CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Whitney
E verything just changed.
Shifted.
Pushed whatever this is to another level and with his kiss still lingering on my lips and his hands still imprinted on my hips, I’m not quite sure what to do.
Sex is supposed to be just that—sex.
Eyes on me.
But this was more. It was different. It was intimate.
Keep them right on me .
I can still hear his groan and the way his eyes darkened and my name sounded on his lips.
Let me watch you come apart. Let me see what I do to you.
The urge to bolt is real. To run away and not look back. I’ve done it before and had no qualms about it.
But despite how strong the urge is to run, the need to keep my feet right where they are is even stronger.
It’s terrifying.
It’s confusing.
It’s . . . foreign.
And despite all three of those feelings milling in my head, none of them combined are strong enough for me to do what I’ve always done—bolt.
It’s just the rush of the orgasm. The heady feeling of staring at Hardy as he collects his things in the locker room. That’s all these feelings are.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
I pull my hair up into a top knot and process everything in silence. It’s not an easy task though, considering I can’t take my eyes off him or stop thinking about the hum of his touch that I can still feel on my skin.
But staring at him also adds another element. Me trying to figure out why this all feels so different suddenly, when I know I’ve been in this situation before and I sure as hell know he has too.
“Why are you so quiet?” he asks, glancing my way and smiling as he zips his cleats up in a special shoe bag.
“Not quiet, just ... this is a first.” I chuckle as the awkwardness of what just happened hits full force. And not exactly what happened, but where it happened.
“A first?”
“A stadium? Like ... not your average place.”
He purses his lips and puts his head down as a grin slides over his lips. He says something I don’t catch.
“I’m sure not for you, but—”
“Actually, it is a first for me.” His words take me by surprise.
“Like I’m supposed to believe that.” He has to be joking, right? There’s no way he hasn’t.
But by the way he shakes his head and looks me up and down like he wants to devour me, I second-guess myself. “Believe what you will, but I know what I’ll be thinking about every time I walk on the pitch from now on. And I definitely won’t be complaining about it.”
Heat crawls up my cheeks, and no doubt stains them pink. I look away and turn to pretend the pictures on the wall of great players interest me.
“Nope,” he says as he walks over to me, cups the back of my neck, and brings his lips to mine in an unexpected kiss. I want to sink into it even more but ending it before I do that is paramount so I step back. “Uh-uh. We’re not going to do the awkward thing. We know each other, Whitney. We’re both consenting adults who just had sex. Sex we’d waited for. Sex that you took the reins on ... . shit, that’s it, isn’t it?”
“That’s what?” I ask.
“While it was phenomenal on my end, I’m thinking it probably wasn’t all that fantastic on yours, right? On a grass field in the wide open. Grass beneath your knees. Buried as deep as I could be in you.” My cheeks grow even hotter as my body burns with a sweet ache. “I get it’s a sure thing for me, but I didn’t ... I couldn’t give you one hundred percent of what you need.” He emits a self-deprecating chuckle and runs a hand through his hair.
“One hundred percent of what I need?”
“Rather, what you deserve.”
“And what’s that?”
He points to our surroundings. “You deserve better than this.”
“It was fine. This was fine.”
He mock stabs himself in the chest. “My ego will survive ... maybe , but fine is the kiss of death for a man.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I laugh and love the smirk that plays at the corners of his mouth.
He’s doing that thing he does again. The thing where when he knows I’m uncomfortable so he tells a little joke to pull me out of my overthinking. There’s something to be said about a man who can recognize it and then react.
“ Fine .” He lifts his eyebrows at his use of the word, and I chuckle. “I’ll ask the question and make this even more awkward than it’s suddenly become.” He draws in an audible breath. “Please tell me you didn’t fake it.”
I stare at him, a man who seems to be an absolute mess of contradictions. Just when I think he’s one way—a player who has his fun without thought—he goes and shows me a completely different side to him. One that is thoughtful and caring and ... real.
I laugh and then realize he’s dead serious. “Yes. Every gasp, every groan, even the way my body shuddered around you. It was all an act to protect your ego and deny my own pleasure.”
“Ugh.” He pretends to fall on a sword in dramatic fashion that once again has me smiling at his unexpected charm. “The kiss of death,” he groans.
But it’s my own reaction that is even more surprising. I step forward, cup his face, and press my lips against his. One that feels out of place in this situation but at the same time so very right. I don’t understand why everything feels so confusing. “Is that answer enough for you?”
“No.”
“No?”
His eyes shoot wider and his grin is ridiculously large. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Whew. I lied. My ego would have been bruised. Immensely.” He motions for me to follow as he turns out the light. “I could have fixed it though. If you had, I mean.”
“Fixed what?”
“The subpar part. Prove I’m worth it if need be. Like, right now.” He points at the wall to the left of us like I can see through it. “My place is right there.”
“Right where? Behind the wall?” A nervous laugh bubbles up.
“No.” He rolls his eyes. “In the condos overlooking the stadium. The penthouse in the left tower. That’s mine.”
“How convenient for you.”
“Or smothering. Depends on how you look at it.” He glances my way before continuing. “I should have thought of it from the get-go. Taking you there, but ... there’s something about you that makes it hard for me to think clearly.”
My smile is real, while my heart hammers erratically in my chest. This doesn’t happen to me. The uncertainty. The quickening of everything within me. “I don’t want to go to your place,” I say softly as he hoists his backpack onto his shoulder and pushes open the door to the parking lot before locking it behind him.
“No?” He chuckles like he doesn’t believe me. “Why not?”
“Because ... it’s just better this way.”
“Better or easier?” He angles his head to the side and studies me. It seems to be his thing, watching me like that, trying to figure me out. It says a lot about him, if I’m honest because he’s earnest in wanting to know what makes me tick.
“Both,” I say softly. “No need to complicate matters, right?”
He nods. “Pleasure doesn’t have to go hand in hand with complication.”
Clearly, he has no idea how my insides feel right now.
“That’s not what I meant. It’s just, you’re at the academy for two more weeks before coming back here.”
“Here as in a thirty-minute drive, which clearly you made with ease tonight, so why would it be any different then?”
“That’s beside the point,” I say simply to have something to say because he’s making way too much sense.
“No, it’s not.”
“It is. Especially when we live in two vastly different worlds.”
“Like how we both have football pitches for our offices?”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“No, I’m heading off the Whitney Barnes freak-out of she had an itch, she scratched it, time to run away.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“It’s exactly what you’re doing, but I see it now. I recognize it. And if I haven’t already proven I’m patient enough to you, I guess you’ll see it yet again.”
“You think you’re funny.”
“No. I think I’m right.” He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear as his eyes search mine. “I’m all for scratching itches. I don’t know about you, Lucky Shot, but sometimes when I scratch the itch, it just itches more.”
I don’t fight my grin because damn, the man has my number in more ways than one. He’s patient. He’s kind. He’s charming. And hell if he doesn’t already have me itching again. The difference this time around is how he’s acting and what he’s saying, which is making that itch even more attractive.
“Obviously, I’m not good at the after part,” I say with a lift of my eyebrows and the hopes that he’s going to let me off the hook on this whole line of conversation.
“I like that you’re not.” He nudges me with his elbow. “I like that you’re awkward and that I make you nervous.”
“You don’t make me nervous.”
“Yes, I do but think what you will.”
“I will.”
“And in the process, you’ll remember every second of what we did back there,” he says and then tugs me against him for one long, slow, torturously sexy kiss that has me simmering for him yet again.
I’m supposed to be sated. I’m supposed to ... not be getting so goddamn lost in this kiss that I can’t find my way out of it.
“And you’ll want more of it,” he murmurs against my lips before opening my car door for me and closing it after I climb in. Then he just stands there and stares at me. I roll the window down. “What?”
“You need to drive away first. That way I’ll know you made it out of here okay.”
I stare at him, eyes blinking and chest expanding. No one’s ever said that to me before. No one has ever looked out like that for me before.
Put your foot on the gas and go, Whit.
“Hardy?”
“Hmm?”
“About tonight? About—”
“You’re overthinking it.” He braces his hands on my window and grins. “Don’t.”
But isn’t that the problem? I already am.
“Okay.” A smile I don’t understand. A look that lasts longer than it should. “Thank you for ... understanding.”
“Always,” he says.
“Good night.”
“Good night.” He taps the top of my car and steps back.
And when I drive off, when I navigate the long rows of the parking lot out of the stadium, I can see Alexander Hardy in my rearview mirror staring after me.
And I can’t shake the image from my mind.