“I did promise you the weekend.” I was suddenly thankful neither one of us had anything else to do until we went back to work on Tuesday.

“Thank God.” He pulled me up and over him, let me adjust myself into position as he rubbed his palms up and down my ribs. I sank down so that just the pierced tip of him dragged across my swollen folds, and we both groaned at the contact. Those little metal balls made every move I made, every way he shifted and flexed against me, even more intense. I felt him in every part of me as I set myself all the way down and fell forward on my hands so I could get at his mouth with my own.

I kissed him the same way he kissed me—hard, consuming—with tongues dancing and breaths mingling as his fingers dug into the rounded curve of my h*ps and forced me to start moving up and down.

At first it was a sexy glide that had us both panting and our fingers clenching into one another. He felt so good, and the way he looked at me, it was turning me inside out and I was having a hard time trying to keep a steady rhythm. I rose up on my knees a little higher as we ground into each other and then let my head fall back on a breathless gasp when one of his hands suddenly disappeared between my legs where we were joined and zeroed in on that hot spot he seemed to be able to find every single time.

My hair pooled in a black puddle across the top of his legs as I started to frantically move on him. Between the stroke of his fingers, the friction of the barbells, and just the general drag and pull from his cock, it didn’t take too long for me to feel the end racing up on me.

He said my name and his free hand left my waist to cup one of my br**sts. He brushed his thumb back and forth across the tight and achy point until I was seeing stars and having a really hard time holding on to any kind of regular motion. Pleasure was riding hard at the base of my spine, my skin was glowing and slick with exertion and the need to let go. If he didn’t catch up I was going to go over the edge without him and I wasn’t going to feel bad about it.

I squealed in surprise when he moved rapidly and flipped us over. He used a knee to shove my legs farther apart to make room for him to move as he swiveled his h*ps in a way that made my eyes cross as he picked up his pace as soon as he was situated in the new position. He caught my hands in one of his and stretched them up and over my head. The other he used to brace his weight as he thrust and pounded into me like he was chasing all the desire he had built up between us to claim as his own. The pressure of his thick c**k in my swollen channel was already enough to have me ready to come, but the added sensation of those metal balls dragging and massaging along every wall, every nerve ending, and I was sure he was going to have my head exploding on top of having a body breaking apart in a blinding orgasm. Rowdy let his head fall so that it was resting in the crook of my neck and I felt the sharp sting of his teeth in the delicate skin there, and that was all it took for it to be over for me.

I felt my inner walls grab him, felt the bottom drop out of his control, and suddenly he was moving just as desperately and frantically as I had been. I loved the way his heart thundered in tune with my own. I loved the way his strong body bowed and felt like stone all along my much softer curves. I loved the way he panted his completion in my ear and the way he collapsed on top of me when he was all wrung out and empty. I loved that sex with him was everything that sex should be and then some. He was really good with a lot more than just his mouth and had just shown me everything I had been searching for when I set off blindly for Colorado.

It might be wild, uninhibited, and a little dirty, but sex with him still felt like a safer place than I had ever been before.

He hefted himself up in a push-up and I shamelessly watched the way it made his biceps bulge.

“Probably the best touchdown I can ever remember.” He was trying to make a joke but his eyes were dead serious, so I didn’t answer. I just lifted a hand and cupped his cheek while we watched each other.

It was a nice moment, another sweet memory that I could tuck away and add to the ones I already had because of him, but it was broken by the keening whine of a puppy.

I sucked in a breath as Rowdy moved off of me and rolled to look over the edge of the bed.

“I think we might have scandalized him.” He scooped up the dog and put him on the bed as he swung his long legs over and rose to his feet. “I forgot all about him when I saw you licking that damn knife.”

I had forgotten about him, too. I was a terrible puppy mom. Jimbo licked my chin and he did indeed look like he was giving Rowdy a jealous-puppy-dog glare.

“I made some sandwiches. I’ll let him out and we can eat.”

He nodded and looked back over his shoulder at me with a flash of white teeth.

“Now ask me if I won, Salem.”

I groaned and threw a pillow at his smug face. “I think we both won, smartass.”

He went toward the bathroom laughing the entire way.

CHAPTER 9

Rowdy

I DIDN’T LEAVE SALEM’S place until it was time for me to go back to work on Tuesday. By then we were both worn out, and the idea that it was just some down and dirty sex to get the urge gone was a joke.

All the reasons I had adored her, needed her, admired her when I was younger came back in a knee-weakening flash right on top of the fact that no girl ever in my extensive history of fooling around had ever blown my mind in bed the way Salem did. She was funny. She was quick and sharp tongued. She was wicked street-smart and called things plainly as she saw them but that never made her seem harsh. She was also sweet, sexy as all hell, and absolutely the most beautiful thing I had ever seen stripped na**d and writhing under me. If ever there was a friend I wanted to have benefits with, it was her.

I was also grateful she had let our weekend together pass without a single mention of the elephant in the room—her sister. We joked around about Texas, talked about some of the good things we both remembered, and basically tried to cram a decade of catching up into two days between bouts of sex that made me hot and bothered thinking about them. We reminisced about Phil and compared the tattoos he had left on us to remember him by. For her it was an intricately done Lady of Guadalupe—the patron saint of Mexico—a shout-out to her heritage and traditional tattooing. Mine was the memorial tattoo for my mom. Considering Phil was the only other parental figure I had ever had in my life, it seemed fitting he was the one to pay homage to my late mother with his craft.

Salem just got me. She got my art and why it was so much more important to me than football had ever been. It was nice to spend time with someone that I didn’t have to try and justify all my life choices to. It also kind of nice to spend more than one day with the same girl even if I was scared of getting too close, of ending up too wrapped up in her because she had a history of leaving. I didn’t tell her any of that, though, because I didn’t want to put a damper on the time we had together.