. The orgasms I’d given her, she owed me at least that much.
I headed back up to my room, and found it empty; Natalie had left a note on the counter telling me that she had some transcription work to do and that she’d see me the next morning for another set of questions. I sighed, crumpled it up, and tossed it away, sliding into bed and praying that I actually managed to get a decent amount of sleep that night.
But here I was, the night after, and nothing much had changed. I had the day off, and I wanted to make the most of it, but Natalie had insisted on keeping things professional so as not to attract too much suspicion. I knew she was right, and that it was her level-headedness that would keep us out of trouble at the end of the day, but it was hard to convince myself of that when all I wanted to do was call her up and tell her to get her ass over here so we could spend the day ordering room service and fucking our brains out. I wanted to know her, outside of the little slivers of time we allowed ourselves.
I found myself second-guessing whatever it was we had between us. I would lie awake at night in the evenings that she didn’t sneak in to stay over and stare at the ceiling, wondering if she had some guy back in the city who she was going to return to as soon as the tour was over. Maybe there was a reason she’d asked to keep things on the low-down – plausible deniability.
Maybe she wanted me at arm’s length so I would be easy to drop-kick to the curb when everything was said and done between us. And if I tried to protest, well, who the fuck would believe me? Because what would a woman like Natalie ever have seen in a man like me? She was a high-flying journalist and I was a jock asshole with a chip on his shoulder and more women than I could keep track of. If she denied it, then people would believe her.
Besides, it worked out better for all of us if no one knew. My sponsors wouldn’t pull out on me and her editors wouldn’t yank her off the story for acting unprofessionally. Win-win. But no matter how often I told myself that was the case, it didn’t feel like it to me.
I tried to remember the last time I had felt this way about anyone, my memory reaching and stretching back as I did my best to come up with an answer and turning up nothing. I had dated before, fucked, screwed, maybe even romanced the odd woman here and there, but nothing like what the two of us shared. She was spectacular, smart and funny and so good in bed that it made my head spin.
She was also completely unreadable, and I had no idea if she thought the same kind of things about me or if she regarded me with a kind of removed lack of emotion. Surely, we couldn’t be having sex that good without there being something more to it than just the physical – but I honestly had no clue. No frame of reference. Nothing at all, apart from the strange feeling in my stomach that felt as though I was spinning out of control and keeping my feet firmly on the ground all in the same breath.
I loved it and hated it, and, with only a couple more weeks of the tour left, I would have to find some way to find out the truth before Natalie dropped out of my life for good.