Page 52 of The Game

He flinched, and his hold on me tightened before a long exhale brushed a rush of breath against my skin. I breathed it in. He smelled of sex. Sex with me.

“I married my childhood sweetheart first. I knew I probably shouldn't have, but it seemed the right thing to do. But we were too young, younger than you even."

"Hey, I'm not that young." I slapped him with my fingers again.

"You're eleven years younger than me." He gave a rueful shake of his head. "Another reason why this should have felt more wrong than it did."

"Hey, I'm a grown woman."

His lips curved into a slow smile and the fingertips of his right hand brushed along my skin, grazing over my breasts making my nipples stand to attention. "Oh, I know that. But I am too old for you. You know that, right?"

"Is this your way of letting me down lightly?”

For a moment, his face was serious and the lines around his eyes creased with more depth. "Lyssi, you know we can't be together? There's too much at stake right now."

I forced myself to nod, although his words did something nasty and ugly to my insides, twisting and turning them until they hurt. "Sure, I can't afford to lose my job, you know that."

He pecked a kiss onto the tip of my nose. "Yes, yes I do."

This conversation wasn't leading anywhere good. "So wife number two?"

He chuckled, and I tried to ignore the way his body moved against mine. "By then I was famous, and I think she was more interested in marrying the public face as opposed to the man that practised every day until the daylight hours were long gone."

I sighed. It was a sound I’d never heard myself create before, a deep and rested echo.

He sat up a little, lifting my head with him. "And anyway, did you see the dress?"

"No." But I have heard a rumour though, and a smile crept along my face.

He sat higher, and I slid off his chest and smacked onto the pillow. "Here let me show you." In one movement he was off the bed and striding for the bathroom where his clothes were discarded on the floor. Returning with his phone and jumping straight back onto the mattress and pulling me into his arms he flicked onto Google. It was a simple search: Jase Willis Wedding Dress. That's all it took for an array of pictures to flash up of the supermodel skinny blonde dressed in see-through white gauze with only her essentials covered with splashes of satin.

"Classy."

"That's what I thought." He chuckled but I watched his eyes, and there was a tightness around the skin there. Those fine wrinkles were tensing for just a moment. “I wanted to run, but everyone was watching.”

I sighed again. There was a lot of sighing taking place.

"And the papers, all those things they say about you?" After what he'd just done to me, the thought of him paying for sex seemed even more ridiculous. Someone with that skill would never have to pay. I could be objective enough to see it for what it was. Mind blowing sex and that was all.

"It's amazing what people would do to make money." His lips settled into a firm line and I wondered again about this man who everyone thought they knew, yet who didn't seem to have any friends to call his own. I snuggled into his arms. If this was a one-off thing, then losing myself to the man that intrigued me and infuriated me in equal measure seemed the only thing to do.

"And you've never met anyone who could bridge the gap between cricket and life?"

He sniggered. "There was a girl once, but it's fair to say I didn't make a good first impression."

Laughing, my body shifted along with his and it felt delicious. Warm skin brushing warm skin, my breasts pushed into his side. "You, not make a good first impression, surely not?"

He bit my neck and made me squeal. "Play nice, you know I've got a dominating side now, and you never know what trouble that quick mouth of yours could get yourself into." A shudder ran over my skin and the fire stoked in the pit of my belly. I clamped my lips shut, mirth rocking my body. "Good girl," he murmured lowering his lips to mine and sweeping a kiss along what felt like the surface of my soul.

"So that girl?" I prompted again.

He sighed and rolled back, looking at the ceiling, linking his arms under his head. "She was too young for me." He kissed the top of my head. "And if I was honest, too good."

I lifted my head to read his face. "Too good? That's a shame."

Although, I didn't feel that sorry for him.

I was dozing off again, my body aching in the most delicious way, his fingers trailing along the sensitive skin over my ribs when he murmured. “I told her girls shouldn’t play cricket.” There was a pause and I waited for his next words with baited breath. “I was wrong.”