MORE THAN TWO YEARS AGO.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t noticed how good looking Jude was until now. I wasn’t blind, even though I wasn’t looking to date a footballer and not one his age anyway. But he was good looking.
Very. Good. Looking.
And he was looking at me like he thought the same about me. That didn’t hurt either.
My skin prickled in the nicest possible way. A flutter of butterflies cascaded in my stomach.
What were we doing here?
“Did you enjoy your McDonald’s?” What a pathetic thing to say.
“Better than a strip club but nowhere near as good as looking at you.” His grin was as cheesy as his line.
It wasn’t just me feeling this then. I wasn’t making up the thickness in the air or how my skin was burning in the best possible way.
“It’s been a night of good decisions so far.” I wasn’t sure who I was saying that for. Me or him?
“Let me make another one.”
Jude’s hand came up to my hair, running his fingers through it until he cupped the back of my head.
I knew he was going to kiss me. Now would be a good time to come to those senses I was meant to have, only they didn’t seem to be working. Or rather, I didn’t want them to work.
So I did what might be a future mistake. I looked up at him, his blue eyes glinting, his smile tinged with a whisper of mischief, only I didn’t get to study it, because his lips found mine and began a kiss that made my knees not feel quite as strong as they should. I had to wrap my arms around his neck to keep me upright so that kiss could continue.
He kissed completely different to how he played, with one exception: his skill level was high. There was detail, there was care, there was control. But he was slow and calm, as if he was trying harder to read me than he had to on the pitch to read the game. Nothing like I thought a man of his age would kiss. I’d expected it to be rushed, fast, something that sought instant gratification. This wasn’t that.
His hand stayed in my hair, toying with it, something I loved. His other hand had dipped from my hip to my ass where he was definitely making a thorough assessment of its tone.
I could’ve done the same, but I didn’t want to break this spell that had been cast, wanting this kiss to carry on forever.
It couldn’t. It didn’t. He stopped, pulling his mouth from mine, looking at me like I was a rare animal he’d just enticed into the very best trap.
“Is this better than a milkshake?” The smile that played on his lips told me he already knew the answer to that.
I managed to find some of my wits. “I’m not sure. I’d have to try it again.”
Jude half laughed, sitting back down on the sofa and pulling me onto his lap so I was straddling him, my knees either side of his thighs, and then he kissed me again, the slight rub of his stubble reminding me that he wasn’t a boy. The press of his hard cock through his designer pants reminding me that he was all man.
I forgot he was younger. I forgot that he was football royalty, the son of one of the country’s legends. I forgot that this encounter was not what I was looking for.
Because it felt good.
His hands slid further up my waist, under my top to just below my bra, his fingers grazing the underside of my breasts, my centre pushed against the hard ridge in his pants.
I’d seen Jude naked. Most of the people who worked at Manchester Athletic had seen Jude naked. He was comfortable in his skin and he knew he had it all - the talent, the face, the body. And the cock. The changing rooms were his parade ground, not giving a shit who came in and saw him when he was getting changed or showering, fine with having conversations when he was stark bollock naked.
It had been hard not to notice. I’d asked Amber about it once, knowing that as one of the team’s physios, she saw a lot more than most. She’d told me that becoming immune to how the players looked was lesson one-oh-one in working for a professional football club, and the only player she’d reacted to had been Nate.
I didn’t have that hands-on role, but part of my job was to notice the players’ form and shape, work with the coaches and the medical staff to support with nutrition, sometimes very specific nutrition. A lot of the time though, I worked with players on their lifestyle. It wasn’t just the food; it was the other habits. Drink, drugs, supplements, excessiveness in other areas of their lives, mental health – I’d trained as a counsellor, needing to look at how food and mental health worked together and to understand how I could get my players heads around nutrition beyond controlling it.
Jude was fascinating. He had enough characteristics of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder for me to look at a specific diet and ways of eating for him. At first, I’d dreaded working with him, having seen him as this cocky, over-confident kid who was basking in the light of being phenomenal with the ball as well as feeling like he had a god-given right to success because of his father. But he hadn’t been like that.
He'd listened. Joked in front of his teammates, but he’d focused on what I had to say, read the articles I’d suggested and asked questions.
Part of me wished he’d been difficult. That would be easier to deal with.
