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Honestly, my time would have been put to better use if I’d just stayed home to unpack a handful of the million boxes that cluttered my four-thousand square foot beachfront home, but one look around the cardboard castle I’d been living in lately had overwhelmed me to the point I’d had to get the hell out of there.
I was sure the house would be nice once I was doing more than squatting in it—at least the pictures my assistant had shown me online before I told her to pull the trigger indicated it would be—but I hadn’t had the time to breathe lately, let alone unpack. I woke up each morning before dawn for a five-mile run on the beach, then headed home with just enough time to shower and suck back a cup of coffee before I had to be at the school. On top of coaching, there was a shitload more paperwork than I’d been expecting, and I was still trying to get my footing with the rest of the OU athletic staff.
After practice I hit up the weight room with the kids to make sure I didn’t start slipping. By the time I got home, I was usually wiped. I had just enough wherewithal to order something for dinner, pour myself a drink, and sit down to go over the stats on all my players so I could make sure we were ready for the start of the season. Then I usually forced myself to unpack two boxes each night before allowing myself to fall into bed and crash, only to wake up and start all over again.
Sam and Monica had invited me over to their place for dinner twice now, but I didn’t have the time. A high school reunion was the very last place I had any business being when there was still so much on my plate, but the thought that I might get to seeherpushed me to be something I hadn’t allowed myself to be in a very long time: Reckless.
It had been ten years since I set eyes on Presley Fields and the draw to see her again after so long was too great to ignore.
“Oh my god! Beau Wade, it’s so good to see you!” The woman sitting behind a long table filled with name tags shot to her feet and jogged around the best she could in her heels. I was caught off guard when she latched onto my shoulders with her long acrylic nails and lifted up to place a kiss on my cheek, awfully close to my lips and way too familiar for my liking.
I yanked my head back, out of the line of fire and gave her the same smile I reserved for dickhead reporters who liked to ask backhanded questions after a loss just to rub that shit in my face.
“Uh, yeah. You too...” I trailed off, at a loss for who this chick was supposed to be.
“Anna?” she said like that wasn’t one of the most commonly used names in the English language. “It’s Anna Waters now, but you probably remember me as Anna Clark.”
The name rang a bell, but it took me a moment to put it together with the woman standing in front of me. Then it hit me. “Ah, right,” I said with a snap of my fingers. “Anna Clark. I remember now.”
She used to run in the same clique as my on-again-off-again girlfriend during senior year, Larissa Johnston. If high school was a cliché, they’d have been the group of mean girls who ran around making everyone else feel like shit. Most of them had been cheerleaders andallof them were spoiled brats.
If I were being honest, I hadn’t liked Larissa all that much, even when I was dating her, but I’d been a horny little asshole and she let me have sex with her.
“Good to see you.”
She smiled like she’d just won the lottery and clung to my arm as a group began gathering around me. I stood there, gritting my teeth to keep from telling everyone to back the fuck up as I received back slaps and high fives from my graduating class like they were my best friends instead of people I hadn’t spoken a word to in a decade and a half. My heart rate had picked up. I was starting to feel claustrophobic as the group got even bigger, the walls closing in on me, and even though I was doing my best to keep from snapping at everyone, it was getting harder by the second.
I was about to lose it when a gap formed in front of me and a flash of vibrant red caught my attention. I looked past the mass of people vying for my attention, and the moment I realized who I was looking at, my heart started beating faster for a whole other reason.
She was the one person from back then that I would recognize anywhere, no matter how much time had passed. Presley Fields stood across the gym looking like a goddamn vision in crimson. Her long wheat-blonde hair hung down her back in fat loose curls that shined like spun gold beneath the overhead lights.
I hadn’t known whether or not she’d be here tonight, it was just my luck that she was and it took no time at all for me to find her. I’d been prepared to search her out, but finding her so easily in a sea of people like this felt like it was destined, like fate had stepped in to make it happen.
That sinfully sexy dress revealed a mile of smooth, tanned legs and ended in a pair of heels that made me imagine what they might feel like digging into my back as I buried my face inher pussy. That flirty little skirt was just begging to be flipped up as I bent her over the nearest flat surface and pounded my cock inside her.
As if she felt me staring, she glanced in my direction and those eyes I remembered being the sweetest shade of honey and cinnamon locked on mine. The blood rushed from my head, traveling straight to my dick with that one look. All these years later and it was still the same effect she’d had on me when I was a hormone-riddled shithead who couldn’t control his boners.
She made me hard without even trying, but when we battled, when we went head to head and I pushed those buttons of hers that lit fire behind her eyes and made her cheeks flush, well, I hadn’t found a single thing that could compare to that feeling.
She’d always been so damn good, so polite and bubbly. Always in a sunny mood. The goody two shoes who bent over backward for everyone else. Everyone but me. There was something exhilarating about being the only one who could rile her up, who could dirty up that good girl exterior she worked so hard to keep polished to a shine.
What Presley made me feel back then bordered on unhealthy. I was well and truly fixated on her. And as we stared at each other across the expanse of glossy maple flooring, I felt that same pull to her that had plagued me from middle school all the way through college.
I felt myself start in her direction, that invisible string between us tugging at me, and I would have been lying if I said the way her eyes flared with a hint of panic just before she ripped her gaze away didn’t make my heart beat even harder, pounding against my sternum like it was a drum. It only solidified my decision to make my move. But before I got more than a few feet, I saw another guy come up from behind and tap her on her shoulder.
The way her whole face lit up at the sight of that dickhead Mike Perry made my blood run hot, and a haze of red coated my vision when she threw herself into his arms for a hug. I stood frozen in place, unable to tear my focus from the two of them as they talked. My hands clenched into tight fists as Presley’s smile turned even brighter, and I nearly lost my shit when she ducked her head and looked up through the thick fan of long lashes in that bashful way I’d seen her do a million times growing up. I’d met more than my fair share of women over the years, and even the most practiced at seduction couldn’t pull off that look, no matter how hard they tried. And the real kicker was, she wasn’t even trying to be seductive when she looked at you like that. It was just her, that hint of shyness mixed with her bubbly personality. It was the most intoxicating combination.
I fucking hated when she gave other men that look because I knew exactly what it made them think. It made them want her. I knew because that was what it did to me every goddamn time, even when that look wasn’t pointed in my direction.
It took every ounce of my carefully honed self-control to keep from going over there and driving my fist into that fucker’s face. He might have come off as the shy, unassuming good guy back in high school, but I knew the truth. I’d warned him off Presley once before, and from the looks of it, I was going to have to remind him that she was well and truly off limits.
The voices around me sounded like they were coming from deep within a tunnel, muffled and barely recognizable as the woman in red across the room stole my attention completely. All those irrational feelings she’d stirred in me years ago came rushing right back to the surface, causing me to feel like I’d shot back in time to the kid I used to be.
“Beau, remember when we played peewee together? Think you could put in a good word for me with your agent?”
“Could I get your autograph, man? I bet I could sell it for a buttload on the internet.”
“How about a selfie?”
