“So?” His voice was the verbal equivalent of a nudge.
My head shook. “No. We can’t.”
“Why not?”
That was the very question I’d been beating to death since Archer’s attention turned my way. “You’re a player. I’m on the staff. I think there’s something in our employment agreements that strongly discourages, if not prohibits, relationships like the kind you’re suggesting.”
His head turned so it was facing me. His eyes were darker than I was used to seeing them—more gray than green. “No one would have to know.”
As a distraction, I tested the water again. His hand floated up to the surface and found mine. Despite the freezing water, the warmth from his skin spread up my arm. “People would find out.”
“Not if we were careful.”
My fingers tied around his of their own accord. It was like a reflex—when Archer reached for me, I reached back. “People always find out.”
“You and me. Those are the only people who will find out.”
My eyes lifted to his. “And where do you see this relationship going?”
“Anywhere we want it to.” When his body moved closer, a wave of water crested over the lip of the tub. “I can’t promise you romance and forever any more than you can promise me the same. This life, it doesn’t leave much room for anything but baseball, but I can promise you my free time when I get it. My attention when it’s mine to give to something other than the game. My loyalty and devotion.”
My mind traveled back in time to a place and a player who I thought had embodied those qualities. I’d been wrong. “Loyalty and devotion? Is a player even capable of that?
“This one is.”
When his thumb brushed up my hand and circled my wrist, I felt a jolt spill down my back. A simple touch. An innocent one. Already my body was firing to life from this lightest of caresses—I couldn’t imagine how I’d survive what he had in mind.
“I need time to decide. We’ve both got so much to lose. I can’t just jump into something like this.”
“How much more time?” Archer tugged my hand so I slid a little closer. “Because I’m pretty sure my manhood’s going to be obsolete in about ten minutes.”
I splashed some water at him. “For being such a tough guy, you’re kind of a big baby.”
He blinked the water out of his lashes. “Do you know how cold these things are?”
“Yeah, I played sports. I spent my fair share of time in an ice bath.”
“And how long has it been since your last one?”
“A while,” I answered.
“In quantitative terms?”
I paused long enough that a grin was already forming on him by the time I got anything out. “A while is quantitative enough.”
“Well, I’ve already had two tonight and get to look forward to another eight in the next twenty-four hours.” He sank deeper into the tub, but it wasn’t big enough to fit his long frame. His knees popped out from beneath the surface of the water.
“Maybe next time you’ll listen to me when I tell you to take it easy.”
“Taking it easy isn’t my approach to anything in life. Especially when it comes to baseball.”
My gaze dropped to where his hand was still holding mine beneath the water. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Good. Then this next part shouldn’t come as a surprise.” At the same time his hand tugged on mine, his other arm reached across the tub to wind around my back.
Before I’d caught up to the fact that Archer’s arms were around me, I was being rolled into the tub with him. As my body crashed over his, water and ice surged over the sides, spilling across the tile floor as ice scattered everywhere. I was so surprised by what had just happened, the icy water took a few moments to process.
Archer must have noticed my face creasing into a grimace or felt the skin on my arms rising, because that was when he moved his hands to my waist, floating my body down over his lap.
The cold water was forgotten again.
His hands seemed to swallow my whole waist, his grip firm, his touch insistent. My chest started moving faster when I felt his hard length pressed between my legs.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
His fingers buried deeper into my body. “Making my move.”
“In an ice bath?”
“On a fucking polar ice cap if need be.”
Beneath my hand, I could feel his own chest moving faster . . . and how had my hand wound up there in the first place? I didn’t remember putting it there.
“I need more time, Archer. You and me . . . I need more time to make up my mind.”
He sat up higher in the tub so his face was almost level with mine. “You’ve already made your decision, Doc. You know that. I know that. You might not be ready to acknowledge it, but you’ve made your decision.”
My head shook, but my other hand moved to him, forming around his shoulder. “What makes you so sure?”
“Because you’re still in this tub with me.”
“You’re holding me here in this tub with you.”
His hands fell away from my waist, but my body stayed hovering above his, my hands still formed around him.
“Because you didn’t object when I said I wanted you to attend to me tonight.”
As he said the last part, his hips flexed into me in such a way I felt heat that no ice bath could touch course through my body.
“It’s my job to attend to you . . .” When one of his brows elevated, I clarified, “It’s my job to attend to
the players
. How would it look if I said no when you told Coach you wanted me tonight?”
I was saying everything wrong. Everything came out sounding like some double entendre, but his body beneath mine made talking difficult. It made talking logically impossible.
“It would have looked like you didn’t want to be alone with me. In my room. Because you didn’t trust yourself to be alone in my room with me.”
Making his point, his hands moved back to me. I’d let my chance to get away go by. His fingers pulled the back of my shirt free from my pants, his palm spreading against the freshly exposed patch of skin. His hand was searing hot, the kind of heat that felt capable of branding me.
“I don’t trust myself to be alone with you,” I breathed, his hand roaming higher up my back.
“Good.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I want to kiss you, Doc. Now. This would be a good time to tell me how you feel about the two of us.”
My stomach wrung when his darkening eyes roamed my mouth. “One request.”
“Name it.” His words echoed off the tile walls.
“Stop calling me Doc. Kind of ruins the mood.”
He fought a smile as his hand slid around the back of my neck. “Fine.
Allie
.”
My body trembled when I heard him say my name. It quaked again when the hard heat settled between us pressed into the space between my legs.
“I want to kiss you. And after that, I want to do more.” His hand at my neck drew me closer, water dripping down his lashes as his gaze dipped to my mouth again. “Allie.”
My heart hammered in my chest as our mouths moved closer. I could feel the warmth from his breath breaking over my lips when I whispered, “And what if I don’t want to kiss you back?”
“Then don’t kiss me back.”
His mouth covered mine then, succinctly silencing whatever objection was about to rise from me next. Successfully silencing whatever objection that could ever rise from me again when it had to do with Archer kissing me.
Luke Archer kissed like he played baseball—intently, skillfully, and like he’d spent his whole life practicing for this one moment in time. His lips tasted mine for a moment, testing me, before I felt his tongue slip into my mouth, teasing my tongue, until mine thrust into his mouth.
One kiss. One minute. I knew that if I let Luke Archer past my walls, he would consume me. I never would have guessed it could happen so quickly. So completely.
One taste. One touch. And he owned me.
Our mouths broke their rhythm just long enough for Archer to peel my wet shirt over my head. My chest crashed into his, sending more water and ice crashing over the lip of the tub.
His fingers worked my bra open and managed to slide it free without breaking our kiss. When my bare chest covered his, my nipples as hard from arousal as from the cold, something rattled deep in his chest.
“I need you.” He breathed against my mouth, his fingers working at my pants.
My hand wandered down him, drifting into the space between us. When my fingers curled around him, that rattle in his chest echoed in the room.
“I need you , too,” I rasped.
“Finally,” he sighed.
“Finally?”
“I’ve been waiting for you to say that.” As he lowered my zipper, his knuckles brushed down my panties.
“To say what?” I jolted when he pressed one of his knuckles into a certain place. “I need you? Take me now? Sorry I held out on you a whole two weeks. I know it’s probably the longest you’ve had to wait for a girl to make up her mind on that issue.”
His head shook, his eyes never leaving mine. “For you to acknowledge that you feel something for me too.” His arms twined around my waist right before he rose from the tub, lifting me with him.
For the briefest flash, I remembered why I was there, and it wasn’t just to let Luke Archer do whatever he wanted to my body.
“Your leg.” Panic took my voice an octave higher. “Put me down. You shouldn’t even be standing on your own right now.”
“I’m not planning on staying vertical for much longer. Don’t worry, Do . . .” He caught himself, clearing his throat as he stepped out of the tub with me still in his arms. “Allie.”
“Put me down now, Archer.”
“No.”
“Dammit.”
His jaw set as he held me tightly, my struggle to get free useless. “I will put you down when I’m damn good and ready to put you down.”
“I’m supposed to be helping your leg get better. Not make it worse.” I wiggled against him, but his grip was unbreakable. He had almost a solid foot of length and fifty pounds of weight on me. Not to mention a solid ton of resolve and determination. “Put me down right this second, or so help me god, I will change my position on the whole needing you in me stance.”
“You can change your stance on the position all you want. I like them all.” His hand smacked my ass when I continued to struggle against him. So help me god, if he injured himself even worse, I was not letting him out of an ice bath for the next forty-eight hours. “So long as I get to have my dick buried deep inside you, the position’s of little concern to me.”
His dirty words had my legs tightening around him even though I was still trying to pull away. “Let me go, Archer.” My words came out slowly, as much an order as they were a threat.
“Fine,” he fired back right before his arms freed me, sending me spilling onto the mattress behind me. The mattress whined as my body bounced onto it. “Now let’s get these panties you’ve got in a serious bunch off of you.”
Even though the material was pasted to my skin from the bath, Archer had no problem peeling my pants down my body in one quick pull. He threw them over his shoulder, sending them smacking into the wall behind him.
Staring at me spread below him on his bed, a crooked smile christened Archer’s face. Something flashed in his eyes when they roamed my bare chest. When they roamed lower, his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Your panties. Take them off.”
My heart was about to burst out of my chest. What resided between my legs was pulsing with need. The rest of my body was bursting into flames, need fueling the fire.
Even through all of that, I was still pissed at him for not listening to me and risking injuring himself even worse.
“You don’t listen to me. I think I’m going to repay the favor.” My fingers curled around one of the pillows stacked on his bed, and I sailed it at his face.
Archer merely slid a little to the side and the pillow whizzed past him. “Fine. Keep them on. I can work around a little fabric. No problem.”
When his hand dropped to stroke himself a couple of times as he stared at the area between my legs, my fingers found their way beneath the sides of my panties, pulling them down my hips.
“Shit, that’s hot.”
Finishing pulling my panties off my feet, I flung them at his face too. This time he didn’t step out of the way.
“What’s hot? This . . .” My gaze moved down to the freshly exposed part of my body.
Archer wet his lips when his eyes followed mine. “It’s hot that I can tell you to do something and you do it.
That’s
hot.”
His hands dropped to my bent knees, slowly opening them until he could step between them. His gaze never left the area between my legs.
“
This
. . .”—the way he said it, the way he was looking at it, made every muscle in my body tighten—“is the damn finest sight I’ve ever laid my eyes on.” When my eyebrow lifted as I leaned up onto my elbows, he added, “Even better than the sight of that scoreboard at the end of tonight’s game, or the scoreboard at the end of any game I’ve ever played and won.” He didn’t stop opening my legs until they could go no farther.
“Not sure how I feel about you comparing that part of my anatomy to a scoreboard, but I think you meant that as a compliment. So thanks?”
“Damn straight I meant that as a compliment.” Archer yanked open the nightstand drawer and reached inside . . . only to find a hotel bible. “So not what I was looking for.” He groaned.
“Conditioned response?” I said, touching myself as he rushed over to one of his suitcases by the door.
“More like some combination of wishful thinking and my dick using up the blood supply that normally carries oxygen to my head.” When I raised an eyebrow at him now throwing things out of his suitcase as he searched, he tapped his temple. “This head.”
“Ah, got it. So you keep condoms in your nightstand at home and your suitcase when you’re on the road?”
“Hopefully,” he said as shoes and shirts continued to tumble out of his bag.
“Hopefully?”
“More wishful thinking.” His face lit up when he pulled what looked like a shower bag out of his suitcase.
I watched him, confused, as he tore the zipper open and spilled more things onto the floor in his desperate search efforts. I hadn’t slept with many guys, but those few I had always knew where they’d stashed their condoms, almost like that little plastic square was an extension of their dick. In a way, I supposed it was. A guy could just as soon misplace his actual package as he could a condom when he was looking to get laid.