“I don’t speed. I keep to the speed limit. I’m a considerate driver. Sometimes I have a tiny — as in teensy tiny — bit of road rage. I don’t tolerate backseat drivers. Or passenger side drivers. So if that’s going to be you, maybe we need a ball gag or duct tape to hand.”
If only she knew.
To be fair, neither were my style. I liked to hear the noises women made when I made them come, and duct tape could be painful to get off, especially if there was hair involved.
“I won’t backseat drive. Or passenger seat drive.” I had a lot of control. It was how I got my kicks. Control of me, control of my abilities, control of making sure I followed through on my promises.
Not, as my ex had alleged, control of a person.
She met my eyes with something flashing in hers that intrigued me. Jerrica Morris was, for most men, a walking wet dream. Tall and limber, she had an athletic grace that made cocks twitch without trying. She also had an air of innocence that was pure catnip. Finding out she wrote steamy books was the cherry on top of a lot of cream.
Every entendre meant.
“Tomorrow at ten. We’ll go to the dealerships. Let me have that list. If after we’ve spent three hours car shopping you think you still want to drive for me, then we have a deal.” I picked up Nate’s beer. He’d be wondering what the fuck I was doing, I’d been that long.
“Deal.” She’d poured herself a glass of Amber’s fruit punch and added a shot of vodka. “This is my last alcoholic drink. Just in case you’re worried about me driving tomorrow.”
I shook my head. “I know you’re a good girl. Wouldn’t be surprised if you breathalysed yourself first.”
She gave me the stink-eye. “I’m not that much of a good girl.”
I raised a brow, a response on the tip of my tongue that would only be classed as flirting.How bad can you be? How bad can I make you?
But her brother was almost in earshot, and he knew exactly how bad to the bone I had been.
For now, and if I had any sense, for good, I’d keep my dirty words out of his sister’s ears.
I crashed in Nate’s spare room, our quiet afternoon turning into a busier evening with Rowan and Dee, then Nicky Pryce-Jones turning up. Genny, the club’s operational manager, showed up as well, saying remarkably few words about my driving ban.
“It’s your one foible,” Genny had said when she found out I’d been caught. “But don’t make it any worse.”
She managed the media about it, giving statements to the press when they did find out, and doing it in such a way that they didn’t dig any further, which took a lot of talent and the hugest pair of balls of any one I’d ever known.
Genny was one of my favourite people. She managed a mainly male backroom team, our moody, temperamental manager, and a changing room full of arrogant, egotistical footballers without breaking sweat or losing her shit.
I had heard from Amber that Genny did have a dartboard with a regularly replaced photo of our manager on it — I’d seen the evidence a couple of times, but I didn’t dare ask her about it for fear of becoming a target.
There was a lot that I didn’t dare ask Genny. She was one of the most self-controlled people I knew, pristinely put together and rarely known to not see something coming. She knew the very vague outline of what my ex had said but didn’t have the details, although she had once mentioned something that made me believe she had a good idea about my tastes.
Having Rowan and Nicky there meant that nothing more was said by Nate about a possible job for his sister. When I headed down to the kitchen that morning, he and Amber had gone for an antenatal appointment and the girls had gone out with their nanny for the day.
I didn’t see Jerrica at first, assuming she hadn’t gotten up yet, but then a flash of movement in the garden caught my attention.
I went to the bi-folds, taking my coffee that I’d managed to get from Nate’s weirdly complicated coffee machine, and found them unlocked, so I headed out barefoot into the garden, curious about what I’d seen.
It didn’t take long to find the colour. Jerrica was out there, an exercise mat on the patio, wearing brightly coloured booty shorts and a multi-coloured sports bra. She was following a routine on her iPad, her body getting sweaty with the workout.
I sat down on one of the seats Nate had dotted about his garden and watched, knowing full well if she saw me she’d think I was perving at her, which I was.
Jerrica was athletic, with a healthy dose of curves. Her stomach was flat and toned, the product of exercise and a careful diet. Her legs were strong with defined muscles, and her arms were just my right sort of crafted. Blonde hair was tied up in a messy knot on top of her head, with lose strands falling down her face. She was makeup free and pretty, the sort of pretty that you took home to your ma before locking it down.
Not the sort of pretty that wrote dirty scenes in books dressed up as sweet romances.
It didn’t take me that long to find her published novel.Jerrika Pepperwas doing pretty well for reviews, the number of them suggesting that she’d sold a decent amount. Her social media followings were growing too, and if she checked later, she’d see she had a new follower, one whose profile pic was just a tattoo and had a strange name.
I downloaded a copy of the book onto my phone and ordered the paperback too, then I skim read the first few chapters, getting a little bit gripped when certain scenes came up.
Jerrica Morris wasn’t a vanilla cupcake. She was definitely something with a sprinkling of spice.
