Orla
I couldn't wait for him to leave. The second the door clicked shut, I unfurled my shoulders, feeling the tension snap like a bowstring that had been held too tight for too long.
I grabbed the disinfectant spray from the cupboard and started scrubbing the treatment bed hoping to wipe away the unwelcome tingle still fizzing under my skin.
When I finally stopped, I leaned both hands on the table, staring at the blue tissue paper until it blurred before crumpling it and chucking it into the bin with far too much annoyance.
Bloody Tyler Reed.
I knew his type. I’d spent my career navigating the classic, cocky, untouchable athlete. Men who walked into a room expecting to be worshipped. And fine—he wasn’t hard to look at. Not if you liked them tall, ridiculously fit, with a jawline sharp enough to cut granite.
But those eyes. God help me, those impossibly deep green eyes.
I pressed my palm to my forehead, groaning into the Dettol-thick silence.
My dignity was swirling down the drain along with the disinfectant.
I should’ve shut him down harder. I should’ve given him the glacial stare that usually sent players scurrying.
Instead, he’d smirked, tossed out that magic-hands line, and my insides had liquefied.
Worse still, I’d seen that flicker in his eyes when my thumb pressed into the tightest part of his thigh.
That look. That spark. The feel of him under my hand all solid, hot, and coiled like a spring seconds from snapping. My fingertips were practically vibrating with the memory of his smooth, warm skin.
What if I hadn’t stepped back? What if I’d let my hand drift higher?
I could see it: him sitting up, catching my wrist, pulling me into the heat of him.
His mouth at my ear, his voice a low, magnetic vibration.
His hand sliding up the back of my thigh, lifting me onto the table like I weighed nothing.
Pinning me there. His fingers hooking into my waistband, the heavy, searing stretch of him filling me until I—
I could feel the heat swirling in my lower abdomen. My thighs snapped together as shame flared through me, bright and hot.
Fucking hell.
I snapped my eyes open, gasping to steady a breath that had gone completely haywire.
I’d treated hundreds of athletes. I’d worked the Olympic circuit.
I’d navigated entire football squads without so much as a stray thought.
I wasn’t blind to attractive men, but it had never been like this.
Never this consuming. Never like a match being struck directly against my ribcage.
Maybe it was because I was single now, Josh was gone, and my body finally had the permission it needed to want again.
But it felt like more than that.
Something about Reed had slipped under my skin, and the more I tried to ignore the itch, the deeper it got.
No. Absolutely not. I was a professional.
I had a master’s degree. I did not fantasize about treatment-room transgressions with a man who had the self-control of a puppy and too much charm for his own good.
I snatched up my tablet and pen, scribbling notes I already knew by heart, flexion fine, residual tension, core activation good…anything to drown out the pulse still throbbing between my legs.
One more session after lunch.
Then home.
Where I could take a shower cold enough to stop my heart.