CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS BEFORE DAWN WHEN Mal pulled on a pair of shorts and his running shoes and headed out to the beach for a run. He hadn’t slept particularly well, but then his mind hadn’t stopped churning with thoughts of his brother, his family, the upcoming football season—and Sabrina.
Yeah, he’d spent a lot of time thinking about the hot little blonde in his house. About the way she’d looked with that robe sliding off her shoulder, the slinky spaghetti strap following it, her creamy skin bare and shining in the moonlight. He’d wanted to touch her.
Lick her.
Fuck her.
Usually he didn’t have a bit of trouble getting a woman he wanted into bed. This one was different. She was vulnerable, and that made him cautious. If things had turned out differently, she’d be lying in some other guy’s bed right now, happy and looking forward to her new life.
He didn’t want to give her a new life. He wanted to peel off her clothes and explore every last inch of her while making her sigh and sob and beg him for release. He wanted to watch her spiral up to the top of the mountain, and then he wanted to catch her when she fell. He wanted his name on her lips, her legs around his waist, and his cock buried deep inside her.
He headed out onto the sand and started down the beach, pushing his body to the limit. He finished his run and then stripped out of everything but his underwear and dove into the water with the sun just beginning to peek above the horizon. It was cool and bracing, and he swam hard before turning and swimming back toward the beach.
He wasn’t worried about meeting anyone out here. He’d built his house on a private stretch of land far enough from town that no one ever ventured this far. Yet when he came up for air, there was someone standing on the beach. It took him a moment to realize it was Sabrina.
She stood with a cup in her hand and a robe wrapped around her body. She was staring off into the distance, her blond hair blowing in the breeze. He didn’t think she’d seen him. Indeed, he’d left his clothes near a small dune that blocked her vision of them. Unless she looked in his direction, she wouldn’t see his head above water at all.
He watched her as she stood there and sipped. And then she set the cup down and shed the robe. She was wearing a turquoise bikini that showed her considerable assets to perfection. She didn’t look like a swimsuit model. She was a bit too short, a bit too curvy.
He snorted. As if there were such a thing as too curvy. He liked curves. Liked breasts that filled his hands and an ass he could grip while he drove deep and found a woman’s pleasure zones.
Sabrina stepped into the surf and then backed up again as if it were too cold. He swam for where she stood. He knew the second she saw him because she wrapped her arms around her belly and shrank in on herself. Trying to hide.
He frowned as he stepped onto the sandy bottom and stood. The water still reached his waist, which meant it would probably be to her shoulders.
“I didn’t realize you were out here,” she said above the sound of the surf. “I wouldn’t have disturbed you.”
“You aren’t disturbing me.” Well, she was disturbing him, though not in the way she supposed. “Coming in?”
“It’s colder than I thought.”
“You have to plunge in, Sabrina. Some things require you to dive in if you want to experience them to the fullest.”
She nibbled her lip and his groin tightened. “You’re a bad man, Mal Hughes.”
“I’m really not.”
“Oh, you definitely are. It’s cold and you want to see me splutter.”
He laughed. “Maybe I do. Or maybe I want to see how brave you are.”
“I’m not falling for that.”
“Dive in, Sabrina. You know it gets better when you do.”
She closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, he knew she was going to do it. She strode forward confidently—and then she lifted her arms and dove. When she came up, she was definitely spluttering. She shoved her wet hair off her head and glared at him.
Mal fell backward and lazily did a backstroke over to where she treaded water.
“Happy?” she asked. “I’m freaking freezing!”
He righted himself and then he reached for her. She stiffened only a second before she let herself be drawn into his embrace. She was small and fit so nicely against him. Her hands went around his neck. She used them to keep herself at a distance instead of cozying up to him the way he wanted.
“Let me warm you.”
Her coffee-colored gaze settled on his mouth, and her breath hitched in. He wasn’t sure she was even aware of it. His cock leapt in response.
“This was your plan all along.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I just know how to take advantage of an opening when I see it.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling. “Football reference?”
“It’s what I do, babe.”
She cupped his cheek. A sizzle of electricity stung him. Her touch was unexpected. The electricity was not. Not anymore.
“I read up on you. They call you Magic Mal. You perform magic on the field. And then there are the women who say you perform magic off the field as well.”
“Do you want to find out?”
Her eyes searched his. Water dripped from her lashes, down her cheeks, and her hair clung to her head. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but she was still pretty. Not stunning or alluring, but pretty. She was like a beam of sunshine, fresh and real and warm.
“I think maybe…” She pulled in a breath, shook her head, and laughed. “Maybe I do.”
* * *
A few hours ago, she’d told him no. Sabrina was well aware of it. Here in the early morning light with nothing but sand and surf and the sounds of seagulls circling and calling, she felt more alive than she’d felt in a long time. She was happy, ironically. And it hit her that life wasn’t perfect, but sometimes it threw a once-in-a-lifetime chance your way and you had to take it.
Mal Hughes wasn’t going to fall in love and ask her to marry him—hell, she was done with the idea of getting married anyway, at least for a few years. Nevertheless. He was here, he was hot, and she wanted him.
Going into it without any expectations meant she wouldn’t get hurt. She had four days left. Four days, one sexy football player, and a lot of sex later, she was going to go back to Nashville and know she was worth wanting. She’d see San Francisco Outlaws games on television in the bar, and she’d get her own secret little thrill whenever they mentioned number fifty-eight.
This wasn’t the same thing as picking up a guy in a bar and having wild sex or being a football groupie—or whatever they called them—and going after a professional player because he was a player. This was Sabrina and Mal, two people who’d met during a storm and shared painful secrets.
Mal’s gaze dropped to her chest, to the nipples she could feel were hard little points, and then back up to her face. His hands on her waist dipped lower, tugging her toward him. She went willingly this time, though she was shivering—and not just from the cold.
It was as natural as breathing to wrap her legs around him—and then she gasped when she felt the evidence of his arousal pressing into her. He was full and hard in spite of the cold water.
“You have no idea how glad I am you said that,” he told her.
“Me too.”
His hands cupped her ass, supporting her, and little streaks of lightning shot through her body when he moved her against that delightful hardness.
She moaned and bit her lip.
He looked troubled instead of pleased. “What changed your mind, Sabrina?”
“Regrets. I don’t want any.”
“What if you regret doing this?”
She snorted. “Then I’ll know I made the wrong choice, won’t I? At least I won’t always wonder.”
He looked very serious for a man with a hard-on. “You’re not like any woman I’ve ever known.”
A little thrill shot through her then. “The parts are all the same, Mal. You can’t screw this up.”
He laughed. “Not what I expected you to say, I have to admit.”
“Stop talking and kiss me before I lose my nerve.”