“She’s not that old, only thirty-two. Looks good for her age. Come on, mate, you’d be doing me a big favor. She’s not been out since she caught her wanker of an ex in bed with his next-door neighbor.”
“Steve, you’re on airport duty.” Gray dropped his bag on the bench next to Damon, virtually in the guy’s lap. Damon jumped, turning a curious gaze up to Gray. “If anyone gets to take Frankie out, it’s me.”
“Hey, wait…I haven’t said no yet!”
Gray shot him a look, one all his teammates were familiar with. Once he’d set his mind on something, there was no stopping him. The same way they offloaded the ball to him if they wanted him to break the opposition’s defense; he set about making sure he was Frankie’s date for the evening.
Bryant held up his hands in surrender, the smaller man backing off. “No need to get your knickers in a twist, mate. She’s all yours.”
Gray grunted in satisfaction and turned his attention to Damon, who was watching him with that damn inscrutable gaze of his.
“Well?”
Damon shrugged, spreading his hands as if to say “Do I have a choice?” “Sure, you can be Frankie’s date. But I want the money for the damn tickets, you tight-arsed git.”
“Done.”
He didn’t ask how much the tickets were, or where they were going. It made no difference. He’d have paid a small fortune and then some to get to be the man to take Frankie out.
Damon flashed a swift grin and grabbed his kit bag, almost smacking Gray in the chest with it as he swung it up and over his shoulder. “My place, half past seven, sharp. Don’t be late. And do something with that damn mop on your head,” he ordered over his shoulder as he headed for the door.
Gray watched the door for long moments after Damon left. As the swinging door finally closed to a stop, he allowed a slow grin to spread over his face.
He had a date with Frankie Cross.
Turning back to his kit bag, he plunked down on the bench and started to unwrap the tape covering the laces on his boots. The boots were only a few months old but they were already ruined, relegated from match boots down to training, and as comfortable as old slippers. Pulling his socks off, he contemplated the healing marks on the back of his calf. Circular war wounds, they were ones any player was intimately familiar with. Stud marks. Bastard from Sarenby Sharks had gotten him good during the match last weekend. He rubbed them absently with one hand as he dropped the socks into his bag.
At least they hadn’t broken the skin. Blood meant time off the pitch, which was often the opposition’s aim, especially with a player like him. Without arrogance he knew he was one of the driving forces in the Wolves’ side. A forward who could smash through the enemy’s defense, and then run like a back if necessary. He was damn dangerous on the pitch, which made him public enemy number one for the other team.
Standing, he wasted no time in stripping off his shirt. His shirt, number four emblazoned on the back, hit the deck just before his shorts, the heavy cotton torn from the rough-and-tumble of training and mud stained from the damp pitch. His base layer followed suit, the long sleeves soaked in sweat. It was getting a bit warm for it now, but he’d rather sweat his bollocks off than be cold.
He fucking hated to be cold, but at nearly seven foot, there was an awful lot of him to keep warm. His shirts, even his boots, had to be custom-made, which was why he wore them until they nearly dropped from his feet in pieces, unable to let go of the lessons he’d learned as a kid dragged up on a council estate on the rough side of town. They’d had nothing, and he’d expected to live the same life as his parents, stuck on the dole or in a dead-end job until he and Cross had been spotted playing for their school team.
They’d been plucked from obscurity, signed to a good junior team, and the rest was history. Signing with the Wolves, with an international debut under his belt last season, was the culmination of his dreams. Sure, he had the money now, but still…those were good boots with plenty of life in them.
Towel over his shoulder, he stripped the protective box and his underwear and wandered stark-bollock-naked over to the showers. He was alone; most of the team had already left and Vicky was still out on the pitch with his partner in crime—no doubt still embroiled in an intellectual debate about breast size.
Picking one of the private stalls over the main communal shower, Gray pulled the curtain over and snapped the water on. The water hit him in a shower of red-hot needles, soaking him in seconds and powering into his aching muscles. He hissed, feeling the warmth spreading through his body. Butler was a bastard, a slave driver with an iron will and a voice like a whip as he drove them harder and harder as it came up to the end of the season.
He tipped his head back, letting the water cascade over his face and wet his hair. He didn’t blame the guy. With him and Cross out on the national squad, the Wolves had taken a battering at the beginning of the season. They’d pulled it back, of course, but Butler wasn’t content with that. He wanted to end the season with a bang.
Letting his thoughts wander, Gray reached down and squirted a handful of gel into his palm. Right now he didn’t want to think of training. He started to wash, the grin sweeping over his face and claiming his lips again. He had a date tonight, with Frankie Cross, no less. Soaping under his pits and across his broad chest, he rifled through his memory.
Eight years older than he was, Frankie had been a part of his life as long as Damon had. As a teenager she’d been their favorite target for pranks like frogs in her bed or slime in her shoes. They’d put so many water-filled balloons above the door that she probably still checked there to this day.
His hand smoothed down his stomach, washing the sweat and mud off. God alone knew how it had gotten there. When you had to wash it out the crack of your ass often enough, you stopped questioning how. Stuff was like fucking sand. It got everywhere.
It wasn’t until he was twelve that Frankie went from being Damon’s annoying older sister to an actual girl. One he developed a hell of a crush on. Soaping his balls with economical movements, his hand slowed when he washed his dick. At twelve, along with his crush on Frankie, he’d discovered masturbation and spent what seemed like that whole year wanking to thoughts of kissing her. And other stuff a twelve-year-old definitely shouldn’t be thinking of.
He’d never said anything to her; he couldn’t. Despite his prowess on the pitch, his teenage years had been blighted by shyness, and he’d hidden behind the ragged mop of hair he’d started to bleach blond. Three years later, he wound up enough courage to send her a Valentine’s card and that Christmas had managed to slide in and grab a kiss under the mistletoe. Then her boyfriend at the time had taken him outside and given him a right beating for his daring. He hadn’t seen her again. She’d gone to work down in London, and even though he knew from Damon that she’d moved back recently, their paths hadn’t crossed.
Just the thought of her had his cock hard and heavy, ready for action, in his hand. He couldn’t resist a small pull. A soft groan rolled through his throat as he did it again, wrapping a big fist around the rigid shaft. He let his head drop back, resting against the cool tile of the wall as his hand sped up. She’d be thirty-two now, not that the fact she was older than he was bothered him. It had never bothered him. At first it was the excitement of the older, more experienced woman but it had quickly become all about her. The way she walked, talked, the cute little way she’d tilted her head to look up when she spoke to him.
She was small and dark; when he was fifteen he’d been taller than she was. He felt like a hulking brute next to her, but that was good; it fed his teenage ego to be taller. Like he could protect her from the world if necessary. Like the time in the kitchen when she’d dropped a glass and he’d lifted her so she didn’t cut her feet. He’d had her in his arms for less than three seconds but that hadn’t stopped him reliving the feel of her slender body against his. For weeks afterward, that brief touch had the starring role in his nocturnal activities beneath the sheets of his single bed.
He stroked harder, hand firm on his cock as thoughts of her filled his head. She had been petite and slender with the sort of lines to her that promised to fill out into curves that would tempt a saint. Leighton was no saint and didn’t pretend to be. If he was taking her out tonight, then damn sure he was going to try to get into her bed. The rigid shaft in his hand jerked and pulsed. Her bed? He’d take her any freaking way she’d let him. Forget leaping off wardrobes; he’d dress in bloody drag if it got her rocks off.
His mind dropped to base fantasies as his hand moved faster. Thoughts of her writhing under him, the tight sheath of her cunt around his cock as he drove into her filled his mind. Her on her knees, lips wrapped around him as she sucked him off. His hips got in on the action, shoving his thick cock in and out of the warm cave of his hand like a piston.
Pleasure coursed through him, wrapped around the back of his hips like a thick belt and caressed his balls. They grew tight, the big vein in the shaft above them pulsing as his movements faltered, became harder. Jerky. He bit his lip to keep the groan in as he came in jagged movements, his ass tight and his hips working overtime. Cum jetted from his cock to cover his hand as he worked the last bit of pleasure from his body. With a groan, he dropped his hand and leaned his head back against the tiles, letting the hot water wash away the evidence of his lust as he shuddered in visceral reaction.
God, if wanking off to thoughts of her got him this bad, what would it be like when he had her under him for real?
* * *
“I have no idea, Robby. Why don’t you ask Keisha?” Frankie Cross snapped, living up to her surname as she crossed her brother’s living room to take her call in the kitchen and not disturb Damon or his girlfriend, Sophie, with her call.
“But babe,” the male voice on the end of the phone wheedled. “She’s an airhead…”
Frankie closed the door behind her and leaned against its cool surface with a sigh. She didn’t need this. Dolled up for a double date with her brother and his girlfriend, a
blind
double date no less, she
really
didn’t need another call from her ex.
Both investment bankers, they’d met while working for the prestigious London bank Reed & Hayes. She’d been bowled over by the charismatic and charming Robby when they’d been assigned to the same merger and acquisitions team. They’d quickly become a double act, in the office and out of it.
She’d thought her life was perfect. A luxury apartment in a good area of the city, a partner who not only understood the long hours she worked but actively encouraged it, even when they’d moved onto other teams and he’d become a rising star at Reed & Hayes.
Until she’d come home unexpectedly one day and found her loving boyfriend in bed with the model wannabe from the apartment down the hall. She’d packed and moved out the same day, living off a friend’s couch while she worked her notice.
“…she’d have no clue what to do with the Cortez account.”
Ah, there it was, the crux of the matter and the reason for his call. The reason he’d been bugging her for the last week, no doubt. Unable to accept that she’d left him, he’d bombarded her with calls. He’d tried everything, from shrugging it off as meaning nothing, through wheedling and begging, and finally to outrage and blaming her.
Though recently his calls had changed, become idle questions about various projects he was working on. It hadn’t taken a genius to realize he’d done that throughout their relationship, using her knowledge and experience to bolster his own, and she would bet not a word of credit for her part passed his lips.
Wanker.
“Well, you should have thought of that before you decided to play away, shouldn’t you?” Already annoyed that Damon had decided to arrange her life without so much as a by-your-leave, Frankie’s “give a shit” button was decidedly broken so her reply was short and to the point. “Next time you fuck about, you might want to pick someone with more than two brain cells to knock together.”
“Hey, there’s no need to be nasty.” Robby’s voice bridled with annoyance and outrage. “Keisha’s a nice girl; she was good to us when we moved in, remember?”
Frankie snorted. “Yeah, she’s a regular Good Samaritan, isn’t she? So good that she made sure to open her legs to stop you feeling all lonely when I was working late.”
“You’re not going to help with the Cortez thing? Pwwwease…you know you have that magic touch with these things.” True to form, Robby switched tracks and came at her from another angle, using the baby voice that, when coupled with a pleading expression from his puppy-dog eyes, used to melt her heart and usually got him what he wanted.
Right now though, she’d happily stick the merger and all accompanying paperwork where the sun didn’t shine. The sound of the bell and the front door being opened filtered through the kitchen door, followed by the sound of deep, male voices. Saved by the bell.
“No, I’m not. Sorry, Robby, you’re on your own. Don’t call me again.”
With no small amount of relish, she hung up on him. Serve the twat right if R&H realized what a two-faced, lying little cheat he was and kicked him out on his ear. Which would happen just as soon as they realized he hadn’t a fucking clue what he was doing. Grinning to herself, she slipped the phone into her evening bag, opened the door, and walked back into the living room…and stopped dead, her jaw dropping as she clocked the guy standing next to her brother.
Dressed for the evening in black trousers and a white shirt open at the neck, tall didn’t cover it. He had to be well over six and a half feet, his shoulders wide enough to make a barn proud. She bit back a whimper as her gaze latched onto feet the size of boats—What did they say about foot and cock size?—and wandered up his body. Strong legs, lean hips, narrow waist, and a broad chest. And muscles. Oh God, he didn’t just have muscles. He had muscles
on
his muscles. The sort of muscles that had her quivering with the need to explore them with her fingertips and lips. She liked her men well built, strong…big. And so far this guy was ticking
all
the boxes.