off, but for some reason, there was more to us tonight than sex and desire. There was a new emotion. One he’d called love. One I’d called love back. I was still adjusting to it.
“I’m thinking I should wait to enter the draft until I know where you’re at, and then I can make a play for that team.”
I looked into his eyes, shadowed in the dim light. “What if that team doesn’t want you?”
“Then I wait until they do.”
It was said so simply. Casually thrown out. But I knew it wasn’t any such thing. For Ty to offer up football. To say he’d wait to be accepted to a team that may never accept him…for me. It was like a god climbing down and offering you a cloud to ride upon. I sucked in my breath, holding it, then slowly exhaling it. Trying to find words.
“That’s pretty stupid.”
“What?” he said, shocked.
“If you turn down a pro offer because it isn’t where I’m at, I’ll kick your ass from here all the way to Florida and back.”
He chuckled quietly. “We’d have a lot of fun if you tried.”
“Shut up. If we end up on different teams, you can live with me during the off-season, and we’ll travel back and forth during season.”
“You’ve thought this through?” The god-like smirk was back.
“No. I’m just responding to your harebrained ideas.”
“What if I don’t want to be apart from you quite that much?”
“The sex will be better. All that time apart building our anticipation.”
“The sex is pretty damn good now.”
I nodded. It was. “But today was nothing.”
His turn to nod. He knew we could do way more damage to each other than that. Good damage. Damage that would make us both soar to the skies and back. Damage and passion intertwined in a deliciously painful way.
I tugged at his phone that was in the pocket of his sweatshirt and handed it to him. “Call my dad.”
“And tell him that I’m keeping you?”
My heartbeat faltered, skipping a beat, and then colliding into a fast rhythm. “You keep forgetting, I’m the one who broke up with you. If anyone is keeping anyone, it’s me keeping you.”
“I’ve already said I’m yours. I’ll go where you want me to, Maleena. I mean that. With every single fiber of my being. Football, schmootball. You. Me. This.” He waved a hand between us. “It’s all that matters.”
I kissed him. I couldn’t help it. This huge dynamo saying he’d give up everything for me. Repeatedly. Meaning it, because Ty didn’t lie. He didn’t bullshit his way through anything. In fact, the only lies he’d ever told were the ones I’d made him tell about me. Lies about us. I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted people to know he was mine. That he was off the field in that one way. But I also wouldn’t let him give up a career that would have him wearing a Super Bowl ring. Not for me. Not for anyone.
My lips must have conveyed some of what I was feeling, because, before I knew it, Ty had flipped us so I was lying on my back on the hay, and he was above me, legs between mine, rubbing on me in the most delicious way. Making me want our clothes to dematerialize so we could be skin to skin, even in the thirty-degree weather.
He bit my neck, and I hummed in enjoyment. He nibbled again before pulling back.
“What do you want me to do? Really?” he asked.
“I want you to join the draft. I want you to figure out where you’re getting a contract, and then I want to get onto that management team.”
“You’d follow me?”
“If they don’t take me, I’ll just become your agent.”
“I like this train of thought. I kind of like the idea of you being my agent.”
“Not out the chute. We need somebody the pros have to play ball with—like Baldwin—even though you hate him. But if you need me to be your agent in the future, then we can go that route, too.”
“A team,” he said quietly, multi-colored eyes flashing at me.
“A team,” I said back.
“I fucking love this idea. I love you.”
God. Before today, I never thought I’d hear those words from him. I’d thought he couldn’t see past the play. But I should have known better, because Ty was a field reader. He read every person and knew exactly where they were going. Only, this time, he’d read me and found a way to my end zone. To