Team Lucas (The Saints Team #1) (27 page)

“Stiff. Can you take a look?”

“Yep,” I said, indicating the couch. Lucas hobbled into the bedroom and lay on the main bed. I followed him in there and gave him a wry look.

“What? It’s more comfortable here.”

“Lie on your stomach,” I ordered. I lowered myself onto his king-size bed with the red satin sheets—what a cliché, not to mention the mirrors covering one complete wall. I sat cross-legged beside him. I tried to remember all these moments, knowing they would be something to store, something other people would never have and I wouldn’t have again.

I touched his left leg below the knee and Lucas tensed. I worked the area. He was right, it was tight but probably no more than most of the players after running around an oval for more than ninety minutes kicking a ball. He lay with his face half buried in the pillow as I tried to loosen the muscle. He groaned a few times.

After working the area for a short while, I stopped to assess it.

“How’s it feeling?” I asked.

He raised his leg and bent his knee, then rolled on his side and looked at me. “Better, thanks. Handy to have a live-in physio,” he said.

“You’re a lucky guy,” I agreed. “You better try for a physio with your next minder.”

He frowned and raised himself on his elbows.

“Why?”

I frowned at him. “Well I’m packed and ready to go. My gear is in the VW and the keys to the house and Beamer are on the kitchen bench in the guest wing.”

He scurried up to a sitting position.

“Why? What’s happened?” He looked genuinely alarmed.

“Lucas, I know you took a bump to the head during the match but you do remember you asked me to leave don’t you?”

“No. I never asked you to leave.”

“Oh good God.” I uncrossed my legs, crawled to the edge of the bed and began to climb off. Lucas with his long legs was quicker.

“Wait, wait, Mia, hold up.” He got round the side of the bed before I got off, sat me back down and squatted in front of me. It was so sexy. There’s something about a large man crouching beside you and looking you in the eye, protective almost. “What’s going on here?”

I took a deep breath.

“Look at me,” he said.

I turned my eyes to his. He was genuinely confused.

“Lucas, this morning you told me you didn’t want me to swab you anymore. That I wasn’t to continue.”

Lucas frowned and shrugged. “That’s right. I don’t like you doing it. It’s...” he looked uncomfortable, “I don’t like you doing it... I feel like a dick.”

“Well there you go. I packed up so you can give the room and car to the next person.”

Lucas groaned and dropped his head on the bed. He got up, sat beside me and turned to face me.

“Mia, look at me.”

I turned side-on.

He licked his lower lip.

“I’m taking a gamble here because you’re so fucking hard to read and you might sue me for crossing the employer-employee line but... I don’t want you to swab me because I don’t want you to see me like that anymore—like some fucking wasted druggie who can’t control his habits. I don’t do that shit anymore, I’m clean and I agreed to the swabs to keep the club and management happy. I don’t want you seeing that as who I am. Get it?”

I nodded slowly.

“And I’m sorry I had to take the call when I did, but it was the coach. I can’t blow Johan off. I don’t want you to move out or give anything back. If you want to move out then I can’t stop you but the car is yours and I... I don’t want you to move out. Is that why you wouldn’t look at me all day? Because you thought I had sacked you?”

Again I nodded, and bit my lip.

“For fuck’s sake, Mia,” he said under his breath. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“When?” I asked. “I can’t bring that stuff up before a match, you have to focus on the match and I thought it was pretty clear cut.”

“Really?” He frowned. “I thought I’d pissed you off...”

“Like when you told the doc you didn’t want me working on the guys.”

He looked surprised that I knew and then a little sheepish. “Yeah about that...”

“Forget it.” I gave him a small smile. “Lucas, if you don’t want me seeing that side of you, then maybe it’s because you’re beginning to like and trust me and maybe that’s all the more reason I should be doing it. Who else can you trust to do it?”

He took my words in but kept silent.

“And,” I continued, “I don’t see you as a druggie. I admire you for your control.”

He nodded, his blue eyes holding my gaze. We stared at each other and I didn’t know whether to look away or not. This wasn’t a boss and employee stare, and it wasn’t a flat-mate stare.

He swallowed. “I was going to say before the coach rang that I like having you here.” He stopped. Maybe that was all Lucas could manage. Maybe it’s more than most of his girlfriends got.

“Thanks,” I said. “I like being here.”

“Yeah, most people do.” He shrugged.

I tried a bit harder. “I meant, I like being here... with you.”

“I like that you don’t take shit from me and that you are funny and smart and fit in with my friends,” he said, watching me. He was still in safe territory; he hadn’t risked saying anything personal.

Lucas dropped back further on the bed, leaning against the bedhead. “I needed you to see me today.”

“I saw you,” I assured him.

“You ignored me,” he said. “Just like my folks, like I don’t exist.”

I inhaled sharply. I hadn’t made the connection. I moved across the bed next to him and touched his face. He flinched. Opening up wasn’t his specialty and accepting comfort was probably something Lucas had never had.

“I never meant to hurt you. It never occurred to me,” I said. “I was just protecting myself... I was in pain, from this morning.”

Lucas blinked a few times, his mind processing what I said; probably processing the honesty of emotion.

“Wow,” he said.

“Too honest?” I asked. I didn’t care. I didn’t have much to lose and my mother always taught me there’s no pride in love. Say what you feel and you’ll never regret it but you’ll always regret not saying what you meant or felt.

Lucas swallowed. “I’m on a bit of a learning curve with that stuff.”

Since we were having a D-and-M, I kept going.

“You must have told a few ladies over the years that you loved them or cared for them?” I asked.

He smiled and made a huffing sound in his throat. “There’s been a few ladies, that much is true.”

“You know I had a love once that I was too scared to share my feelings with and I was always scared he’d call it off and he’d leave. And he did.”

“Ah ha,” Lucas said as if proving a point that his way was best.

I shook my head. “From that, I learned that I was always anticipating the pain and then it came.”

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“If it is going to end then you’ll go through the pain then. Why cloud the future and the now with that fear? Why not enjoy it, because it might never end? What’s the point of doubling your pain quota? You get what I mean?” I asked.

Lucas nodded. “Oddly, I do.” He smiled and I returned his smile. We sat in silence for a moment and he reached for my hand. His fingers traced mine as my hand lay on the quilt. It was so sensual, so intimate and the house was so quiet we could hear the waves crashing.

“So, you’re not going to move out?” his eyes studied me.

I was privately orgasming from his touch. I cleared my throat to get the words out.

“I’m packed, my stuff’s in the car.”

“I’m having it towed away tonight,” he said, and leaned over to reach for his phone. I grabbed his arm back. He shrugged loose from me. “Then again, I’ve got a friend in the bomb squad...”

I laughed and reached for his arm again and we wrestled for the phone with me winning. A text beeped and a name came up on the screen. I saw the message: “Where R U Honey? Tania x.”

“Um, it appears Tania is looking for you,” I said.

He grabbed the phone from me, opened the first drawer beside his bed and threw it in, closing the drawer with a slam. He lay back on the pillow and looked at me.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said surprised. Lucas-iceberg-Ainsworth wasn’t always forthcoming so I welcomed it.

“It’s pretty personal stuff,” he warned.

I inhaled. “Okay, sock it to me.”

He clasped his hands behind his head and I noticed a significant rise in his shorts.

“Every time you’ve swabbed me, even when you took blood, I had a hard-on and look what you’ve done now.”

“Eww, Lucas, that’s my work you’re talking about.” I hit his arm. But that bulge was a thing of beauty and the way he lay had it on full display.

“Well you’re very, very good at your work, maybe too good.” He shrugged. “I should have set up a bonus like my father did—a boner bonus.”

“Eww again with that word. My job is not giving erections, it’s monitoring,” I reminded him.

He laughed. “I love how you say erections. Everyone else would say hard-on or boner, but not you. Erection. I bet you say penis too.”

I could feel myself blushing.

“Go on,” he teased. He watched me, as he sat back looking smug. “Tell me that the erection of my penis is unacceptable to your professional standards,” he said in his British accent.

I blushed even more. “Well it is and that’s the correct terminology.”

“You’re such a prude,” he teased me.

“I’m so not.”

“Say it then,” he dared me. “Say ‘Lucas you’ve got a hard-on which is not on’.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“You can’t say it,” he laughed.

“Go away Lucas.”

“This is my room.”

“Oh yeah.” I looked around. “Fine, I’ll go away.”

“No you don’t.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back on the bed beside him. We moved to lie side on, looking at each other. He reached up and pushed a strand of my hair behind my ear.

“So you’re not going to text Tania back?” I asked.

He shook his head. “There’s something else I’d rather be doing tonight, someone else I’d rather be with.”

My heart stopped beating. I would give anything for him to say it was me. I took a deep breath and I put my walls up... I wouldn’t put it past Lucas to mention some other girl’s name now and laugh. I took control.

“Well, best I get going downstairs to my posh pad then so you can contact them,” I said, with a shrug.

I saw doubt flicker in his eyes and then he slowly smiled, as though he was going to forge on regardless.

“Are you wet, Mia?” he asked.

“Lucas!” I said, alarmed. “Shut up! You can’t talk to your staff like that. Keep your dirty talk for Tania and your model friends if they put up with it.”

“So you’re not?” he persisted, “you’re not wet?”

“You’re disgusting.” I hit his arm and he grabbed my wrist, his eyes laughing at me. I hit him with my other free hand and he grabbed it too. He pushed me on my back and rolled on top of me, his arms holding his weight. Lucas grinned at me. I could feel his erection pushing into my leg.

“So you don’t want to swab me now?” he said pressing against me. “I’ll give you a bonus.”

“This isn’t part of our contract, stop mixing business with pleasure,” I snapped. I couldn’t get a fix on what he wanted from me and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself.

Lucas rolled his eyes. “I know, I know, I’m only joking, lighten up.”

“You’re hilarious. Let me go.”

“Not until you agree I’m funny,” he said, looking at me.

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m very funny, Mia. Say it.”

I narrowed my eyes and took a different tactic. “Why do you care what I think Lucas Ainswright?”

He shrugged. “You’re right, I don’t.”

But yet he kept me pinned and the bottom half of him hadn’t deflated.

I started to smile at him as I teased him. “I think you like me.”

A smile began to play on his face.

“You’re okay,” he said.

“No.” I shook my head. “I think you
LIKE
me.”

He grinned his boyish grin.

I continued, “I think you couldn’t wait to get me alone.” I began to sing it. “Lucas likes Mia… Lucas and Mia sitting in a tree...”

Lucas came closer to me, within inches of my lips and then, quickly, he licked my neck.

“Yuk.” I struggled to push him off. “What did you do that for?” I cringed.

“You said lick me!” he teased. “You said ‘Lucas lick Mia’.”

“I said ‘like’ not lick. Ha, ha, you’re very funny,” I said.

“I told you I was a minute ago but you wouldn’t agree.” He continued to look down at me and our eyes held. He was inches from me.

“Mia...”

“Yes,” I whispered. It’s all I could get out.

“Breathe,” he said.

“Right,” I agreed. “Then get off me.”

“Mm. I’m thinking of letting you go now. But I want to be sure I’m not going to score a knee in the groin or smack in the head.”

I bit my lip and thought about it. “Can you take that risk?” Then I remembered something else to throw at him.

“You know, I think you’ve liked me for a long time Lucas Ainswright.” I narrowed my eyes. “Why did you run from my room when I was giving you a sports massage?”

Lucas looked away, chewed on the inside of his cheek while he thought of a response and then looked back at me.

“Don’t tell me Mr. Cool is embarrassed?” I had him.

“Mr. Cool?” He laughed.

I shrugged. “Why did you run off?”

He dropped his forehead to my chest and mumbled, “Blowing my load during your massage wasn’t the coolest of moves. I just made it out of there.”

I laughed. “The groin workout did it, huh? Ah, well I’m flattered, I think.”

He looked up, and again, smiled his charming, boyish smile at me that would melt any woman. I was so weak with lust, I wouldn’t have been able to get my knee to his groin even if I needed to. Lucas was pressing into me, his erection hard and urgent, his hands pinning mine to the bed, his eyes studying me and his lips inches from mine.

“I could just... lick you again,” he said softly without taking his eyes off me. He lowered himself the final few inches to my lips and he touched mine with his. I was frozen, wanting him, wishing and willing it. I felt a deep ache inside, a sexual ache for wanting him inside me. His lips pressed down on mine and his tongue softly slipped between my lips. I moaned with the electricity it created throughout me.