Stealing Home(9)

Waving my cardkey beside the exercise room keypad, I could just make out the whir of a treadmill behind the door. I’d been hoping I’d have the room to myself, but it sounded like someone else was an insomniac.

I threw open the door, moved inside, and stopped short. If the room hadn’t been lined with mirrors, I might have quietly backed out and found another way to vent my excess energy, but it was too late. Archer had already seen my reflection in the mirror in front of the treadmill he was running on.

A slow smile shifted into place as he lifted his hand in a wave.

The door clicked closed behind me, sealing me in that small room, alone with him. The scent of sweat and man was overwhelming, rolling over me in heavy waves. I wasn’t sure if this was what scientists meant when they talked about pheromones and their effect on the opposite sex, but shit, my body was practically writhing from the scent of Luke Archer filling the room.

The view of him didn’t help either.

“Couldn’t sleep.” Archer pulled the ear buds from his ears, glancing at me over his shoulder.

“Yeah, me either.”

“I don’t sleep for shit most nights, but it’s been impossible lately.”

I could feel his eyes on me as I moved across the room, grabbed one of the folded towels, and brought it over to him. He was drenched with sweat, beads of it rolling from his hair down his forehead. The rest of his body was just as soaked.

That tended to happen when a person was maintaining a . . . I leaned over the treadmill just enough to read the screens.

“Archer!” I chided, going into athletic trainer mode instantly. My finger punched the speed down until he wasn’t sprinting at speed Super Human.

He grumbled as he wiped his face with the towel. “Sorry, Doc. I didn’t think you’d be around to catch me in the act.”

“The act of running ten miles per hour for the past . . .” My eyes darted to the time screen, widening instantly. “Hour?! You’ve got a big game tomorrow. What were you thinking running—no, wait, sprinting—almost ten miles less than twelve hours before it starts?”

Archer sighed when I kept punching the speed down, but he didn’t fight me on it. “I was thinking I couldn’t sleep and had about ten miles of wind-sprint energy to work off before I could even try.”

“There are other ways to work off energy that don’t involve you going into cardiac arrest or passing out from the effort.”

“Those are my favorite ways to work off energy actually.” He ran the towel through his wet hair, sending beads of sweat raining down onto my arm.

The room was warm and I was hot, but I still got goose bumps from feeling Archer’s sweat spray on my skin. It made me think of other ways it could happen. It made me fantasize about those ways.

Clearing my throat, I reached for his water bottle—which was empty—and backed up for the water cooler. “No more ten-mile dashes the night before a game. You’re going to hurt yourself or wear yourself out. You need a way to burn off some extra energy, I’ll work up a plan that doesn’t involve you setting speed records on a treadmill, okay?”

“Would this plan have anything to do with you and me horizontal in my bed?”

Two weeks of silence on the issue, and now he was jumping in with both feet. I guessed I could rule out his interest passing or it all being some figment of my imagination.

“Archer,” I said in warning while I filled his water bottle.

“Fine, fine.” His feet continued their steady pace, pounding the treadmill. “You and me vertical up against my hotel shower wall?”

Another round of chills spiraled down my spine. He knew just what to say to make my body respond. He knew just how to say it to test my willpower.

“I take your silence to mean you haven’t arrived at any conclusions regarding you and me?”

My head shook as I filled his water bottle.

“Have you given any thought to you and me?”

He watched me as I screwed the bottle’s lid back on and wandered toward him. “Lots of thought.”

“And?” He took the water bottle from me, waiting.

Looking at him from this close was hard. Seeing him shirtless again made me remember the way his body had felt against mine during that impromptu photo shoot. The way his hard planes accepted my soft curves. The way his arms felt around me, tucking me close to him like nothing could get past him. God. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not with him. Not with a player on the very team I was working for.

“And it will require lots more thought,” I said, picking up his bottle and holding it out for him with a raised eyebrow. Gauging how long he’d been running and how much he was sweating, he needed to down a couple of liters to restore his fluid levels. I needed to make sure he got some electrolytes in him too.

“Anything I can do to help sway your decision?” Archer looked down at me while he sucked on his water bottle. He gave me a happy now? look when he handed it back, almost empty.

“Yeah. Explain why you ignored me for months, then when you decided to notice me, you pretty much came on so strong it was like I was the last woman on the planet and the fate of it rested on our ability to procreate.” I headed back to the water cooler, thankful for the added space between us.

He’d been guarding his looks around me when others were around, but now that we alone, he was staring at me like he knew me as intimately as two people could know one another. He didn’t blink once, his long strides strumming along the treadmill. His muscled shoulders lifted. “I go after what I want. I don’t leave you guessing. Or wondering. With me, you get what you see. You know what I want. Who I am.”