Page 28 of Tempted By the Safety

“That’s it,” I gasp, hand moving faster, both of us chasing it. “I want you to fuck me, Spencer. Want you inside me. Want to feel how big you are—”

His whole body goes rigid against mine, a broken sound tearing out of his chest, and he comes hard, spilling hot over our joined hands, his forehead dropping to my shoulder as his hips jerk through it.

“Spencer!” I cry out, the sight of it wrecking whatever control I had left, and then I follow him over.

11

Spencer

Ten yards of running backward is the only part of my week I don’t have to think through. Weight on the balls of the feet, hips low, chest over knees, eyes on the quarterback. Harlow’s throwing from the far side of the field. When his shoulder turns I plant, open, and drive on the ball, and I get there a half second before the receiver does. Knox has to pull up and stare at the grass where the football isn’t.

“Come on,” he says. “It’s June!”

“You could’ve stayed home.” I flip the ball to him underhand and go back to my spot.

It’s a mostly empty field in the offseason, four guys who didn’t have to show up, one coach with a whistle around his neck he hasn’t blown once in an hour, and a set of problems that come with answers. Where to line up, how deep to drop, which shoulder to take away. Nothing in a footwork drill has ever asked me how I feel about it.

Coach Grant’s standing on the painted numbers with his arms folded, sunglasses on, watching us. Dalton’s on the other side of the field with his shirt already off and tucked into the back of his shorts, showing off his release package. Knox is waiting his turnand telling Dalton what he’s doing wrong. Harlow says nothing and throws the ball into a two-foot window every time.

And Milo is on the sideline.

He didn’t have to come. I told him that last night. I said there was nothing for him to do and he could take the morning. He said it was on the calendar, so it was work, and then he loaded a crate of water bottles into my trunk while I stood there with my keys in my hand, having lost an argument I hadn’t realized I’d entered.

Now he’s parked on a folding chair, ankles crossed, the crate at his feet, sun cutting across him at an angle that should be unflattering. He’s wearing the plum shirt, the one we bought together, sleeves shoved up past his elbows, and my eyes keep drifting back to him.

It’s been four days since what we did in my kitchen, and neither of us has said a word about it. Monday morning he came down at seven and made eggs and briefed me on the co-packer while standing an arm’s length farther from the island than he had the week before. I took the eggs and matched the arm’s length.

“Rhodes.” Harlow’s got the ball up. “Ready?”

“Go.”

Dalton comes off the line hard, closes half the space between us in three steps, and I ride him with my eyes on his hips because Dalton’s hips lie less than the rest of him. He leans outside at eight yards and I stay square. Good. He throws a head fake at ten and I don’t buy it. Also good.

Then, out at the edge of everything, Milo stands up and stretches, both arms over his head, and the hem of the shirt rides up.

I turn the wrong way on nothing, on a move Dalton has run at me two hundred times in practice and never beaten me with it, and by the time my feet understand what my body just did, Dalton is behind me with two steps of separation and the ball is already in the air, and it lands in his hands.

He doesn’t even accelerate. He just jogs it in for the last fifteen yards like a man taking a stroll.

“Oh,” he says, coming back. “Oh, no. No, no, no, we’re not going to be able to move past this.”

“Run it again.”

“Do you understand what just happened to you?” He’s got both hands on his head, and his grin is enormous. “You bit on the fake, Rhodes. You turned your hips like a rookie who’s never seen me play! Knox, did you see it?”

“I saw it,” Knox says.

“Run it again,” I say.

“Harlow, did you see it?”

“Yeah, I did,” Harlow says, tucking a ball under his arm. His face gives up nothing, which is standard.

Dalton puts his hands on his knees and pants for effect. Then I watch it happen: he tracks back along the line I’ve been standing on and turns his whole head to look at the sideline.

Milo waves at him cheerfully with his whole hand.

Dalton turns back around. “Huh.”