“What about him?” I asked. “I’m assuming he didn’t live with his parents too.”
“No, but …”
I felt like I was pushing my luck with this continued line of questioning, but I had to know.
“Didn’t you think that was weird? I mean, if the guy loved you why didn’t he try to see you when you weren’t working?”
Sad eyes turned toward me and she shrugged. “That’s not how our relationship worked.”
I only had weeks left with Sophie but I was trying my damnedest to figure out how I could spend every available minute with her. We were sitting here together and already I missed her.
“You do realize the only time that fecker tried to see you was when someone else was paying?”
“Yes, I do,” she shot back. “I’m not dumb, you know.”
“I do know, which is why I’m surprised you put up with his bullshit.”
Her eyes shooting daggers, she asked, “Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?”
“I don’t know. Do I?”
She sighed and said, “I’ve told you this much, I may as well finish. Maybe then you’ll understand.”
“Understand what?”
Flicking her eyes between mine, she whispered, “Why I have trouble trusting men.”
I’d already figured out from the way she was constantly trying to push me away that she didn’t trust me not to hurt her. She had a vulnerability about her that I’d sensed almost immediately, but it was one she kept well hidden from most.
“Well?” she barked. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“What do you want me to say?”
I kept my voice neutral, letting her own the flow of our conversation without allowing it get out of control. I’d never given much thought to the sports psychology courses I’d taken beyond what happened on the field, but my ability not to meet her anger with my frustration was coming in handy.
“I dunno, that I’m damaged goods or something,” she spat.
“Why would I say that?”
Just stay calm, I thought, and she’ll calm down as well.
“Because it’s the truth. My dad, my first boyfriend, Stephen. I don’t trust any of you.”
“I’m not them, Sophie.”
“No, you’re just the first boy who broke me,” she choked out.
“We were children Sophie,” I reminded her through clenched teeth.
I didn’t know too much about her relationship with her father beyond the fact that it was almost non-existent, but I was irritated she compared the natural idiocy of an eight-year boy old with the cold manipulation she’d experienced at the hands of Stephen.
Relaxing the muscles in my neck and shoulders, I continued, “I told you I was sorry for what happened. Had I known I was legitimately hurting you I would have stopped teasing you.” I paused to calm the timbre of voice. “And you told me you forgave me.”
It wasn’t exactly an accusation, but she needed to understand her forgiveness mattered, that I didn’t take it lightly.
“Forgive, not forget,” she muttered, looking across the room, her gaze resting anywhere but on me.
Since there was no point in arguing, I let the comment go. I didn’t expect her to forget about her childhood, but I wouldn’t let her punish me for it either.
“Anyhow, as I was saying,” she remarked as she settled back down on the sofa and curled her legs under her. “Stephen and I were together for almost a year, give or take.”
I shook my head, still not believing Sophie had been naïve enough to fall in love with an asshole who made no room for her in his life. Checking my reaction, I set my face into a mask of polite, non-judgmental interest. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure the guy probably had multiple girlfriends he fed the same tired lines to as he juggled them all.
It takes one to know one, I thought with a hint of disgust. But I’ve never let anyone think there was more to us beyond a quick fuck, I reminded myself. I’d certainly never lead anyone on the way I was thinking Stephen had lead Sophie on.
“So what happened?”
I didn’t want to know, and yet I was also dying to find out.
“It was October and we were in Napa, staying at a cottage that belonged to a guy he knew who owned a small, elite vineyard. We were there to study what went into making wine, from harvest to bottling and then write a few articles about it.
“I had contracts lined up with three different magazines and a national daily newspaper to document the experience. Professionally, things had never been better, and personally I thought Stephen and I were building up to something more permanent.”
She looked up from her clenched hands and captured my gaze. Holding it, she said, “I thought he was going to ask me to marry him. I would have said yes.”
The confession hung heavy between us. As much as I might want to, I couldn’t ignore the fact that Sophie had very real, very powerful feelings for Stephen. She’d been prepared to spend the rest of her life with the bastard! The knowledge of her commitment to him made my chest pinch. I rubbed at the ache in my sternum, not understanding why it hurt so much to know Sophie might not be willing to give her heart away again.
“Obviously that didn’t happen though.”
She laughed mirthlessly. “Obviously not,” she answered, wrapping her arms protectively over her middle, almost like she was trying to hold something bad inside her body. “It would have been hard to marry me when he already had a beautiful wife and a baby girl at home in Seattle.”
What the fuck?!
I had not seen that one coming. Nothing she’d said so far had prepared me for that particular bomb. I’d known something bad had happened, but this was … too much. As much of a prick as I could be, even I knew there were certain things you just didn’t do to a woman, and that was one of them. I wanted to cut off Stephen’s balls and feed them to him for breakfast. Not only for what he’d done to Sophie, but also for how he’d treated his wife and daughter.
“Sarabeth was three months old when I found out about her and Hannah. That’s his wife, by the way.”
“But that means …”
I didn’t need to say what it meant. Sophie had lived through it.
Her shoulders slumped and tear streaked down her face. “Yes. I had an affair with a married man. I helped him commit adultery.”
“Stop that,” I admonished, crossing the room to stand in front of her. Dropping to my knees, I took her ice cold hands in mine. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“No?” She asked. “I should have known better.”
“How were you to know Sophie? The bastard lied to you from the beginning.”
“You said it yourself, Declan. He avoided having a life with me. We only saw each other while on assignment, but I ignored what was right there in front of my face.”
“Yer man lied to you.”
“He did,” she acknowledged with a rueful shake of her head. “And yet I still wanted him. That’s the truly horrible thing.” Her confession came out as a pained whisper.
“Did you want him, or did you need to cling to what you thought you had together?”
I had to ask, because if after everything he’d done to her, Sophie had still wanted to be with him—even knowing he had a family at home—I wasn’t sure I could look at her the same way. I couldn’t speak from experience, but pining after someone who’d fucked you over that way, being willing to take them back after such a huge, humiliating betrayal … it didn’t speak very well of a person, did it? And I’d grown to think of Sophie as the very best sort of person.
But if she’d simply missed their relationship, that was okay because that meant it didn’t need to be Stephen. I reasoned one could mourn what had been without wanting it still.
On a sob, she admitted, “I miss being loved.”
“Oh Sophie,” I replied, gathering her up in my arms as she broke down against my shoulder.
The anguish she harbored over that doomed relationship hurt
me because it hurt her, but I also thought that if she let me, I could heal her broken heart.
I didn’t exactly know how I planned on doing that when I had no idea how this relationship was going to play out in the long term, but holding her in my arms as she cried over her lost love, I silently promised her she’d never have a reason to hurt that way again.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asked, her hands fidgeting with my light dusting of chest hair.
My first instinct was to say no. I almost did, but then my mind flashed to a little, awkward blonde girl who’d hated me to my very core and all the stupid things I’d done to try and change that. To all the times I’d silently begged her to look at me with something other than fury in her beautiful green eyes. To the day she’d left Ballycurra and how I might have cried myself to sleep that night.
I wrapped my larger hand around her smaller one and moved it to her lap so that it wasn’t anywhere near my heart. The same heart that was beating as fast as it did after 80 minutes of play.
“Yeah,” I admitted quietly. “I think maybe I have.”
She looked up in surprise. “Really? I wouldn’t have guessed. What happened?”
I shrugged and smiled, tried to make a joke of it so she wouldn’t guess what I’d really been thinking. “Simple really. I was a dick.”
She laughed. “No, really. What happened? Come on, I told you my story.”
I pretended to consider her request to buy some time. I wondered how much I could divulge without her guessing at the truth.
And so, changing names and dates and all other pertinent facts, I told her about how I’d treated a wonderful person like shit because I hadn’t been prepared to deal with my emotions.
“Kind of like now,” I said, looking down at our entwined hands. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
“I know,” she replied. “Me too.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sophie
Declan: I can’t stop thinking about you.
Sophie: Aren’t you supposed to be at practice?
Declan: I finished an hour ago. Home now …
Declan: Jacking off to thoughts of your juicy wet lips wrapped tight around my aching cock.
I sucked in a breath, surprised, annoyed, and incredibly hot all at the same time. My fingers flew over the keyboard almost as quickly as my heart beat within my chest.
Sophie: DECLAN!!!!
Sophie: Good lord. What would happen if my grandparents found my phone? Do you want to send my grandpa back to the hospital?
Sophie: You can’t say stuff like that via text.
When my phone rang seconds later I knew exactly who was calling. “Seriously, you can’t say stuff like that via text,” I scolded before he spoke.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s … it’s not appropriate.”
“But it’s the truth. I’m holding my dick right now pretending you’re here with me.”
Before I could prevent it, a picture of him lying on his bed, his large hand pumping away at his magnificent cock jumped into my head.
Steadying my voice, I said, “Be that as it may, I’d be mortified if anyone came across my phone and saw those messages.”
“Why?” he asked, as if he really couldn’t understand the problem.
I groaned out loud, this time in exasperation. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe you don’t know why it might be embarrassing for someone to come across sexts from you on my phone?”
His tone and inflection matching my own, he asked, “You honestly don’t expect me to believe you haven’t sexted before, do you?”
When I didn’t answer, he laughed. “No fucking way! You’ve never sexted?”
“Umm …”
“Seriously?”
“Fine. You win. I’ve never sexted.”
“Oh, this is too perfect,” he muttered mischievously and I knew he was plotting to flood my phone with messages that could make a porn star blush.
I didn’t bother asking him not to do it because it would have been a useless request. I’d just have to make sure my phone never left my sight and erase them as they came in.
“Anyhow …” I said, hopefully drawing his attention from whatever wicked plans he was busily concocting. “What are you doing? Really?”
“I told you,” he answered, his voice going deep and gravelly. “I want to come with your voice in my ears.”
I sucked in a gulp of air and my body tingled all over, my nerve endings remembering the pleasure that followed Declan’s sexy dirty talk.
“You’re a fiend,” I whispered.
“And you love it.” He laughed and my stomach fluttered at the sound of it.
“You’re incorrigible,” I shot back, laughing myself.
“I’m charming,” he replied on a small exhalation.
“Are you really …?”
“Yes, Sophie,” he bit out. “I am really.”
His breath came shorter and quicker and the sound of it in my ear left no doubt he really was pleasuring himself while we chatted.
“Now, be a good girl and tell me what you want to do to me the next time we see each other.”
The whispered command had me imagining all sorts of lascivious scenarios but I wondered if I could really do this. Not only had I never gotten into the whole sexting thing, I was also a phone sex novice. Not that I’d never done it before, but the few times I had, I’d found it … lacking.
Maybe you just didn’t do it with the right guy, my brain interjected.
None of the men I’d been with before had been big on dirty talk, so phone sex had been awkward at best. But Declan? He loved to whisper (or text) filthy little things to get me hot and bothered.
I decided if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. This time, I was going to be the one to make him squirm. I took a deep breath and launched in to one of my fantasies.
“I’m waiting for you when you get home dressed in nothing but your jersey and a smile.”
“Mmm,” he murmured. “I’d like that.”
“I take your hand and lead you over to the sofa. I push you down and then drop to my knees in front of you. You’re already hard for me, your thick, delicious cock straining in your jeans.”
I was proud of myself when my voice didn’t waver or crack.
He moaned and the sound shot straight to my core as it fluttered with need.
“I run my hands up your thighs, drag my nails over you, and your hips buck in response. I reach up and undo your button, pull your zipper down.”
Declan’s breath sawed in and out and I heard small grunts of pleasure as he worked himself over.
“Your cock is free and it’s glorious. Just looking at it makes my mouth water.”
“Mmm,” he moaned, louder this time.
“But as much as I want to taste you, wrap my lips around you and suck you deep until you’re hitting the back of my throat, my pussy aches for you more than my mouth does. I’m empty inside and I want you to fill me up.”
I waited, listening to the sounds he made as he stroked himself.
“Do you want that too?” I asked when he hadn’t responded after several seconds.
“Yeah, baby. I want you to ride my cock so fucking hard.”
His breathing rushed, I imagined his hand pumping furiously at his thick, hard cock, my words gasoline pouring over the flames of his desire. Closing my eyes, I slid my hand under the elastic of my panties. When my finger slipped through my blonde curls, I was soaking wet. That small touch electric, a gasp caught in my throat. I tried to hold in my moan when I hit the perfect spot, but Declan heard it anyway.
“You’re wet for me, aren’t you?” he asked between pants.
“Yes,” I breathed out.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel …” I didn’t have words to explain how my body responded to him. “I want …”
“What do you want my sweet girl?”
“You.
I want you, all of you,” I answered, my fingers swirling over my throbbing clit.
I increased the pressure, rubbing furiously at that magical spot, desperate to come. I could have taken my time, savored the experience, but Declan was already so close and I wanted to go over the edge with him.
“I want … to … fuck you … right now … so bad,” he choked out.
I wanted to fuck him too. So much so that I worried he’d ruined me for all other men.
“Declan …” I groaned as goosebumps bloomed over my body and my limbs tingled with imminent release.
A shimmering awareness spread through me, starting at my center and blossoming outward until all of my nerve endings buzzed.
On the other end of the line, Declan repeated my name over and over, a benediction, and it fueled me. I shook and my heart raced as I rushed to the edge and tossed myself over an endless cliff. I was falling, my body weightless, my mind empty of any thought except for him.
Eventually my hand stilled and then I started laughing uncontrollably.
“Sophie?”
I heard my name through the speaker, muffled, and found my phone face down on the mattress several inches away. I giggled and picked it up.
“Well,” I said. “That was something.”
He chuckled, a sound of pure masculine satisfaction. “It was.”
“I think I finally understand what all the fuss is about,” I admitted.
“See what you’ve been missing all these years?”
It was said playfully, but it reminded me that I’d been with the wrong people, the wrong sort of men. Our conversation grew quiet but this time it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence.
“Hey Soph.”
“Yeah?”
“Can we try our date again? I want to show you what Dublin’s like at Christmas. I think you’ll love it.”
“I’d love that.”
“I have an away match on Friday night and a recovery session on Saturday afternoon. Can you get Sunday off?”
I chuckled. “Since I’m not technically an employee and I’m working for free, I’m pretty sure I get any day off that I want.”
“Yeah, I figured but …”
Trying Sophie: A Dublin Rugby Romance Page 23