Karen Kendall - After Hours

Impossible, she realized, but she’d orgasmed three times without him inside her, and they were both still wearing their clothes. She wanted to feel the fullness of his cock, stretching her to capacity and stroking her where his tongue simply couldn’t reach.

She stripped off his shirt—he didn’t exactly protest—and unbuckled his belt. She unbuttoned his fly and shoved his jeans down his hips, freeing his engorged penis. As she took it into her hands he groaned, encouraging her to move her palms against the smooth skin and slide them up and down.

Somehow she wriggled out of her own clothes while he found a condom and rolled it on. She straddled him, rubbing herself against his shaft until he grabbed her hips, forcing them down while he thrust roughly upward. She gasped as he entered her, throwing back her head and experiencing slick, dark, powerful pleasure.

He set a fast tempo that excited her all over again, driving into her with a fierce possessiveness that was purely masculine, primal and urgent.

Troy pulled her shoulders down as he thrust, bringing her breasts within range of his mouth. His bristle scraped the aureoles of her left nipple, painful but erotic. Then it was in his mouth and he was sucking, pulling electricity through her hot spots again and filling her veins with a roar of heat.

He mastered the other breast and then rolled her under him, her wrists pinned over her head, while he thrust again and again. His face flushed dark and his eyes glazed with pleasure, he stole her lips again in a deep, intimate kiss. His tongue in her mouth echoed his cock between her legs, until finally he climaxed in a single mighty stroke and spilled himself inside her, moaning her name into her hair.

She ground herself against the root of him and his aftershocks set her off again, too, melting her in a rush of warm, sweet honey. She had a sinking feeling, as she floated back to the surface of reality, that Troy Barrington had ruined her for any other man.

THE NEXT DAY Troy stood in the baking afternoon heat and listened to Joe Vargas give him the rundown on Pop Warner football. The man’s wedding ring gleamed in the sun, accentuating his wholesomeness and making Troy feel like even more of a drinkin’, fornicatin’ bottom-feeder.

He had been up all night having sex with a woman he needed to betray for his own ends. He was a complete shit-heel. What business did he have trying to be a role model for a group of kids?

Worse, he wanted to see Peggy again in the worst way. And he couldn’t do that. He really, really couldn’t.

“So the secret is,” declared Joe, “you’ve got to find the fine line between tough and supportive. You can’t push them too hard—they’re only eleven years old. It’s a lot more important at this stage that they learn good sportsmanship than that they win the game.”

Troy nodded as if he were absorbing pearls of wisdom. Surely this was just common sense?

The kids on the field were scrimmaging in an enervated formation, wilting in an early burst of summer.

The air was hot, stagnant vapor without a single breeze. It hung over them like a vast, wet cloth, smothering anyone who tried to suck oxygen from it.

Vargas had gone into the politics of the team, specifically what the parents were like and how that affected their children’s attitudes and behavior. Troy tried to focus and retain what he said.

“Bobby Pitkin, now, his dad’s a real problem. Wants his kid to be the star no matter what, even if another kid gets hurt. You gotta watch him and step carefully. On the other hand, Aaron Tate’s parents don’t want him playing football at all—it’s his grandpa who signed him up. The father is a musician and worries about Aaron’s hands….”

By the time the boys were through with their warm-up, Troy had the goods on everyone. He and Vargas took them through some simple running plays together, and then had them play a nine-on-nine game: shirts against skins.

In the middle of it, Bobby Pitkin’s dad showed up, veering erratically in his red SUV, and climbed out to entertain himself by causing trouble. He started yelling instructions and other things from the sidelines, annoying the group of moms who sat in the bleachers.

Joe growled under his breath, “Guy’s a prize jerk. Owns his own construction company and shows up here a lot after having a few Jack Daniels for lunch.”

Troy listened to him for a while, his disgust growing. “I’m not putting up with that guy.”

“Watch it. He’s connected around town and he could cause trouble.”

“I don’t care.” Troy strolled over to the man. “Hi, I hear you’re Bobby’s father.”

The man was clean shaven, dressed in pressed clothes, but sure enough, he stank of whiskey. “Who’re you?”

“Troy Barrington. Used to coach the Jaguars. Now I’ll be coaching this peewee team.”

Pitkin ignored him for a moment, shouting onto the field, “Bobby, you pussy! Knock him down. Which part of the word tackle do you not get?” Then he turned back to Troy. “That’s quite a demotion, buddy. Then again, the way the Jaguars been playin’ for the past two seasons, any peewee team could beat ’em.”

Troy made himself count to ten slowly so he wouldn’t pound the guy’s face into the ground. In the meantime Pitkin exercised some more of his natural charm.

“Run, you little prick!” he roared at Bobby. “Run! By God, you better get your hands on that ball, or I’ll get my hands on you.”

Troy decided that he’d had enough. He began politely, suggesting to Pitkin that it might be counterproductive to call Bobby a “pussy” and that this term was also offending the ladies present.

Frank Pitkin declined the advice, so as the new coach Troy slung an arm around his shoulders and walked him off the field without anyone else knowing for sure that it was by force.

He didn’t harm him in any way, just removed him. Like a true gentleman, he walked Frank to the door of his Toyota 4Runner and helped him into it, ignoring the man’s insults and threats to have him fired before he’d even started.

“You want little Bobby to play on this team?” Troy asked. “Then you don’t verbally abuse him from the sidelines or make the atmosphere uncomfortable for the other parents. If that isn’t clear enough, or you feel you need to challenge me on this, you can take it up in front of the school board.”

Frank Pitkin suggested that Troy screw himself with a two-by-four, and instead of pounding the man’s face into his steering wheel, Troy just nodded and said he’d take it under advisement.

Dadzilla sped away in a cloud of rage and dust.

Troy felt that perhaps he’d done something to redeem himself. He went to ask Joe Vargas who Bobby could get a ride home with.

The skins won the game, and after discussing with the shirts how they could have done things differently, Troy and Vargas talked to the boys about sportsmanship.

“The world of sports is competitive,” Troy told them. “But you’ve got to make sure you don’t let the competition turn you into a jerk. Winning is great, but it’s attitude and playing the game that’s most important. You don’t call each other names, you don’t cheat or injure other players to gain the upper hand. You don’t walk around like a grouch. Got it? I don’t care how many points you score, if you behave like that, you are a loser.”

He bought sodas for everyone and said he’d see them next time.

His mood stayed up until after he’d driven Derek back to Samantha’s house and he sat at the scarred kitchen table in the Coral Gables shack, staring with distaste at a greasy fast-food burger.

He ate it because it was there and better than the alternative: three-day-old garlic beef and a leftover pork egg roll that had been fried in rancid peanut oil to begin with.