Page 76 of Off the Pitch

“Goalie? You any good?” Liam asked in one of those trying to be casual but failing tones.

“I’m okay.” I shrugged while Lily smirked beside me. This was going to be fun.

It ended up with Christian, Lily, and Jordan on one team and Liam and I on the other. We technically had Hugo as an ‘honourary player’, but he’d been relegated to a fold-out chair that Jordan had acquired and been told to sit still.

Everyone had agreed that it was fairer to put one ‘normal person’ on each team to balance it out. Then Lily had casually suggested that Christian and I should be on opposing teams, for fun.

Neither of us apparently got a say in the matter.

There was only one set of goalposts, so we set the other up using two hoodies in time-honoured playground tradition. I took the big goal, while Lily took the other. To make it slightly fairer on her, we did make her goal a lot smaller.

Then it was game on.

Jordan had already said there was no point using actual football rules, so it was basically decided that the only rule was no biting of ankles. I could work with that.

It was amazingly entertaining to watch! Christian and Jordan were a pretty good team, and even though it was casual, you could see the competitive fire alight in their eyes. What they hadn’t counted on were Hugo and Liam being just as competitive and utterly shameless.

Liam had already tried to distract Jordan by asking him a question about the wedding and the stag party. Meanwhile, Hugo was apparently trying out for manger of France—waving frantically from his chair and yelling at Christian and Jordan, his French accent becoming more pronounced the more excited and frustrated he got. At one point he even tried to get up from the chair, and it was only after a very, very pointed look from everyone on the pitch that he sat down again.

I laughed as Hugo muttered darkly in French. My French was incredibly limited, but even I could understand the prolific swear words he was throwing around. I got the feeling Hugo was going to be utterly unbearable for the entire time he was out of action.

The sudden appearance of a ball flying at my face made my thoughts take a very different track. Without thinking I leapt across the goal, caught it with ease, and rolled onto the turf.

“What the fuck?” Jordan groaned. “How’d you stop that? You weren’t even lookin’!”

“Told you he was good,” Lily cried.

As the game progressed, I made a few more good saves and some complete howlers that saw goals go swinging past me. One of those came accompanied by a subtle wink and grin from Christian.

“Good thing you’re cute,” I muttered, handing the ball back to him.

“You’re easy to distract,” he said with a grin.

Bastard. It was true, though. He’d lost the beanie and donated his hoodie as one of Lily’s goalposts, so now he was just clad in tight dark jeans that hugged his ass and a black t-shirt that looked like it had been painted on. Fuck, I just wanted to nibble him.

“Oh, really?” I added. “Want to make this interesting?”

“Go on.”

“If you can get one more past me, you can take me home and fuck me into your mattress, however you want. I’ll be yours for the whole night.”

Christian swallowed, eyes wide. “And if I don’t?”

“Then,” I whispered, stepping close to him to whisper in his ear, “I’m going to take you home and take you apart piece by piece until you’re howling, and then I’m going to fuck you until you forget your own name.”

The look on his face was a priceless mixture of lust, determination, wanting, and embarrassment. It was delicious, and I knew he was mine. Even after the birthday sex conversation, we’d never quite gotten around to me topping him because I’d wanted to make his first time special in some way.

“And,” I said, wrapping my arms around his waist for emphasis. “You’re not allowed to stop playing. You have to play properly until we go home.”

“You’re mean, you know that,” Christian groaned, his voice already cracking and breathless.

“You love it.”

“I do,” he said, moving in for another delicious kiss. I swept my tongue across his lips, a tiny taste of what he’d get later. Christian gasped and pushed closer against me, mouth opening against mine, and I was pretty sure both of us were on the verge of popping extremely awkward public erections.

“You two are gross, you know that?” I looked up to see the other four rolling their eyes at us.

I rolled my eyes back and smirked. “I feel like we have an excuse. We’re starting the making-up stage. Surely you’ve had fights before. You know how it goes.”

---