Home > Stealing Home(9)

Stealing Home(9)
Author: Nicole Williams

“The act of running ten miles per hour for the past . . .” My eyes darted to the time screen, widening instantly. “Hour?! You’ve got a big game tomorrow. What were you thinking running—no, wait, sprinting—almost ten miles less than twelve hours before it starts?”

Archer sighed when I kept punching the speed down, but he didn’t fight me on it. “I was thinking I couldn’t sleep and had about ten miles of wind-sprint energy to work off before I could even try.”

“There are other ways to work off energy that don’t involve you going into cardiac arrest or passing out from the effort.”

“Those are my favorite ways to work off energy actually.” He ran the towel through his wet hair, sending beads of sweat raining down onto my arm.

The room was warm and I was hot, but I still got goose bumps from feeling Archer’s sweat spray on my skin. It made me think of other ways it could happen. It made me fantasize about those ways.

Clearing my throat, I reached for his water bottle—which was empty—and backed up for the water cooler. “No more ten-mile dashes the night before a game. You’re going to hurt yourself or wear yourself out. You need a way to burn off some extra energy, I’ll work up a plan that doesn’t involve you setting speed records on a treadmill, okay?”

“Would this plan have anything to do with you and me horizontal in my bed?”

Two weeks of silence on the issue, and now he was jumping in with both feet. I guessed I could rule out his interest passing or it all being some figment of my imagination.

“Archer,” I said in warning while I filled his water bottle.

“Fine, fine.” His feet continued their steady pace, pounding the treadmill. “You and me vertical up against my hotel shower wall?”

Another round of chills spiraled down my spine. He knew just what to say to make my body respond. He knew just how to say it to test my willpower.

“I take your silence to mean you haven’t arrived at any conclusions regarding you and me?”

My head shook as I filled his water bottle.

“Have you given any thought to you and me?”

He watched me as I screwed the bottle’s lid back on and wandered toward him. “Lots of thought.”

“And?” He took the water bottle from me, waiting.

Looking at him from this close was hard. Seeing him shirtless again made me remember the way his body had felt against mine during that impromptu photo shoot. The way his hard planes accepted my soft curves. The way his arms felt around me, tucking me close to him like nothing could get past him. God. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not with him. Not with a player on the very team I was working for.

“And it will require lots more thought,” I said, picking up his bottle and holding it out for him with a raised eyebrow. Gauging how long he’d been running and how much he was sweating, he needed to down a couple of liters to restore his fluid levels. I needed to make sure he got some electrolytes in him too.

“Anything I can do to help sway your decision?” Archer looked down at me while he sucked on his water bottle. He gave me a happy now? look when he handed it back, almost empty.

“Yeah. Explain why you ignored me for months, then when you decided to notice me, you pretty much came on so strong it was like I was the last woman on the planet and the fate of it rested on our ability to procreate.” I headed back to the water cooler, thankful for the added space between us.

He’d been guarding his looks around me when others were around, but now that we alone, he was staring at me like he knew me as intimately as two people could know one another. He didn’t blink once, his long strides strumming along the treadmill. His muscled shoulders lifted. “I go after what I want. I don’t leave you guessing. Or wondering. With me, you get what you see. You know what I want. Who I am.”

When I handed him the fresh water bottle, he drank a few more sips before squirting a stream onto his head. I backed up into the wall behind me. Distance seemed like a good thing when Luke Archer was looking at me the way he was, saying the things he was, sweating and breathing hard the way he was.

“And you want . . . me?” I said, needing the words spelled out.

He didn’t pause. His stride didn’t lose a beat. “I do.”

My heart felt like it was climbing into my throat. “Why?”

His gaze pinned me to the wall. “Because you know the demands of this lifestyle. You’re as committed to your job as I am to mine. You’re as interested in keeping this quiet as I am.” He motioned at me like I was living proof of his confession. “I respect you as a trainer and a human being. And, most importantly of all, I am attracted to you in a way that makes it hard to breathe when you’re close.” That was when he paused to take a breath. “I want you in a way that makes rolling into bed every night without fantasizing about crawling over your body impossible. That’s why.” He let that settle in the air, never looking away. “I can’t promise you forever. I can’t promise any length of time actually, but I can promise honesty and commitment. The rest, I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“And sex.” My eyebrow lifted. “You can promise me that too, right?”

A tipped smile slid into place. “I can absolutely promise you that.”

“Glad that’s all cleared up,” I muttered, wondering if anything was or if everything was just more confusing now. Was he suggesting a sex-only relationship? A no-strings-attached one? Was he hinting at maybe more?

   
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