Page 124 of The Sweetest Return

“Blasphemy.”

I had laughed until my eyes watered.

That was what stayed with me now. Dre laughing beside me. Dre watching the young running back wearing twenty-two like legacy had walked past him in shoulder pads. Dre going quiet when Coach Wallace said the Forge hadn’t been the same without him and hinted that maybe the game still had a place for him, even if it was not the one he used to occupy.

The Royal Sound had nearly taken the stadium apart at halftime, turning T.I.’s “Let Em Know” into brass, drums, attitude, and enough bass to make the alumni forget their knees and the students lose their whole minds. Dre had stood beside me with his head tilted, smiling at the way the band made something brand-new feel like it already belonged to AWU.

I watched his hand tap against his thigh, watched him take in the students dancing and yelling around us, and my mind did what it always did when something shifted in front of me. It tried to name it. Retired player. Alumnus. Maybe coach. None of those labels held all of him. Dre was beside me instead of on the field, and for the first time I could see that as a life instead of a loss.

And now he was beside me, wanting the night not to end.

“What?” I asked, though I’d heard him perfectly.

“Come up to my suite.”

My eyebrows rose.

Dre laughed softly. “I’m not trying anything.”

“That sounds exactly like something a man says before trying something.”

“We’ll order food,” he said. “Watch something. Talk.”

We both smiled because the lie had manners.

“We’ve been together all day,” I said.

“And I still want more time with you.”

That moved through me soft first, then lower. Dre had spent the whole day being careful with me, opening doors, making room, keeping his hand where he could touch without taking. Somehow his restraint had become its own kind of pressure, and my body had been answering him since the stadium.

His scent in the truck.

His mouth brushing my knuckles like he did not care who saw.

Now we were parked outside The Nocturne, close enough to leave with sense and close enough to ruin it.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Yes.”

I lied beautifully.

Food was absolutely not what I wanted, but it gave us both something respectable to pretend this was about.

His eyes darkened like he heard the thought anyway.

“For food,” I said.

His mouth tilted. “For food.”

The way he repeated it made my thighs press together.

Dre noticed.

His hand crossed the console and settled on my thigh, warm through my jeans. He didn’t slide it higher. Didn’t squeeze. Didn’t do anything a man couldn’t explain if he needed to.

My pussy still answered like his fingers had already found bare skin.