Qualified: A Sports Romance

by Croix, Ada

  Allie dodged a look aside and hoped no one was listening. “I’m not a doctor.” It was the easiest thing to protest.

  “Huh.” The weight of Marc’s ankle against the inside of hers became an active press. “We could pretend you are.”

  “Marc,” Allie panicked as she saw the waiter coming over. “I’m just trying to do my job. Why must you be so … so … difficult?”

  “You’re the one making it hard.”

  Allie gave him a stare across the table. She couldn’t tell if he was trying to embarrass her as revenge for prying into his life or if he was actually flirting. Either way, her heart pounded fit to flee for how her personal interest in him felt so exposed.

  “Thank you,” Allie said shakily to the waiter when the plates clattered down in front of them.

  Marc just kept watching her. The pressure of his leg was firm at the inside of her ankle.

  Allie picked up her fork and tried to carry on eating, hoping he would do the same.

  “This is good.” Marc not only followed her lead, he also seemed to be relenting by commenting on the food. “I don’t know if this place was around, last time I lived here. That was five years ago. You were probably still in high school.”

  Allie furrowed her brow as she assembled a perfect bite of feijoada onto her fork. “How young do you think I am?” A quick look at the expression on Marc’s face suggested that she not give him time to answer. “Five years ago I was at my community college.”

  “Community college,” Marc echoed once he’d taken a drink of water. His wielding of his fork was somewhat impeded by his wrapped hand so he wasn’t inhaling his dinner at typical athlete super-speed. “In Colorado?”

  She nodded. “I missed out on the fancy scholarships to fancy schools.” It was supposed to sound airy, but perhaps she failed.

  Marc licked at the side of his mouth, studying her a moment. Then he focused back on his plate and continued eating in silence.

  Allie worked through her meal quietly awhile, too. She was chasing down her last sliver of plantain when she risked another question. “What was it like, when you left school without graduating? Wasn’t it like … walking away from everything?” She could only peek towards him.

  Marc was frowning. “I was just focused on doing what I was good at. Playing.” He took a deep breath, shifting his right arm restlessly on the table where his wrapped hand was curled. “It’s what I live for. I wasn’t walking away from anything.”

  There was something Allie couldn’t quite find, lost there in the shadows of his expression. But Marc was walled behind that familiar confident composure when he looked back up. “It’s the one thing that matters to me. The one thing I can’t lose.”

  Allie rolled her lips together, still helplessly trapped in the dark of his gaze despite Marc making it point blank clear that she couldn’t mean anything to him. She’d be dismissed as easily as Natalie. Easier, probably. His skin was still pressed against her leg, making her senses prickle. She felt like he’d hold her bound unless she could escape his touch. She deliberately made herself fold her ankles back beneath her chair in a neat cross of feet.

  His lashes dipped slightly, but Marc seemed to expect that she’d draw away from him.

  “You know what that’s like.” Marc continued to round up the last bites of his meal. “Everything’s a research project to you.”

  “Not everything.” Allie frowned down at the wrap of her fingers around her sweating water glass, too keenly remembering the chill feel of his hand within hers just hours ago. “I hope it’s nothing,” she offered as an example to the contrary, her eyes bouncing to his hand and then up to Marc’s eyes. “I hope you’re back to playing soon.”

  “Yeah,” Marc sniffed. He threw down his fork and looked towards the waiter, grabbing for his bag with his left hand. “We should get back and ice it.”

  “I can get the bill,” Allie floated out in protest when she saw him get his wallet. “It was my idea to come here.”

  “I don’t need your pity.”

  It was a snarl so out of nowhere that Allie sat back dumb in her chair.

  She was silent as Marc flagged over the waiter and counted out bills to pay. He stood quickly thereafter, holding out a hand to pull her up from her chair. “Don’t look at me like that.” His voice was back to its cooler cadence. “I’m not Blake, but I can buy a girl dinner.”

  “I didn’t think this was a date.” Allie gave him a wan smile as she accepted his left hand and came to her feet.

  “I’ve never been very good at the dinner and conversation part,” Marc grunted. A dark curl played at one edge of his mouth. “But you’re going to tie me up later, aren’t you?”

  Allie snatched her hand back and clung to her purse. A quick gasp of breath escaped from her parted lips. His sense of humor put her completely off balance. At least she assumed he must be teasing. The thought that Marc might be serious made her feel like she was treading in water way beyond her depth. She fixed him with a scolding look in an attempt to remain professional. “Not if you say it like that.”

  22

  She may have assumed she was safely on shore, but that perception was dashed during the drive back to the apartments. Allie had a hard time concentrating on her weave through the evening traffic with the way Marc was looking at her from the passenger seat. For once he plugged his music into the stereo. The rock songs of his playlist were a bit older than her generation, but they were still familiar. He reached over at one point to brush a fallen lock of her hair from the heated flush of her cheek.

  Allie parked in the assigned garage spot and helped Marc tug his bag out from the car. She raced him for the doors but his long stride won out. He held them open with a roll of his left shoulder so he wouldn’t have to use his injured hand. She turned to lean her back against the elevator’s side once they got in, watching him from across the small space. He looked a little like he was smiling.

  “Did they give you anything,” Allie blurted as the thought occurred as an explanation for the rare expression.

  “Ibuprofen.” So nothing hallucinogenic or euphoric.

  Allie stalled at the elevator’s threshold once it reached their floor. She peeked furtively towards Marc’s door, and then turned a longer look in the other direction. Nervous butterflies churned in her stomach. She could make some excuse and go home to her own apartment. It would be the safe thing to do. The predictable thing.

  “You were going to wrap me after I ice,” Marc helpfully reminded her.

  “Right.” Allie left the elevator to follow in his wake.

  Marc tossed his keys in a basket by the door once they entered his living room and immediately started shedding clothes. Allie took a second to get her bearings in the floorplan. It was a flip from the one she shared with Kelsey. “Do you have a mixing bowl or something?” she asked as she moved towards the kitchen.

  “I’ll get it.” Marc didn’t leave her any space as he brushed around her. She felt the warmth of his skin against her back through the thin cotton of her shirt.

  “Careful …” She started to remind him not to use his right hand, but she stopped when she saw he was using his left to flick open a cabinet. “I’ll get the ice.” Allie went to the freezer and started to shuffle through the trays to find one that was mostly full. She brought it over to crack into the large bowl Marc set beside the sink, grabbing the extender faucet afterward to add water.

  His hand was resting on her left hip. When she turned her chin over her shoulder, Marc was right there behind her. She struggled to remember what she’d come to the apartment to do. “Do you need help with the tape?” Allie asked.

  “I can get it.” He let go of her so that he could pick at the old binding on his right fingers.

  But he wasn’t gone. The curve of his body pressed him hard against her rear and Allie had to bite down on a gasp. Marc probably did this all the time, she told herself while her thoughts raced with giddy uncertainty. She had seen girls climbing on him,
licking him, without Marc having to do so much as smile at them.

  Yet he had gone home with her. He’d gone home with her in Colorado, too, and she’d seen him ease his impressive walls enough to admit that he cared about being on the water polo team. So Allie knew he could care. Had she just imagined it, that he seemed upset to see his teammate’s name on her phone? It was Marc whose room she wanted to go back to that night. It was Marc whose hands she wanted in her hair, and whose dark eyes she wanted to search until she found the secret worth such indomitable defenses. It was Marc …

  Allie fumbled at the faucet to make sure the water was slammed to the cold side and dunked her own fingers into the bowl. As if she needed to test that ice was actually freezing. It didn’t have as much of an affect on her pulse as she may have hoped.

  Lindsey had given her the responsibility of taking care of Marc. He was still a subject in the trial she was helping conduct. She couldn’t forget. “Why don’t you go sit down,” Allie suggested through the tightness which had laced into her throat.

  “Can you handle that?” Marc asked. “It’s big.”

  He probably meant the bowl, but he was still rubbed up against her and Allie’s mind was short circuiting. His voice vibrated in her ear and she was too aware of his mouth. Too aware of her own mouth. She licked her lips and swallowed awkwardly. She forgot that the water was on until it started to spill out over the tight-curled grip of her knuckles at the bowl’s edge. “Fuck.”

  She heard Marc’s breath exhale heavy behind her, like that was the suggestion he’d rather take.

  “Go sit down,” Allie commanded with more deliberateness than she felt. A glance to the side found where the guys’ kitchen table was dominated by a bowl of fruit topped off daily by the housekeeping service. She pointed towards one of the chairs. “I can do it.”

  Marc didn’t shift.

  It was a risk, looking up into his eyes. Allie didn’t know what would happen. Once their gazes latched, she felt Marc’s hand grip hard at her nape.

  They must have given him something hallucinogenic and she was experiencing the bystander effect. Marc Belmont was going to kiss her, and Allie was going to let him.

  Until a little look of triumph flickered into his expression.

  All he cared about was the win, she reminded herself. Kelsey had suggested that he was the reigning champion when it came to notches on his bedpost. Although how that fit with what he said in the restaurant about his ex cheating on him, Allie didn’t know.

  She lifted a chill-dampened hand to press at his chest. His solid, heartbeat-holding chest.

  Marc was her patient.

  Lindsey was trusting her.

  “Go,” she said firmly.

  Marc paused, a faint laugh chuckling on his breath. His chin tipped as he looked at her incredulously. But the pressure released and he paced the few backward steps that brought him to the chair. He dropped into it heavily, his gaze never losing its fix upon her.

  Allie rolled her wrist against her forehead to brush off an escaped tendril of hair and tried to focus upon her patient care. Her hands were shaky as she tipped the bowl to slop some of the water back into the sink before carrying it across to the kitchen table. She tried to stay as far out of Marc’s reach as possible when she set it up beside his hand.

  “Twenty minutes,” Allie ordered as she got out her phone to set a timer.

  “Are you just going to stand there and stare at me?” Allie hadn’t gone far enough. Marc caught a toe behind her ankle and reached forward to hook her waistband with his good hand. “How am I going to stay entertained while I sit here?”

  “I have to get ready to wrap it,” Allie protested. There wasn’t much strength in the hand she pushed off his shoulder. She was lost again in his eyes.

  “That will only take you a second.” Marc was undeterred. “We have more than a thousand of them.”

  “I have to report to Lindsey,” Allie tried as a last resort of reason. Her traitorous fingers were finding their way up the slope of Marc’s shoulder to the muscled curve of his neck.

  “You can tell her that you’ve earned my compliance with your treatment plan.” His good hand pressed along the weakening arc of her spine.

  “You’re not compliant at all,” Allie breathed, but it was more like a marvel than a censure.

  Marc smiled.

  A little gasp escaped her lips as his fingers crawled beneath the hem of her shirt to spark electricity along her spine.

  “This is a terrible idea,” Allie whispered. All of her arguments seemed distant and his arm was right there, feeling so good as he held her. She found herself dipping to satisfy her want of his seldom-smiling lips.

  Allie whimpered as he arched into her. She drowned in the intensity of his kiss. Her phone clattered to the floor and she couldn’t even worry about it. Her last act of responsibility was the run of her hand down his arm, ensuring that he kept his knuckles dunked in the bowl of ice. The chill water did nothing to cool the heat of his mouth which pressed to taste deeply from hers. From their startled splay along the line of his neck, her fingers twined into the soft-lick curls of his hair and held him to her.

  Some part of Allie was aware that she could not kiss him forever. But that seemed less important than the heady heat and hunger Marc poured into her. His hand drew a firepath beneath her shirt as he felt greedily along her skin and up to the satin cupping her breast. In timelessness she was lost from her thoughts, dragged instead into the animal now of this man. A body alive with force and heat.

  The timer would have been a shrill enough awakening. Worse was the door and the sound of Adam’s voice. “Fucking hell, I could sleep for a week.”

  Marc hardly reacted, but Allie jolted sharply away. Failing to keep professional distance was bad enough without being caught in the act. She wiped her wrist at her mouth and fussed her shirt straight and checked her hair. Like somehow she could get her ponytail to cover her damning blush.

  Marc was still gripping at her waist. “Why don’t you start now?” he called to Adam. His eyes never left Allie.

  She could see the trace of her kiss shining at his lips. Allie wanted to reach out and wipe it away, but beneath her shame was a yearning to keep touching him. She worried that if she fell into Marc’s lap she would never escape. With both her hands she peeled his fingers from her waist instead. He only put up a little resistance.

  “You okay, Marc?” Adam was coming into the kitchen, his bag thumping as he tossed it over the back of the couch on the way in. “I heard your hand was fucked up. Oh. Hey, Allie.”

  “I was just leaving,” Allie said in panic. She bent hurriedly to scoop up her phone from where it had fallen on the water-spotted floor. The minutes were still ticking down to zero.

  Adam turned her a briefly confused look.

  “Caught the ball badly this morning,” Marc said without missing a beat. “My hand was giving me trouble in the gym and so they’re making sure it’s not broken.” His eyes slid from Adam to where Allie was standing uncertainly. “An abundance of caution, you know how it goes.”

  “Yeah.” Adam reflected Marc’s nonchalance readily. He swept past Allie to go to the fridge and pull out the orange juice. “You want to hang around for dinner, Allie?”

  “Uhm.” Allie was watching as Marc slowly licked his lips. Like he wanted her for dinner. “We already ate,” she found herself saying before she could worry about whether she wanted to admit to going out with Marc or not.

  “All right.” Adam unceremoniously took a plate of cold pizza and wandered off to flop in front of the TV in the other room.

  Her phone’s timer went off. Marc stood up and started stalking towards her. Allie backed up until her hips checked against the counter. She fluttered her eyes closed as he leaned in, but when she opened them she found that he had grabbed the dish towel to dab the moisture from his skin.

  “I know you want me.”

  “Marc,” Allie pleaded in a whisper. She set her hand against his
chest again. Like it might work better on the second go. “I’m here to do a job. I want to do my job.”

  “I want to do you.”

  Allie almost let a moan free from her lips as his hardness rolled against her. “Please,” she begged. “Please don’t get in the way of my goals. I’m trying to help you with yours.”

  Marc’s heavy sigh spilled against the soft of her throat. The way he flicked her earlobe with his tongue was an indecent promise which made her shudder. “Good things don’t last forever.”

  She almost crumbled beneath the feel of his mouth. Allie was pulled in two directions. She wanted to jump him right then. But she was also too aware of his warning about things that didn’t last. Allie knew how it felt to be left with nothing. The press of her palm became less conflicted and more insistent.

  Allie pinned her lips and slid a quick glance over towards the living room to where Adam was paying them no attention. She set her gaze bravely back upon Marc. “I’m not going to be another girl who falls for you and watches you go.”

  “You can’t live in the future, Allie.” Marc tested her resolve by reaching to route her hair back from her forehead. “It might not show up the way you think.” But he shifted a step back and offered her his ice-chilled hand with palm-up relinquishment.

  Allie spent a moment searching his eyes before settling herself with a determined breath. She took his hand with a touch that was trained and she focused on all the things that she’d spent so many hours preparing herself for. Third digit. Proximal joint. She needed her tape, and she’d wrap it in the pattern she’d been taught to support the structure and reduce inflammation. The best way to promote healing was to minimize the things that got in the way of the body’s natural process.

  The stupid part of her wished that Marc would kiss her again. But with Adam in the living room, it proved possible to finish up her tasks and escape out the front door with no more than the promise that she’d see the both of them at the van the next morning.