by Amy Andrews
Everyone was wet, including Tony and the other coaching staff. It was what they needed. What they all needed. There was a time for serious things but also a time to celebrate.
Darcy knew the team would be taking the party to the streets of Melbourne tonight and a pang of longing lanced sharp and hot right through her middle. She wouldn’t be with them. She’d be in bed with her leg up, icing it every two hours and chugging back pain meds.
So she had to lap this up now.
Darcy sang and joked and smiled so hard her cheeks hurt but couldn’t shake the weird sense of disembodiment. Maybe that was from the pills she’d swallowed? But she suspected it was more than that, this strange feeling of being outside her body. Like her dream to be part of all this was fading in front of her eyes and she was destined to always be some kind of ghost sitting on the sidelines.
An eternal spectator.
All she knew was there were people everywhere but she felt... alone. Faces flashed in front of her vision—happy, excited, big smiles, lots of teeth, their excited chatter reaching her as if from a long way away.
It wasn’t their faces she wanted to see, however. Their voices she wanted to hear. The only person she really wanted right now, to hear right now, was Levi. Smiling at her in that slow confident way of his, telling her it was all going to be okay. That she had a long road ahead but she could do it.
She could do anything.
Shit. She must be stoned.
But then, as if she’d conjured him up, he was there, pushing through the little crowd around her, his face creased with concern. ‘Darcy.’
‘Hey Levi!’ Wendy greeted him with a shoulder check and he smiled, but his gaze quickly returned to her.
‘Levi?’ Darcy blinked. She was seeing him. Levi was right here. Somehow he’d wangled his way into the locker room and she’d never been more happy to see another human being in her entire life.
‘Celebrating, I see?’ There was a smile on his face as his gaze raked her from head to toe, talking in her soaked uniform and the icepack on her thigh. But it seemed forced, as did the teasing tone of his voice.
‘Because we’re the winners,’ Shayla announced, holding a champagne bottle in the air and leading everyone in another rendition of the club song.
Levi took a step closer and Darcy almost reached for him. He was really here. ‘Are you okay?’
He had to duck in a little to be heard over the din. And just like that, she wanted to cry again. To shake her head and bury her face in his chest. But she didn’t, she bit back the sob, cutting it off viciously somewhere between throat and her vocal chords. She blinked back the tears just as viciously, her eyes burning in protest.
‘No.’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘What can I do?’
‘Get me out of here.’ She was emotional, her leg ached and she was pretty sure she was about to throw up from champagne fumes.
He nodded. ‘On it.’
***
A noise woke Levi with a start after midnight. His eyes flew open, the unfamiliar surroundings disorientating him. Where was he? Strange ceiling, not his own bed, the hum of an air conditioner.
Another noise, like a wounded animal, spiked through the confusion. Darcy.
Crap.
He was in Darcy’s hotel room. He’d stayed in Melbourne for the night rather than flying straight home after the match, to help her manage the injury while everyone else went out and partied.
And he’d fallen asleep!
He practically levitated off the hotel couch too short for him by a good foot. ‘Darcy?’
He groped blindly in the dark, blinking to hasten his night vision. It hadn’t been dark before he’d drifted off to sleep.
‘I’m here. I’m fine.’
But she didn’t sound fine. Her voice was husky with strain. He stubbed his toe on the coffee table and cursed as pain lanced up his foot. ‘Why is the bloody light off?’ he growled.
‘You were asleep.’ Her return growl sounded as irritated as his. ‘I didn’t want it to bother you.’
‘You should have woken me.’
Suddenly a light snapped on—the bedside light—and he squinted at the quick stab to his pupils as she said, ‘One of us should get some sleep.’
She was standing, leaning on her crutches beside the bed. His gaze automatically fell to her quad. Normally he tried not to notice how much leg her plain blue boxers revealed but tonight it worked to his advantage. Her thigh was reddened from the ice but didn’t look like it had swollen any further.
‘What on earth were you doing?’
‘Just putting the icepack back in the freezer.’
Levi frowned. So it’d only been twenty minutes max since he’d drifted off. Although considering how deep and disorientating it had been, he’d have thought it more like a day. He glanced at his watch, the time confirming his calculations.
‘That’s what I’m here for.’
‘You can’t wait on me hand and foot for forty-eight hours, Levi. I can manage.’
He sighed. It was going to be like this for the next few weeks, he just knew. Her trying to prove she could manage by herself, that she was stronger. That she was okay. Their tussle over her showering unattended had been epic. They’d compromised on her keeping the door half open and him standing right outside it with his back to the door.
But her mouth was a grim line and he could see her thigh trembling from here. ‘For chrissakes.’ He walked towards her. ‘Sit down before you fall down.’
It was a measure of how much effort standing was taking that she did so without protest, and even let him help ease her leg up on the pile of pillows.
‘Thank you,’ she said, her face pale as she relaxed back against the headboard and shut her eyes.
It made him feel sick seeing her like this. Watching her go down on the field had been horrible enough. Knowing as she lay there screaming in pain, clutching her quad, that it must be bad because Darcy was no drama queen. Feeling utterly impotent, knowing he couldn’t do a damn thing.
He couldn’t even get to her, which had been his first instinct, thwarted by overzealous security. Eventually a physio had recognised him, vouched for him and he’d been admitted to the locker room.
He sat on the side of the bed, tentatively. A little awkwardly, in truth, because he’d never sat on a bed with her in it before. Which was ridiculous because he’d sat closer to her on the couch some nights as they shared popcorn but neither of them were wearing many clothes—he’d ditched his T-shirt early, leaving him in just his jeans with the top button undone.
And the whole horizontal thing made the situation seem that much more intimate.
‘You’re due some pills. Did you take them?’ Levi prided himself on keeping things normal.
She nodded but didn’t open her eyes. ‘Ten minutes ago.’
‘It is going to be fine, Darcy.’
He felt like a cracked record but he knew that was what she needed to hear at the moment. What all elite athletes needed to hear after they’d been injured.
This too shall pass.
Even if she couldn’t see it. Even if she didn’t believe it.
Her eyes flew open, blazing with cold, green fury. ‘How do you know that?’ she demanded. ‘No one can say that for sure.’
‘I can.’
‘Why? Do you have some kind of X-ray vision?’
If he had, it would have made living with Darcy a hell of a lot harder these past two years. He gave her a small smile, trying to keep things light. ‘Because I know you. I know you’ll do all the right things and you’ll work harder at your rehab than any injured athlete ever has.’
‘And what if I do and it’s a lot worse than everyone thinks or just takes longer for some reason?’
‘Darcy, you know you’re just going to have to take it—’
‘One day at a time.’ She huffed out an angry breath and shut her eyes again. This time tears squeezed out around her lids.
Levi’s heart turned o
ver in his chest. He wished he knew what to say, how to make it easier for her. ‘Hey.’ He reached out and slid a hand on the slope of muscle where shoulder met neck before he’d consciously realised what he was doing. But she seemed so alone right now, he needed to connect with her. So she could feel she wasn’t. He would have done the same to anyone in emotional distress.
‘I’m fine,’ she muttered, wiping at her eyes.
‘It’s okay not to be fine, Darcy. This has been a huge curve ball to deal with.’ Absently, he kneaded her trapezius as he spoke. An occupational hazard for him. Something he did from pure muscle memory. ‘You’re allowed to shake your fist at the sky and stomp around for a bit. Hell, I’ll even find you an A4 printout of that Griffin chick’s face you can pin to a dartboard.’ She gave a shaky half laugh. ‘You’ve just got to stop at some point and pick yourself up again.’
‘What if I don’t?’
‘You will because you’re you. And if you don’t, I’ll help you up.’
‘God, Levi... don’t be nice to me.’ Her eyes shone with tears. ‘I’m barely holding my shit together.’
Levi desperately wanted to pull her into his arms—to comfort her—but he didn’t want to give his feelings away. He gave her trap a firm squeeze instead. A you’ll-be-right-soldier squeeze. She winced.
‘Jesus.’ Her muscle knotted beneath his palm. ‘You’re tense.’
‘Of course I bloody am,’ she said, back to being snippy and frustrated. ‘I’ve had the biggest opportunity of my life handed to me and now it could be all slipping through my fingers.’
Levi could feel the muscles around her neck lock tight as she growled at him with eyes that were two pools of jade.
‘Why does this always happen to me?’ She slammed a fist into the mattress beside her. ‘Just when I think something is in my grasp, the bloody universe snatches it away.’
Her muscles pulled tighter beneath his palm and he couldn’t take it any longer. She’d give herself a bloody headache to match her corked thigh if she kept this up. He stood. ‘Can you shuffle forward enough for me to get in behind you?’
She blinked at him. ‘Why?’
‘Because you’re so tight I’m going to worry about you getting lockjaw or having a stroke during the night.’
Putting his hands on her now—in her bed, in a hotel room, far from home and all the reasons why he shouldn’t—wasn’t wise. The foot massage had proven that. But she was injured and worried and in pain—he was pretty sure he could keep his libido under control.
Keep it about muscle groups. Work out her kinks, help her relax. Maybe even help her sleep.
She hadn’t slept at all so far and that stuff about the restorative powers of deep REM was actually true. The studies on it were truly impressive. Plus it’d give her a break from catastrophising her future.
And it was something he could do. He couldn’t uncork her thigh but he could unknot her shoulders. Help her sleep.
If that meant touching her? Then so be it.
Chapter 7
Levi waited for her to move and thought for a moment she wouldn’t, but then she bent at her waist slightly and he helped move her leg on the pillows as she arse-walked herself forward a little. When she was settled again, he slipped in behind her, making sure there was at least some air between her arse and his dick as his right leg bracketed the stack of pillows and his left leg spread wide, his foot firmly on the floor beside the bed.
He wasn’t fully on the bed if one foot was still touching the ground, right?
He stared at her back for a moment, the tension in her neck and shoulders obvious just to look at. Jesus. He could feel the challenge of it call to him. There was nothing more satisfying than turning a rock-hard muscle, knotted tight, into something smooth and supple beneath your hand.
But this was Darcy. No matter how much he told himself it was therapeutic, there was a level of intimacy that put a slight hitch in his breath. Shutting his eyes and finding his Zen, he quickly flicked her less than perky ponytail over her shoulder and slid his fingers onto her trapezium muscles either side of her neck.
She flinched a little. In fact, he thought he heard a rather sharp intake of breath at the touch but he blanked it out. Her body, her muscles, were his to sculpt and he needed to transform them from stiff clay to silky putty.
It would be best, of course, with some warm oil and for her shirt to be off but he wasn’t going there.
He dug his fingers in, attacking the knots in a methodical, professional manner. Like he wasn’t in her hotel bed in his jeans and no shirt and she wasn’t in pyjamas. He swept his thumbs from the end proximal to the shoulder all the way to the base of the neck. Firm, deep, even pressure, putting his back into it, gratified as her muscles heated beneath his fingers, even if they remained tight.
‘Jesus, your traps are like cement,’ he grunted, increasing the pressure of each stroke, waiting for that magical moment when the muscle started to release and smooth out.
She whimpered and he stopped abruptly. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong?’ Her voice was incredulous. ‘I’m not some hundred and twenty kilo rugby player, Levi. I know you’re into deep tissue massage but ow!’
She shook his hands off her neck and he could see her chest expanding through the thin cotton of her tank top as she took several deep breaths.
‘I know it’ll probably make me feel really good tomorrow but I think I’ve taken about as much pain as I can stand today. Ever heard of the kind of massage that’s not therapeutic? The kind that makes a person feel good instead of tortured?’
Yeah. Levi had heard of that kind of massage. God knew, he’d given a few to women over the years—girlfriends, lovers. The kind of massage that was a prelude to something else. Not that she meant that, Levi knew. But the pain in her voice was real and he knew he’d give her whatever she needed right now.
He lifted his hands to her shoulders again, his heart pounding like a drum, reverberating through his chest, as he contemplated the kind of sensual feel-good massage Darcy wanted.
The heat Levi had already generated in her traps warmed his palms as he dug his fingers in, gently this time, sweeping along the muscles smooth and light and easy. Darcy moaned and Levi tensed.
Christ, if she was going to moan like that, this was going to be harder than he thought.
‘Good?’ His throat was thick, his voice husky.
An inaudible, nonsensical noise came from the back of her throat. ‘If you stop I’ll kill you.’
Then she did something even more dangerous than moaning. She collapsed back against him, her back to his front, nestling snuggly between his legs.
Levi’s heart rate kicked into overdrive as she squirmed a little, finding a position of comfort to settle. That sad, sanity-saving, slice of air between them was gone. Her hair tickled his chin, the scent of something sweet filling his nostrils.
His dick stirred both at the smell and her movement and he shut his eyes as he continued to rub and knead, thinking about having his nads smashed between two bricks. And old Mrs Atwell who lived down the road when he was a kid who’d been mean and had smelled like cigarettes and mothballs.
Hell. He shouldn’t have started this. Giving a therapeutic massage he could be Levi Phillips, sports massage therapist working on an injured athlete. Giving a relaxation massage with Darcy jammed up against him, he was just Levi.
Just a man. Touching the woman he’d had the hots for, for far too long.
‘God.’ Her head fell to one side. ‘Your fingers are magic,’ she muttered. ‘I think I’m drooling. My eyes have definitely rolled back in my head.’
Levi opened his eyes, his chin resting on top of her head as he forced himself to laugh. Because it was funny and it would seem odd if he didn’t. But he was having a hard time coordinating any thoughts as he spied two hard points tenting her tank top and the pale, smooth mounds of her breasts on partial display as her cleavage gaped.
Don’t look down her top, duf
us.
Levi blinked and shut his eyes again. He didn’t need sight to do this anyway, it was mostly a feel thing. He dragged his mind back to the job, to the knots he was trying to work out. He threw in bathing in an Alpine mountain stream and plunging into waters off Antarctica without a wetsuit, just for the hell of it.
‘Maybe you could do my thigh when it’s up to the massage stage?’
Her words weren’t much louder than a whisper, and slightly slurred. Levi wasn’t sure if it was the drugs or she was finally drifting off to sleep. Either way her proposal was alarming enough to open his eyes again.
He glanced down to her injured leg, his gaze snagging on her cleavage as it made its way back up her body. An image flashed into his brain, his hands stroking down her chest, slipping beneath her top, cupping and kneading her breasts, Darcy arching and panting.
Christ.
Snow caves. Blizzards. Really ugly fish.
Dragging his gaze out of her cleavage, he resolutely stared straight ahead at the blank television screen, his mind flipping her proposal over and over. Massage her thigh?
Touch her thigh?
Not bloody likely. No way was he going anywhere near her thigh. Not in case his traitorous fingers decided to keep going, all the way up. Really relax her. Put a smile on her face. Make her happy. Real happy. The kind of happy that was beneath his professional integrity.
‘I’m sure the Banshees will have all that organised for you through their physio.’ He cleared his throat to strengthen a voice that was suddenly raspy as sand paper. ‘Best to stick to one practitioner.’
He expected her to protest, to talk him round, or even to nod and agree but he got nothing. He got nothing because he realised, as she suddenly grew heavier against him, she was asleep.
Well... that was something at least. If he did actually run out of gross things to think of and his dick finally got its way, at least she wouldn’t be able to feel how little control he seemed to have around her.
Because that would be embarrassing.