Vegas Aces: The Wide Receiver Complete Series

CHAPTER 11 TRISTAN

“You're stunning as always,” I say. I’m leaning up against my truck waiting for her. Watching her practically skip toward me makes it feel like it's been worth the wait.

All seven years.

“Do you get hotter every day or is it my imagination?” She tilts her head as she studies me, and I laugh.

“I definitely get hotter every day.”

God, am I ready for this night.

She reaches me and I take my foot off my truck to brace myself on both feet as I pull her into my arms. I press my lips to hers knowing full well that it's a mere preview of what's to come this evening.

I can’t recall a time in our history together that we had this much uninterrupted time together. We were teenagers back then, which meant our parents could come home at any minute or friends would be interrupting us for something or any other of a multitude of things that come up in a teenager’s life. We weren’t old enough to get our own hotel room, not that her dad would've allowed something so scandalous anyway, but now we are…and I plan to use that to my advantage.

She pulls back. "What are your plans for us?”

“If I told you now it would ruin the surprise,” I tease.

She pouts a little, but she’s still in my arms and I know it’s all in jest. “You know I've never really been one for surprises.”

I laugh as I think back over the time we spent together. When we read books for English class, she’d read the last page first. When we watched a television show together, she’d search the internet for spoilers. It was something that both endeared her to me and drove me crazy.

She was always polite enough not to share the spoilers, but just knowing she knew what was going to happen sometimes made it not worth watching. I just wanted to make out with her, anyway. I was a horny teenager, and now I’m a horny adult.

“Hop in the truck and you'll find out soon enough,” I say, opening the door for her and taking her bag from her shoulder. I toss it in back with mine, and for some reason the fact hits me that we're really doing this.

For as inseparable as we were back then, we really never got to spend the night with each other without the fear that our parents would catch us and we’d get in trouble. They knew how close we were, but it didn't really matter since we were teenagers…since she was the daughter of the town pastor. A lot of things stood in our way back then that just aren't issues today.

We went camping once with a big group of friends, but it wasn’t like we could make love for hours in the sleeping bag with Jen and Chris sleeping in the tent next to us.

I did slip it in for a few seconds, though. It was tough in a sleeping bag, but we made it work.

I can’t help a little smile at the memory.

I shut the door behind her and walk around to the driver’s side. I fire up the engine and we're officially off on what I suppose is technically our first date even though it’s also technically not at all.

I thought for a long time about where to take her and figured we’d want to start somewhere fun rather than somewhere that would create more tension between us. It was with that in mind that I chose our dinner destination. I thought about checking into the hotel first, but then I figured we'd never make it to dinner, and this boy’s gotta eat. And I assume she needs to eat as well since she’s pregnant, and I know once I get her naked, we won’t be leaving our room until the sun comes up. Or later.

We pull into the parking lot of Capital Arcade in Davenport. It’s a place we used to go when we were teenagers, but anyone under twenty-one had to leave by seven o’clock.

Tonight we’ll leave early for other reasons, I'm sure.

I glance over to see if the look on her face tells me she approves of my dining selection, and she's grinning from ear to ear.

“I'm gonna kick your ass on the air hockey table,” she announces.

“You think so, huh? Just like old times?” I tease. “As I recall, I went undefeated in our battles on the table.”

“I may have brushed up on my air hockey skills in the last few years,” she says, rubbing her knuckles on her shoulder.

I laugh. “Well I play against the pros now.” In reality I’m referring to pro football players, not pro air hockey players.

She laughs. “We'll see if that matters.”

We head inside and grab a couple seats at the bar in front of one of those arcade consoles with a bunch of different games.

We peruse the menu and the bartender comes over. We order drinks first, and she gets a Sprite. As much as I want some alcohol, I order a Coke…with no Jack in it.

A Jackless Coke.

“You can drink if you want to,” she says, sensing that I'm not doing it because she can't.

I shake my head as the bartender walks away, and then I angle my head toward hers. “I need all of my faculties intact. I don't want to miss a single second of how it feels when I slide in your body later.”

Her cheeks flush at my words, and I'm dying to see if her chest still flushes to match the red in her cheeks when she’s turned on. I can’t wait to watch as her nipples still tighten with the same need and desire as they used to, the way they always betrayed her when she wanted me. I want to know if she still tastes the same. These are the types of things you never forget about the first girl you ever loved…the only girl you ever loved.

The bartender drops off our sodas, and we order some food—chicken for me, naturally, and a burger and fries for her. I slide my credit card into the reader, and she flips through a menu of games.

“Spot the difference?” she asks.

I nod, and the game begins a minute later. We each tap on the screen as we work as a team to find all the differences in the first puzzle. Each level gets progressively more difficult and if we don't find a certain number of differences by the time our timer runs out, we lose.

Twenty bucks later, our food arrives.

She scarfs down her burger, and it’s quite possibly the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. She’s comfortable with me, as comfortable as I am with her, and there’s something insanely sexy about that. There are no pretenses between us, no faking it, no question as to whether she’s only with me because I lucked into a career playing football.

It’s only a small part of why my heart always wandered back to her, but it’s an important part.

She wasn’t there with me through college, or through the draft, or through my first three seasons. She was there before all that, and she still wants to be a part of my future.

We finish eating, and then we let our food settle a little over a round of air hockey.

“What are the stakes?” I ask.

Anytime we used to play, we’d make a bet—but it didn’t matter who was actually the victor because we’d both end up the winners.

She thinks for a second, and then she says, “Winner gets to pick the position.”

I laugh. “Deal.”

“Best of three?” she asks.

“It’ll only take two to put you away, babe.”

She giggles. “We’ll see.”

She does give me a run for my money, but in the end, I win the first game.

I think about letting her win the second, but I think we’re both ready for what comes next. Prolonging it with a third game will only delay the thing we’re both looking forward to.

“You ready?” I ask after I win the second game.

She nods, and the way she looks up at me from lowered lashes seems to speak directly to my cock. She looks sweet and innocent…and while she can be, I also know she’s not.

It’s one of the things I remember about sex with her. She loved it when I’d tell her what to do. She loved it when I demanded things of her. There were times when the rougher I was, the wetter she became. She was vocal enough to tell me the things she liked—or the things she didn’t like, though there were few of those—and she was adventurous enough to try pretty much anything.

I did a little research, and I found that the best positions for pregnant sex are doggy style and spoon style. I don’t care which position we decide on…I’m just excited to have a player in the game.

I drive to the Blackhawk, the fanciest hotel in town. It’s where we joked we’d get a room after our senior prom—always just a joke, though, since we knew our parents wouldn’t spring for one for two underaged kids.

Not that it mattered anyway. She left and I didn’t go to my senior prom.

I wonder if she did, wherever she ended up. I wonder what her graduation was like. I wonder a lot of things, but I also know they don’t matter. I already told her I didn’t want to know, and I stand by that.

“The Blackhawk?” she asks quietly once I pull into the parking lot.

“Felt like it had meaning, you know? We didn’t get to do this back then.”

She offers a soft smile when I glance over at her. “It’s perfect.”

I already checked in on the app, so I grab our bags from the back, and we bypass the front desk. We head right for our room—a corner suite that overlooks Davenport.

I open the door with the app on my phone and hold it open to allow her to go in first, and she flicks the light switch before walking across the room right for the windows. The view doesn’t quite have the bright lights of the Vegas Strip, but it’s got special meaning in its own way since it’s the biggest town near where we grew up.

Somehow just pouncing on her doesn’t seem right. We both know why we’re here, but that doesn’t mean we have to dive right in.

But she seems to have other ideas.

I walk over and slide my arm around her shoulders, and she leans into me.

“It’s been a long time coming,” she says quietly. “Are you ready?”

“I’ve been ready since the day you left, Tess. Everything else? Just a distraction, and not even any good ones.”

She turns and looks up at me, a sad smile on her lips. “Same. I love you. I’ve always loved you.” Her eyes sparkle with tears, and I lean my forehead down to hers.

“I love you, too.”

She tilts her head to catch my lips with hers.

I lean down and turn into her, and she wraps her arms around my waist. I deepen the kiss, opening my mouth to hers, and time seems to stop as the only thing that matters is the collision of our mouths in this slow, luxurious kiss.

My fingers sink into her hair, the scent of jasmine wafting over to me and reminding me of everything I love about this woman. It’s not just the tender kiss that’s turning more and more needy by the second, but it’s the way she steals my breath just by being in the same room as me. It’s some intrinsic connection between the two of us, some abstract, intangible thing that links our souls together in a way nobody else has ever been able to touch.

Her lips become the oxygen I need to survive, and my body starts to move instinctually, my hips moving toward hers. A soft moan bubbles from her, a signal that she likes it and wants more.

I slowly move us over toward the couch I spotted in my pursuit of her when she stood by the window, and as her legs hit the back of it, she grabs onto my neck, pulling me down with her as we fall onto the soft surface. She lies back, propped by the armrest, and I thrust my hips to hers as she rocks along with me. Our limbs tangle together as we kiss like we used to. It’s at once familiar and new, and then she wraps her legs around my torso and draws me in closer to her, moaning as she feels how hard I am for her.

How ready I am for her.

I pull back to look at her, and my eyes feast on the gorgeous face.

“I wish we would’ve found each other sooner,” I say, and my fingertips brush along her jawline. I study her—the eyes a little cloudy with lust, the lips a little swollen with our passion, the cheeks a little flushed with need, and her eyes lock in on mine. “I wish we would’ve fought harder. I hate that so many years separated us, but we can’t change the past. All we can do is focus forward.”

“Let’s make some new memories,” she suggests, and then she pulls my head back down to hers.