Chapter 17

Apparently the adult response to an adult problem isn’t sending a meme to fit the situation. Who knew?

-Things you shouldn’t do when you’re an adult

Ellen

I was living in a fairytale. My fairytale!

Everything that I’d ever wanted out of life was now my reality—living with Jessie, having a child, Linc, and enjoying life.

I hadn’t realized out of the fourteen years that he’d been gone that this was exactly what I was missing. Had I known this feeling—the one that made me feel like I was walking on freakin’ water—was what I was missing, I would’ve been lost.

“Are you almost ready to go?”

I looked over the rim of my cup of coffee, which I was enjoying while sitting at Jessie’s island, and saw him standing there with his cut hanging off of one shoulder while he affixed a gun to his hip. Moments later it was covered by Linc’s jersey, the number 88 with ‘James’ on the back of it. Then the cut covered the jersey moments after that.

“Are you allowed to wear that to a football game at a school?” I questioned him.

He did up one button on his cut and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “But I’ll take it off and store it in my saddle bags.”

“You think we’ll get back before all that nasty weather hits us?” I questioned him as I took another sip.

He nodded. “Not supposed to hit until one AM. Game’ll be over by eleven, and we only have an hour drive back to the house.”

“Don’t you usually follow the bus home?”

He shook his head.

“Not anymore.” He walked over to the coffee maker and turned it off before turning around and leaning those trim hips of his against the counter. “Linc likes to party afterwards, and if his old man is there, then that cramps his style.”

My lips twitched behind my coffee cup.

“You’re his father and look like his older brother. I’m pretty sure you don’t cramp his style, only enhance it,” I informed him.

He grunted.

“Ready then?”

I let the coffee cup drop from my lips after finishing off the last dregs, then got up and walked around the island to rinse the cup in the sink.

The moment my hips were against the counter, he moved, aligning his hips with mine and pressing me even deeper into the counter.

I barely contained the urge to moan.

“When you were seventeen, and we did the dishes together, I had this fantasy.”

My lips pulled into a devilish grin.

“And what was that fantasy?” I questioned.

He pulled the blue t-shirt that I’d had tucked into my jeans—one I’d borrowed from Linc that was his when he was in the eighth grade and had ‘James’ and his number 88 on the back—and let his fingers drift along the soft skin of my belly.

His rough hand skating across my smooth, slightly rounded belly felt delicious.

I could also feel the long column of his cock pressed against my backside, letting me know that whatever this fantasy was, he was really into it.

“Well,” he said. “It has to do with a football game, you sitting on my lap, and a blanket wrapped around us.”

I shivered as the tips of his fingers dipped below the waistband of my jeans.

“We’re not doing that at your son’s state finals football game.”

He started to chuckle as he ran his lips along my jawline.

“No,” he agreed. “This was when we were younger. Obviously, I know that we can’t do it now.”

I was nodding my head in agreement when he said, “But, at halftime, we could go under those bleachers.”

A shiver worked its way down my spine at the images his fantasy brought to my mind even though I declined his suggestion.

“I can’t do it at a football game,” I told him. “But right here, right now, I’d allow you to do whatever it was in your fantasy that you wanted to do to me.”

His growl of agreement came about right before both of his hands were on the button fly of my jeans. My pants were down around my ankles, and he was dropping to his knees behind me before I could even register it had happened.

“Bend over the counter, baby.”

I did, offering my sex up to him on a silver platter.

The moment his beard came into contact with my legs, I bit my lip. My eyes drifted closed, and I got lost in the way his tongue started to do naughty things to my pussy. The way he licked a straight line from the tip of my clit all the way to my back entrance.

“Oh, God,” I breathed, reaching up to hold onto the faucet that was directly in front of me.

“Not God, baby,” he growled. “Just Jessie.”

Jessie spread my cheeks apart with his thumbs, allowing him more access, and growled when he tasted the heat of me.

“You’ve tasted like fuckin’ honey since you were seventeen,” he informed me. “Glad to see that hasn’t changed.”

My face flushed with heat, and I opened my eyes and gasped in surprise when I saw someone out in Jessie’s front yard.

“There’s some guy outside your house,” I told him breathlessly.

Jessie stood, but not before he got one last lick in from clit to ass first.

As he stood up behind me, he was undoing his belt and jeans, shoving them down hastily to just below his ass.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of the man in the front yard.

“That’s Jackson,” he told me, reaching forward and drawing the window shades.

Then I felt his hard cock up against my entrance, and I nearly cried out in surprise and a little bit of pain when he drove straight inside of me, not pausing to wait for me to adjust like he usually did.

The countertop at my hips kept me from moving forward to control the feeling, and even if it hadn’t been there, his hands clamped on my hips would’ve kept me from moving even if I had wanted to.

The thatch of pubic hair met the curve of my ass, and I groaned at the sensation.

“You feel like all of my dreams come true,” he growled, burying his bearded face into my neck.

I uncurled my fingers from the faucet and lifted it up to wrap around his head. “You’re much better at this than I remember.”

He chuckled darkly against the skin of my neck as he pulled his hips away before swiftly bucking back into me.

I tilted my head sideways and bit the fleshy part of my bicep, trying extremely hard not to cry out with each of his thrusts.

But when his hand tangled in my hair, pulling my mouth away from my skin, I could do nothing but stifle my scream.

“Fuckin’ love hearing those sounds.”

That was good, because I couldn’t stop.

He felt so good…so freaking big inside of me that I could barely keep my legs up beneath me.

Then he bent his legs slightly, changing the angle of penetration, and I saw stars.

“Oh my God, Jessie, yes, there,” I whimpered.

He growled, pulling my hair tighter, as he started assaulting my neck with kisses.

“Pull your shirt up.”

I didn’t delay; I just did as he asked and pulled my shirt up around my ribs. The moment I did, he started fucking me in earnest. Hard, fast, precise strokes. Each plunge and retreat caused the head of his cock to drag along a particularly sensitive spot that had me climbing higher and faster toward explosion. So damn high and so damn fast that I was scared to come back down.

But then I did and nothing else mattered.

Nothing.

My orgasm rushed through me as I burst into a million tiny fragments of sensation. Aching pleasure soared through me, ran straight through my veins, and pumped into every single cell in my body.

I even felt that orgasm in my toes.

And just as I was coming down, he pulled out, and I felt the hot spurts of his come on my back and ass. Felt it sliding down my skin, funneling into the crack of my ass.

He grunted twice as he spurted, decorating my skin with himself.

“Fuck.”

He said it so quietly that I almost didn’t hear it.

Almost.

I leaned over the counter and rested my head against the faucet as he grabbed a towel from the drawer next to my hips.

He cleaned me up, wiping his release from my body, growling as he did.

“I wish I could leave that there all day,” he told me. “But I don’t think you’d enjoy being wet all day.”

He was right. I wouldn’t.

And it was sweet of him to think of me. Because had he come inside of me, I’d be leaking him for hours to come, even if I did my best to wipe him out of me.

“Go clean up while I take care of your wolf.”

I snorted and waddled to the bathroom, I’m sure in a most ladylike fashion. He was nice and didn’t laugh or snicker in any way, leaving me my dignity.

And as I looked into the bathroom mirror as I prepared to go to him five minutes later, saw the flush on my cheeks that he’d left there from the rasp of his beard, I realized that I was so freakin’ gone already. So gone that I never wanted to find my way back to the person I was only just yesterday.

***

“Oh, my God!” I screamed, jumping up. “You could’ve killed him!”

I was sitting directly behind the fifty-yard line with Tally on one side, and Imogen on the other. All of us were standing now as we watched all of the huge football players peel themselves off of the dog pile one by one.

There was a lot of pushing and shoving as the players tried to jostle the ball from whoever’s hands had it, and my heart started to pound.

One. Two. Three. Five. Seven players peeled themselves off the pile.

Then, finally, I saw the black jersey with the number 88 on the back.

“Move,” I ordered Linc.

Linc didn’t move at all.

That’s when I saw Jessie make his way back up to the top of the railing.

It was the same place I’d seen him in all those months earlier, at a pre-season game when Linc had been hurt previously.

The first day that Jessie had come back into my life, and by default, Linc.

This time I was a whole lot more concerned.

This time Linc meant a whole lot more to me.

“Move,” I repeated.

Linc rolled over onto his side, and I took a deep breath.

When he got his legs under him, I dropped my hands to my knees.

Then, when he was all the way on his feet, the ball still in his hands, the entire home side of the stadium erupted in hoots, hollers and applause.

But not just because he was okay, but because he’d gotten the first down.

“What now?” I asked the two women at my sides.

“Well, where they’re at right now, they can kick a field goal,” Tally said. “Or they could try to run the ball for a touchdown. The touchdown would put them ahead of the other team. The field goal would only tie them.”

“What do you think they’re going to do?” I asked as Linc walked back to the sidelines to his coach.

I saw Jessie get down out of the corner of my eye, and turned my attention to him.

He had his head in his hands as he watched Linc walk/limp toward the sidelines.

I didn’t wait for the women to reply, instead made my way to my man.

The moment I was close enough, I squirmed my way in between him and Tommy Tom, who was being fairly chatty today compared to how he’d been yesterday.

Jessie’s arm curled around my waist and he pulled me to him, but he didn’t say a word as he waited for Linc to come back on the field.

My stomach was in knots.

This game, the state finals for their school’s division, was a nail-biter.

I’ve never, not once, seen a game this close.

There’d been less than three points between each team the whole game. The home team—Linc’s team, even though they were at a visitor’s field—had scored first. The visiting team had scored not even five minutes later, and they’d been trading points back and forth since. Now with only four minutes left in the fourth quarter, I didn’t know who would win.

They were behind, twenty-one to twenty-four, and Linc had just gotten the first down.

But he was also not walking as fast as he normally did.

“Do you think he’s hurt?” I whispered worriedly to the man at my side.

Surprisingly it wasn’t Linc’s father who answered, but Tommy.

“He’s fine,” Tommy said with a surety that I wish I’d felt, too. “Making ‘em think that he’s more hurt than he really is would be my guess.”

I bit my lip and wondered if that really was the case.

Linc came back out on the field as the time-out that they’d called ended.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I murmured to myself. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

The wind blew, and I winced at the bite of the frigid air.

“Fuckin’ cold as fuck,” Tommy grunted as he pulled his toboggan down lower over his ears.

I looked at my brother and snorted. “You should’ve worn a heavier jacket,” I informed him haughtily.

My brother nudged me, but stayed there next to me, trying to share my warmth.

I didn’t complain, though.

It was twenty something degrees and the windchill was making it feel closer to fifteen degrees. Any warmth, at this point, was better than nothing.

I was just happy it wasn’t raining in addition to the strong gusts of wind whipping through the stands.

“Here we go,” Jessie stood up a little straighter.

I turned my attention back to the field, barely opening my eyes wide enough to see, and started to chant ‘you can do it’ in my head.

I’d been saying it aloud, but I kept getting funny looks from everyone around me because I sounded like the dude from The Waterboy each time it left my mouth.

The center snapped the ball, and Linc caught it.

The moment the ball hit his hands, Linc went down hard when an opening in the offensive line allowed one of the other team’s linebackers through.

“Shit fucking hell,” Jessie grunted.

Tommy leaned forward in aggravation, too.

“Kid’s a machine, man,” Tommy said as Linc stood up.

Jessie grunted in reply and tightened his arm around me tighter.

“Go baby! You can do it!”

I turned to see the woman I’d been trying hard all night to ignore standing in the front row, blocking the view of the people behind her and causing them to have to stand if they wanted to see what was going themselves.

Selfish cow.

I turned away and tried to ignore her, but her voice was so fucking annoying.

And, to be honest, I was a little bit pissed.

I’d been to more of Linc’s games this year than she had, and I wasn’t even Linc’s mother. How convenient now that Linc starts getting the attention of college scouts that she finds her way out of the woodwork to ride on his coattails.

Thank God Linc had Jessie for a father, because I knew he wouldn’t allow Margot to get her claws into him.

“Pass the ball.”

I whipped my head around in time to see Linc throw the ball, and I gasped.

“Wow, that’s a really far throw!” I crowed.

Jessie’s eyes followed the ball, and I felt him tense.

The ball sailed for what felt like forever, straight into the waiting hands of a player from the other team.

“Son of a fucking bitch!” Jessie growled deeply.

“What a shame,” came that annoying voice from behind me.

I looked away from the game, my heart sinking, and watched as Margot slipped away through the crowd with a fucking smile on her face.

What a bitch.

How could she be smiling like that and not feeling terrible?

I looked back to the game in time to see Linc running, his legs looking so powerful in motion, his arms pumping quickly, as he raced toward the man who was making his way easily down the field while the other players were still gathering themselves off the ground, seemingly unaware that the ball had been intercepted by the other team.

But Linc was.

The crowd all around me was going wild as the opposing player ran as fast as he could down the field toward the end zone.

Nobody saw Linc coming, though.

But I sure did.

I saw Linc hit the player hard.

I also saw the ball fly up and out of his hands as Linc dove for it.

Then, before it could even register with anyone what the hell was going on, Linc had the ball in his hands and was running toward the opposite end of the field.

And no one, not one single player, was in a position to stop him.

There was confusion all over the field as players tried to scramble up and into action.

Nobody but Linc and one other player, who was clearing a lane for Linc by knocking opposing players out of his way, seemed to recognize that Linc was just seconds away from scoring.

By that point I was jumping up and down, screaming so loud that my throat hurt.

Tommy and Jessie were doing much the same, as well as the other members of the Dixie Wardens who’d been able to attend tonight.

When he finally made it into the end zone and threw the ball down so hard that it bounced high into the air, I was out of breath.

“That’s my boy!” Jessie cried loudly, pointing at Linc with one outstretched finger.

Linc pointed back, almost as if he were waiting for Jessie to do it, and held a fist high in the air.

Jessie followed suit, and I realized that something silent had passed between the two men.

I loved that they shared something like that.

“Holy shit,” I breathed as I finally caught my breath. “That was epic!”

Jessie turned to me, a smile on his face a mile wide, and winked.

Fucking winked.

And there went my panties.

“You’re incorrigible,” I informed him, patting him lightly on the chest. “And I hate to do it, but I have to pee like a racehorse. All that jumping around nearly did me in.”

I’d been holding it for what felt like forever, and I probably should’ve gone at halftime, but I had stopped myself when I saw all the women heading in that direction. Now I didn’t have any other choice.

So, after offering my lips, which Jessie readily took, I scooted out of his hold and continued down the stairs that led off the bleachers.

I rounded the corner of the bleachers, and I came to a sudden halt.

Why? Because there was Margot.

I tilted my head down and tried to pass her hoping that she wouldn’t see me, and I thought I succeeded.

I even made it into the bathroom and relieved my bladder under the assumption that I’d dodged that bullet.

But when I came out of the stall and saw her leaning against the wall across from it, I gritted my teeth.

She was waiting for me.

“I see that you’re here.”

I didn’t know what to say to that that wouldn’t sound sarcastic, so I kept my mouth shut.

I moved down past her and walked to the end of the row of sinks that was nearest the exit, ignoring the bite of the cold water hitting my cold hands.

“I’m talking to you.”

I looked at Margot, who was only inches away from me, in the mirror.

“I see that,” I murmured softly.

Women were coming and going out of the stalls behind me, and I wanted to hurry so I didn’t miss any more of the game.

Especially after I heard the roar of the crowd a few seconds later, and I cursed the woman who was now standing in the way of my exit.

“Why are you here?” she snapped.

I threw the paper towel away and turned around, my intention to go to the other exit even if it would lead me in the opposite direction of where I needed to go.

I did not want to talk to this woman.

I did not want get in a fight with her when I knew damn good and well that it wouldn’t end well.

But as I exited the bathroom and started stomping my way around the building, she came up behind me and grabbed a hold of my hair, giving me no other choice but to stop.

“Let. Go. Of. Me,” I ordered, turning my head to stare at the woman who had a death grip in my hair.

“I was talking to you, bitch.”

I gritted my teeth, then reached up and took hold of my hair right above her clenched fist.

Then, with a vicious yank, I pulled it away from her.

I didn’t miss the surprise in her eyes as I did, either.

Nor the leftover brown hairs that were still in her clenched fist.

“I realize that you want to have a conversation. But I don’t want to talk to you. I want to watch the last few minutes of the game,” I ground out, starting to turn.

“They’ll lose. Or, at least, if Linc knows what’s good for him, he’ll throw it like he’s supposed to,” Margot snapped. “So I believe you have plenty of time to talk to me. You won’t miss anything good.”

I blinked.

“I…”

“Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t.”

“I…” She opened her mouth again.

I held up my hand.

“Right now, I’m seconds away from beating the shit out of a pregnant woman,” I said. “So, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll let me leave before I do something stupid that’ll get me put in jail for the night instead of celebrating Linc’s win with my man and his son.”

Margot’s eyes flashed hot with anger.

“You listen here,” she hissed.

I turned and walked away from her, this time moving a hell of a lot faster than Margot did, weaving my way in and out of the crowd quickly so she couldn’t stop me again.

By the time I reached Jessie’s side, there were twenty nine seconds on the clock and the other team had the ball.

Jessie didn’t even look down at me as I made my way up to his side. His eyes were solely focused on the field and the defense as they tried to keep the opposing team from scoring.

And they did, but I barely was able to finish watching the game as worry spiraled through me like a freakin’ out of control tornado.

What had Linc done? Had his mother forced him to do something? Had I misheard her? Surely, I’d misheard her.

Jessie’s arms left me suddenly, and he hooted his excitement as the last few seconds finally melted away from the scoreboard.

Then the crowd around me went wild.

Too bad I was a worrywart and couldn’t figure out what in the hell I was supposed to tell the man who looked incredibly excited at his son’s accomplishment.

Dammit!