Blind Side (Red Zone Rivals, #2)

by Kandi Steiner

I watched her pinball the entire way out of the weight room, and didn’t realize how much I liked the distraction of her until she was gone.

“Do you think I’m going to be tying you up, Kitten?” Something wicked gleamed in his eyes, like he’d just thought about what that would entail, and once again, he leaned his large frame over the tiny table. “I mean, that can be arranged,” he added with a smirk. “If you’d like.”

Clay caught me with ease, his arms coming around my waist as my legs locked around his. My breath caught with the force, hair falling into my face a bit and glasses sliding down the bridge of my nose. I pushed them back up slowly, breathing heavily as I catalogued every place my body touched his — my arms around his neck, my chest pressed against his, my thighs squeezing at his hips. And between my legs, something foreign tingled where his stomach rubbed against me.

She was completely oblivious to how sexy her legs were, to how seeing that little skirt contrasted with the modest button up fastened all the way to her neck would make any straight man long to undo her,

I caught her in a whoosh of air and hair and a sweet scent that washed over me like a baptism, ocean breeze and sunflowers. Her arms wrapped around my neck, mine wound around her hips, and I felt the lace of her stockings as she crossed her ankles where they hooked behind me, the smooth skin of her inner thigh brushing against my waist.

I squeezed where I held her hips, focusing on everything we’d rehearsed and not on the fact that she had her legs wrapped around me in a skirt — which meant other than a scrap of panties, there was nothing between us.

I was surprised by the soft firmness she met me with, tentative, but seeking. She froze at first contact, an inhale trapped in her chest, but then she slowly exhaled, pulled me into her, and deepened the kiss like we’d shared a hundred before it.

I had not prepared for Giana to roll her hips, arching into me and breathing in another long kiss with a shockingly seductive moan before I had the chance to break contact. That little motion, how her ass poked out and I felt the heat of her against my lower abdomen made my cock twitch, and I groaned, squeezing her hip before I reluctantly pulled away.

He held me like I weighed nothing, his knuckles still there under my chin as his lips pressed softly against my own. And when I’d deepened the kiss, when I’d wrapped my arms tighter around his neck? He’d only pulled me closer, a low groan rumbling out of his throat that made something… different happen to me. It sent a spark of fire roaring up my inner thighs, one that sparked at my core and had me flushing any time I thought about it since.

His lips were warm and soft, delicately pressing against my skin as his hand slowly slid down the length of my ribs and under the table once more. He rested that palm possessively on my knee, fingertips wrapping full around it and tickling the inside of my thigh.

It was a welcome distraction, watching Giana’s shock as what I told her to do worked, feeling her tremble and pant beneath me as I teased her in that booth, knowing it was driving Shawn mad to watch it.

I was surprised how easy it was, how effortless it felt to kiss along her neck, to whisper in her ear and elicit a wave of chills over her skin.

But as the night progressed, that amusement shifted into something primal. The more I pretended like she was mine to tease like that, the more it felt like she really was.

Her arms threaded around my neck and my hands caught her ass — her bare ass under the skirt she wore. It was apparently something she hadn’t thought about before jumping, because shock washed over her, face paling at the feel of my warmth against her.

I cut off the rest of her words with my hand behind her head, guiding her into me for another bruising kiss. This time, I pinned her against the wall, and she gasped when my abdomen rubbed along her center.

Clay inhaled a deep breath through his nose, one hand winding around the small of my back while the other cradled the back of my head and held me to him.

I parted my lips and met his tongue with mine, a sharp zip of electricity stunning me at the collision. It was as if his tongue stroked me between my thighs rather than in my mouth, and I squeezed my legs tighter together against the foreign sensation even as I leaned in for more. Clay moaned, one hand tightening where he held me against him as the other slid down from my face, over my neck, and right over the swell of my heaving chest.

It was possessive, the way he cradled me, the way he pulled me in tighter, kissed me harder, his hand slowly pushing up under the hem of my skirt.

I spread my legs wider, letting him in. Until he ran the entire length of his index finger right along the soaked cotton of my thong. I whimpered, a gasp of a moan roaring out of me at the touch, at the feeling of his sure, steady palm against the most private and sensitive part of me. And when he felt my desire, he groaned, his mouth capturing mine just as he retracted his finger only to glide it along that same line of fire with more pressure.

“I want you to fuck me.” The words rode out on a breathy, high-pitched plea that jarred me to the core. It was like a fist to the gut and a mouth around my cock at the same time, both excruciatingly painful and delightfully shocking. I ignored the beast inside me that fired up at those words, suffocating the wild need for me to grant her wish right now, right here in this fucking closet.

And every minute since that night, her little whimpers of pleasure were about the only fucking thing I could think of.

It was also fucking stupid how much I had thought about her since.

I was eager to test the theories I’d come up with the next time we were alone, and to tease her a little — which was quickly becoming my favorite pastime.

“Use me to take your mind off whatever it is that’s hurting you, to escape.” She swallowed.

“Show me you want it,” I demanded, voice low and firm.

I flexed into her touch. “I love seeing you like this,” I husked. “On your knees.”

“Good girl.”

So I held her gaze and I said, “Look at me while I fuck that pretty mouth.”

“Goddamn, Giana,” I praised, running the pad of my thumb over her slick bottom lip. “Such a good fucking girl.”

“You want me to tell you how good you made me feel, how hot it was to see you on your knees for me, to watch as I fucked your mouth.”

“Fuck, Kitten,” he said next, his fingertips playing at the seam of my thong. “You fucking loved that, didn’t you? Being on your knees for me.

I wanted her. I wanted her so badly my chest had a gaping hole in it whenever I wasn’t with her.

I wanted to touch her, to hold her, to taste her.

I’d take every stolen moment, every fake kiss, every lesson she’d let me teach her. I’d grind myself down to sand and let her leave me behind in the end if it meant I got to soak up everything that she was right now.

She reminded me every chance she could that I was worthy, that I was good, that I was going somewhere.

It had been hard enough through the week to ignore texts or tell her I was busy, to not look her way every time she was on the field or in the cafeteria, to adjust my schedule so I wasn’t in the same place with her for too long.

She was a vision, draped in a floor-length dress that glittered like starlight against her pale skin.

I was mesmerized. And I was rooted to the spot until the moment her eyes flashed behind the cameraman in front of her and landed on me.

“You look…” I bit my lip against everything I wanted to say, landing on a quiet, “breathtaking.”

“I’ve watched enough Breaking Bad that I think I could help you get rid of the body.”

“You’re so fucking perfect.”

“I couldn’t eat,” he started, knee still bouncing. “Couldn’t train, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t do anything other than make myself sick thinking about him touching you.”

“I have thought of nothing and no one but you since that night on the observatory tower.”

“I want you to be happy, Giana,” he continued, voice ragged. “Maybe more than I’ve wanted anything in my life. And if he’s what makes you happy? I’ll leave. Right now.”

“But that’s not what I want,” he continued, testing the space between us. “And it hasn’t been for a while now, no matter how I tried to fight it.”

“I want you,” he repeated on a raspy breath. “And I don’t want to pretend anymore.”

“This isn’t fake,” he swore against my skin, kissing and nipping it along the way. “Nothing between us has ever been fake.”

“You read my books,” I breathed, a question and a disbelief all at once. “Fuck yeah, I did.” “Why?” Clay swallowed, brushing his knuckles along the side of my cheek. “I told myself it was to help you get Shawn,” he said. “But in truth, it was to help me please you.”

I loved how he talked to me, how every dirty word made me arch and pant and ache for him.

“That’s my girl,”