And just like that, Elliott was more focused on dinner than the game with Temple on Saturday. Which was unsettling to say the least. When he’d dismissed practice half an hour early, his players had looked at him like he’d donned a dress and started tap dancing on the field. For good reason, too. The offense he’d designed specifically for the upcoming game still needed tweaking due to losing Kyler, an announcement that had cast a dark pall over practice all its own. Not to mention, he now had a speech to work on.
Yeah, he’d known Peggy’s return would throw a wrench in his engine, but he’d forgotten exactly how much he enjoyed being thwarted by her antics. Hadn’t allowed himself to remember how much she calmed him and crucified his control at the same time. How addictive that combination could become.
He’d heard far more of Peggy’s speech to Alice than he’d let on that afternoon. Standing there, he’d been so aware of his pulse, he could have closed his eyes and counted each little bump. That is, if he’d been capable of removing his focus from Peggy. She’d always been earnest and bright, but the additional maturity to her now? It got his blood flowing even hotter. He wanted to pin her down and ask what she’d experienced during her three years away. Maybe ask what gave her the nerve to be even more fascinating now than she’d been at twenty-two.
She was doing damage to his peace of mind. Always had. But there was a new sense of urgency in his belly making him crazy.
Elliott pulled up to the house and exhaled slowly when he didn’t see the Suburban. It was entirely possible Belmont had dropped Peggy off, though, meaning she could already be inside his home. Inching toward the tennis ball that hung from the ceiling, his foot slammed on the break when an image of Peggy in his bed blindsided him. He threw the truck into Park with a curse but didn’t try to dismiss the image, knowing from experience it would haunt him until he allowed it to play out.
Dinner would be over, Alice gone to bed. Peggy would ask for a tour upstairs and they would move quietly, careful not to be heard. She would tease him a little, slinking around his bedroom and picking up his watch, his aftershave—sniffing it—all while he followed on her heels, waiting for the right moment to strip her naked. She’d be wearing a thong—that little nude-colored nylon one from his memory—and he’d slide it down her legs with his teeth, watching her back arch on the bed.
Elliott groaned in the truck’s silent interior, pushing his erection down with the heel of his hand, but succeeding only in chafing it into something bigger, more urgent. And when he opened his eyes, Peggy was looking right back at him from the garage entrance, holding a glass of soda in her hand. Smiling knowingly.
She saluted him with the glass and retreated back into the house, her skirt molding to her backside in such a taunt, he would have put her over his knee and given those cheeks hell if they were alone. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
Rein it in, Elliott.
The scene he was about to walk into would be dangerously homey. Alice cooking dinner, Peggy setting the table or helping cut up salad ingredients. If he wasn’t careful, his mind might play tricks on him. Confuse him into thinking he were the kind of man who welcomed the idea of home. Family. Togetherness. He’d tried it once and hadn’t succeeded. He’d failed to be a good husband and proved every day how deeply his abysmal parenting skills ran.
This was a one-off deal. Peggy acknowledging earlier that day that this dinner wasn’t about them might have made him feel hollow, but the sensation would pass. What wouldn’t pass was his inability to be the kind of man who comes home to spaghetti and small talk every night. He wasn’t built for those comforts.
So why was he so damn anxious to get inside?
Elliott brought his libido back under control and climbed out of the truck, the smell of red sauce and sautéed mushrooms wrapping around him. Not the usual scent of Alice’s spaghetti, and when the kitchen came into view, he saw why. Peggy stood side by side with Alice at the chopping block, a sprig of rosemary tucked behind her ear, instructing her on how to judge when you’re adding too much garlic.
“Dad.” Alice looked more animated than he’d seen her in a long time, and warning bells went off at the same time his pulse went haywire, the scene way more real than he’d been expecting. Especially the way Alice regarded Peggy with such blatant hero worship. If he’d allowed the moving picture in his kitchen to be the norm for the last three years, would he have already fucked it up? “Did you know Peggy’s mother used to have her own cooking show on TV?”
How were they playing this? As far as he knew, Alice had been told Peggy was a professor at the college, but who knew if she’d even bought that explanation? Still, it was a big jump from Peggy being his colleague to an ex-student with whom he was formerly involved. When Alice blinked at him, still waiting for an answer, he decided honesty was the best policy when dealing with someone as sharp as his daughter. “I did know that.” Alice looked a touch surprised by his answer, but didn’t comment. “Is there something I can do?”
“Got it under control, Coach,” Peggy said, without looking at him.
Elliott nodded once. “I’ll be in my office.”
A few moments later, he closed the door behind him and propped both hands on his hips, running through the team’s offense in his mind to erase the vision of Alice and Peggy huddled in the kitchen. To block the way it made him feel; a sensation far too close to content. The contentment he’d experienced with Peggy years back had been so brief, he shouldn’t recognize the return of it now. But there it was, like green sprouts trying to push through dead weeds.
There was a gentle knock on the door behind him. Thinking it was Alice, he turned and opened it, surprised to find Peggy on the other side. The stress of what he’d come home to must have shown on his face because Peggy gave a low whistle. “Brought you a beer.” She held it out to him. “Looks like maybe you need whiskey, though.”
Maybe it was the way she made light of something he found so heavy. Maybe it was simply a buildup of tension inside of him, starting on the day she’d left town. Or the day she’d returned. He didn’t know. Only knew he was so damn aware of the strain in his hands, his neck, his chest…and it needed to go somewhere. Preferably to the person who’d caused it.
When he clasped Peggy’s wrist and jerked her into the office, beer sloshed over the bottle’s rim, but neither of them stopped to clean it up. Elliott kicked the door shut and moved up behind Peggy, burying his face in her hair, pushing against her ass with his growing erection. “Lay your hands flat on the desk.”
“W-why?”
Despite questioning him, she set the bottle down so fast on the wooden piece of furniture, it suggested her arms had lost strength. “Did you really come in here to bring me a beer?” He hooked a finger beneath the hem of her skirt, drawing it up to find a neon orange thong running between her cheeks. “Or were you wondering if that little salute you gave me in the garage might have earned you a spanking? Is that what you came in here to find out?”
She seemed to deflate a moment, before her shoulders heaved back up. “Yes.”
“Well?”
Even as he reached over to lock the door, Elliott couldn’t drag his attention away as she bent forward, angling her hips up so he could see the entire underside of her body. Her stockings ended mere inches below her upturned ass, the skin above them a smooth sliver of a taunt. And God, the orange silk hugging her pussy was already beginning to darken. “Hard, please,” she whispered. “Please.”
There was a voice in the back of his mind telling him to step back, but he’d been denying the impulses too long. Hell, there’d been no one before or since Peggy he’d wanted to loose them on. Now? He wanted to hear that snap of flesh on flesh so bad, he couldn’t have held back, even if the quiet warning voice had been a shout.
Elliott removed the ever-present rosary beads from his pocket and placed them on the desk, out of respect for what they symbolized…and the action untethered him even more. He felt unexpectedly light-headed. Hungrier then he’d ever been before, as if setting the beads aside had given him permission. Stepping forward, he conformed both palms to her curved backside, groaning at the memory of propping it up, meeting the tight buns with his abdomen while thrusting inside of her. “Been begging for this since you got here, haven’t you?”
She pushed her legs apart a few more inches with a breathless whimper. “Don’t take your ring off.”
Twisting the gold championship ring in question—and painfully aware that they didn’t have much time—Elliott stepped to one side, giving her a warm-up slap. That single sharp sound had him nearly doubling over, the possibility of needing to change his pants before dinner a definite reality. From his position, Elliott could see Peggy’s teeth digging into her lower lip, eyes closed tight. So beautiful. So…dutiful. Again that electrified zap of forewarning bashed into his subconscious. Like you hate me. I deserve it. Like you hate—
“Elliott, please,” Peggy breathed, swaying her bottom side to side, the seductive movement forcing him to swallow a groan. “Don’t stop.” And he couldn’t. His hand seemed to move all its own. It lifted and rained down a series of smacking blows, one right after the other, until Peggy fell forward onto the desk, breath wheezing in and out. Her tight ass shook with each crack of his palm, the muscles in her thighs straining, hips angling to encounter his hand as soon as possible. So soft. Was a man supposed to strike something so soft? Crave it? As if answering him, she chanted, “Yes, yes, yes.”
He should never have made contact with her in the first place, because moving forward with the evening without fucking Peggy first was unimaginable. Yet it was their only option. His stomach constricting with the need to claim her, he snatched a Sharpie out of the pen holder on his desk and signed his name across her right ass cheek, before letting the marker drop to the ground.
Shame and pride mixed inside Elliott as Peggy straightened and smoothed her skirt back into place. It was huge and constantly shifting, shame winning out by a mile when she refused to look at him.
“Peggy,” he said hoarsely. “Wait.”
She surged forward, fusing their lips together. Not kissing him, just stopping the flow of his words. Then she pulled away, licking the seam of her lips with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I don’t know about you, but I just worked up an appetite.”