Dirty Tackle: A Football Romance Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Copyright

  Dirty Tackle

  Bad Boy Ballers

  By Imani King

  © 2016 Imani King

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.

  Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Eight Years and Nine Months Ago

  Maddy Thompson was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, in Rosewood or anywhere else for that matter. Besides that, she was the smartest girl I’d ever talked to, and she liked football. All in all, she was damn perfect.

  And I’ve regretted not telling her that, right then and there, for every day since then.

  Instead of letting her know that night at the bar exactly how beautiful I thought she was, and how much I liked talking to her about the football team and everything else, I said, “Yeah, no strings attached. I’m not that type of guy.”

  It was dark in the bar, and her eyes flashed in my direction over and over that night. She’d come up to me and told me she needed a ride home, and she was hoping I was up to the task. I’d had one—maybe two beers—and she didn’t have a car there with her. And we’d just gotten to Brooks University all the way from Virginia. I was the only person she knew. And someone told me she’d had eyes for me forever, though I didn’t quite believe them.

  Because it felt like forever that I’d been watching her, wanting her.

  I stared at her when she came up to me like she was a ghost that had appeared out of nowhere.

  “Well are you going to take me back to my dorm, or what, Shane Wright? You’re the only guy I know in this whole town, so I thought I’d ask you first since I’m pretty sure you’re not a serial killer.” Her voice was melodic and soft, but I could hear every word, even in the noisy atmosphere of the bar. It’s like I’d been waiting to talk to her all night.

  Even though the boys on the team called me “Dirty Tackle” because of the way I played—and the way the Brooks University freshman girls followed me around—Maddy Thompson made me shut right up in confusion whenever she talked to me. I was a bad boy by reputation, all right, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a soul. And Maddy touched that piece of me, even back then.

  “No, I guess I’m not. And I guess I can,” I said after a pause that didn’t make me look like a dirty bad boy, or an offensive tackle, either one.

  “Then get me out of here.”

  We were quiet on the ride back to her place. She had one of those single dorm rooms that I was jealous of, even though I lived in the best dorm on campus. It would be worth it to live a farther walk from everything if I didn’t have to have a roommate.

  I nodded to her when we pulled up outside of her dorm. “Have a good night,” I said.

  “Aren’t you going to walk me in?”

  I gulped. At that point, I was familiar with how women looked at me when they wanted a certain thing, Usually, I was ready to oblige, right out of the gate. But Maddy wasn’t the type of girl I usually walked in. “I could do that.”

  I turned off the car, and she offered me her arm as we walked up the steps to her brick dorm building. “Listen, Shane. I’m going back to Rosewood tomorrow. And I’ve liked you for a long time. I know you like me too.”

  “We’re friends—I do like you, of course—” I internally kicked myself for being so stupid. I knew what this woman was saying, and I should have been jumping at the chance to be with her.

  “You do like me. And you know you do. We’ve been skating around this thing since forever. And I’m going home tomorrow to finish college there. For the sake of my parents and my family. All that.” She reached up to my face and pulled me in. “You should kiss me and take me inside. And then we should—do what you have a reputation for.”

  I thought about protesting, but even a nervous man has his limits. “And what do I have a reputation for?”

  “For keeping the freshman girls up all night long. Or so I’ve heard. And if we’re just friends, then there are no strings attached when I go back to Rosewood—”

  “Yeah, no strings attached. I’m not that type of guy.” I winked at her then and took her inside.

  Instead of talking, we kissed, my lips strong and hot against hers, her tongue glancing against mine. We fell into her room like a couple of kids in high school, clothes coming off and landing in piles on the floor. I didn’t ask her exactly why she was going home or what it had to do with her family—I just kissed her. Her deep red top came off, and my mouth found her breasts, bra flying to the floor in a mad rush. She moaned, and gentle whimpers escaped her lips. When I took my shirt off, the core of me grew tight, and I realized that there was nothing more in the world than this woman. I needed her, like a man needs to breath air. She unzipped my jeans, and it was all over.

  Everything happened fast after that. Blood rushed to my cock, and I grew hard as steel. She knelt before me and tasted me until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I picked her up and threw her back on the bed, entering her as a loud, satisfied groan escaped her lips.

  “It feels so good,” she gasped, “to have you deep inside of me.” I almost exploded at that very moment, but I held off, making sure to touch the base of my cock to her clit with each thrust, bringing her closer and closer to the edge. Her sex tightened around me after what felt like forever, and I felt her legs shake against the small of my back, the whole of her body wrapped tight around me. She begged me to come inside of her, told me she was on the pill, that she was clean and knew I was too. I’d told her that once in one of our many conversations.

  I didn’t tell her, though, that I’d never entered a woman bare. That I’d always fantasized about her, nothing between us, filling her and taking her to her limits.

  When she came, she begged me again. “Fill me up, Shane. Please.” I came deep inside this time, my mind tipping over into oblivion.

  We fell asleep like that, limbs intertwined.

  In the morning when we woke, I spread her legs and tasted her before I pulled her on top of me and watched her ride my cock, deep red flushing over her brown skin as she came hard, riding me.

  After that, I took her to breakfast and drove her to the airport.

  No strings attached.

  And just like that, she was gone.

 
; I’ve thought of that woman every day since then, even with all the women I’ve taken home in between.

  And I never thought I’d see her again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Present Day

  My eyes had gotten blurry from staring at all of the stacks of paperwork with numbers in front of me. “I’m a doctor, not an accountant, but from what I can tell, this looks bad.” I hadn’t wanted to verbalize that obvious truth, even though I knew my parents, sitting across the table from me, already knew this. “Why didn’t you tell me how bad this was before? I moved back here once to fix these problems. I love you guys but—wow. What is going on here?”

  “We didn’t want to worry you,” my father said. “Especially with your new job and everything else you’ve been worried about.”

  “I have a little bit of money put away, and I’m going to be making almost twice as much with this new job. I’m sure I can funnel some of that back to you.” Even as I said these words, I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. The money I had been squirreling away ever since my first job out of residency was meant to be put toward a down payment on a house. That was my dream. A beautiful little house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a set of monkey bars in the back yard for Scarlet.

  “We can’t take any money from you,” my mother said quietly. “Had we known what Darrell was doing, obviously, we would’ve fired him years ago.”

  My heart felt heavy for them. My parents had been in business for fifteen years. They had built their small service business cleaning commercial properties from the ground up. Their very first full-time employee was a man named Darrell Brown. He was their bookkeeper. It turned out that Darrell started embezzling from the business about five years ago. My parents found out six months ago when my father got a call from the bank requesting authorization for an abnormally large withdrawal, but by then it had been too late. The damage had already been done. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been siphoned out of the business, and they’d be lucky to recover a fraction of it. Even then, it wouldn’t come back to them anytime soon.

  I’d come back here to get them off of the ground, and now they were falling again.

  I sighed. “You paid for my college tuition and lent me money to close the gaps when I was in residency. The least I can do is pay you back on that. It’s not as much as this, and it’ll take me some time, but it’s a start,” I said.

  My father shook his head. “Nonsense. We were happy to do that for you.”

  “But you didn’t have the money. You just didn’t realize it,” I argued. My hand waved over the sheets of paper in front of me. “It turns out you haven’t had money for a long time. What is the accountant telling you? I know you said you might have to dissolve the business, but is it worse than that? Be honest with me.”

  “I don’t know how we can keep the doors open. We’ve already had to lay off over half the staff, and we can’t keep up with our client base as it is. We took out a second mortgage on the house to be able to keep the business afloat this long, but even that’s not enough,” my father said. I could tell that saying these words aloud were painful. Alan Thompson was a proud man. “That’s not for you to worry about, though, Maddy. You’ve got a great new job, and you and Scarlet have a bright future in D.C. You’re going to be fine.”

  “There must be something I can do,” I said searching my mind for any option. “Don’t do anything yet. I can lend you the money to keep things running for at least a couple more months. Let’s sit down and see if we can figure this out. I don’t want you to lose everything you’ve worked so hard for.”

  “Dear, don’t worry about it. You have your new job to think about. We want you focused on that and making sure that Scarlet has an easy transition to her new home. We can come with you,” my mom said.

  I was worried about my new job and the move for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that I was moving hours away from my parents when I thought they might need me the most and was uprooting my daughter from the only home she had ever known. I turned to my mother. “Are you sure you can come with me? I hate taking you away from everything right now.” My mother had agreed to stay with us for the first few months until we were able to get acclimated. It was going to be a great help for me in saving money on childcare, and now I saw the need for it even more than I had before.

  “It gives me more time to spend with my granddaughter. I don’t mind,” my mother said. Even though she said that, I saw a long look exchanged between her and my father. They had been married for twenty years, and I thought they were just as in love today as they were on the day they got married. I imagined it would be a strain on them to be apart, especially if my father would have to shoulder everything for the business on his own.

  I got up from the table and walked over to my briefcase. I pulled out the paperwork that I had been ready to sign and send in. It was the offer letter from the Gilmore Institute of Sports Medicine. They were the most elite sports medicine practice in D.C. The fact that I had got an offer from them at all was astounding. I hadn’t expected to score such a fantastic opportunity from my first round of job applications. Gilmore had been my first choice for a lot of reasons.

  “Are you nervous?” my mother asked. It was a loaded question.

  “There’s nothing they can throw at me that I haven’t done a million times. It’ll be great,” I said although I knew I didn’t sound very convincing. But my mother knew just as I did that it had nothing to do with the work itself.

  The Gilmore Institute had clientele that included the general public, but it was also the practice that supported the Washington football team. There was a good chance that, at some point, my rotation would put me in the position of working with the team, especially as I specialized in sports injury and rehabilitation. Although that should have been incredibly exciting just from a career standpoint, I knew that working with the the team meant that sooner or later I was going to be confronted by my past. A long time past.

  Shane Wright. The boy who had gotten away, or more appropriately, the boy that I had shoved out of my life as quickly as I could when I was nineteen years old.

  We were once best friends—and then there was that one night.

  A heavy sigh escaped my lips. It was almost as if fate was trying to tell me that I could no longer run from the truth of my past. I was on a collision course with Shane. It was inevitable even as much as I logically understood it was necessary for one very important reason.

  My eight-year-old daughter skipped into the room whistling a tune that I had never heard before. Every day was a new surprise with her. She seemed to catch the tone of the room without anyone saying a word. Her feet stilled even as the whistle cut off in mid-note. “What’s up?” she asked cocking her head as she looked around the room. “Why is everyone so sad?”

  My mother started fussing over her. “Nobody’s sad. We’re just all looking forward to your move. It’s going to be so exciting to be in a new school and getting to meet new friends.”

  Scarlet’s face fell. I knew that she wasn’t looking forward to the move at all. It’s not something that I would have advocated if the new job with the Gilmore Institute wasn’t so lucrative. Plus, if I worked for them for even one year, I could get a job anywhere in the country with little effort. At that moment, there was a crushing feeling in my gut. It wouldn’t be fun for Scarlet, not exactly. But there would be a huge financial benefit—and of course there was more.

  I had to be honest with myself. The job and its salary were had benefits for my daughter and for my parents, but the real reason I was willing to uproot my life and Scarlet’s had everything to do with Shane Wright. The time had come to pay the piper. Scarlet had started asking questions about her daddy, and they were questions I couldn’t avoid forever.

  As I stared into my daughter’s beautiful blue eyes, I knew I owed her the chance to have a relationship with him, if that was what he wanted. That was the real reason I had taken the job. I
was going to test the waters with him and see if it was safe, and then I’d have to tell him.

  I was too chicken just to call him or email him to tell him I wanted to see him. That’s what a logical person would have done, but I still didn’t know how to say, “You have a daughter” after almost nine years of no communication at all. It was a delicate situation.

  I stared at all of the unpaid bills and opened envelopes with past due notices inside of them on the kitchen table. My job had taken on a new kind of importance now, though. I had more than just Scarlet and our future to worry about.

  “It’s going to be great, sweetie,” I said as I ruffled her hair. I looked at my parents and saw that they were both frowning at me. So far, nothing was great, and I sensed it would only get worse before it got better. “It’s all going to be great,” I repeated. If I said the words often enough, maybe I could make them true.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I wrung my hands hard that first day of work, pacing all over the house I had moved into with my mom and dad. Even Scarlet watched me suspiciously, but she kept quiet and got her backpack ready for her second week at school.

  That’s what comes with being a single mom sometimes—my daughter has always known more about me than I do myself.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart? You’ve been looking so forward to this.” My mother gave me a look that said she knew something was up, but I wasn’t about to share it with her. She knew plenty about Shane, but I didn’t need to get into it right now.

  “Oh, I’m just a little nervous about going in today. Gilmore is the best game in town—and what if I’m not good enough? I couldn’t bear it, for Scarlet’s sake and mine.” This was only partly true. I was at the top of my game professionally, and intellectually, I knew I’d be just fine. There was a gut feeling that I might screw it all up. But the bigger feeling had to do with Shane—and seeing him again. Over the past eight—no, nine—years, I’d thought of him, fantasized about him, wanted him. But as his career took off, there was no way I was going to tarnish his reputation, or complicate his life with Scarlet. He was known as a womanizer, and he didn’t need us in his life.