Loud rap music assaulted me as soon as I did, but it was no match for my heart thundering in my ears as I scoured the room until I found Clay. He was on his back, a bar saddled with heavy weights across his chest as he heaved a breath and pushed it up toward where Holden was spotting him.
With one last deep breath, I made a beeline for him, ignoring the players who arched their brows at me as I passed. Holden helped Clay rack the bar just as I approached, and he’d no sooner sat up on the bench before I was wrapping my hand around his wrist and tugging him off it.
“I need you.”
Clay
Giana’s grip was mighty fierce for how small she was, and she all but dragged me through the weight room as my teammates watched curiously. I followed her with an amused smile, shrugging at the players who tilted their chins at me as if to ask, “What the hell is going on?”
Coach Dawson slammed a hand hard into my chest before we hit the doors.
“Training isn’t over,” he said — more to Giana than to me.
“Sorry, Coach. We need Johnson for a quick podcast interview. He’ll be back in fifteen minutes or less, I promise.”
She held her shoulders back as she said it, though I didn’t miss the thick swallow in her throat as she stared up at him. He was at least a foot-and-a-half taller than her, and three times as large. His brow furrowed, a heavy sigh leaving his chest before he took his hand off mine.
“Ten minutes,” he conceded. “You’ll run laps for every minute after.”
I nodded, and then Giana was tugging me out the door.
“So, what podcast is this for?” I teased, knowing damn good and well this had nothing to do with public relations.
Giana ignored me until we walked past a training supply closet, the door of which she wrenched open before shoving me inside.
It was pitch black when the door shut behind us, the silence almost deafening compared to the raucous noise of the weight room down the hall. Giana’s breathing was heavy in that quiet, like a caged animal.
“The light should be—”
I went to reach for it, but Giana smacked my arm down, which told me she knew exactly where it was, too.
“Leave it,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to say this if you’re looking at me.”
“Say wh—?”
“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. A slow inhale and equally slow exhale were all I could manage before I spoke.
“Uh, Kitten, I don’t think—”
“No, I mean it,” she said, cutting me off. “I want you to take my virginity, Clay.”
I was thankful for the pitch black of that closet as I bit my knuckle, stifling a groan at how sinfully sweet it was to hear those words from her lips.
“I’m going to need a little context here,” I finally croaked, that monster inside me getting harder and harder to contain.
There was a long sigh, a shuffling of feet followed by a soft curse that told me she probably walked right into something. “Shawn is experienced,” she said. “He’s probably had sex with more girls than I’ve even met in my lifetime. I mean, he even walks with sexual swagger. He practically drips sex appeal.”
I wrinkled my nose, again thankful for the dark that covered my not-so-subtle disagreement with every word she just said.
“When I finally get my chance with him — if I get my chance — I don’t want to be so bad in bed that he laughs or takes pity on me or… or… walks out completely.”
Those last words were almost like a shocked cry of realization that that was a possibility.
“He won’t walk—”
“You don’t know that,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like to be an almost twenty-year-old virgin because you probably lost your virginity when you were sixteen.”
My mouth shut then, because she was right.
“Please, Clay,” she said, and I felt her small hands reach for me, wrapping around my forearm and squeezing. “I need your help. Please. Please.”
This girl is actually begging me to take her virginity in a dark supply closet right now.
“Teach me how to kiss, how to make a man feel good,” she whispered. “Teach me how to do it all.”
I let out a low hum of a groan on my next exhale because fuck me, it wasn’t okay how much that turned me on.
My heart picked up its pace, thundering like a dozen stallions as I mulled over what she was asking. Every warning sign and bell and whistle was going off like a chaotic symphony inside me for even considering it. Fake kissing and heavy petting was one thing, but to strip her down, to take her for the first time…
That was an entirely new ball game, one I wasn’t sure either of us was equipped to play.
“Clay,” she whispered when I didn’t answer, and her hands crawled up my chest, fisting in my shirt. “There’s no one else I trust. Please.”
I closed my eyes at the sound of yet another plea, gut wrenching and chest caving in because I already knew before I answered that I wouldn’t deny her.
I couldn’t — not when she was asking me for help.
Swallowing, I reached behind her and flicked on the light. We both blinked at the brightness, but then her Caribbean-blue eyes locked on mine, her breath just as shallow as it was when she dragged me in here.
But she didn’t waver.
She didn’t cower our back down. She didn’t shy away. She didn’t take it back. She looked me right in the eye and asked again, silently, for me to be the one to take something I knew was more precious to a woman than I would ever understand as a man.
I rolled my lips together.
And then, I nodded.
Her relieved sigh came like her first breath after being underwater for years. She threw her arms around my neck, and I closed my eyes as I caught her, warning zipping down my spine like an electric shock.
“Really?!” she squealed, squeezing me tighter. “Thank you, Clay. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I just buried my face in her neck where I held her, hoping like hell she knew better than I did what we both could handle. It was more disbelief than anything else that washed over me the longer we stood in that embrace.
I’d agreed.
I was going to take her virginity.
Against every obvious red flag telling me this was a bad idea, I couldn’t say no.
Somewhere deep inside me, that wild creature I’d tried so hard to tame smiled in victory…
And anticipation.
Clay
Our first away game was against the South Vermont University Vikings, and we clobbered them.
The field was a rainy mess from the time we jogged out onto it for warm-ups, our cleats and uniforms both covered completely in mud by the end of the first quarter. My knees ached from sprinting in the conditions, and my left ankle felt worse from all the sliding around than when I’d broken it in the sixth grade.