🔥 The Victory Lap 🔥

An Exclusive Bonus Scene from Going Deep

Set immediately after the Super Bowl victory. Contains: Explicit MF content, praise kink, multiple orgasms, possessive hero, and intense emotional intimacy.

SLOANE

The hotel suite door hadn’t fully closed before his mouth was on mine.

“Jax—” I managed, but the word dissolved into something less coherent as he pressed me against the wall, one hand already working the zipper at the back of my dress. The navy sheath I’d worn to the owner’s box. The professional armor. The GM costume that the whole world had watched me wear while my team—while his team—won a Super Bowl.

“Eight hours,” he said against my throat. “We have eight hours before the flight. Before the press. Before anyone needs Sloane Sterling, General Manager.”

“What do they need instead?”

He pulled back just far enough to look at me. His eyes were dark. Hungry. The same eyes that had found mine across a hundred yards of football field, through confetti and chaos, and promised later.

Later was now.

“They need you,” he said. “Just you. No title. No suit.” His fingers found the zipper, drew it down in one smooth motion. “No clothes.”

The dress pooled at my feet. I stood in the entryway of a five-thousand-dollar suite in nothing but the black lingerie I’d put on this morning—fourteen hours ago, before the game, before everything—because some part of me had known. Had hoped. Had planned for this exact moment with the same precision I applied to salary caps and roster construction.

“You planned this,” he said, taking in the lace. The straps. The specific, deliberate architecture of want.

“I’m a general manager. I plan everything.”

“Did you plan for me to win MVP?”

“I planned for you to win. The MVP was a bonus.”

“And this?” He traced one strap with his finger. Just his finger. Just the lightest pressure. My whole body shuddered. “Did you plan for this?”

“This is the contingency.”

“The contingency.”

“The ‘if we win, I’m going to let Jax Ryker do whatever he wants to me for eight hours’ contingency.”

Something shifted in his expression. The hunger was still there, but underneath it—something darker. Something that made my pulse pound in places that had nothing to do with my wrist.

“Whatever I want,” he repeated.

“Whatever you want.”

“That’s a dangerous promise, Sloane.”

“I trust you.”

Three words. Simple. True. The same words I’d said in a kitchen five months ago, when trust had been theoretical. When the loving had still been something we did in the dark, in secret, in the spaces between the professional and the impossible.

Now the trust was load-bearing. The trust was the foundation. And Jax Ryker was looking at me like he intended to test every inch of it.

“Bed,” he said. Not a question.

I walked to the bed.

The suite was ridiculous—the kind of space that teams booked for owners and executives and people who won championships. King-sized bed with sheets that probably cost more than my first car. Windows that looked out over the Phoenix skyline. A minibar stocked with champagne we hadn’t touched because the touching had seemed more urgent.

I sat on the edge of the mattress. Looked up at him.

He was still dressed. Super Bowl MVP in a charcoal suit—the suit I’d bought him for the press conferences, the one that made him look like the legitimate businessman he actually was, not the “troubled veteran” the tabloids had invented. The fabric stretched across his shoulders as he loosened his tie.

“You watched me today,” he said. “On the field. I could feel it.”

“I always watch you.”

“Not like that.” The tie came off. He set it on the dresser with the deliberate precision of a man who was taking his time on purpose. “Today you watched me like you owned me.”

“I do own you. Technically. You’re under contract.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

I knew what he meant. I’d felt it too—the specific, possessive, completely inappropriate surge of mine every time he caught a pass. Every time he pointed at my box. Every time sixty thousand people screamed for a man who came home to my bed and made me coffee and looked at me like I was the only play in the book worth running.

“Come here,” I said.

He didn’t move. “Not yet.”

“Jax.”

“I said whatever I want.” He unbuttoned his jacket. Slid it off. “What I want right now is to look at you.”

“You’re looking.”

“I’m appreciating.” He walked toward the bed—slow, deliberate, the kind of walk that made heat pool low in my belly. “Do you know what I was thinking about during the fourth quarter?”

“The coverage scheme?”

“You.” He stopped at the foot of the bed. Close enough to touch. Not touching. “Standing at that window in your box. The way you bite your lip when you’re nervous. The way you don’t let anyone see you’re nervous except me.”

“I wasn’t nervous.”

“You were terrified. And you didn’t show it. You stood there in your navy dress and your impossible heels and you looked like a woman who could run the world, and I thought—” He leaned down. His hands bracketed my hips. His mouth hovered an inch from mine. “—I thought, that’s mine. That impossible, terrifying, perfect woman is mine.“

“I’m not perfect.”

“No. You’re better. You’re real.” He kissed me. Soft. Brief. A promise, not a delivery. “Lie back.”

I lay back.

His hand found my stomach—just resting there, warm through the lace, not moving.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“I’m not.”

“Your left hand is shaking.”

Damn him. Damn his attention to detail. Damn the way he’d spent five months learning every tell I had, every crack in the armor, every place where the machine met the woman and the woman won.

“I’m excited,” I admitted.

“About?”

“You. This. The fact that we won a Super Bowl and I’m lying in a hotel room in my underwear while you’re still fully dressed and looking at me like—”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re going to ruin me.”

His hand moved. Lower. Over the lace. Over the heat that had been building since the final whistle, since the confetti, since he’d pressed the Lombardi trophy into my hands and said this is yours.

“I’m not going to ruin you,” he said. His fingers traced the edge of the lace. Not inside. Not yet. “I’m going to worship you. I’m going to take my time. I’m going to make you come so many times that you forget your own name, and then I’m going to make you remember it by saying mine.”

“That’s—” I swallowed. “—ambitious.”

“I’m an NFL MVP. Ambition is the point.”

His fingers slipped under the lace.

I arched off the bed. Couldn’t help it. The touch was electric—five months of touches and this one still felt like the first, still felt like discovery, still felt like he was learning something new about my body and I was learning something new about his hands.

“God,” I breathed.

“Just Jax.”

“Don’t make jokes. Not when you’re—oh God—”

He’d found the spot. The exact spot. The place that made my hips roll and my fingers clench in the sheets and my breathing go ragged in a way that would have embarrassed me if I’d had any room left for embarrassment.

“Right there?” he asked. Like he didn’t know. Like he hadn’t spent five months mapping this territory.

“You know it’s right there.”

“I like hearing you say it.”

“It’s right there. It’s perfect. You’re perfect. Please don’t stop—”

He stopped.

I made a sound that was not dignified. Not professional. Not anything that the NFL’s youngest female GM should make in any context.

“Jax.”

“I like this too.” He pulled his hand away entirely. Sat back on his heels. “I like making you wait.”

“I don’t like waiting.”

“I know. That’s why I like making you do it.”

He unbuttoned his shirt. Slowly. One button at a time while I watched, while the heat between my legs throbbed with the absence of his touch, while my body screamed more and my brain catalogued every inch of skin he revealed.

The compass tattoo. The chest I’d pressed my face into a hundred times. The shoulders that held me when I cried and lifted me onto counters and carried me up stairs.

“Stop staring,” he said.

“I can’t. I won’t. This is my eight hours too.”

“Fair point.” He let the shirt fall. Stood to remove his pants. His movements were unhurried. Deliberate. The movements of a man who understood that anticipation was its own kind of pleasure.

By the time he stood at the foot of the bed in nothing but boxer briefs—straining, obvious, making his own wanting clear—I was vibrating.

“Come here,” I said again.

This time, he listened.

He crawled over me. Covered me. The weight of him—familiar now, beloved, the specific pressure that my body had learned to crave—settled onto me with the precision of a play designed to score.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“We won a Super Bowl.”

“We did.”

“And now I’m going to make you scream.”

“That’s—” I started, but he was already moving, kissing down my throat, over my collarbone, between my breasts. His hands found the clasp of my bra—front closure, because I’d planned, because I always planned—and freed me with a single motion.

“Beautiful,” he said. The word was reverent. Holy. The word of a man who’d seen me a hundred times and still couldn’t believe his luck.

His mouth found my nipple.

I stopped thinking about Super Bowls.

He worked his way down. Slowly. Kissing a path over my ribs, my stomach, the curve of my hip. His fingers hooked into the waistband of my underwear—the last barrier, the final layer—and pulled them down with the careful reverence of someone unwrapping something precious.

“Sloane.” My name in his mouth. The first word of a sermon. “You’re so wet.”

“That’s your fault.”

“I know. I’m proud of it.” His breath was hot against my thigh. So close. So deliberately not where I needed him. “Tell me what you want.”

“You know what I want.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Your mouth. Please. Jax, please—”

The please undid him. It always did. The word that the machine never said, the vulnerability that only he got to see. He groaned against my skin and then—finally, mercifully, perfectly—his mouth was on me.

The sound I made was not professional.

The sounds that followed were worse.

He knew exactly what he was doing. Five months of learning had made him fluent in this language—the flick of his tongue that made me gasp, the pressure that made me moan, the rhythm that built and built until I was shaking under him, until my hand was in his hair pulling him closer, until my hips were moving against his face with an urgency I couldn’t control.

“Don’t stop,” I panted. “Please don’t stop, please please please—”

He didn’t stop.

He pushed me over the edge with a precision that felt almost surgical. The orgasm crashed through me—waves of it, building and cresting and breaking, my whole body shuddering with the release of every tension I’d been carrying since 2 AM last October when a phone call changed everything.

I screamed his name.

Just like he’d promised.

JAX

She was beautiful like this.

Undone. Unguarded. The machine dismantled and the woman laid bare on expensive hotel sheets, her chest heaving, her skin flushed, her eyes still slightly unfocused from the orgasm I’d just given her.

I crawled back up her body. Kissed her mouth so she could taste herself on my lips. She moaned into the kiss—still sensitive, still shaking, still mine.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“Like I just won a Super Bowl and you just—” She swallowed. “That.”

“That’s a good feeling?”

“That’s the best feeling.” Her hands found my shoulders. Pulled me closer. “But you’re still wearing clothes.”

“Boxer briefs aren’t clothes.”

“They’re in the way.” Her fingers hooked into the waistband. “Take them off.”

“Demanding.”

“I’m a GM. Demanding is the job description.”

I let her push the briefs down my hips. Let her eyes go wide when she saw how hard I was—how hard I’d been since she’d walked into that stadium in her navy dress.

“Jax,” she breathed.

“Mmhm?”

“I need you inside me.”

Four words. Simple. Direct. The same voice she used in boardrooms, but soft now. Honest. The voice she only used with me.

I positioned myself at her entrance. Paused. Looked at her.

“Okay?” I asked.

“Okay.” She wrapped her legs around my waist. Pulled me closer. “More than okay.”

I slid into her.

The sound she made—half gasp, half moan, all need—was the best sound I’d ever heard. Better than the roar of the crowd. Better than my name over the stadium speakers. Better than anything that had ever come out of a football field.

“God,” I breathed. “Sloane. You feel—”

“Move,” she commanded. “Please, Jax, move.”

I moved.

Her second orgasm built faster than the first. I could feel it in the tension of her thighs, the rhythm of her hips, the way her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth fell open and she said my name like a prayer.

“Come for me,” I said. “Come on, Sloane, I’ve got you, let go—”

She let go.

The orgasm rippled through her body—I felt it everywhere, in every place we touched. Her walls clenched around me so tight I almost followed her over the edge, but I held on. Gritted my teeth. Kept moving through her aftershocks because I wasn’t done.

“Jax,” she gasped. “I can’t—I need—”

“You can. One more.” I shifted my weight. Changed the angle. “Give me one more and then I’ll let you rest.”

“Let me?” Even wrecked, even shaking, there was fire in her voice. “You’ll let me?”

“That’s what I said.”

Something sparked in her expression. Challenge. Competition. The same look she got in boardrooms when someone underestimated her.

She pushed against my shoulder. Rolled us. Suddenly she was on top, her thighs bracketing my hips, her hands braced on my chest, her hair falling around us like a curtain.

“My turn,” she said.

I put my hands behind my head. Grinned up at her. “By all means.”

She rode me like she ran her franchise—with precision, with confidence, with the absolute certainty that she knew exactly what she was doing. Her hips rolled in a rhythm that made stars explode behind my eyes.

“That’s it,” I encouraged. “Take what you need. Use me.”

“I always do.”

“I know. I love it.”

“I’m close,” she breathed. “Jax, I’m so close—”

“Touch yourself.”

Her eyes flew open. Met mine.

“Touch yourself,” I repeated. “Let me see. Let me watch you come apart.”

Her hand slid between us. Her fingers found her clit. The combination—me inside her, her touching herself, the visual of Sloane Sterling coming undone on top of me—was almost more than I could handle.

“Beautiful,” I told her. “God, you’re so beautiful. Come for me, Sloane. Show me.”

She showed me.

The third orgasm hit her like a wave—her whole body arched, her walls clenched, her mouth opened in a silent scream that became a moan that became my name, over and over, while she shattered above me.

I couldn’t hold back anymore.

I grabbed her hips. Drove up into her. Chased my own release with the desperation of a man who’d been waiting hours, days, months for this exact moment. When I came, it was with her name on my lips and her body still trembling around me and the absolute certainty that this—this—was what winning felt like.

Not the trophy.

Not the title.

This.

SLOANE

We lay tangled together afterward. His arm around my waist. My head on his chest. The compass tattoo pressed against my cheek, the needle pointing somewhere under the rumpled sheets.

“Three,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“You said multiple. That was three.”

His chest rumbled with laughter. “I have five more hours. I intend to set records.”

“You already set records. MVP. Eleven catches. One hundred sixty-three yards.”

“Football records don’t count.” He kissed the top of my head. “The only records I care about are the ones I set with you.”

I closed my eyes. Let myself feel it—the specific, perfect weight of happiness. The knowledge that everything we’d fought for, everything we’d risked, everything we’d built in the spaces between coffee and catastrophe had led here. To a hotel room in Arizona. To sheets that probably needed changing. To a man who made me come three times and looked at me like he was already planning the fourth.

“I love you,” I said.

“I know.”

“That’s a Han Solo reference.”

“I’m aware. I also love you.” He tilted my chin up. Made me look at him. “I love you, Sloane Sterling. I have loved you since the cereal. I will love you until the coffee runs out. And the coffee is never running out.”

“That’s a lot of coffee.”

“I’m a professional athlete. I have excellent stamina.”

I laughed. The sound surprised me—open and unguarded and completely undignified. The laugh of a woman who’d spent three years being the Machine and who had found, in the arms of a man who got arrested at 2 AM, the courage to be human instead.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Now we rest. For exactly—” He checked the clock on the nightstand. “—twenty minutes. And then I wake you up in a way you’ll enjoy.”

“And after that?”

“After that we shower. Together. In that ridiculous marble bathroom that probably has seventeen showerheads.”

“And after that?”

“After that…” He pulled me closer. Pressed his lips to my forehead. “After that, we go home. We drink coffee. We build a life. We see how many more Super Bowls we can win and how many more records we can break and how many more mornings we can spend with the mug at twelve o’clock.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

“That sounds like the only plan that matters.”

I closed my eyes. Let sleep pull me under. Let myself be held by a man who’d seen me at my worst and my best and every version in between, and who had chosen—was still choosing, would always choose—to stay.

The last thing I heard before I drifted off was his voice, low and warm against my hair:

“Logo at twelve o’clock. Every morning. Forever.”

Forever sounded just about right.

THE END

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