His to Win (The Alpha Soccer Saga #1) (11 page)

This is what a proper fucking feels like,
was the last rational thought that crossed her mind before the sexual eruption deep in her core. It frightened her, as there was little buildup, virtually no warning; it was a wild beast smashing its way out of confinement.

The orgasm triggered a trembling in Ellie, uncontrollable shaking, cold and hot all at once. Patrick feared she was having a seizure, and fighting every urge in his body, he withdrew, holding her close, and tried to comfort her.

“Ellie, I’m sorry, are you OK, love?”

Ellie smiled weakly, bringing an index finger to his lips to quiet him and wrapping her arms around his neck nuzzling into his chest.

Patrick cradled her as the last aftershocks jolted her, and suddenly her bliss turned to red-faced embarrassment as she realized she’d just caused a man, not just a man, a MAN, to stop having sex with her because he feared she was having a stroke. She couldn’t bear to have him look at her, and she extricated herself from his arms.

“I’m . . . I . . . Patrick I’m so sorry. I . . . please don’t look at me. I just . . . oh no . . .” And with that she left the bed and sought refuge in the bathroom, locking the door behind her, collapsing onto the floor, sobbing into a towel.

Patrick was thoroughly confused.

One moment he was having the best sex of his life, the next Ellie was shaking as if possessed and then running away into the bathroom. His impressive erection disappeared as quickly as he rose and found his clothing piled on the floor by the door.

He tapped softly on the door. “Ellie, what can I do to help? I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t want to . . . hurt you? I don’t know what happened. Can I help you?”

Between sobs, Ellie choked out a reply. “No, Patrick, I’m the one who’s sorry, I’m so sorry, you’re so perfect and I’m so fucked up. I can’t, I’m sorry, thank you for everything. I just need to be alone.”

“I hope I didn’t do anything wrong, Ellie, I truly do.” Patrick pulled his shirt and pants back on as he spoke. “I thought everything was fantastic. I’d never hurt you, Ellie. Please, let me in and we can sort it out. We can lay in bed all night, we don’t have to do anything. . .”

Ellie’s sobs had become sniffles, “I know . . . it’s all my fault. Please just go back to your room. I need to be alone. I’m sorry, I’m really so sorry.” Ellie began to run a bath as she heard Patrick’s last words and the hotel room door closing with a soft click.

“Ellie, I don’t understand what happened, but if you want me to go, I’ll go. Maybe it was all too fast . . .”

As Ellie sank into the tub, her mind wandered back to her junior year at Ohio State.

She’d bumped into Jace Trapp on campus and recognized him immediately. To her surprise, he actually recognized her, and called her by name.

He’d been a star linebacker in high school, coached by her father, a heartthrob with a reputation as a ladies’ man. A variety of small colleges recruited him, but the big-time programs judged him a step too slow and a few inches too short.

He’d eschewed stardom at a lower level to scrape and claw his way onto the Buckeyes’ roster first as a practice player and, eventually, through sheer determination and guts, a contributing member of the Buckeye defense.

Ellie had always admired him from afar, warned by her father to “never date football players; they’re no good!” Not that it would have mattered if Daddy had encouraged her to date them. Guys like Jace Trapp were into cheerleaders and soccer players, not readers and writers.

“Ellie? Ellie Peavey? Coach’s daughter?” Jace asked a flustered Ellie.

“Y-yes, that’s me. You’re Jace, right?”

“In the flesh. Do you go here? I mean, duh, you’re carrying a backpack, of course you go here. Hey, do you have plans tomorrow night?” His charm still oozed out of his perfect pores.

“No, nothing serious, I was just going to study.” Ellie was completely shocked this conversation was happening.

“Forget that, you should come over to the Sig Ep house. Big party. Probably lots of football players, but I’ll protect you! Seriously, get your roommate or some friends or whatever and come over there any time after 10:00 tomorrow night. I’d be honored to have a drink with Coach P’s little girl.”

“I could probably drop by, I don’t know,” Ellie replied. Parties, especially big fraternity house affairs, were definitely not her scene.

“How about this, then, how about you come out to Muggsy’s with me tomorrow night before the party. Whenever you can get away from your books. I’d love to catch up. I went back for a game last fall, said hello to your dad, but that was the first time in a couple years. I know coach said we had to stay away from you, hell, he told the team that before every season began, but I think that’s expired now that we’re in college, right?”

Is Jace Trapp actually asking me out on a date?
Ellie pondered.

“What do you say? 8:00 p.m.? Just let me buy you a drink or two, hang out, no pressure, I think it would be fun.”

Ellie agreed to the “date,” inhaling deeply through her nostrils as she watched him swagger away, a walk she’d spent so much of high school appreciating from within her cloak of anonymity. Or so she thought.

Dad warned the team to stay away from me? But not from the slutty cheerleaders? Thanks, Dad . . .

Beer at Muggsy’s turned into shots and conversation turned into making out in a booth. Drinking had been new to Ellie when she reached college, and while she enjoyed it, she was far from experienced. She didn’t feel like Jace was taking advantage of her, exactly, she’d spent four years imagining kissing him. And more. A few drinks and she became the aggressor, hands all over his chest and arms, kissing him back harder than what he’d initiated.

When he suggested they go somewhere a little more private, she agreed, but not before two more fateful shots of Cuervo.

Jace’s off-campus apartment was just a few blocks from the bar, and he told her his roommates would be gone for the evening. Part of her was ashamed at herself for falling victim to Jace Trapp’s jawline and pecs, but another part of her felt like this would be her revenge against the high school cheerleaders, against her dad, against all the guys who
didn’t
ask her to homecoming and prom. She was attractive enough now, at least for this one night, to be noticed by Jace Trapp. So screw the rest of them, she was going to have sex with the hottest guy on campus. Slut-shamers be damned.

Jace’s apartment was typical college jock style–Xbox controllers, empty beer cans, cheap furniture, and empty pizza boxes. They made out from the door to his bed, beginning the act with perhaps a touch less foreplay than Ellie would have hoped for, but damn he felt
good.

His physique was magnificent, his sexual experience evident, and she was just finding her groove when it happened.

Tequila, after beer and Jack Daniel’s, on an empty stomach, the stomach of an ingénue like Ellie Peavey, was a deadly combination.

Jace was gaining speed, his long, slow strokes becoming quicker and harder, when Ellie, with little warning, began to vomit. Violently.

Jace jumped back with an uncharacteristic squeal, looking at Ellie with unabashed horror. The mess was on her, on him, on the bed. She’d felt a queasy twinge when they started, but he felt so good, and she wanted so desperately for it to be good for him, that she ignored it, hoped it would pass. But it didn’t.

“El, Ellie, what the . . . oh shit, what the fuck, girl? All over my bed? On me? Oh fuck, I’m gonna be sick. Holy shit!”

If Ellie wasn’t mortified enough, there wasn’t the slightest glimmer of understanding, or compassion, in Jace’s eyes.

“Just . . . I need a fucking shower now, shit. Here’s a towel, just get out I guess, get your stuff. Just keep the towel . . . I don’t know. I need a shower,” Jace said, slamming the bathroom door behind him after tossing Ellie a towel, questionable in its cleanliness.

Ellie sat up and cleaned herself as best she could, putting enough of her clothes on to be decent, and slipping away into the night, fighting every step not to burst into hysterical sobbing. There would be plenty of time for that once she got back to her dorm.

She never spoke to Jace again after that, and thought it may have been her imagination but she could have sworn that whenever she encountered male athletes on campus, they all gave her a look like they knew what a disgusting pig she was.

Ellie slid beneath the surface of the water, the huge tub swallowing her up. She held herself under as long as she could, emerging with a gasping inhale. She’d run out of tears for the moment and thought back to what had just happened.

Patrick was fucking her like she’d never even dreamed she could be fucked, hitting places in her she didn’t even know she had, and she’d experienced an orgasm so powerful she lost control of her motor functions, becoming a complete spaz. A horrifically ugly spaz, she was sure. There was no coming back from something like that. Patrick was too classy to leave on his own, but she was sure he wanted nothing more than to get away from her before she started throwing up—or worse.

If she’d thrown up on Patrick, she would have gracefully gotten up, walked to the window, and jumped.
Mortified
couldn’t begin to describe such an event.

She’d obviously done him a favor by telling him to leave. It gave him an out. All the awkwardness vanished in an instant.

The whole thing had been a mistake. It had to be. This was the universe giving her a dose of cosmic karma. She wasn’t a wild, one-night-stand kind of girl.
Know your role, stay in your lane.
She wasn’t Meg. Her phone buzzed while she dried herself, and a message popped up, not from Patrick, but from Ian.

Are you really going to stand me up on your last night in the UK???

No, she wasn’t. Ellie Peavey needed to get drunk.

Gutted. Devastated. Patrick Sievert, in his suite a floor above Ellie’s, was in ruins.

He’d made it to his room intact, but once inside, he fell completely apart. He cried into a pillow, angry at himself for whatever he’d done to hurt Ellie, disappointed in himself for taking a chance, for dropping his guard and allowing a woman back into his life. The whole thing had been a mistake. It had to be. This was the universe giving him a dose of cosmic karma. He was the Mad Monk for a reason.
Know your role, stay in your lane.
He wasn’t Shelton.

But why did she have to be so damn sexy? And so adorable? Her laugh, her walk, her eyes, her mouth, her skin, her . . . well, her vagina, too, as he now knew. Just everything about her was so perfect, so exactly what he wanted.

As hurt as he was, as furious as the whole thing made him, his heart was still filled with her smile. Everything had been so perfect, until it wasn’t.
What had he done wrong?

A walk, he decided, along the breezy River Clyde, would help clear his head. And even alone, he ought to avail himself of a meal at the restaurant Paddy recommended, the Shandon Belles.

Ellie arrived at Murray’s Drafty Kilt after 8:00, meaning her team had at least an hour head start on her, but she was determined to catch them in the race to full-blown intoxication as quickly as possible. She desperately needed to forget the disastrous romantic interlude with Patrick, the embarrassment during and after their brief lovemaking, the memories it had dredged up of her evening with Jace—all of it.

The pub was more crowded than she expected for a Thursday night, but she located her group quickly with the help of an Irish homing beacon.

“Oi! Ell’s Bells! Over here!”

Ian stood on a chair, hoisting a pint, waving her over.

Beer flowed, chased by whiskey, then more beer (no tequila!). Ellie was starting to get that warm, fuzzy feeling all over, and Ian’s shameless, and much too physical, flirting was welcomed by the heartbroken American girl.

Colleagues with early flights trickled out of Murray’s, eventually leaving only Ellie, Ian, and the girl he’d been keeping late hours with, Helen.

Ian was a drinking machine, and despite a never-ending procession of pints and shots, he showed no sign of slowing down. Helen and Ellie, on the other hand, were both well past feeling groovy and on their way to being blind drunk. Helen and Ian had both been pawing at Ellie, and making no secret that they’d be more than happy to have her up to one of their rooms at the Marriott to continue the party.

Ellie wasn’t sure, even in her state, that a threesome was really her cup of tea, but she didn’t relish that thought of being alone, either. Ian was handsome enough, if a little punk rock for her taste, but if Ellie was going to experiment with a girl, she could certainly do worse than the raven-haired, green-eyed Helen.

Staggering down the street between Murray’s and the Marriott, Ian, Helen, and Ellie laughed and fell over one another, the picture of drunken merriment.

Patrick pushed himself away from the table, surrendering by waving his linen napkin as a white flag. A rich meal of polenta, wild boar sausages, and toffee pudding had his six-pack feeling more like a keg, and he thanked the wait staff, chef, and manager profusely for the experience, promising to return once settled in Glasgow, but for lighter fare once his preseason training with Celtic commenced

Returning to the street, Patrick found himself under a waxing moon, the water on the river choppy from the wind. Now for the first time since leaving the Grand Central for his walk, he scanned the messages on his phone, disappointed to have texts only from his football buddies, none from Ellie.

Patrick moved quickly through the streets, walking briskly to avoid being recognized as he explored Glasgow in the moonlight. His meandering found him approaching the rear of the Marriott, site of the his first kiss with Ellie, a thought that subconsciously had him licking his lips, hoping for some remnant of her flavor there.

Stopping to look up the side of the building, trying to recognize which room he’d stayed in and which room had been hers, Patrick heard a muffled cry from somewhere nearby.