Saving Hearts

by Rebecca Crowley

  “Did you bet on me?” The words were breathy. Her breasts rose and fell with the heightened pace of her lungs, her nipples tightening. The idea of him watching her from the towering heights of his career in Europe, coding her name in his notebook, spending all that time considering her stats, trying to get into her head—something about it was so deeply erotic she pressed her crossed legs together, applying pressure to her hungry core.

  He responded with an enigmatic smile as he stood up, stretching his arms over his head.

  “I need a break. And I have an idea.”

  She hoped the idea involved the bedroom. Or the kitchen table. Even the floor. “Which is?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  She followed him upstairs, her enthusiasm fading as they passed a series of what she felt were eligible surfaces. Eventually, they made their way to the backyard, now only dimly lit by the ambient glow of the streetlights and the neighboring houses.

  She easily made out what he gestured to in the semi-darkness. A soccer goal, complete with a bright white net.

  “I’m wearing flip-flops,” she informed him, already reading the intention in his smile.

  “I have a couple of youth-size cleats in the shed, for my nephews. This whole setup is for them, actually.”

  “I didn’t know Aidan had kids.”

  “You met Aidan?”

  She nodded. “At that same Family Day when I met Liam and your parents.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. “He has two boys. Jordan and Tucker, ten and eight. He works in my dad’s dealership now so I don’t see too much of them, but they came out for a visit in June. I spent a small fortune getting this ready, only to be told about their plans to become star quarterbacks.”

  “Ew.” Erin wrinkled her nose. “There’s still time. Hopefully one of them will come around. And although I’m flattered you think I’ll fit into a ten-year-old’s shoes, there’s an ugly truth you should know about me, and about most women my height. Dainty of foot we are not.”

  “At least try them on.”

  She did her best to look annoyed.

  “Humor me,” he requested, momentarily disappearing into the shed at the back of the yard. He reappeared carrying two pairs of brand-new, professional-quality cleats from his own sponsor. He handed them over, and she noted each boy’s name printed on the relevant pair.

  “Wow, these are really nice. They didn’t want to take them home?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think either of them even wore them.”

  “Let’s see if I can get them on.” She drew a circle in the air. “Turn around.”

  He obliged, and she slipped a foot into one shoe in each size. She grimaced when Jordan’s larger shoes were a near-perfect fit, then sat down to tie them.

  “Can I look?”

  “I guess so.”

  He did and smiled even more broadly when he saw her tying the laces. “Those look like Tucker’s.”

  “Damn right they do, and you better not check to make sure.” She stood up tentatively, testing the cleats in the grass. Brendan returned to the shed, this time emerging with a soccer ball and a pair of goalkeeper’s gloves.

  “Oh, hell no.” She shook her head. “That goal is youth size. You can barely stand up in it. No way is that fair.”

  “Penalties are all about beating the keeper. The size of the goal shouldn’t make a difference.”

  He rolled the ball toward her. She stopped it with her foot.

  “I’m out of shape,” she protested.

  He leveled an appraising gaze as he took his position between the posts. “You look good to me.”

  She couldn’t help fluffing her hair, enjoying his scrutiny. “You’re a match-fit professional. I’m retired. I’m also not wearing any socks.”

  He tightened the straps on his gloves. “I’m hearing a lot of excuses. If you think you can’t beat me, just say so.”

  “Get on your line.”

  She smiled inwardly as she dribbled the ball to what she estimated was an equivalent penalty distance. Brendan thought he was pushing her competitive buttons, and to some extent he was. Greater than her need to beat him, though, was pure hunger for testing herself against a world-class keeper.

  During her professional career, she’d frequently refused to participate in men versus women exhibition events, viewing them as degrading and making a spectacle of the women’s game she was trying to get people to take seriously. Secretly she would’ve loved to take on some of the male players and see whether she could compete with them.

  A post-retirement penalty shootout in the dark in a suburban backyard wearing kids’ shoes wasn’t exactly what she had in mind, but she’d take it.

  She flexed her ankles and pulled each knee up to her stomach to stretch her hamstrings, fully aware she was giving Brendan a view of her pink-and-white polka dot panties beneath her sundress. She watched his jaw slacken as she bent over to touch her toes, the dress’s thin-strapped bodice barely holding her breasts in place.

  Hey, tactics were tactics.

  He visibly gathered himself, widening his stance and holding out his arms. She toed the ball up to her knee, then back to her foot, then positioned it in front of the goal.

  The small goal exaggerated Brendan’s size and wingspan, but she could see how he intimidated strikers even in a full-size net. Long-limbed, so tall he seemed to loom over the line, and an expression so intense it felt like he was reading your intentions before you knew what they were.

  Which he probably was.

  She squared her shoulders, determined to outwit him. “How many shots do I get?”

  “As many as you want.”

  “I’ll beat you in five.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  She knew gamesmanship when she saw it. “Okay. Three.”

  “I won’t make it easy for you.”

  “You better not.”

  He bent his knees and slapped his hands together. “Enough chat. Let’s do this.”

  She took two steps back to give herself a run-up. She hadn’t memorized his stats but she vaguely recalled a couple of instances in which he dove left. She feinted left, then booted the ball in the right-hand side of the net.

  He read her like a book. He leaped right and knocked the ball out of the way, falling on the grass.

  “Dammit,” she muttered as he brushed off his shorts and reset his position. She jogged to recover the ball, then walked it back to her spot.

  “Well, that’s disappointing,” he remarked. “Here I thought it was a big misconception that women suck at soccer.”

  “You’ll have to try harder to wind me up,” she tossed back, although in truth his words sent irritation prickling along the back of her neck. “What do you say to the stars when they face you down?”

  “Profanity about their mothers, mostly,” he replied mildly.

  She cracked a smile, then forced it off her face as she focused on the challenge. She couldn’t beat him on speed or power—she was a woman, like it or not—so she’d have to outthink him.

  Big ask against one of the cleverest goalkeepers in the world. But then she was one of the women’s games best strikers, so why not?

  She quickly ran through her mental list of the greatest penalties of all time. She landed on a recent one, scored by Skyline’s own Rio Vidal to win the South American Cup for Chile. It had been a cheeky end to a hard-fought contest and required balls twelve times as big as the one at her feet.

  Yeah, she’d try that one.

  “Come on, striker,” he called. “I haven’t got all night.”

  She didn’t bother wasting energy on a response. She took several long steps backward, ran at the ball with increasing pace and energy—and then chipped it in a gentle arc toward the net.

  It was an audacious, genius way to take
a penalty. Most keepers would’ve jumped left or right or even center so long before such a soft shot reached them that they had no chance of saving it.

  Instead, Brendan dropped to his haunches and comfortably caught the ball, then tossed it back to her before she could get an expletive out of her mouth.

  “Do you want to tell me again that you’re not wearing socks? I’m sure that’s to blame.”

  She couldn’t help but return his smile. She bet he had no idea that he was far sexier than he was intimidating. Of course, she was pissed he saved that last penalty—one she thought was unstoppable—but at the same time his precision, his foresight, his unparalleled ability to anticipate her every move was straight-up hot.

  For a few seconds, she simply stared at him. She wasn’t trying to psych him out—she doubted anything could—but she wanted to savor this unlikely moment in her life.

  When they walked in different directions on Family Day all those years ago, she figured that would be the last time she saw him. She thought the same when the door clicked shut behind her in the hotel in Vegas. Even the other night in Boston, when he’d left the bar with his shoulders set and his expression cold, she wondered whether it might be the end of this brief whatever-it-was.

  She never imagined he’d crack open the door of his impenetrable exterior enough to let her slip inside. To confide in her the way he had tonight. To listen so openly and nonjudgmentally in return. To show her the respect of saving both her attempts, treating her as an equal, holding her to the same standard he’d hold one of his male teammates.

  Too bad she wasn’t the relationship type. Otherwise, he’d be a pretty good candidate.

  He raised one gloved hand to cover an exaggerated yawn. “Are you still there? It’s getting so dark I can barely tell. Any chance we can wrap this up before dawn?”

  “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “We’ll be done in a second.”

  As he spread his arms for the third time, she decided the best way to keep him from reading her intentions was not to have any. No hesitation, no overthinking.

  She drew back her leg, muscle memory shaping her body into position for one of the fiercely accurate, incredibly fast shots that made her one of the most feared strikers in the women’s game.

  She cleared her mind and closed her eyes. Then she swung her leg forward to kick, relishing the familiar pressure against her toe, the fulfilling thump as her foot sent the ball flying through the air.

  She opened her eyes just in time to see the net shudder as the ball found the back of it. Her shot hit dead center. Straight down the middle.

  Brendan was on the ground. He’d dived left.

  She beat him.

  She whooped her delight, punching her fists in the air. Brendan rolled over onto his back and pressed his hands over his eyes.

  “Beat you in three,” she taunted as she skipped over, dropping to her knees beside him and prying his hands from his face. “And don’t you dare say you let me win.”

  “I didn’t. You got me on that last one. That’s not something a lot of strikers can claim.”

  She straddled his waist and pinned his arms to the ground on either side of his head. “Now I intend to claim my reward.”

  She leaned down to kiss him, her better judgment overwhelmed by the scents of the freshly cut lawn, and the jasmine climbing a trellis on the back of the house, and the hint of citrus and smoke that was utterly, uniquely his.

  He shifted beneath her and she held his wrists more tightly, pressing her calves against his thighs, not ready to let him go. He spread his still-gloved palms in surrender, matching the pressure of her mouth and the eager movements of her tongue.

  He didn’t kiss her like a man who was afraid of getting his heart broken, or who couldn’t settle for anything less than commitment. His lips said he wanted her, and the hungry rumble in his throat said he didn’t care what it took to get her.

  Maybe she could have her cake and eat it after all.

  “I like you like this,” she murmured against his temple. “Powerless. Defenseless. Mine to have my way with.”

  He said nothing, but his wide eyes as she scooted higher up his chest told her he was enjoying this too. She pulled open the Velcro straps around his wrists, tugged his arms straight and positioned his hands on either side of the goal post. Then she reattached the straps to each other, left to right and right to left, effectively tying him to the post.

  She glanced at the upstairs windows of the houses next door. “Do you have nosy neighbors?”

  He shook his head. “Family with three little kids on one side. They’re too busy to care. An old lady in the other house, but if she sees anything she’s too Southern to mention it.”

  “I hope she enjoys the show.” She shoved his T-shirt up beneath his arms and ran her hands down his long, lean, finely chiseled torso. Unlike most soccer players he didn’t wax, and hair the same ash-blond as his head filled the space between his pecs, then narrowed into a line that ran down the middle of his stomach. His lanky build disguised a weights-honed body, and she traced the contours of his six-pack with her thumbs.

  She slid down to straddle his rock-hard thighs, then took her time unbuttoning his shorts, skimming her fingertips over his exposed skin.

  “I have an idea I’d like to share with you.” She toyed with his zipper and then began tugging it open slowly, so slowly that her fingers itched with impatience.

  “Okay,” he said hoarsely, slightly raising his head to watch her progress.

  His zipper finally all the way down, she reached inside and gripped him through his cotton boxers, squirming with pleasure at the hard heft of him in her palm.

  “I know you’re not in the market for something casual, and I’m not interested in a relationship. But I think there may be a middle ground.” She squeezed him gently.

  He dropped his head back on the grass with a soft groan she interpreted as his signal for her to go on. She bit her lower lip briefly, trying to quell her matching, lusty moan.

  She failed and echoed his sound of desire as she repositioned herself on his thighs so she brushed her clit through her panties every time she drew her fingers down his length.

  “Think of a friends-with-benefits scenario, but better,” she explained, reaching through the opening in the front of his boxers to hold him, skin-on-skin. “We hang out. We do our stats thing. Maybe I’ll even make you dinner.”

  With her free hand, she shoved the gusset of her panties aside and rocked her bare slit against him. “We’re friends. Friends who fuck.”

  He shut his eyes and arched his hips, grimacing as she moved over him. She let her head fall back, enjoying the illicit friction, the lack of anything separating them except will power.

  It would be so easy to lower herself onto him right now. Totally irresponsible, both emotionally and in terms of contraception, which is why the mere thought of it ramped up her heartbeat and stiffened her nipples to the point of aching.

  She pushed up onto her knees and teased his tip against her core, running it up and down, circling it over her clit. He moved beneath her and bent his knees to keep her from sliding back down his legs, trapping her in temptation. He could easily pull free from the Velcro straps but he didn’t, opting to play her game, to let her take control. If she parted her thighs wider and took him inside her now, he wouldn’t stop her.

  Maybe that’s exactly what he wanted. All the pleasure, none of the accountability, and afterward he’d repeat his line about needing more than sex and send her on her way.

  Sorry, handsome. That’s not how this works.

  Reluctantly she shifted her panties back into place and released his erection, then shuffled up his body, widening her squat to fit over his ribs. His gaze fixed on her questioningly.

  She slipped one of the straps of her sundress over her arm, then followed it with the strap of her bra.
She reached inside as if to release her breast, but instead, she stroked her nipple, ensuring Brendan’s only view was of the suggestive motions of her fingers.

  He licked his lips, eyes following every move.

  “So what do you think? It wouldn’t be much different than tonight. I come over here, or you come to my place. We talk, we have a drink, we look at the fixtures.”

  She leaned in closer, exposing another half-inch of her breast as she dropped her voice to a throaty whisper. “Then we kiss, and you touch me, and I taste you, and you slide that big cock of yours in and out of me until neither of us remembers who we are.”

  She felt his breathing quicken, the rise and fall of his chest rapid between her legs. He swallowed hard. His eyes never left hers, unblinking, shimmering with hot desire.

  A second later the sound of uncoupling Velcro was like an unexpectedly cold blast from a shower that had run out of hot water. She plopped ungracefully onto the grass as he twisted his way out from under her, stripping off the gloves and stuffing himself back into his shorts.

  She tried not to pout as she yanked the straps back up her shoulder and straightened the bodice of her dress. “I take it you’re rejecting my suggestion.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Is it always this hard to say no to you?”

  “Most people quit trying pretty early on.”

  “I can see why.”

  “Don’t feel bad. You may become the only man to see my boobs and subsequently turn me down.”

  “It’s not easy. They’re spectacular.”

  “Then say yes,” she urged, resting her hand on his leg. “You can’t jump into a relationship with anyone here anyway, not when you’re leaving in a couple of months. Why not enjoy yourself in the meantime?”

  “You’re so sure it’ll be that simple, all cut and dried and we both walk away no worse for wear. What if it isn’t? Have you considered that you might develop feelings for me, or is that too absurd to contemplate?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, men and their feelings. Don’t take it so personally. It’s not about whether I like you—obviously, I do. And as for your feelings, I’m not interested, not with you or anyone else. As long as we go into this with open eyes, knowing we’re good friends but nothing more, we’ll be fine on the other side. Nothing lost, but a hell of a lot gained.”