Page 35 of Sideline Play

Sensing the change in the room, Winnie begins to stir. Still half asleep and tangled in the throw blanket, she rolls and lumbers her way over to Scarlet, dropping her heavy head into her human’s lap.

My girl, so small now as she closes in on herself, exchanges the sheet for Winnie’s velvet ears, a strangled sob leaving her.

Sucking in a heaving breath, her hand unsteady as she continues to soothe herself by petting her docile protector, she sniffles. “Our first date wasn’t bad. It wasn't good either. It was awkward—I was awkward. I think I should have paid betterattention to how he acted. Maybe… maybe then it wouldn’t have happened.”

Holding her hand up to stop the words I’m already biting back she corrects, “I know what happened isn’t my fault. I know that. And I’ve accepted that it happened, analyzed it, coped with it, even healed from it. That said, I still get stuck and am unable to act when it comes to dating and wanting to be intimate with someone, but I have made progress. I can experience arousal without feeling sick to my stomach. My own touch no longer makes my skin crawl. I enjoy masturbation and have a healthy sexual appetite now. I just haven’t wanted to risk experiencing that with someone else… not until you. You make me feel safe enough to be okay with the fact that I’m always so incredibly horny when I’m around you,” she laughs, the sound watery but not in any way self-deprecating or disgusted.

“But I worry. I worry about giving you a complex if I have an episode while you touch me. I worry that you’ll think I’m too fragile to be yourself with me. I worry that I may never actually progress past touching myself. I worry that this may be too much for you to deal with and you’ll leave and I will never feel this way about another man again. It’s a constant cycle in my head each time I try to push for more and I end up getting more and more stuck because how do I tell you I both need control and need for you to take control? I mean what kind of fucked up, mixed signal is that?”

Looking over her shoulder at me, her tears like falling crystals as they drop, she gives me a sad smile.

“I’m sorry I’m broken. The bruises and concussion healed years ago but the insides… he made them ugly. I just want to be perfect again.”

Unable to stay in my space any longer, my very soul collapsing with how she sees herself, I tug her back to me, bringing her to sit in the center of my lap. Cupping her face, Iswipe my thumbs over her cheeks, catching and clearing each tear as it falls, wiping their stains away.

Resting my forehead against hers, I turn my hold firm as I stress, “Who you are, right now, in this moment, is enough. You do not need to be anything more or less to be perfect. You already are perfect. You were perfect then and you’re perfect now. And nothing about you could ever be considered anything less than heartstopping, breath stealing beautiful. You are everything, and I could never want anything more from you. What you give is enough. It will always be enough.”

“You’re gonna make me fall in love with you aren’t you, Remington Tate?”

“That’s my plan, baby girl. Love, marriage, babies—I want it all and see it when I look in your eyes.”

I’m not ready for it when it happens. Can’t believe it even as I feel it. Am completely still. Rendered unmovable as her lips crash onto mine.

She’s kissing me.

Scarlet Jones is kissing me.

I’m getting kissed by Scarlet Amelia Jones, the woman I’ve slowly been losing myself to for nearly a year, and like a fucking tool, I’m just sitting here stunned, not kissing her back.

It’s only when she begins to retreat that the synapses inside my brain come back to life and begin firing off. Not wanting to lose her or let this moment end without first becoming an active participant, I shove my fingers through her hair, cradling the back of her head, and bringing her right back to me.

It’s a gentle breeze and burning fire. Falling and flying. Hazy and crisp. A thousand possibilities and a single moment. An end and a beginning. Like her, this kiss is everything.

Her lips are plush, unpracticed but eager. Her body melts into mine, electrified as she squirms in my lap before rising to her knees. Low in her throat but as loud and actionable asa cannon ringing through my ears, she sighs and moans, her hands coming up to my shoulders as she rocks forward, sending me to my back.

Tentatively licking at the seal of her lips, I’m met with a groan as she opens and sinks back into me, her legs straddled over my hardening cock. Slipping into her mouth, she keeps still, the raking of her nails and desperate sound vibrating into me my only sign to keep going. She’s eager and I’m ravenous, my hand pulling free to glide down her back as she begins to mimic the actions of my tongue.

Slowly, I reach the bunched up hem of the shirt she wears. Pushing it up, I retrace the path of my touch on her bare skin.

Another whimpering moan leaves her as she sits fully in my lap. I can’t bite it back as she rocks over me, a grunt tearing free as I fist her hair. She does it again, the thin barriers of her panties and my shorts doing little to dull the sensation of rubbing herself along my dick. And again she moans, longer, louder. It’s maddening having her like this, my sanity slipping away with each second that Scarlet uses me, explores me. By the time she’s done, I'll be useless for anything not involving the devout worship of her, my soul leaving my body to be collected by her, one caress of her tongue and grind of her hips at a time.

With a faster, harder hump along my cock, she keens into my mouth, my own hips reacting without thought as I chase her lust. Two years of my dick only receiving attention from my hand begin to rear forward. My release is already pooling at the base of my spine. Any more of this and I’ll be coming in my shorts, but fuck all if I care about embarrassing myself if she feels good.

Pulling her mouth from mine with repeated, lingering kisses breaking up her words, she pants, “I think we should stop,” only to sink her tongue back into my mouth.

Reluctant as I am, I use the grip I have on her hair to pull her off of me, the sight of her starry, hooded eyes and swollen, brightpink lips a source of pride for me. I can’t help it. Seeing her near glowing from kissing me, I crunch up and kiss her once more hard and fast. Then sitting up the rest of the way, I agree with her, chuckling as she pouts.

“Don’t worry, baby girl,” I rasp. “You can kiss me again whenever you want.”

Turning sweet and timid, she asks, “And will you kiss me?”

Already hopelessly addicted, I lean in and steal another, whispering against her lips as I retreat, “Count on it.”

FIFTEEN

SCARLET

True to his word,Remington didn’t press for more once I stopped speaking. Instead, he spent the rest of the afternoon in bed with me, telling me about his own life before he came to the Nighthawks. How he read every cookbook in the library when he was 10 years old so he could learn how to cook for his mom on Mother’s Day and afterward slowly started taking over that responsibility for her; that he wouldn’t know who his dad was if he was standing right in front of him; how at 14 he tried playing matchmaker between his mom and the mechanic who lived two streets over who she had said “looks like he belongs on a romance cover,” and instead ended up learning how to diagnose and fix cars and earning himself a job in the guy’s shop; that unlike the stereotype, he didn’t major in Psychology to fix himself or someone close to him, that it had been a calculated decision to help him better read and analyze players on the field with the backup plan of going into Sports Psychology.

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