“Don’t you forget it,” Charlotte said, the softest blush on her cheeks. “He was very good about sticking to our contract,” she added afterward. “One day he actually forgot about his phone—to be honest, I worried he was getting sick.”
Gabriel rumbled a response to Charlie’s tongue-in-cheek comment, and laughter filled the air.
Juliet realized it would always be like this, whether she was with Jake and Esme alone or if they were joined by other members of the family or their friends. Family for the Bishop-Eseras meant support, laughter, ties that bound with affection and love.
Buzzing after the lovely night, she felt lazy and sexy when they got into bed. Jake was feeling the same, kissing her all over, his hand stroking her curves with unhurried patience as he murmured naughty, dirty things that made her toes curl. But it was his breath that hitched when she took over the kissing and began to make her way down his body.
In the mood to tease, she kissed him everywhere except where he wanted her mouth. His thighs were rock hard and gorgeous with muscle, his abdomen ridged, the hairs on his legs rubbing against her in delicious friction.
Though she was torturing him, he didn’t tell her to hurry up.
They were both having too much fun.
His hand did fist in her hair, but he was careful to be gentle.
When she finally closed her mouth over the taut, reddened head of his cock, his back lifted off the bed, his hand shifting to cradle her nape.
“Jules.” It was a groan.
Moaning, she stroked his thigh and drew him deeper into her mouth, enjoying giving him pleasure. Her core grew hotter, wetter, small pulses clenching her muscles. Until by the time he tugged her up his body and asked her to ride him, she was desperate to have him inside her.
A gasp escaped both of them as she settled on him.
Sitting up with her astride him, Jake wrapped his arms around her, his mouth coming to her own. She moved on him as they kissed and the way he held her, with such possessive tenderness, it thickened her throat and made her weave her hands into his hair. As close as two people could be, they touched and made love and Juliet began to believe in happy ever after.
A month later and Jake was having the best game of his career.
The lights of Eden Park blazed down on him, the field a rich green except where it was marked by the sponsors’ logos.
That wasn’t to say it had been an easy game—in point of fact, it had been a bruiser. The clock had eight minutes to go, Jake’s team was behind by six points… and the ball had just hit Jake’s hands.
Seeing a gap in their opponent’s defenses, he ran, always aware of all the players around him. Right before his body smashed into that of an aggressive flanker who had his head down to tackle him, he threw the ball in a sweet, sweet pass that landed in Danny’s hands.
Even as Jake’s momentum crashed him into the defending flanker, he saw his brother’s winged feet fly. He came up from the tackle relatively fast, just in time to see that Danny was about to be tackled. Leo was to his back and right, but Danny did sometimes have a problem with his spatial awareness on the field.
Already running, Jake yelled, “Danny! Five!” It was a simple clock reference—no need or time for complicated calls when play was moving this fast; their opposition would have no time to take advantage, not if Danny passed quick enough.
The ball left his brother’s hands just before Danny went down in the tackle, the defender’s hit taking him out-of-bounds. But the ball was still in play and Leo, fast and powerful, was in the clear… all the way to the try line. Jake yelled with the rest of his team, fist pumping the air as Leo slid across the line, thumping the ball down in the area behind the goal posts.
The whistle awarding the try and the resulting five points split the air.
But the celebrations had to wait. With the clock rapidly counting down, Jake quickly set up the kick awarded to his team for having successfully achieved a try. If he managed to clear the goalposts, they’d get the two points they needed to win this match. The conversion kick, however, was always lined up with where the ball had been placed during the try, and Leo had slid across at a spot that meant the kick would be from an acute left angle.
Wiping the sweat off his face using his playing jersey, Jake set the oval-shaped ball upright on the kicking tee, tilting it a fraction toward the right as was his preference. Then he breathed deep and shut out the screaming crowds, stopped seeing his teammates, and focused on the passion inside that drove him.
Juliet and Esme. Twin flames deep in his heart.
He moved back several steps, looked at the goalposts one last time in the silence inside his mind, pictured the ball flying through the posts in a perfect curve, then flowed into the kick. The ball flew in what seemed an impossible arc, one that meant it’d bounce off the posts, losing them the game.
The entire stadium was hushed.
The ball sailed through, the referee’s flags went up to signify a successful conversion, and the stands erupted.
The final whistle went off at the same time and Jake was overwhelmed by his jubilant teammates, including an ecstatic Leo—who wrapped one arm around Danny’s neck and hauled him down for a kiss on the cheek. “Fucking insane pass, Danny boy!”
Words were lost in the overlapping conversations, sheer joy ascendant.
Jake looked up toward the area in the stands where he knew his family and the two pieces of his heart were watching, and though he couldn’t see them from this far away, he blew a kiss in that direction.
Juliet caught that kiss, curling her fingers against her thundering heart. It was pandemonium in the private box behind the family’s seats. Gabriel had opened a bottle of champagne, the girls were yelling and dancing, and Sailor had found streamers that he’d let off before pulling his wife close for an ecstatic kiss.
“You okay?” Alison touched her lower back.
“I just… It’s so dangerous, the game.” She’d never truly understood the amount of force that came from two such powerful men hitting each other at speed. When Jake had gone down just before the try, she’d jerked out of her seat, her skin ice-cold.
“It took me time,” Alison murmured. “But it’s their passion. If I stopped them, I’d kill a part of them.” She stroked her hand down Juliet’s spine. “Jake’s a brilliant player, rarely goes for brute force. He plays with intelligence and strategy.”
Juliet nodded; she’d seen that on the field. Jake had scored tries in his career, but more often, he set up the try. It was as if his mind could see multiple steps ahead—even when all the pieces on the board were moving. “He’s really good,” she said, then flushed. “Sorry, I never properly watched rugby before being with Jake.”
Laughing, Alison passed over a glass of champagne while behind them, Sailor started popping open beers for those who wanted them. Ísa and the girls already had glasses of bubbly pink grape juice in hand.
“I still get a shock sometimes,” Alison said, “when I see Danny and Jake do impossible things on the field—how are these my boys? The same ones I picked up a hundred times when they were learning to walk.”
Juliet could commiserate; she still hadn’t internalized the fact that Jake was her man. That the world continued to question their relationship didn’t exactly help. She had a firsthand demonstration of the public’s lack of belief in their relationship later that night, when Jake gave in to his family’s urgings to head out on the town with his team to celebrate.