The past few weeks, the pressure of being me—Jude McAllister, who was carrying his team on his slowly aging back and trying desperately to keep them out of mediocrity, who was trying to keep his younger brother from meddling in his life, who was making sure his family knew how wrong they’d been about him—was a slowly growing millstone around my neck.
For one night, I didn’t want to feel any of those things.
Each day that I poorly juggled my responsibilities while balancing a high-demand career was another day that I craved an escape. One night, like this one, where I could pretend no one wanted anything of me. One night when I could flirt with a beautiful woman, a night when I could indulge in something harmless and only for me.
When she slid her cool fingers up my palm, I felt the charge of it up the length of my arm, like she’d plugged me into a socket.
“Jude,” she repeated slowly.
Lia was tasting those letters on her tongue, and fuck all if it wasn’t the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to hear her gasp it into my ear with her nails digging into my back.
Because I was feeling particularly turned on by every facet of this brief interaction, I did the same back. I licked my bottom lip and met her eyes. “Lia,” I murmured. Her pupils dilated, a pulse fluttering wildly at the base of her slender throat.
“We are definitely having a moment here.” She glanced down at my hand, still holding hers.
Slowly, I pulled mine away, using the tips of my fingers to curl along the edges of hers, and she swallowed.
I watched her face as she settled her hands back around the pint glass in front of her. “How very American of you to point it out.”
She lifted her beer, and I clinked my glass against it.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m about to ruin it.”
“Are you now?”
Lia set her chin in her hand, like she had earlier, only she fully turned on her stool, so I had no choice but to either bracket her crossed legs with mine or be turned away.
I chose the former, stretching one arm along the back of her seat. That long, curling hair brushed against my forearm, and I fought the urge to see how it felt tangled in my fingers.
We both took another pull from our drinks, and as I was setting my glass down, she said, “I think your football is the most boring sport in the entire world.”
My entire body froze. “I beg your pardon.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Carl whistled under his breath.
She shrugged. “They just … run all over. There doesn’t seem to be any strategy that I can see.”
Was my jaw on the floor? My heart pulsing in a bloody heap just next to it? That was what it felt like.
I took a moment to recover the absolute heartbreak that anyone would say those words to me, but when I caught a flash of anticipation on her face, I knew she was looking forward to my reaction.
Lia was an unlit match, simply waiting for someone to provide the friction she needed to ignite.
I’d provide that happily.
“I can see why it might be difficult for you to understand the grace and fluidity of the game,” I told her quietly, leaning in just enough that her breath caught. “Given there’s no smash, grab, graceless violence like you lot think is interesting.”
A spark flared hot behind her eyes. “It’s hardly graceless.”
“Do tell,” I drawled.
Lia took the challenge like a relay baton, and oh, did she run with it.
“Have you ever seen a receiver stretched out in the air to make a catch, so aware of his entire body, so in control of it, that he manages to get one”—she licked her lips slowly—“just one edge of his toe inside the line so it counts.”
My voice sounded like I’d chewed glass when I answered. “Those games are like watching a car wreck that someone starts and stops a thousand times and you can’t quite stop looking to see where it all went wrong.”
In truth, I had nothing against American football. The opposite, really. As was true of most professional athletes, I had a thorough enjoyment of all sports. Yes, football was my favorite, and it was in my blood, but I watched the Super Bowl almost every year. I tuned in when the league played games in London.
But there was no way I was admitting that now. Not when it was triggering the strangest type of foreplay I’d ever encountered. She’d slid forward in her seat, foot curling around the back of my calf, my fingers were toying with the edge of her hair. It was soft and cool from the rain.
“Ahh,” she said triumphantly, “but you can’t quit watching. There’s a structure to it. A framework that requires critical thinking and forethought.” Lia glanced at me underneath her long lashes. “When they line up against each other, they’re reading everything about their opponent. Each flinch, each flicker of the eyes, each word that’s shouted. Will it be a run or a pass? Is that defender going to blitz? Every answer is a different option, and they’re ready for all of them.”
It sounded like she was talking dirty, in the hushed secretive tone to her voice. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to laugh at what we were doing, or tear her clothes off on top of the bar.
From the look in her eye, she wasn’t entirely sure either.
I chuckled under my breath. “Look at the telly,” I told her, tapping the side of her leg. She turned her face toward it, jaw set stubbornly. Before I slid my stool closer, I glanced over my shoulder. The pub was still practically empty, which suited me fine at the moment. No one was watching us. My arm curled fully around her back as I moved closer, setting my face just over her shoulder so I could murmur in her ear. “Watch,” I instructed. “Not just the ball. Watch all the players move along the field. It’s like a chess game, see? You can’t move too far forward or you’re offside, you have to have total awareness of the people playing against you, and the people playing with you. Total awareness of where the ball is and how your body is positioned.” My lips brushed against her hair and her entire frame shivered. “Watch the defenders hang back when the other team has possession. Now look, their striker has the ball, and they’ll move up, in case they can help. They have to work as one moving piece.”
“Mm-hmm,” she managed. “I-I see it.” Lia cleared her throat delicately, and from the corner of my eye, I noticed her fingers curl into a fist.
She smelled fresh, and I turned just slightly, placing my nose in the crown of her hair.
I inhaled.
She exhaled, a shaky gust of air as it passed her lips.
“The back and forth of the game is what makes it so beautiful,” I whispered. “It’s like water. There’s an ebb and flow, a movement that never quite stops. That’s what makes it so hypnotizing.”
Her knee pressed against my leg, a helpless gesture she may not have even realized she’d made because her chest was rising and falling so rapidly.
My voice got deeper. “That’s why you can’t look away for a single moment. Because that moment might change everything. See,” I murmured, sliding my hand over her back until my fingers found the curve of her waist under the cotton of her shirt, “that pass was perfection. If one person hadn’t paid attention, if one person wasn’t exactly where they needed to be …” I paused, watching a player dart up from midfield, watching one of the strikers hook the ball high in his direction, and the other drilled it into to corner of the net with a perfect header. The stands erupted, the players gathered to celebrate, and an unwitting smile curled my lips. Bethnal Green, the arseholes, would gain three points on the table today.
When I glanced sideways, Lia was smiling too.
“There it is,” I whispered. Her face turned, and our mouths were a hairsbreadth apart.
“What?” She spoke so quietly I could barely hear her.
I licked my bottom lip, and her navy eyes tracked the movement. “The moment you see it, how utterly perfect this game is.”
Lia blinked, backing away slightly, and I fought a wave of disappointment.
Her hand reached for her pint glass, and as she lifted it to her mouth, the one I very much wanted to taste, the sound of a loud crash and breaking glass had her jumping. Beer sloshed over the lip of her cup, dousing the front of her shirt. She cursed, her face twisting up in frustration.
“Hold on,” I said, leaping out of my chair to snag a bar towel from Carl.
Carl headed back to the kitchen to find the source of the sound, and I rubbed the back of my neck as Lia sopped at the mess all the way down the front of her black shirt. It wasn’t even remotely supposed to be cut in a sexy way, but it clung to her chest nonetheless, making the line of her bra visible against the wet material
She laughed under her breath. “What a perfect end to this day,” she said. “I’m going to smell like a frat house until I get back to my flat.”
“No spare in that bag of yours?” I asked.
Lia shook her head. “Of course, I decided I didn’t want to look like a tourist today and left my backpack behind.” She continued to use the towel to sop up the beer. She looked miserable.
I glanced around again, making a split-second decision before I could think too hard on it. The couple in the corner had only looked up once but returned their attention to each other shortly after Carl had left the front.
“If you’d like a clean shirt, there’s a spare room upstairs,” I told her.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.