Bad Boy Brit (A British Bad Boy Romance) Read online

  For all those reasons, and the fact that I’d grown a little older and a little wiser, I was now beyond such fantasies.

  Or so I’d thought...

  This current encounter with Liam was nothing like those late teen fumblings—always uncomfortable, always afraid of being disturbed. The bench I was lying on now, drawing Liam down over me, was probably as hard and unpleasant as those I’d laid on previously, but I didn’t even notice. The risk of someone walking in was presumably just as big—looking out across the room as Liam undid my blouse, kissing his way down my trembling skin, I could see that we’d left the door unlocked—but I just didn’t care. In some ways, we could’ve been absolutely anywhere right now, because all I felt was him; there was nothing and no one else in the world but him.

  And yet in another sense, the fact that it was happening here was important, here in this place that meant so much to him; this touchstone of his existence. I was now a part of that, and a part of his history.

  And perhaps a part of his future.

  With urgent hands, I pulled Liam down roughly on top of me, unable to be without him for another moment. He kissed me hard, our tongues meeting in a furious dance, breaking for a second to allow me to rip his T-shirt off over his head and toss it across the room. I felt his hard, bare chest rub against me, and an irresistible pulse of desire flared through me, focused on my core.

  “God, don’t make me wait!” I gasped between kisses.

  If Liam had been slightly tentative to that point, then those words let him off the leash. His lips never leaving my mouth, he reached for my belt, unfastening it with practiced ease before unbuttoning my jeans. Looping fingers into the waistbands of both jeans and panties, he leaned back and yanked both garments down my legs. They caught momentarily.

  “Damn shoes…”

  Then I was naked from the waist down, staring up at Liam, and he looked down at me with an animalistic hunger in his eyes that only excited me more. He still wanted me as much as I wanted him. My eyes drifted down to between his legs, and I reached for him.

  He was more than ready for me.

  In a moment he was back on top of me, our bodies meeting from top to toe, and in another moment I gasped in desperate, almost anguished pleasure—he was inside me.

  The other night at the stadium had been fun, an enjoyable exercise in seeing just how many places in one room and how many times we could do it before one or the other became just too exhausted to continue. It was passionate as well, certainly, but above all, it had been fun.

  This was different.

  Not because it wasn’t fun, but because it was more heated, more focused; the pleasure seemed concentrated to a white-hot lance of sensation, piercing me. In the stadium, we’d wanted each other—in fact, I’d wanted him more than I’d ever wanted another man in my entire life. But here and now, I needed him, felt as if I might die if I didn’t have him.

  With closed eyes, I slid a hand up his steel arm and snaked it up behind him to the nape of his neck as he withdrew before thrusting deeply inside me again. Gathering his thick, soft hair between my fingers, I pressed my lips against his and immediately decided that it wouldn’t be so bad if I drowned in his scent. Liam returned my kiss, and I loved every second of the moment; his hungry lips, his steady hands holding me on the bench, his stiff manhood buried between my legs…all of it.

  I wanted him to kiss me even harder. I wanted his teeth grazing my skin in breathless bites, and his tongue sliding up and down my neck and breasts.

  I wanted him.

  “You’re so fucking sexy,” he growled into my ear, moving his lips against my cheek. I felt him pepper kisses in a trail from my ear to my neck before taking a detour back to my mouth. His right palm circled my nipples, and I cried out.

  “Don’t stop…oh, god, yes!”

  He slid out and picked me up a moment later, and I yelped in surprise as he maneuvered me so that I was bent over the bench, my hands pressed against the cold wood. He spread my legs and entered me from behind, and finally he was inside me again, fucking me harder than anything I’d ever felt. I was wet and hot for him, so I could take anything he gave me, and sighs and moans of pleasure spilled from my lips with every hard movement.

  His fingers dug into my hips as he plowed into me, pressing my knees back together so that I was almost too tight against him. There was no worry about getting caught now; the thoughts had simply vanished from my mind in my heated bliss. There was just me and Liam in the locker room, his harsh breathing as he took me in punishing strokes, filling me completely and utterly until there was no room for anything else in the world except us.

  Us. That felt nice to say.

  Soon each stroke was taking my breath away and making my mind go completely and utterly blank. I felt myself peak, feeling the hot gush as I came all over his cock, hard and pulsing. I was too far gone to really know what was happening in my body, drowning in sensation, and when the point of no return came, I thought I might black out from the tight intensity of it, tugging me in, suffusing every cell. Every inch of my body seemed to cry out in frustration, only to be suddenly and wonderfully fulfilled in a tidal wave of overwhelming, voiding orgasm.

  “Oh…” It was all I could say as my body went from tight to limp, my muscles relaxing in a blissful post-coital wash that flowed across me.

  Liam finished with a gasp, and we lay down on the cold floor, grateful for the relief on our hot, perspiring bodies. Liam was almost as out of breath as I was, and as he wrapped me into his arms, our sweat mingling, I felt like we might dissolve into each other. I slid my arms around him too, holding him gently but firmly against me—a silent ‘thank you’ and an attempt to retain that sweet intimacy for as long as I could.

  When we’d laid there for a while, long enough to get our breath back and recover some strength in our exhausted bodies, we got up, unconcerned by our nakedness, and, holding hands, we made our way into the showers.

  “Damn!” I squealed as the freezing cold water hit me, puckering my skin to gooseflesh.

  “Shit. Okay, I definitely need to replace the showers in here!” Liam said beside me. “It’s so bloody cold!”

  “I can tell,” I said with a giggle, noticing where the cold water had particularly shrunken him.

  “Hey, that’s not fair! Don’t judge me on this. I’m freezing…and tired,” he said with a wink. “Besides, this water isn’t half as cold as your heart.”

  “Hilarious,” I said, gathering up a handful of water before throwing it at him.

  I loved that we were already at the stage where we were comfortable enough to tease each other and make silly jokes. It normally took me months to be like that with a new guy, but Liam and I had reached that stage in what felt like no time at all.

  We showered in each other’s arms, washing the sweat of passion from each other’s bodies. Afterwards, Liam fetched towels from the equipment locker, and with careful purpose, he dried my body, neglecting no area. I happily performed the same duty for him, my eyes never leaving his gorgeous face, even as I felt his cock stirring back to life.

  “Really? Already?” I asked, one eyebrow arched.

  Liam answered with a smile.

  “Sorry, but you’re going to have to wait,” I said, poking my tongue out at him before turning around to find my clothes. “I’m hungry.”

  We dressed, both finding that we were missing a button or two from our earlier activities, and then we were ready to go.

  Liam took a last look around the locker room. “It’s time, I think.”

  “Time?”

  “To take this place down and replace it with something better.”

  “Jeez, the sex was that bad, huh?” I said with a teasing grin. “Gotta tear the place down to get rid of the memory?”

  He chuckled. “Nah. I’ve got so many good memories here, but I’m never going to top that one. I want this afternoon to be the last memory I have of this place.”

  I went to him, and he folded me into h
is arms, kissing me and stroking my hair. It was strange, I thought: last night I’d been as angry at him as I ever could’ve been, and this morning I’d been wondering if I could ever really trust him. So had I answered those questions? In a way; no—I had no more firm evidence that I could trust him now than I’d had before.

  And yet I did trust him and felt no need for evidence of any sort, beyond the evidence of my heart and the way it skipped a beat every time I saw him.

  “Will this pitch be part of the foundation you were talking about in our interview the other day?” I asked as Liam locked up the locker room. “Somewhere for the kids you’re helping to play.”

  Liam shook his head. “We can build something new for that. I don’t want this place to change too much. It’s always been here for the local kids to play on and that’s how it should stay. I can buy boots, fix goalposts, replace locker rooms, maybe get the place re-sodded—because this grass is looking torn up—but in the end it belongs to the community. For parents and their toddlers as much as teens with their friends. If it became part of my foundation then it’d be something else, and it’d be like I was claiming ownership of something that wasn’t mine. No, this place will always be what it is: a bit down-at-heel, a bit short of funds, and absolutely essential.”

  I could only smile and nod. He knew exactly what he wanted. There was a whole great picture in his mind, which was not something I would ever have guessed about him before meeting him. He’d surpassed my expectations in so many ways.

  “Probably goes without saying,” he said as we walked back across the pitch in the direction of the tube station. “But I don’t want this area overrun with fans thinking it’s cool to take over the pitch and play where their favorite football star grew up. So I’d prefer you to keep this stuff to yourself.”

  “Oh, too late, I secretly filmed everything we did today and already sent it to every media outlet,” I said with a grin.

  “Ah, now who’s the hilarious one?” he said, playfully jostling me and chuckling.

  “I guess I also better cancel my scheduled press conference where I tell them about that shower back there.”

  “Hey, it was cold in that shower!”

  We laughed together as we walked on.

  “Listen,” I said, aware that I was about to raise a sensitive issue. “I understand why you don’t want those kids to know who you are, because ‘Harry’ is a better role model and because you don’t want them to be idolizing you unconditionally, but…”

  “I know what you’re going to say.”

  “Well, I’m going to say it anyway. Why wouldn’t you want people to know? Then you could be a role model worth being, rather than just a bad boy star. Why wouldn’t you want people to know that you have this connection to your past? That you care about where you come from? I mean, you touched on the issue in the interview you gave me the other day, but not this much,” I said. “I guess what I mean is, you’d be better able to preserve this place for future generations if you were able to use your own name.”

  Liam looked dead ahead, refusing to meet my gaze directly. “Because that’s not Liam Croft.”

  “Except it is.”

  “I doubt my manager would think that’s a good id…”

  “Oh, screw Brian!”

  “He’s got my best interests at heart, you know. He’s done me well so far. That’s why I tend to listen to him.”

  “Something tells me he only has his own interests at heart,” I muttered.

  “Look…what if,” Liam now faced me, making his point with keen intent, “what if I’m better able to help these kids in the future because of the path I choose now? What if Brian is right, and if I stop being Liam Croft the drunken arse, then my whole career comes tumbling down? Then I lose the ability to ever help them. Did you consider that yet?”

  He had a point, but I still disagreed for various reasons. I blew a raspberry at him instead of saying so.

  “That’s not a cogent argument,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

  “Well, it’s all the argument I can be bothered to give to that load of crap that Brian’s obviously spoon-fed you. Liam, as long as you can play, then I think your career will be fine. Maybe—and I’m specifically saying ‘maybe’ not ‘definitely’—you would make less money from endorsement and all that, if you just played football and were a generally decent human being who was respectful to women and didn’t act like a dick. I think that’d be a pretty sad state of affairs, but maybe. But even if that were the case, do you really think your income would drop that low? You’d still be the best football player in the world, and, as far as I understand it, that’s a pretty damn well paid job. Do you want me to list the millionaire sportsmen who manage to be millionaire sportsmen without acting like a frat boy overdosing on Viagra?”

  “Football is different to other sports…”

  “Maybe so. But I still think you’d earn enough—more than enough, actually—to buy boots, fix goalposts, start a foundation and in fact, pretty much whatever the hell you want, on the meagre eight figure salary afforded to a player of your caliber, without all the other bullshit.”

  He nodded and scratched his chin. “True, but there’s Dean to consider as well. He doesn’t make a lot of money, so I support him a lot,” he said. “Besides, my career would probably be nowhere without Brian. He’s—”

  I stopped Liam with a hand, and he turned his head to look me straight in the eyes.

  “I don’t know who has made you believe that of yourself over the years; who has made you think you’re less than you are, as a player and as a person. You’re better than that. You’re a good player. You’re a great person. People will like you for that,” I said. “With or without Brian.”

  I could tell that I’d made him think, but equally that I’d not gotten through to him yet—Brian Thomas still exerted his spell. Brian was the expert on this sort of thing and so it was with Brian that Liam would side.

  For now.

  I wasn’t done trying yet.

  We started walking again. “You know, you argue pretty hard,” Liam said as we continued on towards the station.

  “Only for things I care about.

  “I guess that makes me pretty fucking lucky, huh?”

  “Damn right it does.”

  Just before we arrived at the station, which was much busier at this time of day, Liam replaced his dark glasses and hoodie.

  “Doesn’t suit you, you know.”

  “Don’t start.”

  I took his hand and grinned at him—I had no wish to start. At least this way, with him in disguise, we could act like a couple, and there was no chance of me being fired from my job. People brushed by or pushed past us as if we were anyone else, just one more loving pair on the London Underground. And with the recent subject behind us, for the time being, there was nothing else we would rather be. We cuddled together on the train, talking about this and that, laughing and chatting. In its own way, it was as intimate as anything else we had done today.

  “Do you want to get dinner somewhere?” I asked as we finally emerged from the tube stop, back into the busy center of London. “There must be loads of places around here.”

  “I’d love to, but I’d better just walk you back to the hotel and head home,” said Liam. “I’ve got practice early.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve got to eat.”

  “I’m on a pretty strict diet.”

  I frowned in amusement. “How much alcohol does it include, Mr. Croft? I’ve seen the pictures of you out on the town, and any diet you’re on is at least seventy-five percent liquid.”

  Liam laughed but I could see the awkwardness returning to his face, mingled with guilt. I knew he wanted to have dinner, but the media would go nuts if he was spotted having dinner with me, and I’d be out of a job before I knew it. He didn’t want to be the reason I potentially got fired; he’d made that very clear, and I loved him for that.

  “Why don’t we eat at my hotel? Room service. We can smuggle
you up, and I won’t lose my job,” I suggested.

  His face broke into a broad grin. “Sure. You’re the best.”

  “I really am.”

  “It would have to just be dinner,” he added. “I really do have to get to bed early.”

  “Who said I wanted anything else? Not all women are just after your body,” I said, although deep down I had been hoping for a repeat of our earlier adventures.

  “I know there’s all the stuff about me going out the night before a match and not taking training seriously,” Liam said. “But…”

  “It’s not true?” I asked hopefully.

  “Oh no, it’s true all right,” he said. “Bad habit. But since it never seems to make a difference, I’ve never tried to shift it, but now…”

  “End of the season’s coming up.”

  “Well, no. I mean, that’s important,” he said. “Although I think we’ve got it stitched up. But…”

  “England selection!” I was amazed I hadn’t thought of it before. Liam had risen to the top ranks of the game so quickly, seeming to come from nowhere, that he was only now getting his first shot at selection for the national squad, with the World Cup just around the corner. A lot would hang on his next game; not just his team’s victory of the premiership, but his own chances of playing for his country in the future.

  Our dinner was a pleasantly casual affair, seated cross-legged on my hotel bed, picking at the room service food between us. We chatted more about the upcoming game and Liam’s chances of England selection. We also talked about my job, and my father and grandfather who’d instilled so great a love of football in me.

  At the end of our evening together, we kissed goodbye.

  “I’ll be busy with the premiership final training for a while,” Liam said, his eyes apologetic. “But I can still chat with you on the phone, or through texts.”

  “I know. It’s cool. We’ll meet when we can.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, I’ll call you as soon as I have a minute to myself. You’ll be able to stay here? In the country, I mean.”

  I smiled. “Hopefully. I’ll come up with something.”