RHINO: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel OFFSIDE!) (50 page)

Harrison follows us all into the locker room for a final bollocking before he lets us go, and I’m the one right at the center of his anger. I’d love to snap the finger he jabs into my chest, but Penny would kill me, I’d probably get sent back to England on the earliest available flight, and it’s not my style anyway.

It seems like I’m getting singled out and I can’t work out why, unless he already knows I’m the best player on the whole of this team, and is worried I’m suddenly not going to perform. All I can say is thank God our next game is away. Apparently it’s not raining in any other part of the country, as though somehow we’re being punished for having the temerity to put together a winning run, largely influenced by a foreign star.

Nobody wants to stick around any longer than they have to. I shower, and then I get the physio to look at my twisted ankle, right after she’s treated six other players. She bandages it, gives me an injection for the pain and tells me to rest until the game at the weekend. It’s painful as fuck, but apparently it isn’t serious. If coach wants me out on the field she can numb it.

I’m the last one here again. Every other fucker has gone home without even saying goodbye. That isn’t unusual, especially on a day like this, when nobody wants to be here in the first place, but right now, I could do with a bit of cheering up. There aren’t many people on this team I’d call friends, not yet at least any way, but there are a few I get along with better than others. Maybe I played even shitter than I thought today. Maybe it’s some kind of psych out to get me fired up for the weekend, and maybe still, every one’s somehow found out about me and Penny, and those fuckers are just jealous.

My mind keeps going back to her. That afternoon in her house, that incredible session of sex that already feels like a million years ago. I can taste her still in my head, but only because the experience was so strong. If I shut my eyes I’m back there, my head between her legs, her lips wrapped round my cock, her wrapped so tightly into me I feel both of us as one. Fuck, man, I’ve never felt anything as strong in my life, never thought anything like that was even possible.

“
What are you doing?”

I nearly shit myself when I hear her voice. I drop my bag, my heart leaps like a hundred miles and my eyes flash open like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

“
Penny.”

“
You were licking your lips.”

“
No I wasn’t.”

“
And you had your eyes closed.”

“
I was-. What the fuck are you doing here?”

She’s leaning against a partition, curled around it playfully, hiding part of herself from me, like a shy teenager might. She shrugs at my question.

“
I was feeling better so I thought-.”

“
You know I’ve been calling you. I came round to your house.”

“
I know.”

“
Does Topher know you’re here?”

“
No. I waited until he was gone. I don’t want to see that fucker if I can help it.”

“
I was beginning to think you didn’t want to see me.”

“
I wasn’t sure if I did.”

“
And now you do?”

“
We have to talk.”

Now she comes fully out from behind the piled up balls, boxes of kit and coat hooks, to present herself fully in front of me.

“
I’ve been thinking.”

“
Go on.”

“
You and me.”

“
Go on.”

“
With Dad and stuff and the Tigers and everything else, Topher-.” She pauses to look at me and I have to urge myself not to close the gap between us. “-So”

“
I don’t know what you’re saying, Penny.”

“
This. I don’t think. You and me.”

“
You don’t think we should or you don’t want to?”

“
I don’t think we should.”

“
That’s not a good enough reason.”

Now I close the gap, but as soon as I do, Penny takes a step back.

“
You know, I think we’re the only ones here.”

She shakes her head.

“
I’ve been thinking about you.”

“
Oh?”

I close the gap again and this time she takes a step to the side, a carefully measured stride as though moving from a hopscotch square to the one adjacent to it. It’s not so much a form of evasion as a form of playful distance keeping. Two animals locked in a weird mating ritual.

“
You know, from time to time.”

“
From time to time?”

I nod.

“
I like you.”

“
I know that already.”

“
If this ends now, you’re going to regret it.”

She shakes her head, but she’s smiling too. I think she’s come down here to play, to force my hand, to look at my cards. Women and games.

“
I have to protect myself.”

“
From what?”

She steps up on the bench and begins to walk across it, her hand out for me to hold and lead her.

“
Emotional distress.”

“
I’m mad at you.”

“
Why?”

Penny skips a gap from one bench to the next.

“
You didn’t return my calls after seducing me.”

“
A, I didn’t seduce you, I let you in, there’s a difference, and B, I didn’t know what to say.”

“
And you do now?”

She pauses.

“
No.”

“
Do you know what you want?”

“
I don’t want to get hurt, which is why I think it’s a good idea if we are careful.”

“
Careful?”

“
Yes.”

“
And
you
let me in?”

“
Yes.”

I take her around the waist and lift her to the ground.

“
Let me kiss you.”

Penny shakes her head.

“
What does careful mean?”

“
It means not asking to kiss me.”

“
Then this is it.”

“
Maybe it should be.”

“
I don’t think once is enough for me.”

“
That might not be up to you.”

“
I don’t think once is enough for you either.”

“
That’s definitely not up to you.”

“
What are you scared of?”

She gathers the distance again, stepping gracefully away from me in long strides that take her right to the far wall and make me convinced she wants me to follow her.

“
Football players.”

I follow her and she follows my approach with her eyes, my pace measured, each step assessed for danger, compatibility, desire. I place my hands against the wall to the side of her head and stand between her and escape.

“
You know what they say about fears?”

Her eyes go up to me first, her hands quick to follow, to explore the muscles underneath my shirt.

She shakes her head. “What do they say about fears?” Already her breathing is beginning to change.

“
You missed that didn’t you?”

She shakes her head again, defiant in her own denial.

“
They say that to beat a fear you have to expose yourself to it.”

“
I don’t know if I can.”

“
You can. It might take some time, but I know you can.”

“
And what if it doesn’t work?”

“
It’ll work.”

“
How can you be so sure?”

“
Trust me, I just know.”

Hands tight around my waist now, desperate to pull me into her. I can see her fighting the urge to resist and it beating her. I can see the thousands of permutations of this moment exploding like galaxies in her eyes, and the infinite parallel universes where I don’t do what I’m about to and in each one me regretting it for the rest of eternity.

I lift her chin gently with the tip of my index finger and in one smooth unbroken moment, I do what I’ve been needing to do, wanting to do, desperate to do since the first time I was lucky enough to be allowed to, lean in, press my lips against hers and kiss her with every single ounce of desire I have inside me. I feel her lips swell against mine, her chest rise towards me, her heart beat increase in intensity and her whole being come to life, as though her soul itself has been brought forth within her, in a way that makes her glow like the first fresh petals or a brand new rose.

“
That”, she says when I pull away from her.

“
Uhuh.”

“
That”, she says again, and licks my heat from her lips. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“
You didn’t give me a choice.”

“
Do it again.”

I shake my head. “If I do it again, I won’t be able to stop. That was a goodbye kiss.”

I push myself away from the wall, gathering a foot of distance between us. Penny looks long and hard at me. She tilts her head, puts her hands on her hips theatrically, looks away and then looks back to me.

I shrug.

“
A goodbye kiss?”

“
Exactly.”

“
A kiss goodbye?”

“
Yes.”

“
No.”

“
No?”

“
No.”

Her hand comes out, grabs my shirt at the chest and pulls me back towards her. I fold my hands against the wall in the position I had them only moments ago. We are face to face, lips to lips. I can feel the heat from her mouth against my skin. I want to kiss her so badly.

“
You don’t get to do that.”

“
Oh?”

She beats me to it. Lips pressed into lips, hot tongues twisting into each other, teeth marks worked into plump and sensitive skin.

“
I want you.”

“
Careful, Penny.”

“
Fuck it, Jasper. I want you.”

I pull her hair down, expose her neck, run my mouth along it towards her ear.

“
Are you going to fuck me and run away again?”

“
If I said yes, would you fuck me anyway?”

“
And you think I’m dangerous.”

“
I’m fragile, Jasper.”

“
You’re in safe hands.”

“
Then show me just how safe before I regret it.”

“
I might begin to think you’re using me.”

Those beautiful eyes tell me otherwise. If there was any doubt before about Penny’s intentions, this has cleared it up completely. Whatever the fuck happens after now, the one thing I’m certain of, whatever Penny says to deny it, is that she won’t be able to keep herself away from me.

“
You know the other thing I’m scared of?”

I pop the top button on her shirt.

“
What?”

Penny smiles. “Huge cocks.”

“
Really?”

She nods seductively.

“
Then I guess we better see to that right away.”

Penny

I wasn’t going to do this. I told myself in plain, clear English. Penny, stay away. He’s trouble. He’s going to break your heart, bust your insides up, use you like an oily rag and toss you into a pile of garbage when he’s done. He’s bad trouble. Wait, he’s worse than that, he’s temptation, and every one knows what happens when you can’t resist temptation.

Fuck.

No one else is here, but that was kind of the plan anyway. You know, for that intimate conversation I was planning to have with him. That moment where it was always going to be just him and me, down here in the belly of the Moxlin Tiger’s head quarters, surrounded by the smell of musk and mud clogged boots that has always driven me crazy, for me to tell him, unequivocally and without giving in, that he’s definitely not the one for me.

Those abs are meant for another. The lines of perfection that mark out the eight pack across his lower torso, the obliques, the belly button, the tattoos that curl around his skin so gracefully they look like they’ve grown with him, all of that for some other girl. Not me. Not the one dancing her fingers across the waistband of his boxershorts, sliding them underneath his top, across the flatness of his chest, the bobbles of skin that make up his nipples, not me. Not me either that’s allowing herself to be undressed by him. Deft flicks of fingers that pop buttons I’d convinced myself I’d be keeping shut for the rest of the season, knowing smiles and perfectly placed kisses, hot tongues in hotter mouths and traces of desire worked out across fragile collar bones, I know I’m allowing him in and I can’t do anything about it.