Down by Contact - A Seattle Lumberjacks Romance (22 page)

One gentle shove and he sank to the couch,
as if he were a ninety-pound weakling not a
two-hundred-fifty-five-pound NFL linebacker known for his
toughness.

She cradled him in her hands, ran her
fingers across the velvety tip of his penis, then slid her fingers
underneath to cup his balls. The blood in his brain rushed to his
dick, robbing him of rational thought. He sucked in a breath and
gripped the couch cushions, leaving finger impressions.

Heaven clashed with earth as her luscious
mouth touched the tip of his cock. It jerked, as if it had a mind
of its own. He’d always been firmly convinced it did.

Kelsie Carrington, his dream girl, had her
mouth on his cock. He had to be hallucinating. Hell, whatever it
was he didn’t want to wake up. He wanted her any way he could get
her. Because right now he couldn’t resist.

He doubted he’d resist tomorrow night or the
next either. He just hoped like hell it didn’t ruin his game. Maybe
it’d improve it.

Maybe…

Crazy thoughts rattled through his
sex-muddled brain, but one fact blasted through the fog like a
ferry horn sounding across Puget Sound during a storm.

His fantasy girl was offering herself to him
and claimed not to want anything in return. This time he’d be the
taker. He’d earned this.

She’d been his fantasy his entire teenage
life and some of his adult life. But in his fantasy she’d come to
him because she loved him and wanted to be with him forever.
Together they became the family he’d never had. It hadn’t been just
a quick fuck. It had been special to both of them. Something that
bound them together for all eternity.

He couldn’t do it. Not like this. He
couldn’t destroy the last remnants of his dream for one night of
satisfaction. The Kelsie who dwelled in his fantasies didn’t do
one-night stands. She held to a rigid morality and insisted on
commitment. Totally fiction, he knew, but his imagination wrote
this story, and he wasn’t deviating from the plot it’d written.
This old-fashioned novel required old-fashioned morals. There
needed to be more, at least for him, even if the more only lived in
an outdated fantasy. He couldn’t control her feelings and her
actions, but he could his.

Zach was fucking going to hate himself, but
he did the noble thing—the dumb-assed noble thing he might live to
regret for the rest of his days. He put his hands on her shoulders
and pushed her back on her haunches. Ignoring her shocked
expression, he shot to his feet, pulled up his boxers and jeans and
zipped them before he changed his mind. She stared up at him with
lust-clouded, confused, blue eyes.

“I can’t do this. It’s not right.” His body,
still numb with lust, couldn’t believe its bad luck, while what
little of his brain still functioning applauded his morality. He
wanted her but on his terms, and an outrageous plan started to take
form in his usually practical brain. He wanted his cake and to eat
it, too, even if that cake was a mirage that disappeared the closer
he got to it. For a brief moment in time, his dream would be a
reality—his reality.

“It’s not right?” Kelsie blinked several
times and regarded him through hazy eyes. Her clenched hands were
still held out in front of her as if she’d been praying. To his
cock. A cock that once again twitched with need. A cock he’d denied
the pleasure of a lifetime.

“No, this isn’t how I imagined our first
time together.” Zach paced the floor. Once. Twice. Three times. He
ran his hand through his thick hair. Then paced some more.

“How did you imagine us, Zach?” Kelsie rose
to her feet and pulled on her jeans and shirt and hugged
herself.

“I—I just thought it’d be special.
Different.” He tried not to look at her, tried to make sense of
this entire screwed-up evening when a flash of something metallic
caught his eye. Halting his pacing, he stared out the window at the
storm just as a dark sedan crept by on the street, with its lights
out. It stopped near his driveway for several seconds then
continued its slow crawl down the street. He turned to Kelsie who’d
moved to stand next to him.

“What is it? Is it him?” Her face, flushed
with the promise of sex a second ago, turned whiter than the chalk
lines on a football field. She shoved her knuckles in her mouth and
bit back a heart-wrenching hiccup of a sob.

Then he knew. For sure. She
was
in
danger and scared shitless. Every protective instinct he possessed
went on red alert. He’d get a hold of that prick following her and
show him a thing or two. Without thinking, Zach sprinted from the
room and out the front door, slamming it behind him. He ran into
the street just as the asshole made his second pass. He caught the
man’s startled expression. The driver accelerated with a squeal of
tires leaving Zach in the dust. The car disappeared around a
corner.

Chest heaving, adrenaline still rushing
through his veins, he turned back to the house.

Kelsie stood in the doorway, hugging herself
again.

“It’s him.” She spoke with quiet dread and
bone-chilling fear. She continued to study Zach as if trying to
read his expression. Her lower lip trembled and there was a small
band of sweat on her forehead. Zach reached for her hand. It was
cold and clammy. He led her back inside, back to the warmth and
coziness of the fireplace. She pulled away from him and stood with
her back to him next to the fire.

“Who is that guy, Kelsie? I don’t believe
for a moment your parents hired him.”

“I don’t know.”

“He has you scared shitless. Is he
dangerous?”

She shrugged. Zach stepped up behind her and
wrapped his arms around her, pulling her backside against his
front. Her body was as stiff as a corpse in a morgue. Even so, as
her fine ass pressed against his crotch, he immediately developed
another boner.

“How long has he been following you?” Zach
fought to keep his voice level, hard to do with only a thin layer
of clothes separating them and his mind flashing to her kneeling in
front of him.

“A while. It started right—right—after—the
gala where I first saw you.” Her voice rose to an almost
shriek.

He rubbed his hands up and down her arms,
trying to soothe her. “You must have some idea why he’s following
you.”

“I think my ex hired him to keep tabs on
me.”

Her smug, self-righteous asshole ex-husband.
Yeah, Zach knew Mark Richmond well. Scaring the crap out of Kelsie
would be just the thing he’d do to get his rocks off. “Are you
concerned about Richmond? Do you think he could be dangerous?”

She wrenched out of his arms and turned to
face him, chewing on her lower lip. Her eyes, filled with unshed
tears, met his. “I think he could be.”

“Did he abuse you, Kelsie?” He clenched his
fists, wishing he could slam a fist into Richmond’s smug face.

“He did emotionally, yes, from the very
beginning. He’s controlling.”

“Did he ever strike you?”

“Not until the end when I asked for a
divorce.”

“What do you mean not until the end? What
did he do to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She swept
her hand across her forehead.

“You can’t stay in your car anymore. It’s
not safe, and he knows you’re here.” As if she was any safer with
Zach, but for very different reasons.

“I have to. I don’t have any money.” She
closed her eyes and hiccupped again.

Zach struggled with his rigid morality and
his baser instincts. “Move in until things get straightened out.”
He’d never lived with a woman before. Hell, he’d never even invited
a woman into his house. Yet, he couldn’t let her go back to living
in her car, no matter what it cost him. He’d abandoned his baby
brother when he’d needed him most. He wouldn’t abandon Kelsie,
couldn’t live with the guilt if anything happened to her.

“I can’t.” Even as she uttered the brave
words, he caught her nervous glance out the window. Her hand
trembled as she reached down to stroke Scranton. “I’ve been a taker
all my life, but no more.”

“I’m not asking you to take anything. I have
room. It’s not a problem.”

“It is taking. Using you. I won’t do that.
Especially not to you. I have to do this on my own. My own way. I
can’t move in with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know you. You’re not the type of
guy who lives with a woman. I won’t have you compromise your
beliefs for me. Am I right? Have you ever lived with a woman?”

She had him there. In a rare moment of
baring his heart to her in high school, he’d told her than he’d
never live with a woman who didn’t have his ring on her finger.
Marriage meant something to him even though it had never meant a
damn thing to his parents. She’d laughed and called him a hopeless
romantic. He didn’t consider himself romantic. He just wanted a
life like a fifties sitcom—a woman who loved him and a real family
with 2.5 kids and a dog. He glanced at Scranton—a
real
dog.

Kelsie seemed to read his mind. She touched
his cheek and he suppressed a shudder. “See? I can’t move in here.
I can’t take your charity either.”

“Okay, then, marry me.” He blurted out the
words that’d been forming in his mind for the past hour. They just
tumbled from his mouth and shocked him as much as it did her.

Yet the second he said them, he knew he
meant what he said. As stupid as it might be, Zach wanted to marry
her, and he wouldn’t take the words back.

Not tonight. Not ever.

CHAPTER 15

Zach watched Kelsie stagger back a step or
two. Her mouth fell open, and her hand flew to her chest. Her lips
moved and nothing came out, like the guppy in the fish bowl he kept
on the counter. He’d rendered her speechless.

The second Zach uttered those two words, he
made his decision, and he’d stick with it to the crazy, bitter end.
Marriage to Kelsie might be a dumb-assed idea, but it made perfect
sense in a skewed logical sort of way. Now if he could only
convince her of that. He wanted her so bad the desire sat hot and
heavy on his tongue, sent sharp pains to his heart, and kept his
cock in a perpetual state of horniness. But he wanted her as his,
even if for a short while and as stupid as it might be for a man
who prided himself on practicality. He’d dreamed of this moment for
most of his life, now he threw common sense over the goalposts.

She kept shaking her head and making these
unintelligible noises, as if she’d forgotten the English language.
Meanwhile, Zach’s mind and body were all-in, rushing to concoct
reasons his insane proposal made perfect sense.

Finally she managed to squeak out a few
words. “You don’t mean that.” Then she laughed, a nervous,
I-must-be-dreaming-this laugh. Her gaze bounced around the room, as
if she were looking for an escape or something solid to hang
onto.

Zach’s jaw moved in a circle as he weighed
his words because saying the right thing had never been one of his
strong points. He lifted his head, his gaze meeting hers. The
second he looked into her blue eyes, he knew the answer as clearly
as a Seattle summer day in August.

Gary, forgive me. I hope you’ll
understand.

“I do. I mean it.” He pinned her with the
same intensity he used on the opposing team’s quarterback. He saw
past all her walls and into the scared, insecure little girl
cowering underneath all the selfish bitchiness. Maybe it was the
hint of vulnerability that attracted him in the first place, those
few times she’d let down her guard with him.

He’d wanted her since their teenage years,
wanted to be with her bad, so bad he’d deserted his brother, left
him alone to deal with an abusive father. Now he was making another
stupid-assed decision by letting her into his life in the most
intimate way possible, not just as a lover but a wife. But it was
his decision and he’d own it.

With jerky motions, Kelsie clutched her
shirt to her chest. “This is so not a good idea.”

Like he didn’t know that? Every time he got
involved with Kelsie a disaster happened. Now he’d invited disaster
into his calm, private life. Yet, he wouldn’t take back the offer
because he didn’t
want
to retract it. He ran his hands
through his hair and pushed it off his face. Along with a haircut,
he also needed a shot of his usual practicality. Yet practicality
also told him she was in grave danger with no one to protect her
but him. She was alone, and she needed him. He liked being needed.
He liked being her knight in shining armor. He liked the idea of
putting his ring on her finger even if it didn’t mean the same
thing to her as it did to him. He’d change her mind just like he
changed an opposing offense’s game plan when they couldn’t run the
ball against him.

First, he struck at her doubts with a dose
of common sense and a pinch of well-placed guilt. “I won’t be able
to live with myself if something happens to you.”

“You’re proposing marriage to keep me safe?”
She didn’t look nearly as convinced as he felt.

“Among other reasons. I’ll admit, it’s
extreme, but I’m not asking for permanence. Just through the end of
the season.” He shoved his own doubts and guilt into his no-regrets
closet and slammed the door. Besides, she’d be a definite help to
him when it came to landing that college coaching job after he
retired. With her skills, Kelsie could teach him enough to be able
to navigate the political waters populated by the university’s
athletic fund donors.

“How is this any different than me living
here for nothing?”

“Because being my wife doesn’t come without
a cost.”

“And what is that cost?” If her trembling
smile was any indication, she was actually softening to the
idea.

“Living with me for one.”

She snorted, a damned unladylike snort.

“And you’d be my built-in buffer in social
situations.” Zach was on a roll now. The justifications rolled off
his tongue. “I’ll be the doting husband following your lead,
nodding sagely, hanging on your every word. No one will expect me
to talk when you’re around. Hell, the men won’t even notice. After
I win my ring this year and retire, it legitimizes me as a
contender for a coaching job I have my eye on.”