“Yeah, yeah, keep on dreaming.” Laughing, I shot a fourth time, because one, my bad knee wasn’t troubling me at all, and two, it was fun.
He jumped up into the air and missed the ball again—but damn the move did give me a good glimpse of his flat stomach when his tee rode up. He picked up the ball and came forward, mumbling something about elephant goals and trampolines.
“Give up?” I teased him.
“You wish.” He kneed the ball a few times and finally let it drop to the ground. “We play against each other now.”
“Not a good idea.” With a duh-face, I lifted my leg. “Knee, remember? I can’t run.”
“But you can jog. Slowly. Right? And I’ll clasp my hands behind my back.”
“You play soccer without your hands, smart ass.”
“Fine. I’ll do that and run backward. Is that better?”
He’d already tucked his hands into his back pockets and started to attack the ball. I was closer and easily maneuvered it out of his reach, not yet convinced by his altered rules. The way he engaged me in a battle, though, left me no choice. I slid it away from him a few times and jogged toward the goal, lightly dribbling the ball in front of me.
Amazing, how speedy and agile Chris was, even when he was moving backward. He cut in front of me, successfully stealing the ball, before he kicked it with his heel, trying to glance over his shoulder. We fought another battle for the ball right in front of the goal. This was more fun than I would admit to him, but my happy grin probably gave me away.
Because Chris couldn’t see what was behind him, he didn’t realize just how close we were to the left goal post. “Watch out!” I warned him, but it was too late, and with his attempt to get away with the ball, he knocked into the pole. A groan whooshed out from his lungs as he dropped theatrically to the ground.
A fit of laughter erupted from my chest, and I could barely hold myself upright. My tummy hurt. Yep, I was sure to pay for this with a sore stomach later, but it was worth it.
Chris lay motionless on the ground. Still clutching my belly, I strolled over to him. “What’s up? Did the goal knock the air out of you?”
He didn’t answer. With my toe I poked his ribs, my laugh fading into a chuckle. “Come on, I’m sure that little bump didn't hurt as much as Will’s punch to your face probably did.”
Chris didn’t grin or move. His face was totally expressionless. I frowned. “Are you okay?” With still no answer, I lowered to his side and leaned over him, a little worried now. “Chris?”
His hand shot up so fast that I had no chance to escape. I shrieked as he grabbed my neck and pulled me down until mere inches separated our faces. Blue eyes bored into mine. “You laughed at me,” he growled.
Shocked, I panted like a dog after a sprint, which made him smile.
“That will cost you,” he promised.
Suddenly, I became all too aware that my hands were braced on his bare biceps and that his breath smelled of mint gum. The skin on his arms was smooth and warm, the muscles hard beneath my palms.
Struggling to anchor myself in the present and leave behind a dream in which I was trapped above a guy that looked every bit as stunning as Ethan, I managed a croak. “Let me guess. You want a date?”
“Sounds like a good idea to me.”
With annoyance that I had to fake more than I wished, I replied, “Seriously, when are you going to lay off me?”
A determined glint warmed his eyes as his gaze trapped mine. “When I get what I want, sweetness. Or to put it in your words,” he taunted, “when hell freezes over.”
“That’s not gonna happen, dude.”
The next instant, he moved so fast, switching positions, that he startled me when he trapped me beneath him. He was way too heavy on me and I could hardly get air into my lungs. The little I managed to suck in, I used for another outburst of laughter—from surprise, I told myself, not because this was funny. “Get off, Chris! You’re squishing me!” I wrestled my arms free from under him and flicked him in the eye.
He froze for a split second. “Oh, you shouldn’t have done that, sweetness.” Faster than I could blink, he grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head. His voice and look adopted a sinister edge. “Remember what I told you last time, if you did that again?”
My mouth fell open. A hickey the size of Ohio rang in my ears. “No, you wouldn’t…”
His brows lifted. “You bet.”
I laughed, squealed, and squirmed all at the same time, but that didn’t make him stop from dipping his head and finding a spot on my neck with his lips. “Don’t you—no—don’t—don’t you dare suck on me!” My words came out choppy, interrupted with hiccups and chuckles.
Chris pressed his lips to my throat, moaning against my skin. He whisked his tongue in a slow circle on that spot. Shivers of excitement I’d never experienced before raced through me. My entire body tensed with a tingling feeling. Something in my gut wreaked havoc. If I had to give it a name, I would call it a lunatic butterfly.
“Agh! Take your slobbery mouth off of me!” I wanted to sound a lot angrier with him but, with all the hysterical laughter, it just didn’t come out right.
His tongue moved farther up my neck until his nose nudged the spot behind my ear. “Why, that was just foreplay, Sue,” he whispered. A sharp little pain followed. He suckled only for the length of a breath, but that would be enough to mark me with an ugly spot for sure.
“Ugh! You branded me,” I whined.
Chris chuckled into my ear. “And you should show it proudly.” He picked himself off of me and pulled me to my feet.
Frantically rubbing his slobber off my neck, I pulled up my nose. “That was so…”—at a loss for a better word, I frowned—“eew!”
“Yeah, that was probably the reason you were laughing so hard, right?”
My face grew so hot, I wanted to dip my head in a water barrel.
Chris bent down and picked up his leather jacket, stuffing his arms through the sleeves. He glanced at his watch, making a wry face. “Sorry. I’d really love to fool around with you some more, but I’m still grounded so I have to go home now.” He walked a couple of steps, stopped and turned, waiting for me to follow him. “Where are you going, anyway?” he asked me, when I reluctantly caught up with him. “Can I give you a ride?”
If my aim had been anywhere other than his house, I’d have declined. But in this case, it would have been silly of me. “Actually, you can take me home with you.”
A laugh ripped from his chest. “Oh, sweetness, you don’t know how I’ve been dying for you to suggest that.”
A frustrated groan escaped me. When would I ever learn? I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Let me rephrase: You can take me home with you, where our ways will part at the front door, and I’ll spend a nice afternoon with your brother. How does that sound? Better?”
“Lame.” He rolled his eyes, but took my hand—really took it, like we were a couple going for a walk—and pulled me along to the parking lot. His fingers felt amazingly warm against mine, but my cold hands had always been an issue.
Chris noticed, too. “Whoa, what are you? Frosty the Snowman?” He squeezed a little tighter. It only took seconds for my hand to warm in his hold.
When my cell went off on vibration in my pocket a moment later, I pulled it out, checking who had texted me.
“Who’s Charlie Brown?” Chris asked me, leaning over my shoulder and reading the sender ID.
With a laugh, I admitted, “Your brother.” He didn’t need to get the full explanation.
Chris furrowed his brows and shook his head. “You two are strange.” After a quick pause, he added, “Do you have a name for me, too?”
Whoa, that was something I really didn’t want to tell him. But my hesitation was answer enough. His eyes grew wide. “You do? What is it?”
“Nothing.” I turned away and read the message. Ethan wanted to know where I was. He’d expected me at his house some time ago, but Chris had thw
arted my plans of being punctual.
On the way, I wrote back, and I was about to tuck my cell back into my pocket, when Chris snatched it right out of my hand.
“Hey! Give it back!” I tried to grab it, but Chris was too fast and pulled it out of my reach.
“Let’s see,” he drawled, holding my phone up in the air with one hand and fending me off with the other. Looking up, I could see how he navigated to the SMS folder and skimmed through my texts, easily finding the ones that were from him, because there were so many of them. Uh-oh…
Chris lowered his hand and took a step back, staring at me with a dumbstruck expression. “‘Arrogant Dick’? You can’t be serious.” From the sound of it, I’d hurt his pride but not made him angry. There glimmered, after all, some amusement beneath the layer of shock in his eyes.
I shrugged it off. “What can I say? That’s what I got to know you by.”
He leveled me a stern but still taunting look and held my phone out to me with a stiff arm. “You are so going to change that. Now.”
“Nuh-uh. It is what it is.”
“Fine, then I’ll do it for you.” He turned his back on me and worked on my phone. I tried to slip around him, but he moved away each time I started a new attack, until he had finished his job and handed me my cell with a satisfied grin. Snorting, I put it away, refusing to check if he’d really replaced the Arrogant Dick with his name, so we could finally head on to the parking lot.
Climbing into the passenger’s seat of his mother’s car and buckling myself in, I prepared for a terrible five-minute drive of taunting. What caught me unaware was Chris’s silence. Soon, it made me uncomfortable, because his enchanting scent filling the car’s interior was the only thing I could concentrate on.
After a while, I started picking invisible lint off my jeans, glad for any distraction.
“Do I make you nervous?”
My head jerked up. He watched me from the corner of his eyes. Weird as it might be, cocky Chris was easier to handle than silent Chris. I cast him a cynical grin. “You never give up, do you?”
“Not as long as there’s a hint of a chance.” He showed a quarter of an inch with his thumb and forefinger. Then he drummed his fingers on the wheel for a moment and his smirk subsided. “Can I ask you a serious question?”
I bit my lip, blinking in a startled way. “I’m almost certain you cannot, but please, go ahead and give your best.”
“Very funny.” He smiled in spite of his faked hurt. “Anyway, tell me… Why would you go out with my brother, who’s my absolutely identical twin and who told you yesterday that a romance was not in the cards for the two of you, but not with me?”
So Ethan had talked to him about us. Actually, it shouldn’t have surprised me. They were brothers, after all, and Chris sometimes seemed to really care about Ethan, if nothing else. I studied him for a long moment, and in that time his eyes nervously switched back and forth between me and the windshield.
“You think it’s only about looks, don’t you?”
“No.” He sounded like a sulking little kid; like he actually wanted to say yes instead. At the next instant, a boyish smirk bulldozed through. “I think I can also be quite charming.”
I remembered the cream-dipped kiwi and had to grant him that. But frankly, his most charming moment had been when he didn’t know I was listening. What he’d said to Ethan at Burger King—those things he’d said behind the closed door—that was what made me think Chris could appeal to me in some ways.
“Yes, you can be. If you want to,” I admitted. “But it’s not enough to make me want to go out with you. You may look like your brother, but other than that, you’re two totally different people. Like day and night, really.”
“So you’d rather kiss a guy who’s shy and insecure.”
“I thought we were talking about going out, not kissing?” I mocked him.
He waggled his brows in my direction. “That goes hand in hand.”
“Okay then… I’d rather go out and kiss a guy, who doesn’t date a different girl every day.”
Chris contemplated that. It took him a few minutes to come up with a reply, and by that time, he’d parked the car in front of his house. Cutting the engine, he leaned forward, folded his arms on the steering wheel, and rested his cheek on them, locking blue eyes with mine. “Give me a reason not to.”
My heart pounded a little faster, just enough to make me aware that his intense gaze affected me. I had to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth before I could get out an answer. “It doesn’t work that way, Chris.”
Holy Jesus, had I just given him an incentive to stop dating other girls? Because it really wasn’t meant to come out that way.
He hesitated another immeasurable moment, like he was seriously considering the idea. Eventually, the left corner of his mouth went up in a challenging smile. “All right,” he said in a rather low voice. “Let’s do it your way.”
I hardly had time to gasp as he got out of the car. With shaky fingers, I fumbled with the seat belt buckle, climbed out, too, and slammed the door. Chris went across the short front yard to the house, leaving me behind. He locked the car with the remote on the key ring.
“Wait!” I called, too confused to catch up with him. “That’s not— Just— No!”
He unlocked and opened the front door before he turned to face me. As I reluctantly walked up to him, his gaze slid down to my neck and a smirk stole across his face. “Your rules. You laid them down, so you better stick to them.”
I shook my head.
Chris nodded in determination.
He reached for my hand and pulled me inside.
“Chris? Is that you?” His mother’s voice came from the living room.
He placed a finger over his lips, shushing me, then shouted, “Yes, Mom!”
What in the world was he up to? My thoughts were still running a little wild, so I totally forgot to protest when he dragged me to his room. Once inside, he pushed the door closed but didn’t shut it completely. He probably didn’t intend to keep me in here for long.
Stiff like a rock, I waited in the middle of his room while he went to fetch something from a drawer. A dark red bandana. With a frown, I watched him shake it out and fold it to a triangle. As he came closer, I took a wary step back.
My shyness amused him. “Hold still,” he told me and came forward again. Gently, he tied the bandana around my neck. He hooked his finger into it and skimmed his thumb over the hickey. “You know,” he said in a soft voice, “I wouldn’t have done that if—for only one second—I’d had the feeling you weren’t enjoying it.”
My heart batted an agitated rhythm in my chest. Maybe I should have said something; maybe I should have ripped the bandana off my neck and thrown it at his face. But I did neither. Instead, I spun on my heel and walked out of his room, wanting to forget the entire past half hour with him.
Chapter 13
ETHAN DIDN’T ASK me why I was wearing his brother’s bandana around my neck. He probably didn’t even know that it was Chris's, but I had the worst conscience while in his room. I’d let the brother of my first real love bite me, and only one day after I found out Ethan and I weren’t meant to be together. How terrible was that of me?
Or was it? I mean, Chris’s mouth on my neck didn’t feel so bad. And what he did for me on the soccer field was really sweet…in an odd way. If Ethan got a chance to hang out with Ted and have fun, he’d probably do so without a guilty conscience, right?
“Susan, is everything okay?”
I looked up and found Ethan’s narrowed eyes on me. “Yes.”
He lifted his brows. “Are you sure?”
“Of course. Why do you keep asking?”
“Because you haven’t moved a single player of your team in like two minutes.”
Crap. FIFA. What was up with me today? “I’m sorry. I’ll pay more attention now.”
Ethan paused the game and lowered his controller. “Do you want to talk about something? May
be about yesterday? It was probably more of a shock than you’d thought at first, huh?”
“No! No… That’s not it.” I could handle gay Ethan. I just couldn’t seem to handle nice Chris. Struggling for a happy expression, I joked, “As long as you’re fine with still being the man in my fancy dreams, I’m all right.”
He laughed out loud. “I’m totally fine with that. But one of these days you should go out with the guy next door. I think you two would make a stunning match.”
My chin dropped to my chest. “What made you say that?”
Ethan looked at me as if he wasn’t sure whether he’d said something wrong, or if I was just interpreting it wrong. He scratched his head and sucked in a deep breath, which was meant for encouragement, no doubt. “Um…he asked me something yesterday.”
“Yeah?” A foreboding layer of goosebumps sprouted on my skin. “What did he want?”
Scooting away from my side and turning so that he was facing me on his bed, he crossed his legs and rested his forearms on his knees. “When he got all serious and told me he needed to talk to me, I thought he was going to ask me about…well, you know, about me and guys. I know he’s been wondering for a while now.”
“But he didn’t ask you about it.” It was a statement more than a question.
“No, he didn’t.”
Then what the hell did Chris want to know? I hated when people got all reticent about important things, and from the sound of it, this was something important.
“He asked me if I was in love with you.”
Oh. “Why would he ask that?”
His eyes searched my face. “Because he would never date a girl I had true feelings for. He’s kind of a player, all right, but even he has a line. And as it seems, that line is me.” After a short pause and more intense eye contact, he continued, “He’s developing a real interest in you, Susan.”
Hah! He just wants to add me to his damn list. If he scores, even better. Ethan’s severe expression, however, stopped me from throwing that bit of sarcasm out. Instead, I asked him with the same serious tone, “Why do you think you’re right about this?”
Dating Trouble (Grover Beach Team Book 5) Page 15
