Qualified: A Sports Romance

by Croix, Ada

  Her mouth wavered with another relentless welling of tears. “But I want to be an ivory tower asshole.”

  Marc looked at her and held his breath a moment, and then he sighed it out into an anemic laugh. “Allie …”

  It was ridiculous, but Allie couldn’t bear to find it funny. Not yet, not when it sounded like he was laughing at her. She shook her head like she could so easily fling everything troubling away. “I can’t. I can’t, Marc. I … I have to get out of here.” She pushed past him to continue her retreat to the car, nothing as important as escaping. How could she expect him to understand? How could she hope for him to believe in her?

  Marc didn’t try to stop her again on her route to the garage, but Allie could feel his presence shadowing her. Each step she took was echoed with his one-below tread as she fled up the metal stairs to the parking level where she had left the car. He made his move when she was fumbling Everett’s keys out of her purse. His deft reach over her shoulder snatched them from her fingers before she realized what he was doing.

  Allie’s breath caught in her throat and she spun quick, laying her back against the car. Her wide eyes turned up to Marc, unsure what was happening.

  “I’m not letting you drive like this.”

  “… What?” Allie’s voice was still cracked from all her crying. She dragged her tissue across her nose.

  “I’m not letting you drive,” Marc repeated patiently. “You can get in the passenger seat.” He gestured over the hood of the car but his eyes didn’t leave hers.

  She pinched the tissue at her nose and slanted an unsure gaze up at Marc. “But … but, you don’t have a driver’s license.”

  Marc’s mouth thinned. “You can stay here, or you can call a taxi, but I’m not letting you drive.”

  The tears threatened to break loose again. “I just want to go home.” Allie hugged her bag to her chest. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I just … I just want to go. Please.”

  “Get in the car.” Marc tucked a hand beneath her elbow to help guide her around to the passenger side.

  “Marc, you can’t drive.” Allie could speak with panicked quick, but she didn’t have enough fight to try and steal back the keys as he reached to open the car.

  “Wanna bet?” Marc stood with his hand holding the door, unflinching.

  “Marc, you’re already in trouble because of what I told them. What if you get pulled over?”

  “What if I don’t.”

  Allie held her uncertainty in her chest, her tear-hot eyes searching over him. “I don’t know if I can get in a car that you’re driving.”

  Tension worked briefly along the line of his jaw. “Because of the license, or because of me?”

  “Yes.” Allie’s voice cracked miserably. Her hands fisted tighter around her wadded tissue. She wanted to trust him, but all the stories she’d heard gave her reason to doubt. She treasured all those moments when she’d had him to herself, her heart never feeling more alive than when his pulse sang beside hers, but Marc was the one who had told her not to count on him sticking around.

  “I don’t know who you are.” It was like he was always on defense, never letting her get through, so how could Allie know? “I don’t know where you’ll go.”

  Marc considered her a long moment. Then he gave a nodding tip of his chin. “If you want to find out, get in.” With that he left the passenger door open and circled back to the driver’s side. He slid into the seat and put the keys in the ignition. The radio came on, playing out the end of the last song from their drive while he worked the latches and switch for putting the top down.

  Allie stood indecisively beside the open door, sniffling.

  Marc jumped her playlist back to the track they’d danced to in the club. He slung his right arm onto the shoulder of the passenger seat and swiveled his gaze up to her. “That door’s gotta close. Are you in or are you out, Allie?”

  33

  Once her sunglasses were on at least the red of Allie’s eyes wasn’t so obvious. She relaxed into her seat and curled with her left shoulder dug into the leather. That way she could watch Marc’s profile as her songlist played and the world rolled by. They headed west past road signs familiar from music and movies until the freeway faltered before a line of palm trees. There the breeze rushed cooler, direct off the water.

  By the time they turned onto surface streets she was brave enough to let her fingers trace the shape of his knuckles while he gripped the shift lever in their wait at a stoplight. Marc looked down at the sight of her skin on his and then up to her eyes. They wore matching mirrors and she had trouble telling if he were smiling.

  “Where are we going?” Allie wondered.

  “I know a spot up in the hills.” Marc had time for a longer glance at her while he was turning onto the coast highway. “Still worried?”

  Allie shook her head no. She had even forgotten to worry that Marc shouldn’t be driving. She was back in the dream and it was more gorgeous than ever. The deep blue of the ocean was sparkling to silver as the sun sank lower. The scent of sand and salt was thick on the air. Palm fronds rustled above them as they passed through intersections that stretched farther and farther apart.

  The hillsides grew less populated and Marc turned right onto a road which wound up into the cliff-rise bluffs above the shoreline. Allie watched the twist and flex of his forearm as he neatly down-shifted to power through the curves. There was something so mesmerizing about the absolute physicality of him that pulled her from her abstract worries to the sensation-full present.

  They climbed steadily away from the pressing insanity of Los Angeles. Marc slowed the car so that its wheels could crunch to full traction as he took them down an unpaved road. There were horses in the distance, so it could have been a ranch, or perhaps just a fire road serving the maze of canyons that cracked the dry California coast. A low glow was set in her belly and she had flutters in her throat.

  Silence fell when Marc turned off the car. They sat for long minutes while the dust cloud settled behind the wheels. Faintly, in the distance, Allie could hear the rhythmic voice of the ocean.

  Marc left the car first, flicking his door closed behind him and walking out to the road’s edge. The soles of his shoes grit with every step. She remained in her seat a moment, appreciating how the cotton of his t-shirt strained as he stretched out the broad muscles of his shoulders. She felt like she was walking on clouds, not gravel, when she got out and went around to perch on the side where she could sit facing Marc and the waves far below.

  He wandered back to join her there. When he turned to lean against the fender their hips brushed close. His eyes were on the view. “I used to come out here, while I was in school. A lot of the guys liked to surf.”

  His hand reached to cap at her knee. His eyes dropped to watch his fingers slide along the pale of her thigh until the edge of her skirt started to fold back from his wrist. “I liked the drive. Getting away. Getting perspective.”

  Allie’s heart was battering in her chest. She couldn’t look away from him. She couldn’t move. Not to shy away, and not to reach out. “It’s beautiful.” She wasn’t even looking at the scenery.

  “My dad was really into cars. He’d take me sometimes, on the weekend. This same highway.” Marc nodded towards the strand of road far below. “But up north.”

  “My dad used to take me driving, too.” It seemed the wrong memory to have while Marc’s palm was cupped so high at her thigh. Fine hairs were standing all along her backward-braced arms, she was so attuned to his proximity. “It was for his job, though. He had to check on the cows.”

  Her smile didn’t stick. Allie was too intent on searching what she could see of his expression. “I’ve never heard you talk about your family.”

  “I don’t have a family.” There wasn’t much to see. His features seemed impassive and Marc continued his downcast focus. The graze of his thumb painted invisible diagrams between her freckles. “They’re dead.”

  Allie blink
ed, her surprise turning into sorrow. “I’m sorry.”

  Marc shook his head. “It was a long time ago. I was a kid.”

  He appeared calm, but she had trouble believing it. Balancing her weight onto the prop of her far palm, Allie reached her timid fingers to stroke the slightly caved line of his shoulders. “What happened?”

  “Car crash.” Marc sounded matter-of-fact, but he still wouldn’t look at her. “They were driving my little sister to this weekend tournament thing. Basketball. She was just in middle school, but she was good. Tall.” The curve of his mouth didn’t quite make it into a smile. “Anyway. The fog …” His forehead tightened into a frown. With his tension came a clipping of his words. “They call it tule fog. And the roads are fucked. It’s one of those things. It happens.”

  Allie’s mouth was dry and her throat was thick. The motion of licking dampness to her lips seemed too much. “What was her name?”

  She wasn’t ready for how he looked at her. She’d never been ready. Those intensely dark eyes had lived with so much hurt that his soul’s window was nothing but scar.

  “Andrea. Drea.”

  “Drea,” Allie repeated carefully.

  Marc took a long breath. “Yeah.” His touch reanimated, sweeping into a broader stroke down to her knee and back again. A shake of his head turned his gaze out to the sea. “I had to live with my mom’s sister after that, but she doesn’t count. I didn’t grow up around her.

  “My mom had practically been disowned by her family. They hated that she married my dad.” That was a memory Marc felt. She could see the muscles bunch in his jaw when he bit down on his anger. “I think every time they looked at me, it proved them right. That he was no good.”

  Her hand had long since stopped moving, her palm dwarfed by the powerful shoulder it rested against. Allie didn’t know how she could possibly say anything that would make a difference. “That’s not what I see.”

  There was a weak chuckle in his exhale. Marc glanced at her sidelong. “Do you think that I’m good?” Skepticism touched a faint curl to his lips.

  Allie slowly folded her hands into her lap, just above where his hand still rested on her thigh. There was a tremble in her aching chest. She must seem naive to him, but she couldn’t bear to have him laugh at her. “I think … that you’ve helped me. When you didn’t have to.” A close of her fist flexed her tendons beneath soft skin and she remembered how the cruel dig of nails felt before he had stopped Natalie. She couldn’t hold his gaze anymore so she looked down to the fold of her fingers.

  “And you’ve shown me beautiful things.” Allie should probably be looking at the view. It was gorgeous, but she wasn’t really referring to the things she could see with her eyes. It was the way she felt around him that was entirely new. “Things I wouldn’t have known about, otherwise.”

  “I’ve shown you,” Marc scoffed in disbelief. “I’m not good, Allie.” The sound of his certainty was almost as bad as if he had laughed at her.

  The knit of her frown matched the knot in her throat when Allie looked back up at him.

  Marc wasn’t done with his argument. “You are.” He had turned so that he was looking right at her. Right into her, it felt like, and Allie wasn’t sure how she was supposed to be good when her thigh opened beneath the harder grip of his hand. “You’ve never needed my help. You’re smart. You care about important things. And you do them.”

  “Marc.” Allie wasn’t sure she actually said his name. She might have forgotten how to breathe. That’s what it was, that look of his she’d sometimes catch. That he was impressed with her.

  “I know you’re not going to let some asshole get in the way of you being great. Whether he’s a professor or not.”

  Marc believed in her. Marc was trying to tell her it’d be okay.

  A hungry little sound welled up from Allie’s belly. She stretched towards him and her hands lifted from her lap. Her fingers hooked at his nape to pull him close so that she could taste the sweetness from his mouth. “This is what I see,” she told him once she pulled back to gasp her lungs full again. The stroke of her fingers along his jaw wished to take his unhappy tension away forever.

  From the pressed closeness of their foreheads, her whole world was in his eyes. “You.” She felt Marc’s smile when she kissed him. “And I want you.” Her words murmured against his stubble-shadowed skin. “You’re who I want. I’ve known … I’ve known.”

  Marc had been receptive, listening attentively to her words and matching the gentle wonderment of her amateur kisses. The extent of his restraint was clear when her unprompted declaration broke it. She bent into the rough claim of his fist tangling into her hair. He bit at her lips and she hissed from the delicious sting as they flushed with heightened sensitivity.

  The car shifted when Marc stood to turn and face her. The fabric of his jeans was cool against the heat of her thighs as he wedged his legs between hers. His hands slid up beneath her skirt while he kissed her. He took her hips into a hard grip and dragged her seat to the very edge of the fender. Allie gasped into his mouth. The startled open of her eyes found his.

  “Don’t you know where I’m going?” The grazing whorl of his fingertips against the heat of her skin was a kind of teasing she could get used to.

  Allie licked at the plumped tingling of her lips but couldn’t find her voice. She was too riveted by him to figure out how to vocalize her barely-dared expectation.

  Her eyes closed when his mouth sucked over the pulse-threaded hollow of her throat. “Down.” His breath tickled across the damp of her skin. “On you.”

  34

  Allie’s skin prickled with giddy anticipation. He went for her shirt first, bunching the fabric carelessly for a peeling pull up her torso and over her head. One of her blouse’s lower buttons popped off with the roughness of his tugging. She reeled at the feel of air against her naked skin. Her forearms fell to an instinctive fold over her breasts as she dodged a look back towards the road. “Marc.” A lifetime of modesty added to her breathlessness. “What if someone comes.”

  “I’m counting on it.” Marc tossed her shirt into the backseat and leaned forward again, nipping quick at her mouth before his kisses started to trace down the line of her throat.

  Allie swayed as he coaxed her wrists away. She set her hands onto his shoulders and gripped tight. “Is this how you cheer a girl up?” Her joking smile was corroded by nerves but he wasn’t looking anyway. His tongue was slipping down the quick heave of her chest.

  “Is it working?” Marc used his thumb to liberate her nipple from beneath her bra’s hem of lace.

  Her answer was a cry and an arch of her back as the heat of his mouth latched on in rough suck. Her hands rose to twist and tangle in his hair. His tongue flicked electric at the tips of her breasts. “Marc,” she pleaded and pulled him up.

  His lips were wet and his dark eyes were so close—she fell in forever. She could feel his hands at her thighs again, so broad and big. “That’s right.” Marc wore an insufferable smirk. “The only crying you should be doing is my name while I take every inch of you.” The flutter of his tongue at the edge of her mouth made her hips squirm. A helpless moan escaped from deep in her core. “That is what you want. Isn’t it, Allie?”

  “I want …” Allie pitched forward and kissed him with the unshaping hunger of her mouth. His hands were cupping at her backside and she arched into him, filling his palms with her curves and pressing her chest to his as their tongues tangled. His hips were tilted against the car’s edge and she could feel the bulge of him through his jeans where her legs hugged around him.

  “Marc.” She exhaled. “I want you. I want you so bad. Please.”

  Marc responded with a fiercer kiss. Allie had to shove the prop of a hand backwards so that she didn’t topple over the dent-flexing trunk of the car. His hand dropped between her legs, the rub of his fingers finding her wetness through cotton and lace.

  The press of his body lessened and Allie was left tipped open to t
he sky, the hard jut of her nipples escaped from her bra and her skirt bunching to uselessness around her waist. Against her hips Allie could feel his thumbs hook beneath the band of her underwear. Marc slid her panties from her legs and dropped to a crouch before her. Her ankles slid over the muscled slopes of his shoulders as he pushed her skirt up her belly and dragged his fingertips back to where her flesh burned for him.

  Allie tried to hold herself up while Marc went down on her but her hands slipped along the car’s glossy surface. Every touch of his tongue was a brand that seared along the length of her spine and set her eyes to overwhelmed roll. In that moment she knew how the ocean must feel when the fireheart sun dove beneath its surface, setting glorious spark to each wave crest. She was at once more than her skin could contain and no more than the knot of nerves inflamed by Marc’s mouth to climax. Her head dropped back and her spine arched and his name choked in her throat.

  From her bliss Allie was called back by the pinch of his knuckle pushing into her. Her belly remained clenched and her thighs quivered. “Marc.” Her voice was weak.

  Rare pleasure brightened from the smile-crinkled corners of Marc’s eyes. He was sitting back, licking those lips made messy by her lust and watching her body accept the shove of his finger. “Such a tight little pussy.”

  Each stroke resonated along every still-quaking inch of her. Allie whimpered.

  Marc looked up at the sound. “Are you going to come for me again?” His touch remained between her legs but he started to get to his feet so he could lean nearer.

  She writhed and dropped the cuff of one hand to his forearm.

  “No?” Marc asked as she pushed weakly. It was a short-lived notion of resistance. When his departing fingers stroked across her slicking folds her grip turned into a greedy pull. Allie fought to keep her eyelashes from dipping, refusing to be lost. She wanted him. It was a choice she needed to confirm by meeting his eyes when his knuckles slipped back inside of her. Her voice mewled through the clench of her teeth and she could hardly recognize herself. She kept her hand on his forearm, feeling his strength as he twisted in her hold and delved between her legs.