“If I recall correctly, you were definitely flirting with me.”

I roll my eyes. “Well, you didn’t seem to know it at the time.”

He stops and pulls me to him. “I knew it at the time, love. Just had to work up the courage to do something about it.” He kisses me on the forehead, and we continue on our way.

We’re a bit early so he leads me up into the stands where he selects a good seat for me. “You’re close enough to hear Alan, our coach, yelling at us, and at me especially, and you’ll be able to see everyone. I better go check in on the locker room.”

I anxiously grab his arm. “What, you’re leaving already?”

“I’ll be right back. Down there.” He points to the field. “Try and stay awake.”

He trots off down the stairs and I watch the muscles in his ass bounce as he goes. After a few minutes, when I realize it might be a while before it all starts, I bring out my phone and start emailing people. I email Steph and Nicola, wanting so bad to tell them what Lachlan told me, but knowing it isn’t their place to know or even understand. It’s Lachlan’s past that he entrusted me with, and I cling to that with reverence.

I email my mom too. The last email I got from her was a few days ago. She said she misses me, which hurt like hell, but that she was fine and that Toshio and Sean had been over. She hadn’t mentioned my other brothers, Nikko, Paul or Brian, at all, so I also drop an email to Toshio to see if he can remind them. After everything that Lachlan told me, I feel strangely weak and shaky inside, and my need to know that everyone will be okay is stronger than ever. I wish there was a teleporting machine so I could go back, just for a moment, and give my mother a long hug. Those kind of hugs fix everything.

But that doesn’t exist, and instead I’m on the bleachers of an empty stadium waiting for a man that I’ve grown hopelessly, helplessly in love with. I hate that I can’t have everything, and I hate that it’s human nature to want more when you finally have it.

Finally there’s shouting from below, and I stop emailing to crane my neck down to see a bunch of big burly men in tight shirts and shorts heading out onto the field. Lachlan is at the back of the pack, talking to a shorter man in a windbreaker that’s nearly as wide as he is. I assume that’s Alan, the coach.

I can’t deny that my heart does a double back flip at the sight of Lachlan on the field, in those clothes that show off every thick, sinewy inch of his muscles. He’s a fucking god and a god I’m fucking. I have to pinch myself, even though my own pulse is threatening to step out of bounds.

Though he walks with a familiar swagger, he holds himself differently here. Proud. He’s beyond confident. He acts like he owns the field, owns the very game. If I was a girl living here, I’d be at every single game watching him. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what half the stadium consists of—girls wanting to get their Lachlan McGregor on.

The practice itself isn’t very interesting. There’s about a dozen or so people on the field, and the coach alternates between having them play each other full on for a few minutes, then pairing players off to work on exercises. Just as Lachlan said, he spends a lot of time running with the ball, dodging players coming at him. He sidesteps them, sometimes causing the other player to fall flat on their face, sometimes spinning off a tackle. Sometimes he doesn’t sidestep at all and just goes for the opponent’s shoulder. I can tell he pulls back at the last second and doesn’t hit with all his strength. If it were an actual game and that wasn’t his teammate he was slamming into, I bet he wouldn’t hold back at all. He really is a beast.

And he’s fucking fast. Though he’s not used all the time and often spends a lot of the game hanging at the edges of the team, when he is passed the ball, he takes off down that field like he’s about to take flight. It’s amazing how a man of his stature can run so damn fast, those muscular legs pumping like a machine.

I could literally sit here for hours watching him. I can’t take my eyes away. He’s so into the game that he only looks up in the stands a few times. But when he sees me, he gives me a nod, and I find myself waving shyly like a school girl.

It’s hard to even imagine him skinny and scrawny on the streets, doing drugs and feeling so hopeless. What a different man he is on the field.

Eventually practice ends, and as everyone heads back under the bleachers and to the locker rooms, he runs up the stairs toward me, tireless and taking the steps two at a time.

“How you doing?” he asks, sweat glistening on his scrunched brow as he stands over me.

“Good,” I tell him. “You’re like…a rugby machine.”

He looks over at the field, wincing while he wipes his arm across his forehead. “Yeah? Didn’t feel like it.”

“Well, you look like it. I’m…lucky. I’m lucky. You’re amazing. You’ve impressed the pants off of me.”

He looks at me, the corner of his mouth lifting up. “Is that so?”

“I’ve never wanted to screw you more,” I tell him honestly.

He chuckles. “All right. Well that can be arranged. You don’t mind if I have a shower first?”

I frown. “Are you actually serious about having sex with me?”

“Love, I am always serious about having sex with you. And yeah. Maybe a locker room shag has always been a fantasy of mine.”

Fuck. Sign me up. As if I wasn’t already turned on watching him get all sweaty on the field, asserting his dominance, now he’s staring at me with a gaze that can only be described as molten.

“What about your teammates? I’m not that much of an exhibitionist.”

“Glad to hear that,” he says. “There’s another room for the opposing team. It’s probably open.” He reaches down and grabs my arm, pulling me to my feet. “By the way, tonight, Thierry, my good mate on the team, invited us to a pub. He wants to meet you. That all right?”

I’m totally flattered that his teammates even know about me. “Sure.”

“Good,” he says, kissing me softly on the lips and letting out an agreeable noise. “I want to show you off to everyone I’ve ever known and ever met,” he whispers against my mouth.

I practically melt and kiss him back eagerly, our lips and tongues hot, wanting him to feel just how he makes me feel. I’m not even sure how to describe just how he does me in.

He leads me down the stairs and across the field, toward the tunnel on the opposite end. I pause in the middle, looking around me, imagining what it would be like to be Lachlan, to step out here among thousands of fans staring down at me, cheering me on. I don’t know how he does it, he must get into some kind of zone.

I think he does that with me sometimes. It’s like he sees me and nothing else, like I’m his whole world, the only thing in his existence.

Even now, the way he’s glancing at me as he takes me into the darkened tunnel, I feel enslaved by his intensity. Fuck it. I’m enslaved by everything about him. His beauty, his darkness. His cock. Definitely his cock.

And definitely now.

He takes me toward a door and tries the knob but it won’t budge. He pushes me back a bit, looks both ways up and down the tunnel, then kicks the door in.

“Wow, are you sure this –” I start to say but the look in his eyes shuts me up and he practically throws me in the room. He closes the door behind him and flicks on the lights.

It looks pretty much like any locker room I’ve ever seen. Lockers, benches, showers at the end. And, thankfully, empty. I look back at Lachlan and he’s already peeling off his sweaty shirt and tossing it to the cement floor. His shoes, socks, shorts go next. Totally commando.

“I, uh, thought you always wore your underwear when you played,” I say to him, my eyes drawn to his massive erection that he’s holding in his fist, stroking it slowly, up and down and burning into me with dangerous eyes. “You know. Because of the shorts being pulled down thing...”