Traded by Lisa Suzanne
CHAPTER 2
Jack follows some hostess at the club toward a set of stairs, and he carries me up them. The hostess glances back at me with disdain, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m bleeding or if it’s because she’s jealous Jack is showering me with this attention.
Shannon’s wide eyes meet mine as she sneaks a glance over at me, and I almost laugh at the look on her face. She wants to apologize, but she also wants me to thank her. I’m torn between being mad and being grateful. I guess I’ll feel a certain way once I know the extent of the damage...and also probably once the Fireball wears off.
He carries me along a small hallway before coming to a stop at a one of the suites. It’s separated from the other rooms with walls for privacy and double doors that are currently open to the balcony that overlooks the partiers down below. It’s quite a view, but I can’t seem to stop looking at the hero who just carried me through the club.
He lies me down across one of the couches inside the suite and kneels on the floor beside me.
“What are you drinking?” he asks, his eyes level with mine.
“Fireball.” My voice comes out all husky and low.
He gives me a look I can’t decode, but then he says to the hostess, “A Fireball for the girl, and I’ll take a gin and tonic, heavy on the gin.”
She nods and disappears, and for a second it’s just the two of us. I don’t know where Shannon or the rest of his entourage went, and I’m about to ask when the man he called Danny walks in and shuts the double doors. It’s immediately quiet in here despite the loud music and pulse of the bass just on the other side of the door. Danny flicks on a light, and I squint beneath my cat mask in the brightness of the room.
“Where did my friend go?” I ask.
“She’s hanging out with my buddies,” Jack says. He stays close beside me.
Danny hands him a cloth then bends down to take a look at my knee, and Jack takes my hand tenderly in his. As Danny pokes and inspects my knee, Jack gently works on cleaning around the cut on my hand. I watch him carefully, and I wince a little as he runs the cloth over my wound.
His hands are huge. What is it about hands that makes them so damn sexy? I think for just a beat about what his hands do. It’s not just the talent he has with throwing footballs. The gossip sites report on his penchant for pleasure and his way with women. He’s been with actresses and singers, sports reporters and porn stars, and everyone in between. What I don’t typically hear about is when he hooks up with cat burglars at nightclubs on Halloween...but that doesn’t mean we can’t make some new headlines.
I refocus my attention on his lean, strong hands. His fingers are long, and all I can think about for a second is those fingers touching my body everywhere. A wild ache presses between my thighs.
“Let’s get the boot off so I can get a better look,” Danny says.
I sit up to unzip, but Jack beats me to it. He pulls the zipper down, down, down, and each hiss of the teeth unfastening pulses another beat of need through my chest.
He slips off my boot, and he palms my calf, and Jesus I feel like I could just lean back and close my eyes and fall into the throes of pleasure.
“Does your ankle feel okay?” Jack asks as he pulls my foot into his hand and moves it back and forth a little.
I’m snapped back to reality. “Yeah, it feels okay.” He slips my other boot off, too, and does the same thing to my foot, and while both ankles are a little sore from the boots, I think I’m going to live.
“I think the boots saved you,” he says, and his eyes travel up toward mine. God, he’s intense. My chest zips with nerves as thrills dart up my spine.
Danny prods at my knee. “You banged it up pretty good, but the good news is I don’t see any swelling. I’d recommend resting it a few days, but you should be fine.”
“Thank you,” I say softly.
He nods and moves to leave, and does this mean I’m going to be alone with Jack?
I don’t know this guy even though I feel like I do. That’s sort of the problem with celebrities, isn’t it? We all feel like we know them personally since we see them doing their thing on the screen, or, in Jack’s case, in person if we’re lucky enough to grab tickets to a game.
But we don’t know them. Not really.
We just know what they let us see when they post little peeks of their lives on social media, or we know them by what the media publishes about them, which might be true and might not be.
Yet I feel this intrinsic connection with this man, like I know a little something about him. He established an immediate trust between us when he scooped me up and took care of my injuries, minor as they turned out to be.
And now...what?
We screw here in this private suite?
Danny flicks off the light and shuts the door behind him when he leaves the two of us alone in this big suite. I don’t owe anybody anything, and certainly not my body...and yet I find myself wanting to hand it over to Jack to do whatever he wants with it.
This is Jack Dalton.
When will I get the chance at something like this ever again in my life?
Shannon said I needed a night of fun, and this is the direction I want to take it.
“So why a cat burglar?” he asks. He’s still on the floor beside me.
I laugh. The truth of the matter is that it was in the bargain bin after Halloween last year and I held onto it to wear this year.
I didn’t think I’d be wearing it in a private suite at a club with a celebrity when I picked it up. The reality hasn’t quite hit me just yet.
“Long story. Why no costume?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t really do the costume thing.”
“You’re playing the Aces on Sunday, aren’t you?”
He nods. “You know who I am?” he asks carefully.
I make some sort of weird pfft sound. “Of course. Doesn’t everybody?”
A knock at the door causes him to pause, and he gets up to answer it. I stay perched in my spot on the couch. He returns a moment later with our drinks, and I note that he closed the door behind the waitress. Do we still need privacy? What’s he even doing here? He has a game in two days. Isn’t he supposed to be somewhere?
“What are you doing here?” I finally blurt as he hands me my glass of Fireball.
He chuckles. “Paid appearance. I take pictures with some key people and bow out.” He sets his drink on the end table and picks up my legs. He sits on the couch then settles my legs onto his lap, and he’s so damn casual about it all like we’ve known each other for ages...but we haven’t. It’s barely been minutes.
“Have you taken your pictures?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I’ll get to it. I just got here when—” he cuts himself off.
“When I tripped and fell in front of you?” I supply, and he laughs.
“I was going to say when a beautiful kitty cat stumbled across my path.”
I giggle and take a sip of my drink for a little added liquid courage. He strokes my legs absently, and his eyes move to mine at my giggle. His are serious. Intense.
My giggling ceases immediately as this new sort of tension swirls around us. Is this just him creating this atmosphere? Is he like this with every woman, or is there actually something between us?
I take one more bolstering sip—a gulp, really—and I set my glass on the table beside the couch. And then I make my move.
I sit up and sort of crawl over to him, and I swing one leg over to straddle his lap. My dress hikes up so my panties rub against his jeans, and the rough friction there is nearly too much. I don’t even feel the pain in my knee when I’m this close to him. “You think I’m beautiful?” I ask shyly, my voice a contrast to my not-so-shy actions of straddling him.
He lets out a low chuckle. “What I can see of you, yeah. A gorgeous, sweet little body. Long, wavy, dark hair...exactly my type. Your eyes may be hidden beneath that mask, but they’re beyond expressive. Even in the darkness of this club, I can tell their exact hazel shade. Too light to be brown, too dark to be green. And the way they’ve been flashing at me since the moment we met is driving me crazy.”
He shifts his hips under me, and need pulses down low in my belly as I feel his erection beneath me. I shift my hips over his and nearly let out a moan at how good he feels.
“You’ve got this...” He trails off as he searches for the word, and then he finishes his thought as his palms graze up my thighs. His fingertips slide under the hiked up hem of my dress, and thrills dart through my chest that this is actually happening. “This innocence about you that I haven’t encountered in a long time. Everybody always wants something from me, but you...” He shakes his head. “I think I want something from you this time.”
I raise a brow that he can’t see beneath the cat mask I’m still wearing. “What do you want?” I ask softly.
He leans forward and catches my lips with a soft kiss that sets my chest on fire. “Your innocence,” he growls, and my God I nearly climax just from the heat of his words.
“You can have it,” I say, and I don’t know where the courage comes from, but I lift my hands to cup his face in my palms. His jaw is covered in this hot as fuck stubble that tickles my hands, but it’s a stark reminder that this isn’t just some dream. His eyes still hold that hot intensity on mine, and I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted anything as much as I want Jack Dalton in this moment.
I lean forward and press my lips to his, and he simply takes over in the kind of way he probably does in every situation in his life. We kiss like our lives depend on it.
Someone opens the door, because the volume turns up on the music...but then it’s quiet again. He flips us so one heartbeat later I’m pinned beneath him. The sudden move takes my breath away, but I don’t have time to catch it because he’s kissing me and I’m giving him everything I have back. He pauses for just a moment to get up and lock the door. When he returns, he resumes exactly where we left off.
His kiss is slow and sensual, and it’s filled with an urgency that matches the way he thrusts his hips to mine. His hand moves along my thigh again, and this time he fingers the hem of my panties. Anticipation builds in my chest as need blooms down low.
He moves his lips from my mouth to my jaw, trailing down to my neck, and I shiver as he hits the little spot behind my ear that drives me wild.
I feel his smile against my neck as he discovers the things I like, and when his hand moves up to cup my breast, I push my chest more fully into it with a soft moan.
He trails back to my lips, and his tongue brushes mine, lighting a volcano of need inside me.
I can’t believe this is really happening. It’s like something out of a movie. Ordinary girl meets hot bachelor athlete everybody in the world wants, they screw on the couch in the club, and they live happily ever after.
Or something along those lines. Maybe it’s something out of a dream. Certainly out of my wildest fantasies.
Except we’re not screwing yet.
He reaches up and pulls my mask off, and he leans back a little to get a good look at me. His eyes move around my face before connecting back with mine. “Without the mask...even more gorgeous.”
“You’re smooth,” I tease, and he chuckles.
“You haven’t seen anything yet.”
I laugh, but his mouth covers mine again and this time when he reaches down and fingers the hem of my panties, he pushes them aside. He runs a finger through me before he pushes it in, and holy shit those fingers know what they’re doing.
He kisses me as he slides his finger in deeper, and then his mouth trails toward my neck. “God, I want you,” he groans. “I want this.” He thrusts his hips against my thigh, and I feel the steel package in his pants begging for escape.
His words and his body combine with his woodsy, manly scent and the absolute lust I feel for him, pushing me right over the edge way too quickly. My entire body seems to squeeze tightly against him all at once, and then pulse after pulse of pleasure washes over me.
“I want this, too.” I fight to say the words through my climax because even in my totally incoherent state of bliss, I still know what I want. And I tell him. “I want you.”
He moves off me while I recover, and my eyes are closed while I try to catch my breath. I assume he’s getting a condom, and his warmth covers me a beat later as he returns to nuzzle my neck. He sits up and pulls my panties down my legs.
“I’ve never been with a cat burglar before,” he says.
“I’ve never been with a quarterback.”
He raises a brow and offers a sly smile. “You won’t be able to say that anymore after tonight.”
He hovers over me and pulls his dick out of his jeans, and I gasp a little as I get a peek of the goods as he rolls on a condom just before he slams it into me.
Holy.
Shit.
My eyes roll back as I lie there and take him in. It’s pleasure on top of perfection.
He thrusts into me again and again, and being with an athlete is so different from being with any of my exes. He’s got strength and stamina as he holds himself up on one arm while he grabs my breasts over my costume. Then he reaches down between us to touch my clit while he continues to thrust.
He flips us in the middle of the action so he’s sitting beneath me and I’m on his lap. His hands move under my ass as he directs our pace, and he buries himself as far inside me as he can before he pulls out and repeats the process. He reaches for the bottom of my dress and pulls it over my head, and then he unhooks my bra as I continue to move over him.
He pulls my body toward him so he can suck on my nipples while I move, his big hands wrapped around my back as he holds me to him. He’s working every possible zone on my body as he grunts his way through our tryst, and all I can do is push my breasts more fully into his mouth and continue grinding my hips over his as I wrap my arms around him for balance.
His hands move to my shoulders, where he pushes me down a little harder, and he leans up to catch my lips with his. He pulls back, and I open my eyes to find his on mine. It’s carnal and visceral, a contrast to the fact that he’s screwing me on a couch. We’re strangers doing something so illicit in a public place and anyone could walk in at any moment if that door isn’t really locked, yet I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as safe and protected as I do in this stranger’s arms.
Something passes between us as our eyes hold the other’s, some inexplicable connection that’s full of tenderness and intimacy. It’s hot and it’s sexy and it’s affectionate and warm all at the same time.
All the pleasure is too much.
I explode into another orgasm, and he catches my breast in his mouth before he follows right behind me. As he comes, he sucks even harder on my nipple, and God it feels so damn good that I can’t help but scream out his name.
I’m so incoherent I’m pretty sure I actually say his full name, which is beyond embarrassing.
“Oh my God, Jack Dalton!”
And when it’s all over, and my body stops contracting over his and he stops grunting and plowing into me, we both relax into each other for a few beats. He pushes me back just a little, and his eyes meet mine. I wrap my arms around his neck and he tightens his arms around my torso as a strangely hot and intimate moment passes between us. He’s still inside me as we stare into each other’s eyes quietly reveling in the feel of the other. He tips his chin up and brushes a soft kiss to my mouth.
We’re strangers by definition, but we just did something so incredible and so intimate together that I know I will never forget.
Maybe he does this all the time, but I have to think it was unforgettable to him, too.
A knock at the door knocks reality back into me.
He growls out a quiet, “Fuck,” before he shifts us to break our connection. “They only bother me when I need to get moving.”
His words clue me into the fact that I’m not unique.
The thought of that sends a ripple of disappointment through me.
He closes doors at nightclubs and he’s bothered when he’s needed all the time. This is just another run of the mill Friday night for Jack Dalton, but it was a hell of a lot more than that for Kate Harmon.
I stand and locate my dress and my mask as my knee screams at me from the fall earlier. I get dressed and gather up my boots into my arms.
He draws in a deep breath then lets it out slowly before he stands. He finds a tissue to get rid of the condom and he fixes his pants and belt before he heads toward the door. He looks back at me to make sure I’m decent before he opens it.
The guy at the door says something close to Jack’s ear, something I can’t hear from this far away. I try to pretend I’m totally unaffected I’m just another notch in his belt as I clutch my boots in my hands, but I’m not that good of an actress.
The truth is I am affected. Deeply. I’ve never done this sort of thing before in my entire life, but between the Fireball and the lust, I jumped before I looked.
That’s sort of my mantra, I suppose. Leap first, look later. It’s why I’m twenty-five and going back to school while I work a job that isn’t my end goal.
He glances back at me, and I get the distinct impression that the guy at the door is talking about me. Jack nods, and then he turns in my direction. He walks slowly toward me before he draws in a deep breath, and his entire demeanor has changed. He’s no longer the hot quarterback who just hooked up with me. Now there’s a tightness around his eyes that wasn’t there before. It’s only after he says his next words that I realize maybe it’s guilt. “My, uh...girlfriend just showed up.”
My heart skips a beat as my chest tightens. “You have a girlfriend?”
What. The. Fuck.
I feel like a total and complete fool. Of course he has a girlfriend. This is Jack Dalton. He probably has twenty of them.
“Sort of. I mean, she’s pregnant, and I’m going through some things and making terrible decisions left and right and you shouldn’t have been another one of them.”
“I’m just a bad decision to you?” I repeat as his words sting me.
“No! No. That’s not what I meant.”
I blow out a breath. “I’ll save you the trouble of trying to explain,” I hiss.
I’ll go find Shannon. I’ll pretend none of this ever happened. I’ll act like I’m not completely humiliated by this asshole who plays with women and their emotions regardless of what I thought I was getting into.
As I hobble out of the room armed with knee-high black boots gathered up in one arm and half a glass of Fireball in the other hand, I stop by the door where he still stands. “Go Aces. I hope you lose on Sunday.”
I don’t wait for his response. Instead, I stalk away from this private suite so I can find a quiet spot to put my shoes back on before the heat behind my eyes tips onto my cheeks.
