“Was it your paper? I thought you were happy with your first draft?” For ten days, she buried herself on her computer, working on … something important. The world of academia was hardly my comfort zone, but I was still trying to understand what it was she did. What she wanted to do.
“No, it wasn’t my paper. She’s still reviewing it, I think.” Her back arched when I dug into a spot on her foot. “Oh, holy shit, that feels amazing.”
At Lia’s age, I’d been just taking the premier league by storm, one year after my transfer from the German team where I got my start. But maybe to her, that paper was the same type of thrill as hoisting a cup over my head was for me.
“What are you going to do with that fancy paper?” I asked. Groggily, she lifted her head, and I stifled a laugh at her expression. It reminded me of when my head was clenched tight between her thighs and she’d just about torn the hair from my head as she came to a screaming release a couple of days earlier. “When you finish, I mean. Take the Bront? world by storm, as it were?”
“If you want me to answer”—she hissed in a breath when I moved to the other foot—“you have to stop doing that.” I held my hands up, and she exhaled heavily. “I don’t know, really.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Meaning …?”
“Meaning,” she drawled, “I don’t know what I want to do with my degree just yet.”
“Aren’t you close to graduating?”
“Yup.”
“With your master’s degree.”
She tapped a finger to her nose. “You got it.”
The look I gave her was incredulous. “How do you not know?”
“Okay, judgy, a lot of people in this world go on and get their doctorate while they decide if they want to write or research or teach. It’s not that uncommon.” She sat up and folded her arms over that marvelous chest of hers. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not knowing.”
Maybe not wrong, but I tried to wipe the look off my face of total and complete lack of comprehension. How did one not know? She’d devoted years of her life at uni studying this subject.
I chose my words carefully—pregnant woman and all. “It certainly seems like you have a lot of options.”
“I do.” Her chin was pointed at a mulish angle, and it was surprisingly sexy, as was the defiance in her tone.
“And once you decide which one, you’ll be incredible. Prove you were right in wanting what you want.”
Lia’s brows lowered over those eyes of hers, confusion clear. “Prove to who?”
I shrugged. “Everyone.”
She hummed.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she answered lightly.
“Bollocks. That’s not a nothing tone. Don’t try to read anything into it.” My entire career was based around proving a point. Every day that I showed up to work my arse off, it was to prove a point. Every time I scored. Every time I left a piece of myself on the pitch, it was the prove a point. “Come to my match on Saturday?” I asked her.
She smiled. “Of course. Is your family coming to this one? I’d love to meet them.”
To match her smile with one of my own was difficult, but I tried. “I’ll ring and ask. It’s hard for them to leave the farm.”
Lia sat up and swung her leg over my lap until she’d settled nicely on top of me. My hands slid up her back while her fingers played with the ends of my hair. “It’s a big game, though, right?”
“Very.” Adding three points now, with how the rest of the table was shaking out, would be a bloody relief.
“Chelsea’s good, though, right?” She peeked at me under her lashes.
I smiled. “Someone’s been doing her homework.”
“A little. But with their best striker injured, don’t you have a better chance of beating them?”
With a groan, I tugged her closer. “Keep talking, I could get off listening to you like this.”
Lia laughed. “I just mean, wouldn’t your parents want to be at a big game?”
And that killed it.
I kept my face even. “Depends on what needs to be done this time of year at the farm. November usually means rotating the crops for grazing, deworming, that sort of thing.”
She hummed. “And you had to do that growing up?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I like the idea of farmer Jude.”
I didn’t. I hated it, which was why I left. But still, I found myself smiling at the look on her face. “Do you now?”
She nodded, ducking her head down to kiss either side of my lips. What did my heartbeat sound like when she did that? Was it racing and whooshing and filling the room with the indistinct drumming?
I turned my head to suck at her lips, but she pulled back.
“Are we playing now, love?”
“Maybe,” she murmured. “I keep thinking about you tossing me onto a bale of hay and having your way with me.”
“Oh please, we can do better than that.” My hand came up and gripped her chin so she couldn’t evade me. With the edge of my thumb, I pressed down on the center of her luscious mouth, hissing in a breath when she sucked it between her lips. “That kind of mood, eh?”
She grinned—wickedly, in fact— and my thumb fell away. Underneath her, my body was aching and tight, heavy with wanting her.
“I think it’s my turn in the driver’s seat.” She whipped her shirt over her head, hands diving down to the button on my trousers when it fell onto the floor.
I surged up and took her mouth in a deep kiss, my hands gripping the curve of her hips while she writhed on top of me, chasing the sharp edge of relief that way.
“Thatta girl,” I said against her lips when her movements sped up, her face flushed a pretty pink. “Show me what feels good to you.”
Slipping my hand between us, I hardly had to do much, and Lia cried out, her chest heaving, her body shuddering in a way that made me crave her dangerously. Never before had I ever wanted a single woman long enough that I was willing to follow the path of how we could make each other feel for a long period. The possible complications had never been worth it.
But as I cupped the back of her head and tilted her at the perfect angle for a searching, searing kiss, something that again, had my heart thrashing dangerously, I knew she’d be the one to make me want to risk it. Risk anything.
Lia pulled away, pupils dilated and lips red from our kisses. “Your turn.”
“Is it?”
She slid back until she was on her knees in front of me. My fingers slid between the silk of her hair. This woman, smart and sexy, didn’t need me to prove myself to her. She simply wanted.
Nothing about this was empty or transactional. For the first time in my life, it felt meaningful. I almost pulled her up off the floor because I wanted to be with her in this, but that thought was fleeting, erased by the feel of her mouth and the cool strength in her fingers.
I laid my head back on the couch and shut my eyes, tightening my grip on her hair as she helped me chase the same feeling she’d just had.
Helpless and open was how I felt when I finally shouted her name into the quiet of the room. And my hands shook when I tugged her back up onto my lap.
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.