Royal Baby (A British Bad Boy Romance) (33 page)

“Faster,” I gasped.

He obeyed my command, and in no time I was writhing beneath him, eyes clamped tight as another wave of pleasure washed over me. My mind was lost as his lips hungrily claimed my skin again and again, and I trembled, moaned and sighed at his touch. My eyes snapped open a moment later as he pulled himself out of me, and I stared at him indignantly until I realized he wasn’t stopping. He just wanted to move.

I let him help me off the table, and then he spun me around. I arched my back and pressed my hands against the table for support, and I felt his fingers on me from behind. He rubbed my clit, kissing me down my back, and then I felt his tip at my entrance again. He slowly entered me, and I gasped out loud, gripping the table as hard as I could. Liam felt even bigger inside me in this position, and he eased into me, giving me time to get used to it. A moan escaped my lips, and then he began to fuck me harder and harder. His fingers slipped around to my front, and he rubbed my clit as he slammed in and out of me. Every single nerve ending was on fire, and I gasped and moaned, my breaths coming even shorter and faster now.

His fingers were absolute magic, and the sensation of being so utterly filled by his cock was almost too much.

“Yes…oh, god…keep doing that,” I cried out, and soon I was right there again; right on the edge of my climax. The hot ball of pleasure inside me was about to explode, but Liam distracted me by pulling out and whispering something in my ear, leaving me hanging and desperate for more.

I turned my head over my shoulder to look at him, my mouth hanging open in a soundless gasp, and I saw a wicked gleam in his eyes. I raised my eyebrows in a question, and I saw his gaze dart towards the microphone on the announcer’s desk, which, at the flick of a switch, would broadcast our sounds to the whole stadium.

I didn’t hesitate. I leaned back and flicked the switch.

I’d never thought of myself as being loud in bed; enthusiastic, yes, but that was just polite. Tonight, I knew I’d been more vocal than usual, but that wasn’t my fault, that was all Liam’s doing—the passion, the pleasure and the whole situation in fact, had raised matters to such a fever pitch that all that energy had to go somewhere, and releasing it as cries, squeals and a whole bunch of other noises I couldn’t give names to seemed the only option. But even with that caveat, I wouldn’t have said that I was ‘noisy’.

It was also possible that once I knew the microphone was on and that the sounds of our lovemaking were being broadcast to the empty stadium—and probably the streets nearby—I might have, albeit unintentionally, become a little louder.

I guess there’s a closet exhibitionist in all of us…

But still, I would never have credited myself with being
that
loud. Of course, amplification helped, but when Liam and I reached a final exhaustive climax, the noise sounded almost more than the speakers could stand.

“Oh…god!” I cried, pushed off the edge again, lost for a moment in between two worlds.

Ecstasy came crashing down onto me, so intense that I almost stopped breathing altogether, and I squeezed my muscles around him, legs quaking in bliss. Liam let out a long sound of pleasure and bottomed out one last time inside me, and I knew he’d reached his own climax.

After he’d pulled out and disposed of the protection, he picked me up and gently lay me down on the carpet next to him. I lay against him for what felt like an eternity, my heaving chest meeting his, our skin salty and slick with the sweat of exertion. Liam gently stroked my hair as we tried to get our breath back, and that just made it all the more perfect.

Finally, I pushed myself upright and looked down at my lover, as exhausted and spent as I was. He was smiling just as widely.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, his face beaming.

I beamed right back. “And you’re incredible.”

“Right back at you.”

With a lazy kick at the floor, Liam sent a nearby swivel chair spinning, making me giggle in startled joy. We stood up, and I saw the stadium laid out below us; the perfect setting.

“What a view.”

“Just what I was thinking,” murmured Liam as he leaned down and kissed my breasts.

“Oh, very funny…” I stiffened. “Oh, shit.”

On the far side of the stadium I saw three men in security uniforms enter, running quickly across the grass, no doubt heading for the stairs that led up to the announcer’s booth.

“Any chance one of them is your friend Reg?”

Liam looked up. “Nope.”

It seemed unfair that anyone who had gone through such a physically draining—in the best possible way—night as we had, should be asked to do anything more taxing than lie back and think about how wonderful life was…and we definitely shouldn’t be asked to get dressed at high speed and bolt down a flight of stairs.

”In here!” Liam hissed, opening the door to a broom closet. He was still smiling and I realized that I was too; the excitement of the situation and the pleasure of being in it with Liam still affecting me.

We crouched like naughty teenagers in the darkness of the closet, keeping still and trying hard not to giggle. We heard the sound of pounding feet going past, up towards the announcer’s booth.

“Come on!” Liam finally whispered, his tone laced with urgency.

We ducked out and pelted down the stairs as fast as our feet would carry us until we were outside the stadium again, where we burst into peals of laughter, falling back against the wall and laughing till we cried, till our sides hurt, until we fell against each and kissed.

“I’ll take you back to your hotel,” Liam whispered, finally breaking away from our embrace. “Just one stop first.”

At the duty security guard’s hut, Liam knocked on the door and stuck his head in. “Thanks, Reg.”

“Oh no, Mr. Croft,” replied the elderly man who sat within, watching a bank of CCTV screens. “Thank
you
.”

“Um…is there a security camera in the announcer’s booth?” I asked as we made our way back towards the carpark.

Liam rubbed his chin. “I’m starting to think there might be.”

I considered this for a moment. I should’ve been mortified, and yet I wasn’t. Not at all. “Well, if that’s the case, then he could’ve thanked me as well!” I said.

We started laughing again and our mirth continued until we reached a black motorbike parked in the player’s section of the carpark.

“Liam?”

“Yeah?”

There was something that I needed to say, needed him to know. “I’ve never done anything like that before, but I don’t regret it. Not one bit.”

Liam beamed. “That’s the best part of this evening, hearing you say that. Not that there weren’t other good parts but…I’m glad.”

Perched on the back of Liam’s bike a moment later, I watched early morning London roll by. The city never stopped, never slept, never even slowed. People just kept on. I knew there were others out there right now who’d spent the night enjoying adventures of their own, maybe even adventures that bore comparison to the one Liam and I had enjoyed. But I would’ve bet everything I owned and every last cent in my bank account that there was no one out there who was as purely happy as I was right now.

All too short a time later, Liam dropped me at my hotel. We kissed goodnight—not the passionate kiss of earlier, but a more familiar and content embrace. Something had changed between us, as exciting in its own quiet way as nearly being caught having sex in a football stadium.

“I’ll call you later,” Liam said.

“You will?” The edge of nervousness still found its way into my voice, despite everything.

He winked. “Try and stop me.”

Chapter 10

Liam

“There’s an interesting story in the news this morning,” said Dean. Although his voice was somewhat distorted by coming from the far end of a phone line, there was no mistaking the tone of someone who had a point to make and was definitely going to make it.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. About someone having sex in a certain stadium, accidentally putting on the announcer’s microphone and broadcasting it to the local community. Rumor mill says it was most likely you.”

Even though my brother wasn’t in the room, I put on my best poker face. “You really think I’d do something like that?” I asked, affecting an innocent tone.

“I don’t think you’d put the microphone on ‘accidentally’, but other than that…yes, absolutely, I think you’d do something like that.”

“Where are you?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“This is a really bad line.”

“You can still hear me.”

“Seriously, where are you? I haven’t seen you since you and Lauren left the other morning. I mean, I admire your stamina but I’m starting to worry about you. Are you keeping hydrated? Pace yourself—don’t try to be a hero,” I said.

There was a pause from the other end of the line.

“Dean? Are you still there?”

“I’m in the Maldives.”

“What?!” I nearly spat out the cola I’d been drinking.

“I’m in the Maldives.”

“I heard you the first time. Why didn’t you tell me sooner; do you know how much this call is costing me?”

Dean snorted. “Oh I’m sorry, how much is it you make
per minute
again, Mr. Bigshot Baller?”

“You’re really in the fucking
Maldives
?”

“Yup. With Lauren.”

“What?” This time my drink almost went across the room.

“You heard me.”

“You dog!”

“What?” Dean said. “She’s single, I’m single, we like each other—what’s the problem?”

“The problem is,” I began, “that two days ago you were down on me for not finding an ‘interesting woman’—someone with whom I could share more than bodily fluids, I think was what you said. And then you hook up with a girl who looks like every girl I’ve been photographed coming out of nightclubs at three in the morning with. You don’t think that’s a little hypocritical, big brother?”

“Don’t judge Lauren on how she looks,” Dean snapped back. “People like you have been doing that to her all her life: she’s blonde, leggy and beautiful so she must be dumb and easy.”

“She went to the Maldives with you after having known you and slept with you for less than a day. I’m sorry mate, but she’s clearly a little dumb.”

I was kidding, and he knew it, but we always liked to screw around with each other in a teasing, brotherly way.

“Who says we’ve slept together?” Dean countered.

“Haven’t you?”

“That’s not the point. The point is you’re making judgements based on how she looks. And can I remind you, those girls you’re talking about always make a beeline for you because you’re famous and rich. Lauren was supposed to be seducing you into an interview but she still spent the evening with me instead. She’s different. She’s special.”

The grin faded from my face, and it was my turn to take a pause for thought. Forty-eight hours ago the argument about a girl being different or special would have held very little water for me—now I wasn’t so sure. “It’s just a little sudden for you,” I said, less jokey now and more ‘concerned little brother’. “I just don’t want you doing something you’ll regret.”

“I don’t think I’m going to regret this.”

I smiled. “Well, in that case, I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks.” Dean changed the subject. “Given your overnight antics I guess I can assume that there remains no one interesting or special in your life. I suppose it’s too much to hope that you were with Allison.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, not without a degree of smugness in my voice. “I just might’ve been with her...”

“What?” Though I couldn’t be sure, I thought it possible that my brother had just spat out one of those brightly colored cocktails with a little umbrella in it. “That nice girl from the other night? You got her to have sex with you in a football stadium with the Tannoy on? What have you done? You can’t treat a nice girl like that.”

I shook my head. “It’s not like that. I think she’s special.”

“I see.” Dean paused to take in this unlikely news. “You know, you really shouldn’t be having semi-public sex with the ones who are special. Save that for your usual picks.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I insisted. “It was kinda like an adventure we shared.”

Again there was a pause as Dean took this in, seeming to recognize something in my voice that he’d never heard before.

“Bloody hell,” he finally said. “Liam?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t fuck this up.”

“You think I’m going to?”

“I don’t know. I guess…I’m just saying that a girl like that doesn’t come along every day. A girl you can talk to; there’s a few of those. A girl you can do the nasty with in an announcer’s booth or in the toilet of an airplane; there’s a few of those. But a girl who you’re equally happy with doing both, or neither, or just sitting in quiet peace together because there’s nothing better in the world than just being with her; those girls are one in a million. If that. Don’t screw this up if that’s what she is to you, Liam.”

I took in my brother’s wise words with quiet solemnity before responding. “You and Lauren had sex in the airplane toilet, didn’t you?”

He chuckled. “You got me. Yes, we did.”

***

The call from Dean had really made me think. I wasn’t accustomed to thinking about women—I’d never really had to, they were just always there when I wanted them. Part of the reason for that of course was that I’d never wanted a specific one. As my brother had pointed out at breakfast two days ago (although it felt like a lifetime ago already), I was always talking about ‘girls’ or ‘women’; always plural.

I’d never thought about a person—an individual. But I was doing it now, and I found it to be nice, but also rather worrying. If you didn’t give a fuck which girl you were going to hook up with—and if you were a famous football star—then why worry? There would be another one along in a minute. And if you screwed it up with her or her boyfriend took offence, then there’d be another one along soon after that. It was easy. But if you were thinking about one woman, then…if you screwed it up, that was it.

Devastation.

Suddenly I was open to making all the other mistakes that ordinary men made. The thought horrified me. I was like Superman without his powers, Samson without his hair, and Popeye without his spinach. Allison didn’t seem particularly interested in my money or my fame, she seemed interested in
me, w
hich almost didn’t bear thinking about. What could she possibly see in me once you took away all the trappings of my success? The girl had to be out of her bloody mind. What could I do to stop her from finding out that beneath the gilt of fame, I was probably just an annoying asshole like almost every other young guy? For the first time in my life, I was worrying about how to
keep
a girl, and I had to say, it was a damned sobering thought.

For our first date (presumably she would now be happy to accept that it had been a ‘date’) I’d allowed her to score a goal on a Premiership football pitch, and in doing so, I had apparently made one of her childhood dreams come true.

How the hell was I meant to top that?

The phone rang and I found that I was simultaneously worried that this might be Allison wanting to know what we were doing for our second date, and, at the same time, worried that it might not be her, and that she’d forgotten altogether. Caring about a woman was exhausting…but it was worth it.

I picked up the phone and was relieved and disappointed to hear that it was my manager. “Hey, Brian.”

“Hey kid,” he said. “What are you doing tonight? No, don’t answer—you don’t know. You’re going to the grand unveiling of a new luxury sports car. And you’re going to be the one to unveil it! They asked for you. Anyway, it’s fast, sporty and has a huge engine. They figured that was you all over. Am I right? Am I right? You know I am.”

“What type of car?” I asked. I wasn’t exactly a petrol-head like some guys, but a fast, showy car was practically part of the uniform for most footballers, and certainly for me.

“What am I, a bloody mechanic?” Brian replied. Cars were yet another thing in which he was proudly ignorant. “Four wheels, an engine and a price tag that’d make your eyes water.”

“Can I bring Allison along?” I asked.

That would be a pretty good second date, wouldn’t it? Maybe not as personal as the first, but still pretty cool and unique compared to the usual dinner and a movie.

“Allison?” Brian grunted the question. “Look, it’s a car show, there’ll be plenty of girls there, models mostly. And they’ll all have been starving themselves for days so the alcohol will go right to their heads. Cut yourself a slice off one of them.”

“I meant Allison Flores. The reporter.”

“I thought her name was Lauren something,” Brian said. “Can’t remember the last name. But her first name was definitely Lauren.”

“That was the other girl.”

“I thought Lauren was the BBC one?”

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that Brian worked for me and not vice versa. “Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t choose her. I told you I was gonna pick for myself.”

“You didn’t choose the BBC girl?” Brian roared down the phone. “Do you have rocks in your head? Do you know how much you’ve cost me…I mean, us? I told you to pick the fucking BBC girl. Jesus, how is
this
the first I’m hearing about this?”

“You asked me to choose—”

“I wouldn’t rely on one of you sporting idiots to choose me a brand of bog roll!” Brian cut in. “There’s a reason that I told you which one to choose. It’s because I didn’t want you to actually choose! Is that a complicated concept? Do I have to explain that to you as well?”

“I know you didn’t want me to choose. But if you
really
didn’t want me to, then you shouldn’t have asked me to in the first place. That’s common sense.”

“Don’t try to be clever with me!” Brian snapped. “You’re woefully ill-equipped for the task.”

“Look,” I said, adopting a remonstrative tone of voice—I did still need this man for my career. “I don’t think it would’ve mattered anyway. Lauren ended up hooking up with…with someone. Someone she met in the club. You can’t fight love.”

“She went off with someone else?” Brian snorted, starting to calm down a bit but clearly still angry. “You must be losing your touch.”

“Maybe.” Despite the circumstances, the suggestion still cut me. “So can I bring Allison?”

“She’s still writing this article, is she? I thought she just wanted the interview.”

“No, I…” I trailed off for a moment. I’d opened my mouth with the intention of explaining to my manager that Allison and I were…well, it was early days yet to be using the ‘L’ word, but there was definitely something there. However, something suddenly told me that sharing this with Brian wouldn’t be a good idea. “Yes, I think so. She wanted some day-to-day stuff on what it’s like to be Liam Croft.”

“All right,” Brian said, somewhat grudgingly. “That actually sounds like a good idea. Your superstar lifestyle should really sell the article. I trust you dug deep for the interview, made your life sound enviable yet somehow relatable?”

I realized that Brian was going to hate the actual article, which focused far more on my humble beginnings than any ‘superstar lifestyle’. Then again, he’d bloody well asked me to dig deep and be ‘real’ in the interview in order to attract fans who were after something more than the shallow party boy they were used to. It wasn’t my fault I hadn’t been raised in a wealthy, privileged manner that made for a less gritty interview.

“But I don’t want anyone thinking that she’s anything other than a reporter,” Brian added a second later, an edge of suspicion in his voice.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you’re popular right now because you’re single and hot. Women love you because you’re available and, given how much you put yourself about, they all think their chance will come. Men love you because you’re living their dream, and that dream involves a lot of sex with no strings, no commitments and no dumpy brunettes getting in the way of the statuesque blondes. If I get even a hint that you and this Allison bird are more than reporter and subject, then I’m having her thrown out, and I’ll call her boss in America and tell him why. Is that clear?”

“I don’t know why you’d even think that…”

“Is that clear?” Brian spoke with a dark finality.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s clear.”

“Good.” Brian’s voice was happy again. “There’s nothing between you two, then?”

I tried to scoff in a hearty, laddish way. “You know me, you know what I like. Even if I had banged her, it’d be a one night thing.”

That was bullshit, but I didn’t want to risk getting Allison in trouble with her boss, and Brian had made it pretty clear that he had no issue with making that happen if he chose to.