Dex

I have this thing I do: When I meet someone new, I look them straight in the eye. My eyes are blue—I’m not bragging; I was born with them, I didn’t fucking earn them—and a lot of people find them intense. So when I first meet someone, the best way to get the truth of that person is to stare right at them and see what they do.

Some of them smile. Some of them look away. Some of them flush. Some of them talk, and some are silent. Whatever they do, I use to categorize them quickly. It’s a survival tactic, to know what someone wants from you right away.

So when Sophie walked in the room, I looked at her. Intently. She stopped in the doorway, her lips parted, and looked back at me. Surprise in her face, and concern, and a mix of some other emotion I couldn’t read.

“You’re supposed to be in Milan,” she said.

Her dark brown hair was tied back, up off her neck, in a messy twist with tendrils falling from it. Her bangs were swept across her forehead, emphasizing her brown eyes. I realized I knew the other parts of her expression. One was alarm, and the other was relief.

Part of her was happy to see me.

I blinked, and some of the tension left my body. I realized I’d been expecting—dreading—some other reaction. Anger, maybe. Disgust. What the fuck—I didn’t know. Whatever it was, I didn’t see it, so I gave her a smile.

“You saw that, did you?” I said. “I’m glad it worked.”

“What worked?”

“My ruse.” Now I took the time to look her up and down. A work blouse, a work skirt, high heels, no tights. I could see the smooth, muscled lines of her calves. “Where are Jim and Patty?” We used their names now, to avoid the awkwardness of Mom and Dad.

“New York,” Sophie said.

Which I would know, if I’d answered any of Dad’s calls. I should be mad that they were cowards avoiding the press, but I couldn’t blame them. I put my phone down and swung my legs off the sofa. Fuck, I’d been jet lagged, but now that Sophie was in the room I wasn’t tired anymore. I was wide awake. How long had it been? Months? I’d done nothing but train in the lead-up to the World Cup, and I didn’t even know what day it was anymore.

“You haven’t answered me,” Sophie said as I stood up. “Why aren’t you in Italy?”

“Because after I got off the plane and let the press shoot it, I drove through the back streets in a circle to the other end of the airport, got back on the plane, and came here. That part, they didn’t see.”

“Why the elaborate ruse?” she asked.

Damn, I liked a woman who used words like elaborate ruse. “To get a few days of privacy without the press in my face.”

Sophie shifted on her feet, and her brow furrowed. Her expressions were always so easy to read. “And Jesetta Bibliona? What about her?”

“Jes? She’s a nice girl.” I came around the sofa, toward her. “You jealous?” She was. She totally was.

“I didn’t say that,” she protested. She watched me come toward her, and the words seemed to come out of their own accord, hard and bitter. “I’m sure she’s a very nice girl.”

“She is.” I came close to her, put my fingertips to her jaw, and tilted her face up toward me. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to look at her up close, see every detail. Drink her in. Sophie. It had been fucking months. “She’s especially nice to the man she’s in love with, who owns a worldwide coffee chain. She’s going to marry him in a few months. She was just helping me out to fool the press.”

She let me tilt her head up, looked me in the eye. “It worked.”

“Yep.” She looked good—her skin was flawless, her eyes so honest yet so unfathomable beneath the ends of her bangs. But I got distracted, because she was wearing eye makeup and lip gloss, glistening and sexy on her parted lips. And I realized I could smell hair spray from her carefully tousled hair. She looked fucking hot, and there was no way she had done herself up like this for work. “You were on a date,” I said, realizing it as I spoke the words.

She flinched, and for a second she looked miserable. “Forget it,” she said.

I stared at her. That second of misery, so quickly hidden, echoed through me, sharp as a blade. “What the fuck happened?” I said, more sharply than I intended.

Sophie reached up and touched my wrist, pressing my hand away from her jaw. I reluctantly let go. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, backing away. “It doesn’t matter. What about you, Dex? Are you okay?”

I gave a bitter laugh and ran a hand through my hair. “Sure, I’m fine. I’m great. I got a nice souvenir of the World Cup.” I held up my right hand so she could see the knuckles, which were swollen red and bruised. “I need a drink. You want one?”

“Hell yes,” she said in that sexy voice of hers. I turned away, toward the kitchen. In that second, hearing Sophie say that, I was so fucking glad I’d come home that I could have dropped on my knees and kissed her feet. Then I could have pushed her skirt up and kissed some other places.

Sure, she was my stepsister. She was also a hot brunette with long, strong legs, an ass that looked delicious, and a high, round pair of breasts that looked small and firm as pears. Ever since I’d first met Sophie I’d been very, very interested in having a go at her naked body. I wanted to see every curve and crevice of it. I wanted to see what she looked like with her back arched and her sexy legs spread open for me. But I’d always known that aside from the fact that our parents would freak, it pretty much was a bad idea. Soccer was my life, my all-consuming existence, and anything I started, I wouldn’t be able to finish. Sophie wasn’t the kind of girl you fucked and forgot about.

It took me a minute, but I found the cabinet where my dad kept the good stuff and pulled out two highball glasses. I didn’t ask her what she wanted; I’d improvise. Thinking about fucking her had reminded me that she’d teased herself up to go on a date with some other guy, and it was distracting me.

“So are you going to tell me what happened?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I said. For a second I was so bothered I honestly didn’t know.

“Um, that little item that’s been all over the news,” she said, a current of amusement in her voice. I tossed some ice in our glasses and poured us each a finger of Scotch. When I handed hers to her she looked at me cynically. “Ring a bell?”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” I said.

She tilted her head and looked at me. She hadn’t complained about her drink, I noticed. “Too traumatic?”

“Too boring,” I said, meaning it. “I’ve done nothing but talk about that punch for three days. To the League executives, to my agent, to my coach and my teammates. I got mad, and I punched Sebastian Santos in the face, and I broke his fucking nose. I did it, I own it. End of story. If I have to talk about it one more time, I think I’ll lose my shit.”

Sophie took a sip of her drink and swallowed, touching her upper lip with her tongue to get a last drop of Scotch off of it. I watched her and wondered if she had any idea what filthy things I was thinking about. Maybe she did. “So, the answer is that you have no idea why you did it. Is that about right?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “It was an impulse, it was a bad one, and now I’m fucked. That’s all there is to say.”

“I’m sorry, Dex,” she said. “We’ll talk about something else.”

I downed my drink in a single gulp. I didn’t usually drink, but I figured what the hell, since my career was ashes. “I want to talk about this date you were on,” I said. “Was it a first date?”

She shrugged. “They all are.”

Once again I was shocked. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that all the dates I go on are first dates. One after another.” She stared into her glass for a second, then took the rest of her Scotch back in a single gulp.

My blood was boiling. I wanted to shake more words out of her, shake her until I understood. “I didn’t know you were dating,” I said, keeping my voice under control. “You didn’t tell me.”

She looked away. “It didn’t seem like the kind of thing I could say.”

That stung. It had been a fucking lifeline for me, those texts we’d exchanged over the last four years. “I was always honest with you,” I said.

“Oh, were you?” she said. “About everything, including the swimsuit models you were dating?”

“I would have, if you wanted. You didn’t ask.”

“No,” she said. “I did not ask.”

She was jealous again. Oh, I liked it. And it suddenly occurred to my dirty mind that I wasn’t getting on a plane tomorrow. I wasn’t on my usual schedule of a few hours at home before flying somewhere across the world. Sophie and I were alone in this house for the foreseeable future. Just me and that sweet, sexy body.

Maybe I finally had the chance to start something—and finish it.

My whole body went hard at the idea. Not just my dick, which was definitely interested, but the rest of me. My back, my shoulders. The muscles in my legs. Suddenly I was braced, my body keyed up the same way it was right before I took the field. I was a beast when I played my sport, a single-minded motherfucker that had one objective and did not quit. Analysts liked to talk about my strategy when I played, but I always knew that my strength was that nothing ever stopped me when it came to winning a game. I didn’t get discouraged when things weren’t going my way. I didn’t get intimidated by players that were better than me. My body didn’t slow down or stop no matter how long I was kept on the field. If we weren’t winning, I just kept playing until we were. When I had a goal, I did not stop until I won it.

I looked at Sophie and saw a new goal.

Not just a notch on my belt. No way. There was something different about Sophie, some reason I wanted her that had nothing to do with bragging rights. Whatever that different thing was, I did not want to analyze it right now. I just knew we’d never been alone before with nothing but time, and I wanted to get her panties off and my hands on her. Now.

I made myself calm down. Sophie would require a bit of seduction, not just a throw-me-down-and-fuck-me approach. She’d need a little finesse. I’d have to reach into my jet-lagged, caveman brain, which was currently raging at the idea of her fucking a string of first dates like she didn’t think she mattered, and remember what finesse was.

I took her empty glass away from her and dumped the ice in the sink. “You should eat something,” I said.

“I’ll make a sandwich,” she replied. “There’s probably something in the fridge. Are you hungry?”

I had to think about it. I’d just flown from South America, to Europe, to the USA west coast, and I honestly didn’t know. “No. What’s the deal with this place, anyway? Do Jim and Patty keep servants?”

She paused, and I knew she was surprised I didn’t know. It was weird, since I’d bought this house, but the fact was I’d hardly ever spent time here. “Not live-in, no. There’s a maid service once per week and a grocery service. They hire caterers when they entertain.”

So it was just us, then. That was good for what I had in mind. I dumped my own ice out and put the glasses down, turning and leaning on the counter. “Where’s your bedroom?” I asked.

Sophie stared at me, silent, her eyes wide.

I smiled at her. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning on joining you in it. I want to know so I don’t pick the same one.”

Her cheeks flushed. I wanted to lick the gloss off her lips and bite them until they went red. “Oh. Um, upstairs. The second door on the right.”

I nodded. “Is there still a bedroom on the third floor?” I remembered a sort of attic room, with a high, slanted roof, that had been done up as a guest room.

“Yeah, there is.”

“I’ll take that one. So we don’t have to share a bathroom.”

She was still flushing, but she nodded. “Okay.”

I gave her my look, the intense blue-eyed one that intimidated people, and I let it sink in for a long minute until she squirmed. “I know I don’t have to tell you this, but I have to say it anyway. Don’t tell anyone I’m here.”

She met my gaze like she always did and crossed her arms. “What about Jim and Patty? They’re worried sick about you.”

That was nice of them, but Jim and Patty were on the other side of the country right now, which was exactly where I wanted them. “They can know, but they’re the only ones. And I don’t want them coming back here.”

Sophie nodded. “I get it. They’d fuss over you. You should tell them. But Dex, when you go out, you’ll be recognized.”

“That’s why I’m not planning on going out,” I said.

Her eyebrows went up. “At all?”

“At all,” I said. “The press doesn’t know where I am. Neither does my agent, or anyone else I work with. I didn’t even tell Jesetta. That way, she can’t tell the press.”

“You mean no one knows at all? Do you have a car here?”

“Just the ones that stay here.” I had two sports cars, both of which were kept in the garage. “I came from the airport by hired car.”

I could see her puzzling through it. “If you can’t leave the house, what were you planning to do?”

“Honestly? Sleep. Eat. Watch some TV, read a newspaper. I can take care of business by email and phone. Otherwise, I was just going to soak up some peace and quiet, without the entire world on my back.” And figure out how to get back in the game. The game was all I had.

Her features softened. “I understand.”

“But that means you have to keep your end of the bargain and stay quiet.” I walked toward her and took her face in my hand again, tilting her up toward me. “I’m your little secret right now, Sophie. All yours.”

I heard her breath catch. I was close, so close I could smell the soft scent of her perfume, so close I could have brushed my lips on hers. I let her feel me there, how close I was, every inch of me. Then I let her go.

“Eat your sandwich,” I said to her as I left the room. “I’m going to unpack and get some rest.”