Page 25

Raeann

T he nice porter dressed in a fancy black suit and bow tie wheels my luggage all the way into the suite at the fancy hotel and places the bag I brought on a stand that’s already set up. He turns with a genuine smile. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Freeman?”

Mrs. Freeman ? The air gets sucked from my lungs. I can’t even respond to him in a socially acceptable amount of time, but he waits patiently for me to gather my thoughts. “No, I think I’m fine. I so appreciate your help.”

I take out my wallet and hand him a ten-dollar bill.

I’m so flustered that I ask for it back and then give him a twenty because I have no idea what I’m doing.

My luggage doesn’t even belong in this nice of a room.

I don’t even belong in this nice of a room.

Nor the sleek black car that picked me up from the airport with its own personal driver.

Nor the first-class seat my ass sat in like I had just won the lottery.

The porter, who I’m sure is going back to tell all his porter friends what a hot mess I am, smiles again, still seemingly genuine, then tips his hat and leaves the room. I’m so flustered, I fling myself back on the bed only to have my phone ring.

I scramble for it, wondering if it’s Micah. He landed in California a few days ago for his away game, and I’m… Well, I traveled to see him.

Tab’s picture flashes on the screen, and I hit Answer a little too quickly. “Tab.”

“Raeann.” Her response comes just as deadpan as mine.

“Did you know they give you hot towels in first class? Hot towels. What do you even use hot towels for?”

“To clean up the downstairs from all the mile-high sex?”

I chuckle. “And here I wiped it on my face.”

She sucks in a breath. “I hope it was clean.”

“I was in first class!”

“Yeah, well, you could’ve had your own private plane, but no .” She draws the last word out.

“It seemed so unnecessary.”

“So, how’s the hotel? Fancy?”

I walk over to the huge window in my room and peer out. “This furniture is nicer than most things I’ve ever seen, and I have a view of the ocean.”

“Penthouse?”

“Penthouse,” I confirm.

“Man, you’re living the life. You, like, have your own sugar daddy.”

“Doesn’t sugar daddy imply that he’s a lot older than me and I don’t work?”

She chuckles. “Who cares what it means? Micah Freeman is whisking you off to California and who knows where else? The Raeann Gorman of a few months ago wasn’t doing any of those things.” She pauses for a second. “What’s the bathroom look like?”

I tear my stare away from the waves crashing against the shore and walk to the bathroom off this room. “Clawfoot tub.”

“You have to take a bath in it!”

Tab is content on talking about all of these amazing things, but my chest is starting to flutter. “How are things there? Athena?”

“Jace is currently feeding Athena copious amounts of treats.”

“Not too many. You know how her stomach gets.”

She raises her voice. “Jace is currently feeding the appropriate amount of treats to Athena that will not trigger her sensitive stomach.”

“Roger that,” I hear him say in the background.

“Are you sure this is okay?” I ask Tab. We’d talked about me leaving for a couple of days over and over, but guilt rears again.

It doesn’t matter that she told me repeatedly to go.

At one point, she even told me that if I didn’t go, she was going to come in my place, steal Micah, and leave me to become an old maid.

“I love you dearly, but stop. Everything is fine here. Business is booming. You did this, Raeann. You deserve to take a break.”

“ We deserve to take a break.”

“I’ll take one when I find my pro football hottie who wants to shower me with gifts and whisk me away to romantic places.”

“He does have a game to play here, you know.”

“Meh.”

“I hate the idea that I keep being pulled in two different directions.”

“That’s why we have employees. That’s why I have Joey looking for a third.

The point is for the money to pile up in our bank account while we become less and less involved.

Right? We need to think about franchising and having a store in New York.

Or we can have a store in every major pro football city.

That way, when you’re being wined and dined all over the US, you can go visit each store to make sure it’s doing well. ”

“That’s…actually a great idea.”

Tab likes to downplay her involvement in Pet Threads, but the truth is, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.

One day, I divulged a dream to her after I’d started making Athena’s clothes.

First, we started with a store on an e-commerce site that pushed handmade goods.

When we grew on there, she asked the landlord about the storefront below our apartment, and everything clicked into place after that.

If Tab wasn’t with me in the first year of starting this business, I wouldn’t be where I am. We split everything fifty-fifty.

Now that there’s something to split, that is.

“I was also thinking that we should contact the league about having a partnership where we can use their logos on our designs. We’d have to see the percentage they’d want, but I think it’s a great way to tie-in what everyone knows is happening between you two now.”

“The porter called me Mrs. Freeman.”

Tab barks out a laugh. “I bet you died.”

“Nearly.”

“It’s an eventuality.”

“Shh,” I chastise her. “You’re going to jinx it.”

She lets out a breath, and I’m startled when she doesn’t retort back with her classic brand of humor. “Good things can happen to you, Rae-bae. Good things are happening to you, and nothing is going to change that.”

My stomach squeezes. I nod, like I know it, but it’s going to take me a while to know it. I don’t want to live with this fear of having everything taken away, but it’s so hard to switch that part of my brain off. It’s ingrained in me.

“Send me pictures and videos. I was thinking, you should do a post from your hotel room on the Pet Threads account and ask people where they think you are.”

“That could be cute.”

“People are speculating anyway.”

That’s the truth. I had an entertainment magazine reach out to me for comment after photos of Micah and me at dinner and around Nashville were shared on social media. Coupled with the fact that I was at his home game, rumors are amping up. “I should probably ask Micah if it’s okay.”

“Are you kidding me? You can, but I’m sure he’s probably going to make you put him in the video so everyone else knows he’s staked his claim on you.”

“You make it sound?—”

“Hot? Because that’s what I think it is. Own it, girl. I mean, the man got a tattoo for you. Already. You’ve only been seeing him a couple of months, and he permanently etched you onto his skin.”

“But—”

“Whatever you want, it’s fine.” Micah’s voice makes me scream, and I drop the phone.

He’s leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest with a knowing smirk on his face.

Goose bumps burst up and down my arms, my heart pounds, and a healthy dose of heat moves into my core. “How long have you been standing there?”

He walks forward and bends over to grab the phone. “Tab?” I can’t hear her response, but he grins. “Yeah, I’ll tell her to call you back. Is everything good at the store?” He nods once. “Great. Bye.”

He ends the call and tosses the phone onto my luggage. “You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

“I missed you.”

“It’s only been a few days.”

He gives me a threatening look. “Downplay the distance between us again and see what happens.”

“The porter called me Mrs. Freeman.”

He nuzzles my neck. “The whole world will call you Mrs. Freeman eventually, but I’m only going to call you mine.”

He pushes the cardigan over my shoulder and kisses my bare skin. “I didn’t think I’d even get to see you.”

Pulling away, he stares at me intently. “You think my girlfriend would fly out to my game and I wouldn’t come see her?”

“I read before that you liked to be alone before games.”

“Alone includes you now, Raeann.” My cardigan falls to the floor with a short flick of his wrist. Pinching the skirt of my dress, he tugs it higher until he holds the fabric with his free hand and uses the other to take a handful of my ass.

“Anything on your mind, superstar?”

“Two things. I had planned on taking you to the beach so you could stand in the ocean for the first time, but now I have another idea.”

He hikes my leg up his hip until my foot that was on the floor can’t even touch anymore. Bracing me against him, he moves me to the bed. When my knees hit, he leans me backward, keeping the skirt of my dress at my hips. “Every time I see you, you get more beautiful.”

He runs his hands down my arms and back up. When he hits my elbows, he grips them, forcing them over my head. My pussy aches for him. “What’s your idea?” I ask, my breath raspy.

“My tongue on your pussy.” He holds my arms with one hand while his other travels down the length of my body.

Over my collarbone, across my breasts, and across my torso until he brushes the sensitive skin under my panties.

He rims around the outside of my thigh, catching just under the fabric as it curves toward my core.

He runs his finger along the crotch line, along where my juices have leaked. “You want it, too.”

I haven’t understood why I can’t bring myself to use the toy he bought me.

But as soon as he starts touching me, I get it.

I’m worried nothing will live up to this and then I’ll leave myself strung out again, never satisfied.

At this point, I don’t even think another man could satisfy me.

Not like Micah. My whole body is attuned to his.

“Is it difficult to take the dress off?”

“There’s a zipper,” I answer, leaning forward. I grab it and start to unzip, but his hands take over, moving it down before gathering the skirt and pulling it over my head. I prop my feet up on the bed frame, licking my lips at the obvious tent in his pants.

“Not right now. I can’t wait.” I pout, and he runs his fingertip over my lower lip.

“I don’t have the bandwidth to be careful with you right now, and I’m certain I don’t want to choke you with my cock, Raeann.

I need you happy and healthy at the game.

I need you slick and needy every other minute. Okay?”

I nod eagerly. He gently pushes my shoulders back to the mattress while he works my panties off. His huge frame kneels between my legs, and even him just staring at me has heat dripping from my core.

He licks those drops first, lids fluttering closed on a moan. Then his hands work up my rib cage to grab my breasts as he buries his face further into my folds.

“Oh, Micah.”

He wastes no time, running the tip of his tongue over my clit while I squirm underneath him.

My first orgasm rockets through me within minutes. I barely have time to register the bliss before I realize he’s not stopping. “Micah.”

“Need more.”

His carefully calculated pattern across my clit doesn’t waver until I come again, this time louder. “Enough.”

He shakes his head, somehow not losing his rhythm. My fingers dive into his hair. I want to push him away and pull him close at the same time. My sensitive skin is on the fritz. It hurts and feels oh so good.

“Micah, oh God.”

He’s relentless, pinning my hips to the mattress, keeping me in place so he can drive me higher and higher. I bite back a scream, and then another. He’s like a madman on a mission. He usually talks, and soothes, and praises, but this is a frenzy of physical pleasure. Consuming.

It’s as if he was starving for me, and my body is all too willing to give him whatever he’s searching for. My pleasure? Ownership?

My fourth orgasm hits me, and I’m a puddled mess on the bed. I don’t know words anymore. I speak in cries and moans, his name a worship on my lips in coveted gasps.

We continue like that for minutes upon minutes. “Please,” he finally rasps.

“Please what?”

“One more.”

“Baby, it’s too much.”

“One more, I promise.”

The pleading stare in his gaze while he watches me—the complete overruling passion—pushes me closer to the edge.

Impossibly, my body gears up for another, and I start to shake uncontrollably.

I lose all control over function and thought, and when I come, I’m so thrown in the grip of pleasure that I see actual stars.

I come to when Micah lowers my dress and crawls to lie next to me.

He wraps his arms around my body, placing soft kisses over my shoulders and cheeks.

“What was that about?”

He shrugs. “I missed you, and all I thought about was giving you multiple Os.”

My breaths still rasp in and out of me.

“I wanted to see how many you can handle, and then we’ll work up from there.”

“ Work up from there ?” I hear myself saying.

“Yeah, there are several records. Or people don’t agree on the records. Some say 222. Others, 135.”

I gasp. “In a day?”

“In an hour.”

I try to scramble out from under him, but he laughs and embraces me, turning us to our sides. “You have no idea how free and beautiful you look when you’re having one.”

“Well, I know how tired I am now.”

“Come on. Get that cute little ass up. We have the ocean to walk into.”

“My legs are Jell-O,” I complain as he gets me to my feet. I’m still feeling things in places and tightness in muscles I didn’t even realize I had.

“Lean on me, Mrs. Freeman . We’ve got this.”