Chapter 19 #2
Alec shifted in his bed so he was flat on his back, his phone on speaker and lying on his heart. With his limbs free, he managed to kick Hugh out, though it earned him a threatening look of retribution made even more ominous by the dog’s angry jowls and preponderance of retaliatory drool.
His new boots out by the front door would probably suffer for his actions, but like he bloody well cared at the moment.
The only care he had in the world was for Marisa.
When he gave her back his full attention, he was met with little jitters of breathy sounds that weren’t filled with the confidence he’d heard in her a moment ago but were laced with more of that uncertainty she was always fighting off when they were in public together.
Did she want this? Want him? Fuck. Had he read things wrong? She was exhausted, that much he knew, and they were both still hurtling toward this mammoth deadline. Perhaps this wasn’t the best idea, even as his cock thumped out its disagreement against his leg.
Ornery wanker.
“I don’t want to play any games,” Alec said, and it was the truth. Games had winners and losers, and he couldn’t bear to see Marisa’s face on the other side of whatever it was they were playing at if she thought she’d lost.
“Oh,” she said, disappointment thick in her voice.
“Because right now, it’s just you and me. And that’s what I want. Just you and me. And we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Another “Oh.” Then a heartbreakingly adorable gasp, followed by a more enlightened “Oooh.”
He smiled at what her lips must have looked like, all plump and pink, pushed out into a fetching O that pulled her beautiful brown eyes wider.
It was enough that she was with him on the phone, that she hadn’t hung up on him after he’d called her at—he checked the time—near to bloody midnight when she’d just worked her arse off all day catering to people who likely didn’t appreciate her the way they should. It was enough that she—
“Alec?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m, uh, wearing a tank top.”
He’d never been more convinced the woman was out to kill him.
Alec nearly choked on his tongue, with his most recent breath doing its damnedest to ensure he didn’t have a next one.
“Aye?” he croaked out while his lower abdominals tensed in time to the T’s she’d spoken in tank top.
“Aye,” she mimicked rather fucking cutely.
Bloody hell. Did the woman not know what state he was in, with his cock about to mutiny over his brain?
“Was that too much?” she asked. “Should I not have said that? I don’t know how to do any of this—”
“Where’s your hand?”
Fucking Christ. Had he really just gone and blurted out the first thought that came to mind, like a creep with an agenda?
He fisted his hand in his hair, again wishing he hadn’t cut it so short.
He was about to apologize, to beg for forgiveness, mercy, blessings, anything she’d give him, when what she said next froze every bone in his body—except one.
“On my breast.”
Fuuuck.
Alec coughed. “I’m wearing a T-shirt,” he said, like a fool. What was it about this woman that stole whatever was left of his good sense?
“If you were with me, would it bother you if I said I wanted to see you without your shirt on?”
Before the T had landed on the word shirt, he’d ripped his off and resettled the phone on his bare chest. “Already gone. And no, it wouldn’t bother me at all.
” Then he paused, his thoughts growing darker through the filter of the phone.
“What would bother me would be not knowing how you’d like your breasts touched. ”
They were doing this. She was really fucking letting him do this, and he was at a complete loss for why he hadn’t gotten in his damn car and driven over to her place a good ten minutes ago.
“Slowly,” she breathed. “Nothing too aggressive.”
“There’s no force in the world that would prevent me from taking my time. Tell me, how do they feel?”
“Heavy. The nipples are sensitive.”
“Only delicate affection, then. Bloody perfect. I’d want to take my time. Savor every bit you’d want to offer me. Learn what you like.”
He slammed his eyes shut, his chest heaving as he imagined worshipping every flawless inch of skin that had been carefully concealed from him thus far.
“I like your kisses,” she said airily.
“Then that’s what you’ll get. As soft or hard as you please. I’d start by tracing the curve of your breasts with my lips.”
“Mapping out a breadcrumbs trail?”
He chuckled. “Wouldn’t want to lose my way, though I wager it’d be a happy accident to get lost in the valley of your curves.”
“Oh my God. You’re so—”
“Where would it lead me, such a trail? If I kept going with my kisses?”
Alec was being bold now. Way too bold, and the heat in Cal’s apartment must have been set to scorching. The sweat misting his skin was beginning to make him forget he was in bed alone and not with the woman his hands itched to caress.
“You’d go lower.”
Please let me go lower. For the love of any holiday with miracles still on offer this late in the game, let me go lower.
Through the phone, he could hear the distinct rustle of sheets, the rearranging—or was that pounding?
—of pillows, and he cursed the too short of a time he’d spent in her apartment, when he was regrettably at his least masculine, getting his damn boo-boo iced by Marisa while three of her mountainous male friends, all with criminal records, casually threatened him with implied New Jersey hospitality if any harm came of her at his expense.
And having spent enough time in the Garden State with Cal, Alec knew what that hospitality likely entailed.
Him wearing a pair of cement shoes and enjoying a trip down the Hudson River.
But he’d not seen her bedroom, and that had been a catastrophic mistake, especially as he took himself in hand and imagined ducking beneath her sheets to taste what only she could offer.
At this point, words fell away from them both and were replaced by throaty breaths and short, eager moans.
“Alec . . . are you feeling . . .”
“I feel you, lass. I feel you all over me. God, Marisa, you’re perfect. You’re bloody perfect. Come with me.” He pumped himself harder, angling his hips toward the ceiling in rushing thrusts, relying on the power of his fantasy to provide any sort of anchor lest he fly off the bed entirely.
She wasn’t really his, but his heart remained focused on the duties that would have been his responsibility had she been.
Helping her seek out her pleasure and ensuring she took it from no one else besides him.
It was that single thought that proved to be his undoing. Alec roared his release into the darkness of his bedroom, echoing in time to the lighter cries from Marisa as she found her pleasure alongside him.
And it was through the hazy aftermath of the strongest orgasm of his life that only her sweet voice managed to penetrate.
“It’s after midnight.”
“Aye,” he agreed, though how she could make sense of anything, let alone tell time, was beyond him.
“A new day.”
“So it is, and a happy one at that.”
“It’s going to be a good day.” The brightness in her tone warmed him, because he’d likely had something to do with putting it there.
“A perfect one, after you get some sleep.”
“Oh, I suppose,” Marisa said, though even she couldn’t fight back the yawn trying to break free.
“Have coffee with me tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. Whatever you say,” she said drowsily.
“Then sleep well.”
After Alec cleaned up and checked that Hugh hadn’t made leather confetti out of his boots, he hobbled back to bed with the biggest shit-eating grin on his face.
But when he went to plug his phone in to charge, he accidentally brushed his thumb over the email icon.
He had every intention of closing it right back down, until he saw Brennan’s name at the top of the heap, with an all-caps subject line titled ARGENTINA CONTRACT OFFER.
Alec’s stomach sank like a stone, then threatened to drag the rest of him down with it as he took in the most lucrative contract terms he’d ever expect to see at his age.
It was more money than even Brennan originally thought they could get and scores more than he would ever hope to negotiate out of Great Britain again.
But it was for a coaching position. Not as a player.
Which meant that if he had any hope of staying in the game, the only way to do so would be by leaving it.
Alec leaned forward with his forearms on his knees and cursed.
If this was what Argentina would offer him, he wouldn’t just need Arthur’s New York sports spotlights and praise. He would need the entire hemisphere’s worth of sports reporters to even convince Great Britain to counter effectively.
And if he accepted the offer, everyone, Phoebe included, would know he couldn’t go out on top as he’d hoped and boasted about and bloody sacrificed for.
That even titans were still expected to hold up the weight of a world, even if the world was content to spin without them.
Whatever he decided, whether signing with Argentina or holding out for a renewal with Great Britain, either option cast a grim pall over his future.
Because both choices saw him oceans apart from Marisa.