Claiming His Firecracker Read online

  He gently slapped the hands of the guys who were carrying him. “Okay, okay, put me down, I don’t deserve even a fraction of this.”

  “You went to war,” somebody pointed out as our Marine was deposited on the ground. “That deserves a little praise.”

  “Playing a good game will be thanks enough,” Jagger said, ably dodging their compliments, running a hand back and forth over his buzz cut as though he were embarrassed by the welcome.

  Hot, humble and a hero. Can’t a girl get a break?!

  “Oh,” he added as an afterthought, addressing all the men, “I’d also appreciate if you kept my presence a secret, just until this afternoon, until the big game. I haven’t told anyone I’m back yet.”

  The group chorused with nods, everyone clearly happy just to feel like they’d done their small part to help Jagger’s return.

  “So,” Martie, a guy who I barely remembered from some AP class, piped up. “How was the war?”

  Christ. Sounded like it was my time to intervene.

  “Um, hey, Jagger?” I called, causing the whole pack to turn to me.

  His eyes glimmered as they moved from the boys’ adoring gazes to my forcibly indifferent one. I could see a laugh sketched around the outline of his mouth, waiting to burst forth. Jagger was, without question, in his element as a down-to-earth god among men.

  “Yeah, Fiona?”

  “Could I get some help with the footballs?” It was a weak excuse — and for the record, I totally could’ve handled them myself — but it seemed necessary just to give him some breathing room.

  “Of course.” He patted a few of the guys on the shoulder, murmuring his appreciation and jogged to me.

  I tried to keep my eyes off his crotch, but frankly, it would’ve been nice if he’d worn some underwear — anything to keep his cock from bouncing against the pants and creating a dick print. Gulp. I didn’t want to speculate too much about a dick I couldn’t see, but based on the size and dimension of those shadows… Jagger was packing serious heat.

  Okay, okay, this was fine. I could handle it. Provided I just didn’t let him get too close, this was manageable.

  Yeah, keep telling yourself that, a voice in my head sneered.

  I didn’t have time to snap back at the internal saboteur because Jagger had fallen into step with my stride, ever the perfect soldier, keeping rhythm with his feet.

  “Thanks for saving me back there,” he said, gratitude seeping from his voice. “I mean, they’re great, of course, I love those guys. It’s just a lot.”

  I turned my head, just enough to see that Jagger looked distant.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, looking straight ahead, his neck stiff. “It’s just… they think I’m some kind of hero. And it’s weird, because I know that all I did was my job. I get paid, I get benefits, I get help with college. Like, I don’t deserve to be praised for carrying out my responsibilities. If that makes sense.”

  I opened my mouth, trying to formulate an appropriate reply, but he cut me off with a laugh.

  “I’m just overthinking it,” he said. “Classic.”

  Matching his change of tune, I replied, “You? Thinking? Seems unlikely.”

  Jagger snorted, his signature laugh from our teen years. Apparently, even hot soldiers can’t outgrow their embarrassing noises of amusement.

  “You always did keep the guys on their toes,” Jagger said as we ducked underneath the stadium archway and turned down the hall that led to the ball closet.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You and your big mouth.”

  Okay, that caught me by surprise. “People thought I had a big mouth?”

  He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face me. It was with enormous, self-sacrificing willpower that I dragged my eyes away from his pecs, which were so shredded they would put The Rock to shame.

  “Fiona,” he replied, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “They called you the fastest gunslinger in the Midwest for how quick your comebacks were.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup.”

  This was new information. “I thought I was, like, the quiet dork and teacher’s pet.”

  “With a fast tongue,” he said. The smirk spread wider, and he added, “Verbally, that is. I never heard anything else about your tongue, though I imagine it’s quite proficient in all… categories.”

  I rolled my eyes, playing the cool girl to cover up the frantic uptick in my heart rate.

  “Anything else I don’t know about my high-school reputation?” I asked, resuming my walk to the ball closet, desperate to avoid lingering in one spot with Jagger for too long. Stasis meant more room for desire to creep in and have its way with me.

  “Well.” Even turned away from him, I could feel his gaze shifted downward. “You were known for… those.”

  My heart was damn near in my throat as we reached the ball closet. I busied myself with the jumble of keys on the silver ring, avoiding his penetrating stare as I asked:

  “What are those?”

  The door clicked open, swinging into a small, unlit room filled to the ceiling with soccer balls, footballs, tennis balls — every sports-related object you can imagine.

  I reached up to find the overhead pull switch, only to discover that Jagger’s hand was on mine, tugging the cord down.

  The room lit up, and I realized we were much, much closer than I’d reckoned in the dim space.

  In fact, his face was only a few inches from mine.

  He licked his lips and replied, “Those.”

  I looked down, and saw that his finger was pointing at my breasts.

  And that’s when I tripped over one of the millions of fucking balls.

  Chapter 4

  JAGGER

  ONE SECOND I was thinking about cupping Fiona’s warm flesh in the palm of my hand, and the next, I was trying to save her as her foot caught on a baseball and sent her tumbling to the ground.

  I managed to get an arm around her waist, but couldn’t balance myself against any of the shelves in the room. With a shriek, she took us both down to the ground.

  Panting, I caught my breath and my combat brain kicked into action.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, looking down at Fiona, who was pinned beneath me, her rosy cheeks flushed. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  She chuckled. “Well, luckily, I landed on some of these damned soccer balls.” She thrust a hand beneath her and patted an unseen object — presumably the ball — letting out a resonating, almost drum-like noise.

  “Oh. Good.”

  The emergency out of the way, I was now face to face with the fact that we were, well, face to face. And chest to chest, for that matter. Fiona’s breasts were pressed against me, and I could feel her nipples hardening.

  The Marines tell you that the most important part of any decision-making is assessing the situation and determining potential consequences. That’s what I’d been trained to do — it was hard-wired into me.

  But in that moment, all my training fell away, like curtains being tugged down from a window.

  I didn’t want to think, to hyper-analyze. I wanted to go with my gut.

  And my gut was telling me that, goddamnit, I needed to kiss Fiona Geffen.

  Before I could lose my nerve, I leaned down and pressed my mouth to hers.

  Immediately, she returned my touch. Her lips softening beneath mine, parting ways so that my tongue could plunge into her mouth. All these years of just looking at her as my sister’s best friend… it seemed like a lifetime ago. How could I ever have overlooked such a vivacious, sensual woman?

  I caught her bottom lip between my teeth and she let out a startled gasp of pleasure, an outpouring of breath that flooded my mouth and vibrated through to my core, hardening my cock. Her gasp turned into a moan as she felt my erection bury itself between her thighs.

  With unrestrained ferocity, I reached down and tugged at the waistband of her pants, desperate to m
ove aside the useless fabric and reveal her pubic mound. Would she be shaven bare? Or better yet, covered in a downy fur? Even that simple question made my mouth water.

  Just as I managed to immerse my hand in her clothes, though, Fiona let out a low noise, and much to my chagrin, I immediately knew it wasn’t one of pleasure.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I whispered in her ear, carefully extracting my hungry fingers.

  There were hands on my chest, pushing me up and away. I immediately put my own hands in the air, hastening off her, pressing my back against a shelf to show that I wouldn’t touch her again without permission.

  Fiona folded into a ball, head against her knees, curls falling over her shoulders. “No.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “Unless… if you just changed your mind, that’s okay, of course. I just want to know if I messed up.”

  She sighed, and lifted her head. Her lips were swollen from my kisses. Had I been too rough?

  At last, she whispered, “I don’t want to betray Jolie. She’s my best friend. To be hooking up with her brother, especially when she doesn’t even know you’re in town — it’s just not right.”

  “Okay.”

  Fiona looked at me with needy, pleading eyes. “Do you get that? It’s not that I don’t want, um, you. I just can’t hurt her. It wouldn’t be… You guys have a really strict code of ethics in the Marines, yeah?”

  I nodded slowly, unable to follow.

  “Well,” she continued, pushing hair from her eyes, “this is my code. I’m loyal to my friends.”

  “Okay. I respect that.” Even if I don’t agree with your reasoning, I thought.

  Whether or not I was on board with Fiona’s judgement of the situation, I didn’t want to make love to her until she was good and ready. And clearly, she wasn’t. So there was no point in debating the subject, in trying to persuade her into something. I wasn’t that kind of man. She was right, in that respect — my moral code was very strict.

  Fiona still wore an expression of dismay and regret, her lips downturned as her eyebrows formed a crease between them.

  “How about we get back to practice?” I smiled and held out my hand to show that there were no hard feelings.

  Relieved, she grasped my hand with her small fingers and I helped her rise to her feet, relishing in what I knew might be the last touch we ever shared.

  “Now, let’s grab those balls.”

  As Fiona straightened out her pants that I had tugged loose, I picked up a net bag of footballs, swung them over my shoulder and headed out of the room, my cock still throbbing with the promise of continued pleasure.

  When we returned to the field, Jimmy was the first to call out, “Hey, what took you so long?”

  A few of the guys turned around, ears piqued and curious to hear the answer. Damn, could it have been more than five minutes? It felt like mere seconds that I’d laid hands on her before she’d called it quits.

  I shrugged, lying smoothly. “That closet’s a shitshow. Guess nobody’s cleaned it out since Coach Bradley’s time, huh?”

  Everyone who had turned around to hear the answer laughed and moved on, not bothering to question my story. I mean, I guess it was plausible enough but I knew it wasn’t my fib that had resolved their questions — it was my image. Marines don’t lie. Star quarterbacks don’t lie. A small part of me burned with shame. These guys were my friends, my former classmates and teammates. I’d only gotten back to town yesterday and already I was making excuses.

  I just didn’t feel like the sort of man I’d worked to become.

  As a few of the men yanked open the net bag and began to toss some footballs out, Fiona trotted over to me, her eyes darting back and forth like a trapped mouse.

  “Hey,” she whispered, voice so low I could barely hear. “Thanks for covering. I know you could’ve, like, bro-ed out and told them everything so—”

  “I’m not that kinda person,” I said, almost offended she’d even suggest it. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  “Of course not,” she hastily agreed. “I just meant… thank you.”

  “Anytime.” I gave her a small smile and tacked on, “Seriously. Anytime.”

  She gulped and whirled to face the field. “Practice is starting, you better get in there.”

  “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”

  The men parted in the center of the field to create two huddles presumably based on the set teams for this afternoon. While they circled up, I yanked off my T-shirt, tossing it on top of my duffel bag. Normally, I wasn’t a shirtless workout guy, but when I caught Fiona staring at my bulging muscles, I knew I’d made the right choice. Good. Let her look. She was welcome to think that hooking up with me was a bad idea, but there was no harm in reminding her what she was missing out on.

  I moved into the huddle she’d assigned me, gamely nodding along at everyone’s field positions and play suggestions. About a third of the guys on our team had played football — the rest were just trying to look cool.

  Needless to say, the only thing they could all agree on was that I needed to play quarterback.

  After what felt like an eternal huddle — Cory didn’t know what a linebacker was, despite what I had to imagine was at least a few practices — Mason, the informal team captain, called to the other team that we were ready to drill.

  As we began to break apart and move to our respective positions, Chuck slung an arm around my shoulder.

  “Fiona’s a peach now, right?”

  Clueless Cory overhead and chimed in, “Yeah, she’s a bombshell.”

  I shifted out from under Chuck’s weight. “Let’s not talk about Fiona like that. I don’t like that language.”

  “A man can’t call a woman hot?” Chuck asked. “What’s wrong with that?”

  Honestly, I couldn’t explain what was wrong with it. They weren’t being rude, or saying it to her. It was a mild comment at most.

  “It’s…” I cast around for a reply, and at last weakly finished, “disrespectful.”

  Cory let out a high titter. “Man, you Marines have no fun.”

  “You knew her when she was a kid,” I shot back. “It’s like making comments about your little sister or something.”

  Never mind the fact that I kissed her, I thought wryly, and was fully prepared to fuck her.

  “Yeah, but she ain’t a kid no more,” Chuck said, licking his teeth. “She’s all woman.”

  I punched his shoulder, the universal guy code for ‘I’m not really punching you, this is friendly. I just wanna remind you that I totally could punch you and it would hurt.’ I’m telling you, look it up in the Guy Dictionary.

  Despite all my objections, of course, I couldn’t have agreed with them more. And as we were teeing up on the 50-yard line, I checked to make sure Fiona was watching me.

  Sure enough, when I turned my head to the right, I caught her staring at my thighs. Gotcha. She quickly grabbed her phone out of her pocket but it was too late — I knew I had an audience.

  If she wanted a show, then hell, she’d get a show.

  “And, hike!”

  Chapter 5

  FIONA

  I’M NOT MUCH of a sports fan.

  Yeah, yeah, it’s ironic that I’d been put in charge of managing the game, I know. And listen, I’d gone to enough sports events in high school to know the gist of all the major ones — things like yards, and home runs, and dunks, all that crap. But it never really transfixed me the way it did others. It all just seemed… trivial.

  And despite my history of crushes, I mostly steered clear of athletes. While other girls yearned for point guards, I dreamed of guys in band and drama club. Well, with the notable exception of Jagger. I suppose raw physical prowess never did it for me.

  But as I watched Jagger’s muscles pump as he vaulted down the field, I realized that those jocks in school hadn’t been desirable for their athletic skills — it had been the raw sexuality that poured off them. It was their very sweat that was the turn-on, the sugges
tion that, at any moment, these guys could walk off the field and tackle you like the ball, pinning you to the ground and making you beg for mercy or for more.

  Maybe adulthood was just about learning everything that could possibly make you horny.

  Before I could get any deeper into this train of thought, the team captains met in the middle of the field, then officially called time. It had been a short practice, just long enough to get all the men on the same page before game time.

  “Go get some rest before the game,” Mason announced. “Shower off, take a nap, drink a beer, whatever you gotta do. See you back here soon.”

  There was a brief round of cheers that dissipated into short, shallow breaths. The practice had been quick, but not all of my classmates were in the best shape. Several had notable dad bods.

  I followed them into the locker room, pulling out my clipboard and preparing to run down the schedule for the day. Naturally, I’d sent out several rounds of emails about this, but knowing these guys, at least half hadn’t read my missives.

  “All right, gentlemen,” I said, trailing the last man into the locker room, my eyes to my board as I ran down the schedule. “I’m just gonna brief you one more time on how today’s gonna go—”

  “Sorry, did you call for us?”

  I looked up and there was Jagger.

  Bare. Ass. Naked.

  His huge cock was just dangling in front of me. Oh God, it was as long and thick as I’d imagined. That wasn’t fair! I could’ve recovered, said something cool if his cock was normal but — I mean, Christ, who knew they made dick like that in Wisconsin?!

  My mouth dropped open and the guys laughed as I spun around to face the wall, my cheeks turning what I knew had to be a firetruck red to match my hair.

  “But — you — wait — what,” I spat out. Cool, that was totally a sentence.

  “Come again?” Jagger said with what sounded like a grin.

  “You’re naked!”