"When you said you had something new in mind for our session today, I had no idea this was what you meant," Charlie admitted as he closed the stadium gate behind them. "Field straight ahead. It's the big green thing. You can't miss it."

Dylan snorted as she strode for the football field. No one with two pairs of working eyes would ever miss that much green: the grass field stretched before her like a great carpet, over a hundred yards long and as natural and verdant as a golf course. The Teamsters spared no expense, preferring the terrain afforded by real grass rather than Astroturf.

Dylan dropped her duffel bag and wandered out to the middle of the field. She stared up at the open dome ceiling and the brilliant blue patch of Austin sky. The power, the sheer enormity of the cathedral-like structure overwhelmed her. She managed to keep her mouth from falling open as Charlie joined her with a knowing look. This place was sacred to him, and now she could see why. She gave herself a moment to revel in it all, though she was a bit more suspicious of the empty bleachers; the sight of so many vacant seats was unnatural.

"Have you ever been here when the stadium’s been empty like this?" she asked. "I imagine you always have coaches and press and hangers-on around you."

"Oh, yeah." Charlie spun a lanyard of keys on his finger.

"'Oh yeah,' you’ve done this before, or 'oh yeah,' there’s always a crowd?"

“The crowd. Teamster players can gain access to the field pretty much whenever we want, but yeah—there’s always at least a security guard or groundskeeper around. How’d you pull this off?”

"I arranged it with the team beforehand." Dylan explained. Smitty was all too happy to help—he was in favor of anything that got his biggest client back on the field ASAP. "We're completely alone for the next few hours."

“I never thought I’d like being here without an audience, but this is weirder than I expected.” Charlie turned in place, scanning the empty seats.

Dylan took another minute to soak in the feel of this temple to sport, then shook her head to clear it. She pointed back toward her duffel bag. "I brought a ball with me, if you want to grab it. I figured we'd start with an easy warm-up, and then you can show me some of the exercises the Teamster trainers put you through. "

“I only do hard,” Charlie teased as he piled his blond locks up into an expert man-bun and approached her bag. He palmed the football and raised it over his head. "Go long," he instructed.

Dylan turned so he wouldn't see her smile and sauntered down the field. "I'll go long so long as you promise to be careful even when I'm not around to police you." She didn't mention that today's session would prove to her once and for all that Charlie wasn't ready to return to the team. Maybe she was just prolonging the inevitable moment when she would have to tell him, but she wanted to be sure. Who knew—maybe the invincible Charlie Wild would manage to pull a rabbit out of that duffel and surprise her.

"Even after all we've been through, you still don't trust me," Charlie said in wonder. He flexed and threw the ball; Dylan lunged and caught it, then shook her head. Some of her curls had come loose from her messy ponytail, and they swished around her face to emphasize her denial. "I do trust you, Charlie. I know there's more to you than all this show and machismo." She hauled back and threw a perfect spiral. "It's just that every time I think I have you figured out, you throw me for a loop."

"You know plenty about me already." Charlie caught the ball and lobbed it underhand back to her. Dylan scoffed at his lack of technique and threw an even tighter spiral in response. "You know more about me than most. Except for my brothers."

"Aren't you leaving the entire world out of the equation?" Dylan caught another easy throw and took a personal timeout. She fisted a hand on her cocked hip and planted the football against the other. "Everyone knows everything about Charlie Wild, star quarterback. I was under the impression you didn't have a lot of privacy, and you preferred it that way."

"There are certain things I like to keep private," Charlie responded with a grin. Dylan tried not to roll her eyes too hard as she dropped back and pitched him the ball once more. "And I mean it, Doc. What you see is what you get, and you've seen all of me, the good and the bad. That includes my MRI scans."

"That reminds me—I wonder if I could get a few copies of those scans autographed to sell at the next hospital benefit," Dylan pretended to wonder as Charlie tossed the ball back to her.

"There's another secret you didn't think you knew about me. You know I don't like hospitals."

"You’re right. I did notice that, didn't I?" Dylan tried to contain her grin. "Obviously, your dislike doesn't extend to the doctors charged with your care."

"Not the hot ones," Charlie conceded. "Even if they do chap my ass every chance they get."

"The chances come so readily. May I ask again, then, why you hate hospitals?"

Charlie paused mid-throw. Dylan watched his fingers slide meditatively back and forth through the football's stitches. They must be so familiar to him. Would there ever come a day where his touch, gliding along her dips and swells, would be just as memorized and natural? The ache hit her with the force of a Teamster linebacker. Whatever Charlie would divulge, she wanted to know it. She wanted to know everything about him and reciprocate when asked.

"My brother. Andrew."

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. Of all the revelations he could have dropped on her, this one was the most unexpected. "I didn't know you had any brothers other than the twins."

"Yeah. Not a lot of people know about Andrew," Charlie conceded, so quiet that she barely heard him from where she stood. Their game of catch appeared forgotten, so Dylan approached him. She didn't know what instinct inspired her to do it, but she reached between them and took Charlie's hand before he spoke his next words.

"A few more years, and he would have looked exactly like Nicholas," he said. "Little scamp reminds me of him more than I can describe."

"Andrew…he died young at the hospital. At Lockhart General?"

Charlie nodded slowly. "When he was four. Complications due to undiagnosed food allergies. By the time help arrived at the ranch and they loaded him up into the back of the ambulance, it was a foregone conclusion. Mom was never the same."

"God, Charlie, I'm so sorry." Dylan squeezed his hand. She was used to giving and receiving bad news in her chosen profession, but this was something without any sort of preapproved communication structure. "I'm glad your mother had someone like you. And Trevor and Trent. She did a hell of a job raising the sons she was lucky enough to see grow old."

"You calling me old, Doc?" Charlie flexed a smile and returned her squeeze with one of his own. "It was a long time ago, and we've all had the time to move past the worst of our grief. Still, never told anyone that little bit of trivia before. Care to share a secret with the class?"

He started to reel her in, and Dylan had a feeling she knew exactly where this line of questioning was headed. She twisted out of his hold, yanked the ball from his unsuspecting hand, and sprinted for the end of the field with a laugh of exertion. She knew he would catch her; she just wanted to see how far she'd make it beforehand. She heard Charlie's curse, but couldn't risk turning around to take in what was sure to be a priceless look on his face.

She knew there was no way she would make it to the end zone; even so, she wasn't expecting the tackle. Charlie came at her faster and with more strength than she could have possibly anticipated. In a real display of grace and athleticism, he caught her around the waist and took them both to the ground. Dylan landed on top of him, and he knocked the ball out of her hand. Just when she thought her capture complete, he rolled himself over on top of her.

"Charlie, get off me," Dylan grumbled from beneath him. Despite her protests, her heart was thudding fast.

"I can't," he lamented, "my knee."

"Oh, fuck off!" she exclaimed with an incredulous laugh. "That's the last thing you would say if it was true!"

"If you insist, Dr. Rose." Charlie's hand slipped beneath her shirt and ascended, skimming her skin and tracing the cup of her bra.

"If I insist on…what exactly?" Why was her breath coming so short? Maybe it was all that running and exercising she had been doing. Then again, if that was the case, Dylan was inexcusably out of shape.

Better to accept the real reason and figure a way out of this.

"I think you know what," Charlie replied. His finger slipped beneath the fabric of her bra to find her nipple already taut and waiting. He pinched it, massaging it between his fingers. Dylan squirmed.

"This—we're on the fifty-yard line!" she exclaimed.

"So? I had sex with you at your place of work." Charlie lowered his mouth to savor the sweet spot between her neck and shoulders. Dylan clamped her lips closed over a moan; the world spun behind her tightly shut eyes. "It's only fair I give you the same opportunity."

"That was different. That was behind closed doors!"

"The stadium is closed," Charlie reminded her. "Come on. You know you want to."

If she denied it, she'd be lying. She hadn't had contact like this with Charlie since that stolen moment in her office, and the distance had been driving her crazy. Judging by how things were taking shape below the belt, it wasn’t just her. Charlie pressed the fierce jut of his erection against her thigh. As if she needed reminding. It was practically all she could think about when she woke sweaty and wanting in the sleepless hours of the night.

"I don't know…" she murmured as Charlie trailed his lips up to hers. He gave the nipple he teased a light twist; pleasure-pain electrified her. She opened her mouth to protest or to moan or to invent a new noise to let him know how conflicted she was, when Charlie's mouth claimed her own in a passionate kiss.

And just like that, she was done for. All the fight seeped out of her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down further. If she was going to sink beneath the overwhelming weight of this sensation, then she was going to drag this insufferable quarterback down with her.

"That's more like it," Charlie growled his approval as he shoved at her clothes. He pushed shirt and bra both up over her breasts. He cupped her newly-exposed peaks, clenching and rolling them together until she wanted to cry for release. The fingers of his other hand undid the clasp on her jeans and pushed them down her hips.

"Am I the first girl you've found time to indulge in your office?" Dylan gasped as his fingers probed below.

"I never even considered trying something like this," Charlie admitted as he trailed kisses down her clavicle. "This is pretty wild even for me."

"You don't say."

"Gotta live up to the name somehow," he said as his fingers thrust their way up inside her. Dylan clutched the back of his hair and moaned. She had been slick before, but feeling Charlie knuckle-deep and scissoring her open made the situation unsalvageable. By the time he withdrew, his fingers were coated with her; he licked them clean appreciatively, and Dylan thought she would lose it. Already she had ceased to care just how exposed they both were. Somehow, pinned beneath Charlie, with his broad shoulders hovering over her protectively, she felt invincible. Is this how he felt every time he hit the field in front of an adoring crowd? All she needed was his glacial-blue eyes fixed on her with rapt, unflinching attention to feel the rush.

But if Dylan felt powerful beneath him in that moment, Charlie seemed determined to strip her of any further say she had in the matter. Remaining sprawled beneath him was consent enough; he pushed her jeans the rest of the way off, with Dylan squirming and bucking her hips to aid him. She could sense his urgency. Not only that, she reciprocated it wholeheartedly—she needed Charlie inside her, right now, or she would die from incompletion.

She shoved at the front of his shorts. The tent he pitched was massive, so big she had to use both hands to navigate his waistband over and down. She pulled his boxers down with his shorts, and his erection sprang free, jutting thick and throbbing toward her. She took it into her hands and smoothed her palms down its length in measured, alternating strokes. When she paused to squeeze, Charlie groaned explosively. God, she loved the feel of him in her hand and the knowledge that she could make the strongest man she had ever encountered weaken for her with the light pressure of a touch.

Charlie licked the palm of his hand lasciviously; before Dylan could anticipate his next move, he thrust it back down between her legs and opened her up once more, lubricating her with his spit. It was so rough, so primal and thoughtless, that Dylan quivered and shook. She tightened her thighs against her own muscle spasms, still fighting for some appearance of control, but she was fast coming undone. It was Charlie's hand that now guided the proceedings.

He positioned his erection at her opening. Dylan hitched her right leg over his hip, clenching her thigh over the bunching muscles, as Charlie plunged down and up. The wide dome of his cock butted up against her passage. She knew he would find it slick and welcoming. The pressure gave.

"Mmm!" Dylan hummed, capturing the moan of appreciation deep in her throat as Charlie sank inside her. She couldn't hold in the blissful sigh that followed or prevent her head from falling back on the fresh turf beneath her. The aroma of the grass broke over her, enveloping her senses. As Charlie craned himself closer, she could smell his natural musk warring with his spearmint body wash; no smell on earth could be more masculine or more likely to drive her out of her better senses and reduce her to a bundle of nerves and raw need.

Her fingers wound themselves in his jersey, making knots to give herself something to hold onto. Even though he had her solidly pinned beneath him, her back pushing into the ground, the risk of falling upward into the big, blue sky felt ever-present. The pleasure that sparked and shivered through her threatened to send the world careening off its axis. Goosebumps erupted all along her arms and the backs of her thighs. She couldn't tell up from down; she was out of control, and they had barely gotten started.

Charlie dropped down to his forearm and planted a quick kiss on her forehead. Dylan sought his lips with her own, but before she could come anywhere close to capturing the kiss that eluded her, Charlie curled his massive body and bucked up into her. She sheathed him again completely in that single thrust.

Dylan wailed wordlessly as she clung to him. She was afraid her cries would reverberate throughout the empty stadium, but she couldn’t keep silent in the face of his might. She compressed her lips tightly together, but his next thrust obliterated all thoughts of stifling any noise. She had to let him know what she needed.

"Fuck me, Charlie," she growled low in her throat. Her command caused him to stall; before she could even think to give any more orders, he brought one hand up to untangle her fingers from his jersey. He reached back behind him to yank the shirt over his head one-handed and toss it away. A thin sheen of sweat covered his neck and torso. He chuckled low in his throat as he pinned her wrists above her head.

"Didn't take you long to change your tune," he noticed. "Guess you just had to be reminded of what you were missing." He punctuated his good-natured taunt with a forceful thrust, rolling her back so that her hips came all the way off the ground. Dylan hiked her legs close around his waist and hissed in pleasure. "What a beautiful tune it is," Charlie added as he lowered his lips to her neck.

"You're seriously…going to tease me…right now?" Dylan demanded between pants. Charlie's hips drove into her in steady, rhythmic thrusts. He suddenly changed tack, grinding his pelvis down into her. The friction against her clit was like watching the fireworks go off above the Austin stadium. She moaned and gasped and strained against the hands that held her wrists down. Charlie lowered himself until his chest pressed flush against hers. He reverse-rolled his hips again, and Dylan arched beneath him. Any more of this and she was sure to leave a doctor-sized imprint on the fifty-yard line for some unsuspecting groundskeeper to discover.

"God, I love making you sweat." Charlie licked along the curve of her neck, tongue catching beneath her chin. "Looks like you love it, too. You want to come for me?"

Of all the insufferable, cocky, domineering questions to ask at a moment like—

A shiver coursed through Dylan suddenly, the foreshock of orgasm. No way. She refused to respond that easily to him! There's no way she was going to allow herself to be directed to come. She tried to hold herself perfectly still beneath him. Charlie's knitted look of concentration lifted, and he grinned roguishly. His expression said it all: I don't think so. He wasn't going to let her hold back on him now. Dylan knew she was in deep trouble. God, it was so deep…and getting deeper with each…

"Ohhh, shit," she heard herself curse. Charlie's hand released her wrists, and she grabbed for his shoulders.

"Hold onto me," he instructed

As if there were anything else for her to do! Charlie tucked his arm between her and the grass, raising her waist to meet him as he thrust himself inside her once with a brutal finality. He couldn't have known it would push her over, but it did. All the mounting pressure that had been collecting in her belly spilled over, and the orgasm swept through her like waves bursting past a dam. Dylan arched into his embrace with a cry that would have brought the stadium down around them had he not been there to capture her mouth in his. He swallowed her pleasure, and she tasted the sweet sweep of his tongue as it scoured past her teeth. Another throb rocked through her, and Charlie's thrusts quickened; she hadn't even come to full completion before she felt the hot jet of his seed emptying inside her.

Charlie withdrew slowly with a groan, his spent cock teasing the outsides of her oversensitive folds. Another shiver raced through her, and she longed to take him inside her again, but she was exhausted. She could feel traces of him weeping down her inner thighs. He dropped his head into her chest, and almost his entire body weight settled on top of her. A laugh of surprise burst from her—along with any spare breath she could manage—until Charlie redistributed his weight with a chuckle and settled in against her.

"I love you, Charlie Wild," she muttered as her fingers caressed his sweat-tangled hair.

"Thought I'd be the one to say it first." His voice was muffled by her breasts. When Dylan drew her chin back a little to consider him, Charlie returned her look. He wasn't giving her his usual half-cocked grin; hell, his eyes weren't even droopy with post-sex exhaustion. His expression was alert, open. She wondered if he could hear the moment her heart stuttered to a stop. She knew she hadn't made a mistake in choosing this moment to bare her soul—but she suddenly felt in need of a perspective that wasn't the chiseled face gazing at her. It was too easy to look at Charlie and want to forget all rules and responsibility.

"This doesn't change anything," she asserted.

"Doesn't it?" His eyes were fixed on her lips. Dylan felt dizzy with the weight of her own feelings for him. She didn't want to ruin the moment by frustrating him, but she had to persevere. Part of her obligation to both of them now was to stand on the strength of her own convictions, even if it meant saying something Charlie wouldn't want to hear.

"Not in the way you might expect." Dylan sat up, pulled her shirt down and adjusted her hair. Once she felt composed enough to continue, she crossed her legs. She took Charlie's hand in hers as he did the same. "I'm in love with you—"

"I love you, too."

"But that doesn't mean I'm going to relent. I'm not going to look the other way just because it would make you happy and make things easier between us."

"You won't need to look the other way," Charlie stated. "You have nothing to worry about, Dylan. I won't see other women. And I never expected things to be easy." His mouth slid sideways, his dimple appeared, and Dylan hated the way her heart clenched at the sight. She wanted to back down. She wanted to savor the moment, but she had to see this conversation through to its conclusion. It was too important to drop for the sake of the smile she loved more than anything.

"No. I'm not talking about having a…relationship with you, although I'd like to. But I think this conversation needs to come first, so that you know where I stand. We've complicated things by having sex. But I'm still your doctor, Charlie. I'm not going to trade one role, one relationship, for the other. So while it's true you've come to mean more to me than I ever expected, it only means I have more reasons to want you well. Your knee shouldn't be played on this season. You need to concentrate full-time on your recovery. That's why I'm not going to clear you."

There. She’d said it. Dylan gazed at him, holding her breath despite herself. She watched the charming, love-struck expression he wore slowly fade as the realization of her seriousness on the matter hit home. She wanted nothing more than to immediately take it back, but she resisted the urge. She hated herself for it.

But she would hate herself more if anything happened to him.

"That's not possible." Charlie's hand slid from hers, and he rose suddenly. He teetered slightly on his knee—breaking Dylan's heart and confirming her resolve in a single unsteady moment—before straightening. His gaze shuttered. "I…need to think about this."

"About this? Wait—about which part?" Dylan snatched her pants up, struggled to her feet, and started after him as Charlie made for the locker room.

"All of it."

Dylan frowned. "I understand you have to think about us, and you should. Hell, I still have to think more about it. But Charlie, the knee is non-negotiable. I'm your doctor," she concluded.

Charlie turned abruptly, surprising her, and Dylan knocked into his chest. Her hands came up, and he caught her. That strong, angular face she had come to worship the sight of when no one was looking was now twisted and miserable. Because of her. God, she wanted to take it all back.

"You're more than that now," Charlie said gravely. He reached up to smooth her hair away from her forehead. Then he released her and turned to go. His bent head and bowed shoulders disappeared from view as he ducked into the shadows of the stadium.

Dylan didn't follow.