Page 84 of Off the Pitch

“Please, he’s just getting started and you know it.”

It was true. Ten minutes later, Christian netted a second goal, sliding across the pitch in celebration, his shorts riding up his thighs. I bit my lip, watching as one of the big screens displayed my boyfriend in all his beauty.

I was definitely more than a little turned on at that point and desperately willed myself not to get hard in public. If Lily noticed, I was pretty sure she’d never let me hear the end of it, and I was not prepared to give her that ammunition.

Mercifully, I was gifted a break because Greenwich’s pace cooled, and they stuck to passing the ball back and forward between themselves. It almost looked like they were having a kick-about in the park rather than playing a top-level professional match. Their poor opponents could barely get a look in, and when they finally managed to get possession of the ball, the solid wall of Greenwich’s defence shut down their attempts to score with brutal efficiency.

I spent the rest of the first half watching Christian jog up and down the pitch, mentally drawing up options for how we could celebrate later.

At half-time, the score was two-nil, and I had to excuse myself to go and find a drink of water because I’d been staring at Christian open-mouthed for the past twenty minutes, and my mouth was dry.

“There’s nothing wrong with being thirsty,” I’d said to Lily as I squeezed past her, trying to look innocent.

Lily just rolled her eyes at me and gave me a withering look. “There is when it’s because you’ve been staring at my brother.”

The pace picked up in the second half.

The opposition had clearly been subjected to a fairly strong pep-talk or telling off, because they suddenly seemed a hell of a lot more determined. Not that it really made much of a difference because all Greenwich did was step up a gear.

Within fifteen minutes, Micah put the ball away again to bring the score up to three-nil, and the crowd sang happily, their voices filling the stadium in a deafening roar.

Trossero made a few substitutions, giving a couple of youth players the chance to stretch their legs and get some game time under their belts.

“I wonder if they’ll just sit back again now?” Lily asked, leaning over to shout in my ear. The noise in the stadium got louder with every minute as the clock ticked down towards victory.

“Maybe, but—” Whatever I was going to say didn’t matter because at that moment, I watched Christian streak down the pitch, and I knew what he was aiming for.

He wanted a hat-trick. Three goals in the same game.

The opposition’s defence knew it too, but there wasn’t much they could do.

Christian got his right foot on the ball, and it was all over, the ball curled past the goalkeeper and buried itself in the bottom corner of the goal.

The crowd exploded, chanting Christian’s name, as Lily and I jumped up and down, screaming ourselves hoarse. I was so fucking proud of Christian I thought I’d burst. Love and longing flooded me as I watched him, a gigantic smile on his face as he celebrated with Liam and Jordan, both of them crushing him in a sandwich-style hug.

The action replay showed on the stadium’s big screens, and I sighed happily as the camera zoomed in on Christian, showing him making the shot in slow motion, emphasising the perfect shape of his thighs and the curve of his ass.

Five minutes later, the final whistle blew, and the stadium erupted. A four-nil win with a hat trick from Christian was pretty much the perfect day.

I was already grinning from ear to ear, my whole body thrumming with pride, excitement, and desire. I checked my phone, firing off a quick text of congratulations to Christian and telling him to get home as fast as possible. I’d had to stop making my post-match texts explicit after Jordan had accidentally grabbed Christian’s phone a few weeks ago. He had mistakenly thought I’d been sending Christian sappy love notes instead of scorching fantasies aboutexactlywhat I was going to do to him, or let him to do me, when he got home.

While I would have been happy to continue tormenting Jordan, I didn’t want to embarrass Christian. Besides, I didn’t want to ruin the surprise.

“Okay, I’m heading off,” I said, turning to pull Lily into a quick hug.

“Do I want to know?”

“Probably not.” I kissed her cheek. “Come for dinner tomorrow, and bring Harper if they’re free. It’ll be a good excuse for Christian to peel himself off the sofa. We made the mistake of starting that new crime drama,Final Cause, and knowing us, we’ll just spend all day tomorrow bingeing it.”

“Sounds good,” she said, pulling me into another hug.

I said my goodbyes to Ali and a couple of other people I knew and hurried out of the stadium towards the Tube, hoping to avoid as much of the crowd as possible. It always seemed pointless to bring my car, especially since parking was a nightmare. Plus, the Tube journey gave me time to plan.

A hat trick was definitely worth celebrating in style.

I reckoned I had about an hour and a half at most before Christian got home. But between the post-match interviews and the ice baths, he’d be occupied long enough for me to prepare.

The journey didn’t take as long as I’d anticipated, and soon I was hotfooting it through Blackheath, then punching in the code to our gate, unlocking the back door, and stumbling as I removed my shoes.

---