Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HUGO
And here I am. Alone with Wilcox.
When I walked into the pub and saw the woman with the bright blond hair trying to get my attention, my heart sank. Thought I’d been instantly rumbled.
And I had, but in a totally different way than I’d assumed.
When I realized she was pointing at Wilcox, I got this weird feeling. Something like relief, but not that. Something like my spirits lifting, but not that either. Something like when you think you have nothing in for dinner, but you open the fridge and discover delicious leftover Chinese takeout that you’d forgotten about—a bit like that.
Anyway, some undefinable thing went on inside me when I saw her. And I have to confess, I’m not exactly sad about it.
Still standing, Wilcox’s eyes dart around the room, like a spooked animal in search of an escape route .
“All right, well.” She drums her fingers on the table. “Now that everyone’s gone, we should leave too.”
It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. But I can’t resist. I want this time alone with her. Need it. So I rest my hand on top of hers, gently pinning it to the table. “Stay.”
She stares at my hand on hers for a second. Then her gaze roves up my arm, across my shoulder to my neck, then my chin, my mouth, my nose, until her eyes come to rest on mine.
Being eaten alive by those green diamonds sparks a flutter in my chest. And it only intensifies at the sight of her sweatshirt quivering as it rises and falls heavily over those beautiful breasts. Does that mean she has an inner tremble too?
If this were any other woman, I would grab her and kiss her right now, while hoping to get a whole lot further.
But this is Wilcox.
And she’s wriggled under my skin and gotten stuck there like one of those burrowing beetle things. But with only two legs. That look incredible in sports leggings.
She’s cute, and passionate, and fucking loves football.
Much as I hate to admit it, and much as I like to think I’m always right—when it comes to footy anyway—after only a month I’ve already learned things from her. Become a better coach—hell, a better person —because of her.
She’s right about making the guys more flexible to prevent injuries and giving them a safe space where they can get their thoughts and feelings off their chests without fear of judgment. And, goddamn her, she was right to stop me yelling at them earlier. And she did that because she believes in treating people well.
That means she deserves to be treated well too—certainly better than I usually would .
I don’t want her to think I’m the dick who behaved like she was just another throwaway drunken fumble for a second longer.
Her eyes bore into me like she’s trying to find my soul but isn’t sure there’s one to find.
“Sit.” I drag my hand off hers. It’s almost a stroke, not wanting to break contact until the final second.
“Why?” That single word might be defiant, but the edge in her voice is a little softer now.
Is it my touch that did that?
“Because I want to ask you something.” There are actually a thousand things I want to ask her. Does she have a favorite pizza topping? What’s her go-to free kick play? If I sucked her nipples while she came, would her inner walls squeeze harder around my dick?
“I think we need to move the defense around, if that’s what you want to know,” she says. “Because tonight they were?—”
“It’s not about footy.”
“Okay, but we should probably talk about how to pick the guys up after that loss so they don’t start a downward spiral. Because I thought we’d decided there was no reason for us to discuss anything but work.”
“Yeah, well, I’m going back on that. And please sit down.”
She sighs. “Five minutes.” And drops back onto the bench seat. “What is it?”
I rest my forearms on the table either side of my drink and lean forward, to just a few inches outside the zone where I might be able to catch the scent of her hair or skin.
This is the most difficult question to ask. And might result in my utter humiliation. But I’m not sure I’ll ever find peace if I don’t have an answer .
I thread my fingers together and squeeze tight, steeling myself. “I want to know what happened in Paris.”
Immediately she’s back on her feet and picking up the keys. “We are definitely not talking about that.”
Then she’s halfway to the door before I can get out of my chair to chase after her.
“Wilcox, wait.”
When I reach her, I catch her free hand and spin her around.
Her surprised gaze, again, moves to where we are connected, looking at her hand clasped in mine like it can’t possibly be a part of her body. “Not only are we not talking about it, we’re supposed to be forgetting about it.”
“I can’t.” The truth falls out of me before I can stop it.
She sucks in her top lip, her expression making my insides sink with regret at my honesty. I know better than that, better than to let anyone see the real me. Losing control like that was stupid.
But does her hesitation mean she can’t stop thinking about it either? That she lies awake wondering what it would be like for us to kiss again and to be naked together?
Her hand gets warmer the longer I hold it. Is the rest of her skin warming too? Maybe the delicate patch a little farther above my touch on the inside of her wrist? The spot just below her left ear, where the tiny birthmark sits? How about the soft area high on her inner thighs?
“What difference does it make?” she asks, her words slow and steady. “Things like that mean nothing to you. One woman one night, another one the next. Who cares what you did and who you did it with?”
She dips her head toward our skin-on-skin contact. “And why are you holding my hand? ”
But again, she makes no attempt to take it away from me.
I wrap my other palm around the back of it, and now I have a part of Wilcox completely in my grasp. “Because I want to.”
She looks at me again, the gold flecks in the green sparkling in the low light.
For the first time in my life, I could stand holding hands and taking in every detail of a woman’s face for hours and never get bored.
What the fuck has gotten into me? Wilcox, that’s what. Damn her for being so totally bloody irresistible.
“And you want to too, don’t you?” I draw her hand to my chest. “I think I know you well enough to know you would have snatched this hand away from me by now if you didn’t.”
“Do you really not remember anything about Paris?” Her voice is soft, almost breathy.
“I remember dancing with you. And thinking you were hot.” Probably best to leave out the bit about her boobs bouncing when she jumped up and down.
“And nothing else?”
I shake my head. “Will you tell me?”
She sighs, slowly slides her hand out from mine, and plays with the keys, as though that was the reason she needed it back.
My heart drops to my stomach. Have I lost the moment?
“Okay.” She digs her teeth into her plump lower lip, a hint of stubbornness back in her face, like she’s decided to tell me because she knows I won’t like it.
“We danced. To an Abba song, then some Bee Gees thing, and…” She looks up at the embossed ceiling for a moment. “…something by Donna Summer, I think.”
“Wow. Granular. I hope you’re going to be this detailed about all of it.”
She turns her head so she can give me an oh-for-goodness-sake side-eye. It moves her face into the green light from behind the bar, which illuminates those three freckles on the tip of her nose. “Then we went to get a drink and stood at a bar table talking. But the whole place was loud, so we had to stand really close together.”
“How close?”
“A few inches.”
I step toward her. “Closer than this?”
Over her breasts, her sweatshirt rises and falls more deeply than before. “Yes.”
“Show me.”
She shakes her head and concentrates on the keys. “Don’t be silly.”
I hook my hand around her upper arm, the softness of the inside a contrast to the firmer muscle on the outside. “It’s not silly. I really want to know.”
She takes a long, slow breath, her chest quivering again as it swells.
I ease her arm toward me, and she follows, inching closer until there’s almost no space between us.
With one quick stroke of my thumb over her arm, I release it. “That’s pretty close.”
She nods, her attention focused somewhere around my ribs.
“Then what happened?”
Unable to play with the keys with both hands anymore because there isn’t enough space between us, she flips them over and over in one palm. “You kissed me. ”
Those words could not turn me on more if she’d said them while getting to her knees in front of me.
Of course I kissed her. I would have been bonkers not to. How could anyone resist a woman like this? It’s taking all my strength and willpower to resist her now. And, oh holy shit, I hate myself for not remembering it.
“What did it feel like?”
Her shoulders slump as she sighs. “If you can’t remember, I don’t think?—”
I bend my knees so I can peer under her dropped gaze. “I want to know, Wilcox.” She refuses to look at me. “I want to know what kissing you feels like. But I can’t remember. So tell me what it felt like to you.”
Her eyes drift shut, almost like she’s trying to suppress the memory.
But then the tip of her tongue peeks out and runs between her lips, like she’s tasting me all over again.
A second later, her eyes snap open like she’s immediately shoved the memory into a vault at the back of her mind and locked it away forever.
“It was just a kiss in a club between two drunk people. One of them clearly a lot more drunk than the other.” She lifts her head enough for me to see her raised eyebrows.
“But it didn’t end with that one kiss at the table, did it?” My desire for her churns with the exasperation of knowing she knows exactly what happened but is refusing to tell me. “How the hell did we get in the cupboard?”
She chews at the corner of her mouth, like she’s trying to suppress a smile. “Never in a million years did I think I would ever be in a dark empty pub, with Hugo freaking Powers asking me how we ended up in a French closet together.”
Okay, I can join her in a joke, if it will help make progress. “Was it a nice closet? Like, full of Parisian design, and croissants, and Monet paintings?”
“It was a janitor’s closet. Do you really not even remember that?” The hurt in her voice is obvious, even to a jerk like me.
Who knew shame could feel like a bulldozer driving over you, crushing you? “Sadly not.”
“God knows how. You almost put your foot in a bucket at one point.”
“At what point was that?” I have never experienced frustration like this in my life. Part of me wants to shake her until all the details spill out. Another part wants to kiss her so hard she comes just from my tongue on hers. “What were we doing?”
She takes a step back, recoiling from my raised voice, brows pinched. “Why are you trying to make me tell you this?”
“Because it’s driving me crazy that I can’t remember.” My hands claw at the air between us. “I’ve racked my brain as hard as I can, but it’s all patchy in here.” I jab at the side of my head.
“But why is it so important to you?”
Now that’s a question.
And all the potential answers are too terrifying to contemplate.
Not liking her knowing something about me that I don’t know? Makes me a dick.
Feelings for Wilcox? Intolerable.
Feelings for Wilcox that go beyond wanting to rip off her track pants? Catastrophic.
“Why do you have all the questions and no answers?” I push my hands through my hair, my pulse rising. “Why won’t you tell me? Is there a reason you don’t want me to know?”
She squeezes the keys, her knuckles turning white. “It’s probably the only advantage I’ll ever have over you.”
“What?” Is that really how she sees herself? Somehow inferior to me? Christ, this woman is a hundred thousand times the person I am.
I instinctively rest my hand on her shoulder. It instantly calms me. I can only hope it makes her feel better too. Because if she doesn’t understand how fucking brilliant she is, then there is something very, very wrong.And I’m happy to take on the job of explaining it to her.
“Don’t you dare think that. I can’t make those performance charts you make. I can’t remember all the staff’s names, never mind their birthdays. And no one likes me anywhere near as much as they like you.”
When her head drops, it’s all I can do to stop myself from nudging my thumb under her chin and tipping her face up to look at me. “Come on, Wilcox. Level the playing field. Tell me what we did.”
Turns out my thumb wasn’t necessary. Her head slowly lifts until her eyes, gentler now, are scanning my face. “Will you promise not to say anything stupid?”
“Yes,” I whisper. I’ve never felt so honest, so lacking in bullshit, my entire life.
“Or sarcastic?”
“Yes.”
“Or anything even remotely Hugo-ish?” Her impish smile sparks a weird wiggle in my stomach.
“Not totally sure what that means.” Hell, even in these circumstances she manages to make me chuckle. “And I’m guessing it’s not flattering. But yes. ”
“Okay.” She takes a deep breath and blows it out. “As we were on our way out?—”
“We were leaving together ?”
“Yes, because it was loud. You said we should go somewhere quieter so we could talk.”
I doubt very much that drunk me wanted to take a hot girl somewhere quiet to talk . “Right.”
“As we were walking along the hallway to leave, you stumbled against the closet door and it opened. You laughed and dragged me inside.”
“Then what did I do?”
“Closed the door. And it was pitch dark. Apart from a bit of light coming in underneath.”
That’s really not what I meant. “ Then what did I do?”
She swallows, her throat shifting under the delicate fair skin. “You kissed me again.”
Her voice is soft and husky. And, yup, that’s definitely the hottest phrase I have ever heard. My body has never burned with more desire at four simple words.
I take a deep breath and try to subtly shift my crotch to make more room for Mr. Happy. “Where?”
“In the closet. Like I said?—”
“I meant, was it here?” I slide my hand inward along her shoulder and tap the side of her neck.
She shakes her head.
I run my finger higher until it touches her earlobe. “Here?”
She shakes her head again, and presses her lips together.
“How about…” I glide my finger from her ear across her cheek and stop right on the soft, round apple. “Here?”
She shakes her head again, her eyes drifting half closed, and releases her lips, as if giving me a clue .
I trace a path from her cheek to the corner of her mouth and slowly follow the outline of her full pink lips. When I complete the circuit, I bring my finger to rest on her cupid’s bow.
Before I can ask the question again, she lifts her sleepy eyelids, locks her gaze with mine, and nods slowly, her lips rocking against my finger.
Her beautiful fair cheeks brighten with a hint of pink. “Then you pushed your hands up inside my top.”
The inner, silky, damp parts of her lips brush against my finger as she speaks. And all I can think of is her other silky, damp lips and how much I would like to rest my finger there too.
My already racing heart now thumps louder.
It’s a crime that I don’t recall having my hands on her body. There’s nothing I’d likemore than to do that again right now. Except this time, I would make sure that the sensation of my fingers on her flesh, and my mouth on hers, were logged away in my memory forever.
I peel my finger from her lush mouth and shove both hands into my jacket pockets for safety. “And what did you do?”
“I kissed you back and put my hands under your shirt too.” A coy smile lifts one corner of her mouth. “You have a lot of muscles.”
She liked it. Excellent. “Then what?”
“Then you lifted me up and set me on a shelf.”
Jesus Christ, this is torture. I should back off, climb out of this deep pond of trouble. But I can’t. I can’t help myself. I can’t stop myself from wading in deeper. “Did you wrap your legs around me?”
She looks down and nods.
I rub my hand around the back of my neck and dig my fingers hard into the taut tendons. I was lucky enough to have this woman’s legs gripping my waist and I don’t fucking remember it. “Tell me what I did then.”
“You started kissing me…here.” She draws a line down the side of her neck.
Well, shit. My mouth really has been on that birthmark.
Her finger continues its journey across her collarbone, then moves over her sweatshirt and down between her breasts.
Holy fuck. Mr. Happy completes his journey northward. And there’s no hiding it in track pants—she must be able to see it.
But how did my pants get unzippered that night? Tom said he had to do them up. So how the hell did that happen?
“And when I…did that”—my gaze settles on where her finger still rests, right between her breasts—“what did you do?”
Even from this angle I can tell she’s focused on my heaving groin.
“I undid your jeans.”
I might be about to shoot my load right here, with roughly a foot between us and not a finger on each other. Is this tantric sex or something?
“Why?”
Silence. Is that because she doesn’t know the answer? Or because she doesn’t want to admit the reason?
Her chest rises with another long, deep breath. Then falls with an equally long, slow exhale. “Because I wanted you.”
Heat trickles down the inside of my ribcage. Christ, the competition for the sexiest sentence in the English language is high tonight .
If we didn’t work together, I’d grab her right now, hoist her up on the bar and bury my face between her legs.
But we do.
So I ball my hands into fists inside my pockets and try to ignore Mr. Happy’s extra happy twitches. “Then what happened?”
Finally she looks up. But her gaze halts at my lips. I can’t help but lick them, to put on a show for her.
And she watches.
My perfect audience of one watches my tongue work my lips as she talks. “My backside knocked a plastic bottle of something off the shelf. It hit you in the leg. You stumbled back and grabbed the door handle, and the door flew open and you fell out.”
And it comes back to me. My hand reaches for that spot, feeling it again now, the whack of the heavy container of liquid on the outside of my left thigh. Why the fuck can I remember what that feels like, but not what it’s like to have my mouth on hers, on her neck, between her breasts?
Mr. Happy aches at the thought that she came so fucking close to touching him.
“Then that was that.” Her voice is soft and tinged with regret.
But is that regret because we didn’t finish it? Or because it shouldn’t have started in the first place?
“Probably a good job it ended there,” I say, testing the water.
A questioning crinkle creeps across her forehead.
So perhaps she doesn’t regret it. That’s gratifying.
I push a stray strand of hair off her face, my finger grazing her temple, another precious bit of contact. “I mean, because you deserve better than that. You are leagues above a shag in a cupboard.”
She shrugs and sighs. “Anyway…”
And slowly she turns away and moves toward the door.
My feet instinctively carry me after her and, with a mind of their own, my hands shoot out and reach for her shoulders. Fuck knows what they plan to do when they get there, but I suspect it will involve spinning her around and our tongues tangling.
With two clunks she unlocks the door and pulls it open, sending a rush of cool night air over my face that brings me back to my senses. Christ, I can’t grab her. That would be very, very wrong.
I regain control of my upper limbs just in the nick of time, right as she turns to let me through, and I push my fingers through my hair like that was what they were up in the air for all along.
“See you Monday morning,” she says with a hushed tone of resignation.
“Right. Yeah. Monday.” I plunge my hands back into the safety of my jacket pockets, step past her and through the door.
It clicks shut behind me.
Followed by the clunk of one deadbolt, then the other.