“Dare you,” I whisper, my lips brushing against his with the words.
I feel rather than see his mouth hitch into a smile, and the sound that he makes deep in his throat will stay with me for years. Then his lips are on mine, light at first, curious, testing. Then heavier, pressing, urgent. The arm around the small of my back tightens and he pulls me closer, my body liquid against his. He smells like sweat and mud and grass and tastes like Gatorade, a sweet, artificial taste, and I briefly think how convenient it is to be replenishing my electrolytes while we make out.
But the urgency of the moment knocks the levity out of me as he lifts me up into his strong arms—arms he famously can’t use in his silly little sport. I cross my ankles behind his waist and shiver as his hand snakes underneath my shirt and his fingers trail up my spine. I press my hands to either side of his head and pull us apart for a moment. I need to see him, need to take him in, even though this brief separation is already painful. He’s got his goal-scoring eyes on, but his smile is all sweetness and relief. I run my thumbs along his cheekbones, looking down at him, this wonderful man. Then we come together again in a rush of heat and desire and want. My lips part open with a soft sigh and his tongue slips in, and that hungry hum comes from his throat again. I press my legs tighter, trying to close any gap that might somehow exist between us; I never want space between us again. I can’t help thesoft moans pouring out of me as he kisses me deeper, and my fingers lace through the sweaty hair at the nape of his neck.
This is, of course, how the team finds us. We don’t notice at first, too wrapped up in each other. But then there’s a cough and our concentration fractures just enough to let other thoughts in. And for me, the first thought is abject mortification, but fuck, it’s worth it. I’m blushing a red as deep as the Ramsay jersey we’re both wearing, and I cover my mouth with my hand as Lachlan drops me gently back onto the ground and we both turn to look at the team. The hush in the room is absolute; the team is staring at us like we’re a couple of monkeys in the zoo. It could be five seconds or five years that we stand there, eyeing each other up, but then Bashie—who else—breaks the silence. “That’s what I’m fucking talking about!” he screams. “Get in, lad!”
And then the room erupts, and it’s somehow even louder than thousands of fans cheering when Lachlan scored. They know what Lachlan’s been through, and all they want is happiness now for their boy and the Yank. We’re mobbed by his teammates as they swarm around us. Bashie hoists me up onto his shoulders and Beto Gomez and the Spanish boys are passing Lachlan around above their heads like a tray of canapés. I hold on to Bashie’s head for dear life as he careens me around the room, and I’m laughing and sometimes crying, screaming and sometimes singing. It’s only when Vogler walks into the room that Bashie crouches down and lets me clamber off.
I want to let the team have some privacy to celebrate this moment, but I catch Lachlan’s eye as I edge toward the door. He winks and it rockets straight through my center, curling my toes in anticipation of what happens next. I bite my lip and slip into the hallway, feeling his eyes on my back as I go.
Chapter Forty-Three
Before the night of May21st, it would have been hard for me to pinpoint the highlight of my life. I guess the easy answer would be the day Steven proposed to me, but we all know how that ended, which sort of negates how it began. Maybe when I was ten and I won a contest on the radio that let me go backstage to meet *NSYNC—that was pretty great. But sweet tweeny me could never have comprehended happiness of the magnitude that envelops me when I set foot on the Mersey bus tonight. Despite Vogler’s insistence that it’s not over and we can’t count our chickens before they hatch (or some German variation thereof), the lads are absolutely buzzing, and it’s the purest, most infectious joy. Mersey are now the favorites to win the league, and everyone knows it.
And one thing they also know is that Lachlan and I are on the highway straight to Bone Town. After a win, the bus always has the energy of a high school gym class, but tonight it’s like a high school gym class where a girl has snuck into the locker room. I don’t hear a noise other than “oooooh” for the full hour between when the team catches us kissing and when we get on the bus.
I wave away their shouts and catcalls and try to sit by Phil, as ismy custom, but the lads won’t have it. My heart is gladdened by the fact that Kieran seems to be totally over his crush on me, as he’s the one who hauls me up out of my seat and pushes me down the aisle to where Lachlan is. The grin on Lachlan’s face is wider than the Mersey, the light in his eyes is actually blinding. He stands up and takes a quick look to see if Vogler is on board yet, and when he realizes the coast is clear, he grabs me around the waist and dips me deep into a We’ve-Just-Won-the-War kiss. Kieran and the rest of the lads slap the sides of the bus so hard it actually starts rocking, and I’m laughing so hard I’m crying. Phil’s camera is right there, of course, and I make a mental note to beg himnotto show the footage to Charlotte. But even the lecture I’ll certainly get from Mummy Collins can’t quench the elation pumping through my veins at this moment. Lachlan takes my hand and pulls me into the seat next to him, and he doesn’t let it go for the entire drive back to Liverpool.
We barely talk to each other on the ride, partly because the boys are always popping their heads over the seats to check on us, and partly because every time we look at each other, we just giggle. But as we pull into the training center, Lachlan slips his hand up my thigh and leans over, brushing his lips against my ear as he whispers, “Got any big plans tonight?”
My pulse quickens as a jet of pleasure flares inside me. It’s a miracle that I don’t straddle him on the bus right there and then, but I do consider it. In a shaky voice, I respond: “Yeah, you know, I’m feeling a bit of tightness in my hips…Think you could help with that?”
His fingers on my thigh tighten and his lips vibrate from where they linger on my earlobe as he lets out a little moan. He starts kissing down the side of my neck and the edges of my vision go abit blurry, the noise of the bus fading away. Then there’s a jolt and Lachlan juts forward: Bashie has slapped him across the back of the head. “Save it for the penthouse, mate.”
It’s possible that every single person in the training center has already heard the news about us, because it takes Lachlan a good twenty minutes to say goodbye to all of them, bro-hugging and dapping and being on the receiving end of a number of slaps to the ass. Sadie squeezes the living daylights out of me and makes me promise to tell her how it is: I negotiate her down from “text me during” to “text me tomorrow.” As she walks away, I hover awkwardly near Lachlan’s Range Rover in the parking lot, my hand over my eyes, listening to the players get into their cars and pretending to endure the wolf whistles that actually thrill me. I’m ecstatic that we can be so overt, that the squad knows me and trusts me enough not to hurt their number 14. That they seem genuinely happy for the two of us.
When the very last car has pulled away, Lachlan finally turns to me and the smile on his face is so familiar, but I can’t quite place it. That is, until I remember the dream I had. I tighten at the memory of what he did to me then, and how it’s about to become reality. He closes the distance between us and pushes me up against the door of his car. All my breath escapes in a rush as he presses himself against me, the full lengths of our bodies locking on to each other like magnets. He presses his hands against my hips and kisses me deeply, and when we come up for air—after hours or years, I couldn’t say—he pulls back and smiles.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I respond.
“Would you like to get out of here?”
“No, I think it would be nice if we fucked right now, in the parking lot.”
“Abigail,” he says, curling a strand of my hair around his finger. “I urge you not to joke about that.”
I run my hand down his chest and onto his stomach, feeling his abs tense at my touch. “Then I urge you to get us home.”
We make it into the city center in record time and I resist the compulsion to go down on him at every stoplight, despite very much wanting to. We step into the lift in his building’s garage, and somehow we’ve agreed not to touch each other on the way up. We trust Security Joe, but you never know who’s willing to sell CCTV footage these days, and I doubt even Charlotte Collins could prevent a video of Lachlan Ramsay having sex in an elevator from making it into the tabloids.
The lift dings and the doors open when we reach his flat, and they’ve barely closed behind us before Lachlan has me pressed against the wall. He looks me up and down, ravenous, and lightly draws his lips across mine. I jut my chin up and a shiver runs down my spine as he pulls away. His smile is downright filthy; his eyes are filled with a light I’ve never seen, dark and penetrating. He puts his hands on my hips and trails them up under my shirt, pushing it up over my bra. He pulls one cup down and covers my breast with his mouth, tonguing me, and my nipples stiffen under the soft, wet warmth. A little gasp slips out of my mouth and I throw my head back as every single one of my nerve endings lights up, craving his body. Then his mouth is back near mine, so close, but not touching. His smile is even wider now, and I’m mere moments from death.
I move my lips to his ear. “Lachlan Ramsay, if you make me wait one more second for this, I will absolutely end you.” I take his earlobe between my teeth and give it a little tug, at the same time slipping a hand under his waistband, delighted by what I find there.
This seems to kick us back into gear as his mouth presses against mine, his tongue slipping in as he fumbles with his key in the door behind me.
We stumble into his flat and I’d be quite content to pull him down onto the couch right there, but he lifts me up and fireman-carries me to his room. He throws me onto the bed and kneels at my feet as if in worship, the light in his eyes rapturous. He grabs the hem of my shirt and peels it up and over my head, then stretches his long, lithe torso over me. He braces his arms on either side of my face and dips to kiss me, then slides one hand under my back to unclasp my bra. I’m so exposed, but I’ve never felt safer, because the man staring down at me has a look of such reverence. He works his mouth over every inch of my body, humming little moans of triumph every time he makes me squirm. He trails his lips past my navel, unbuttoning my jeans and sliding them over my hips. He hooks his fingers under the fabric of my underwear, pulling them down and pulling me apart and I’m already starting to unravel. It’s like in my dream only unfathomably better, and when he flicks his tongue into me for the first time, I arch my back and cry out in utter bliss. And he’s good at this—of course he is, with that mouth on him—and we’re good together, quickly finding each other’s rhythms, long imagined but finally real.
As I disintegrate beneath the warm pressure of his tongue, my fingers scrabble for purchase wherever they can. I’m clawing the shirt off of him, sliding my fingers through his hair, doing whatever I can to feel him on me, against me, forever. I’ve never felt like this before; it’s like I’m aware of every single individual cell in my body. It’s a whole new plane of existence. Every time I moan, he finds a new angle, and it’s reducing me to rubble. When I think I’m at the edge, he pulls back, the light in his eyesdarkening another notch as he watches me writhe at his touch. I need him inside me. Now. And just when I think I can no longer bear the absence of him, he presses in and my mind goes blank. I dig my fingers into the perfect ridged muscles of his back, wanting to feel every inch of him as we rock together. I whisper his name over and over, an invocation, a recitation. And then I scream it as we tumble into ecstasy together, and it’s hard to imagine a time before now, before his name on my tongue was the only thing I ever needed, the only thing I ever craved.
We more than make up for lost time, as we don’t leave the bedroom for hours. Finally, reluctantly, even this man who runs upward of seven miles per match is on the brink of exhaustion. I have no idea how I, who can barely climb the stairs on a double-decker bus, am still alive, but somehow I make it. I throw an arm over his chest and it takes everything I have left. “Water. I need water. And sustenance.”
He smiles at me, his breath coming in gasps. “I can go get you some of those energy goo things they feed us at halftime.”
“I think I’ve had enough of your goo for one day.”
