Page 40 of Trick Play (Playing the Field #4)

CHAPTER

THIRTY-NINE

Micah

Now

My apartment is closer to Mischief than Zeke’s house, so that’s where we go. The trip is short but long enough that nerves begin to fill my gut. I have to keep reminding myself of the way Zeke reacted in the private room of the club. The way he pressed his obvious erection against my back and purred salacious words in my ear. I recall the time he confessed to enjoying watching me dance with Frankie in the nightclub.

I hold on to the reassurances, lest I fall too deep into a pit of worry.

The heated glances he sends me during the trip help as well.

And once we enter my apartment building and the elevator doors close behind us and Zeke doesn’t panic at the rising height because he’s too busy groping me and shoving his tongue down my throat—that takes my mind far, far away from all concerns that he might want me less than when he didn’t know about my night job.

I’d changed into a pair of loose cargo pants and a crop top before leaving Mischief earlier, but beneath, I’m still wearing the pink lingerie set I’d worn for the private dance, the floral lace pattern decorating the tan skin of my stomach where the top doesn’t cover. Zeke’s fingers explore that expanse of tempting flesh and fist the delicate seams as if to rip them apart. The elevator opens just as I’m afraid he really will rip my clothes right off me.

Reluctantly, we separate, and when we move to exit, I come face-to-face with my elderly neighbor, Ms. Gennings, and her equally as elderly Chihuahua, Choo Choo. She’s frozen in the hallway, jaw slack as Choo Choo trembles on the floor at her feet. He’s fine, though. He just does that. All the time. I swear he never stops shaking.

“Ms. Gennings.” I hastily wipe my wet lips and correct my rumpled clothing. “What are you doing out so late?”

“My Choo Choo needs to tinkle.” She waggles a chastising finger at me. “This is a public elevator, young man, no matter what time of day. You should be ashamed.”

“I . . .” Well, I’m not. I mean, can she blame me? Zeke is an eleven out of ten on a bad day.

She moves to enter the elevator, so we quickly dart into the hall. As we pass, though, she pats my shoulder and leans in to whisper, “Good job!”

I manage to hold in my laughter until the apartment door closes behind us, but once it does, I collapse against the hard wood and guffaw. “Holy— I can’t believe she just— And we were—” My laughter fades as the severity of this night hits me in full force.

Zeke is already staring intently at me when my eyes find his. All my fears surface once again, but nothing on Zeke’s face seems judgmental, upset, or disgusted. The only emotion in his dark gaze is desire.

“How can you?—”

“Remember when you?—”

We speak at the same time, both breaking off with sheepish grins.

“You go first,” I insist because I’m too nervous.

He gives me a crooked smile that says he’s just as nervous as I am. “Do you remember that party at Gin’s house, when you gave Tank that lap dance?”

My cheeks grow hot. Of course I remember. I was drunk and not thinking about repercussions. After I sobered, I’d wondered if that lap dance I’d given his teammate had ruined my chances with Zeke. He’d never said anything about it, though, and we’d later ended up dating, so I’d tried not to fret over it. “Yeah,” I eventually respond, voice reedy.

Is he going to make some comment about how he should have realized I was a stripper back then? Will he say it was obvious?

“That was the night I realized I like to watch,” he surprises me by saying.

I blink once. Twice. “You . . . what?”

“It turned me on to see you giving him a lap dance. At first, I didn’t understand the way my body was reacting. Tahegin tried to reassure me it was okay, but it was ultimately one of my other friends who spelled it out for me. Chris is kinky, and he helped me understand what it meant to enjoy watching you dance and grind on other guys. Like when we would all go out to Gemini together, and you and Frankie would go dance. I liked to sit and just . . . watch.”

Right. He’d already told me about that, but . . . I gape at him, eyes wide, as realization dawns. “And after, we’d go back to your place, and you’d fuck me so good .” It makes sense if he was that turned on by me dancing on other guys.

“I always fuck you good!” he quickly defends.

“Mmm,” I purr and caress his chest, “you do.”

We lose ourselves in another heated kiss to rival the one from the elevator. I grip him everywhere I can—biceps, shoulders, pecs—to remind myself that this is real . He’s here, kissing me, desiring me, even after finding out that I moonlight as a stripper. Zeke doesn’t mind. Hell, he likes it! He isn’t jealous or disgusted; he’s turned on, and the proof is in his fervent, needy kisses.

Oh, fuck. That reminds me.

Yanking my face from his, I gasp for air as he dives for my neck, kissing and nipping and licking until I almost forget why I pulled away. It takes the strength of God to put my hands on his chest and shove him back a few inches. “Wait,” I pant. “Need to—talk.”

“Fuck talking,” he growls and grabs the delicate lingerie above my waistband, yanking us together until I can feel his arousal digging into my stomach.

“It’s important. It’s about your kissing.”

He pauses. “What’s wrong with it? I thought you liked the way I?—”

“I do,” I assure him. “I mean, about you kissing other people.”

That sobers him, and he steps back with a soft, “Oh.” He blinks, the lust in his eyes fading with every passing second. “Right.”

I take a deep breath and blurt, “I don’t want you to stop.”

Zeke’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline. “What? But you were jealous of Gael at the animal shelter, and we weren’t even technically together then. How could you possibly be okay with it?”

“Okay, that is true.” I wince at the reminder of that day, when my jealousy and loose lips cost me thirty grand for some stupid-cute kittens I didn’t even get to bring home. “But it was different with Gael. Your agents were trying to set you two up, and you kissed several times—which is different from your fans. I mean, I know you, Tahegin, and Rix have kissed on several occasions for your posts, but they’re only friends and aren’t interested in you like that. Gael is a hot, sexy actor with flawless skin, a beautiful face, and a belly button piercing, and I love you, so how could I not be?—”

Zeke cuts me off with a bruising kiss. “Say it again,” he demands against my lips.

“I—” Kiss. “—love—” Kiss. “—you.” Kiss.

“No repeat kisses with anyone but you. Got it.” He crowds me against the wall, devouring me, fisting and yanking at my clothes.

My crop top flies over my head. “Rix and Gin are fine—” I mumble, trying to keep up by rucking up his shirt, too, until it lies discarded on the floor beside mine. “Your media presence is an inspiration to young athletes. It’s an important part of who you are, and the charities you’ve helped?—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, bunny. Now, are you gonna let me love this ass like I love you?”

My laughter is swallowed by his mouth, but I pull back after just a second, teasingly staying just out of reach. “Zeke,” I purr. “How about I give you that private dance? You never got to see me in action tonight.”

He groans, deep and guttural, and fists his cock through his jeans. “Oh, fuck yes.”

Smirking, I take his hand and lead him to my bedroom, where I sit him down in the chair I use for practice. It’s set up a good distance from my pole so I won’t accidentally kick it during a move.

Zeke collapses into the chair, bare chest rising and falling with heavy breaths as he watches me with ravenous eyes. The bulge in his jeans is obscene, and I bask in the knowledge that I’ve caused this reaction from him.

I quickly connect my phone to the Bluetooth speaker in my bedroom, and as the first notes of the song play, recognition slowly drifts across Zeke’s face. It’s a remake of the song that was playing in the private room earlier when I came in to dance, not knowing it was Zeke waiting for me inside. I haven’t given private dances in ages, but when I did do them, this was one of my go-to songs. The tempo is slow and sensual, the singer’s voice deep and alluring, and the lyrics relatively relatable to our situation. He sings about being put under a spell by someone he desires and about how he can’t keep his hands off them—only slightly ironic, considering the people I danced for weren’t allowed to touch me.

Zeke, however, can, and I hope he does. I hope my dance drives him so crazy he can’t help himself. I hope he grabs me with his big, rough hands and kisses me until we lose control, until we lose track of reality and live in our fantasy that has somehow become unexpectedly tangible. Real. No more secrets lie between us. We can love and be loved and do everything we want, together. Finally.

I pull out all my tricks, giving Zeke a tease as I shimmy out of my pants to leave me in only the lingerie bodysuit, the lace skirt swishing over my ass cheeks as I strut for the pole waiting in front of Zeke. My skin is still shimmery from the strawberry-scented, glitter-filled body spray and lotion I use at the club, and the familiar scent fills the room as I grab the pole and swing onto it. I start low and slow, rolling my body along the cool metal, lifting my leg high until I’m in a full vertical split—which has Zeke’s jaw dropping despite how often he’s bent me into a similar position in bed. It’s a thrill to know I can still surprise and enthrall him with my body when he already knows it so well.

Private dances have never been my favorite, hence why I don’t give them anymore, but dancing for Zeke is intoxicating in the best kind of way. I find myself pushing my limits, muscles quivering as I hold myself high above the floor and flip my ass and legs over my head, my bare feet and toes pointed gracefully.

Upside down, I lower myself to the ground before rolling from the pole and closer to Zeke. I end on my ass, legs spread wide as I pull myself through a middle split to lie flat on my belly at his feet. When I rise, it’s a slow roll from shoulders to hips to knees, and then I crawl the rest of the way to him.

I climb onto his lap, touching him more intimately than I would a patron of Mischief, and grind my prominent erection, unfettered even with the tight lace underwear I’m wearing, against the bulge in Zeke’s jeans. The friction is almost too much—almost enough to make me say “fuck it” and abandon the dance altogether in favor of riding his dick into the day after tomorrow.

“Dear God, you dance like this every night?” Zeke rasps, his hands curling into fists on either side of the chair to keep himself from touching me.

“Sure,” I muse in his ear before nipping at it. “Except I don’t do private dances, and I don’t grind my dick against anyone else, and I don’t get hard for them, and I don’t let them touch me.” Running my hands down his arms, I grab his wrists and bring his hands to my hips. “Touch me, Zeke.”

It’s all over from there. I can’t say what song auto plays next, or the one after that, or the next. I’m not sure what time it is or how late it gets, only that we’re getting off together like two lovers who have been separated for years. We’re rough hands and frantic limbs, so needy that we don’t even get the rest of our clothes off before the first orgasm. Zeke just uses his hold on my waist to rut me against him until we frot our way to a sticky mess in our underwear. Then, he carries me to the bed, where, with a promise to buy me countless more sets, he rips the delicate lingerie from my body, utterly destroying it before destroying me, too. We’re wild, feral, as we come together and pull apart and collide again. It somehow feels like our first real time together—no secrets, no alcohol, all love—and our millionth time—the way we know each other’s bodies better than our own.

He kisses the birthmark under my left nipple, then sucks it into a dark hickey. I bite his shoulder as he pounds into me, leaving an impression on his tan skin that I hope stays long after tonight. I love the attention he gives my body, the marks he leaves on me, and his groans with each new bite I bury into his muscles.

We mark each other the ways we know how, and then we find more we didn’t know we could. I’ll feel him in me for days and see him on me for even longer. If this were football season, he’d be chirped in the locker room for the scratches down his back and the bites on his shoulders and pecs, but I know he wouldn’t mind.

Because we can do this now without guilt, without the daunting thoughts about how we couldn’t belong to each other. Now, we can. Now, we do. I belong to him, and he belongs to me, and neither of us would have it any other way—except, maybe, sooner than now. I’m pretty sure we’re both feeling foolish about the serious miscommunication between us, the secrets we kept. We’re thankful those are obsolete now, though. With the secrets gone, there’s room for us to be Zeke and Micah. Together. The way it should have always been.

“Never leave me,” I beg as I ride him, sweaty and breathless and exhausted, toward another orgasm that is borderline torture at this point.

“Never, bunny,” he promises, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me down for a deep kiss. “I’ll never let you go, not now that I’ve tasted what it’s like to love you.”

I throw my head back and moan as he circles his hips, cock deep inside me. “Didn’t know you were such a sap.”

He chuckles. “That’s the last thing I’ve ever been accused of being. You must bring it out of me. Now, come on my fucking cock like a good little bunny.”

And I do.