Page 65 of Floored

He exhaled. "I wish I would've handled all that better."

I kissed his chest. "I know you do. But I think we're in an okay place now, right?"

Jude cupped the side of my face and drew me up for a soft kiss. "Aye, we are."

When I pulled back, I grinned at him. "So, you're taking me back to Brontë country?"

"If you'd like. You can make me smart, tell me all the things I need to know about these famous ladies."

"Okay." Was it possible to want to mount him again already? Because the man had hardly had any recovery time, but when he started planning trips for me to go back to my literary idols’ hometown because he remembered I had to cut my time short, it made me feel all sorts of things. Sexy things.

"What's that look in your eyes?"

I bit my bottom lip and watched his gaze track the movement. "Take a guess."

His hands moved low down my back, one palm slowly covering my bare bottom. "You must have a lot of faith in my abilities. I'm old, love."

My own hand started exploring. "You feel pretty spry right now."

When he laughed, a sexy, quiet, exhale of a laugh, I pushed on his chest, swung my leg over his lap, and did exactly what I'd imagined earlier.

20

JUDE

By the last handful of hours in Haworth, I'd become addicted to a certain look in Lia's eyes. I'd discovered certain things triggered it.

- Scones (good scones, at least. She ate a dodgy one at our first cafe stop and spit it out into her napkin)

- Ancient school buildings where famous literary icons taught the youth of the village

- Orgasms

These were not listed in order of priority, of course, because during the two nights we spent exploring Haworth Village together, I saw that look numerous times. We entered the church building, and she grabbed my hand, squeezing it so tightly I thought my fingers might fall off. When we walked through the Parsonage Museum, the home that the Brontës’ lived in, I heard her sniff quietly. In alarm, I'd tugged her round to make sure she was okay, but she had such a blinding smile on her face, I found myself smiling in return.

"Happy tears," she whispered. "Thank you for bringing me back."

I kissed her there, soft and quick, and I remember feeling like it was such a normal thing to do.

A quick kiss in the middle of a normal day.

The way she walked close to me as we strolled through the park on our way back to our hotel room to pack and head back to London.

Our fingers brushing against each other’s when we sat and ate a quiet lunch tucked into a small cafe.

For those three days and two nights, with her curled up against me in our rented cottage in the village, everything felt remarkably normal. We didn't rush what we saw or at the places we ate or when leaving the bed in the mornings.

When she worked on her laptop, notes strewn across the sturdy wood table on the stone floor, I worked out in the small garden in the back. There were no major distractions for either of us.

Maybe this was what the rest of the world experienced on a day-to-day basis. But for me, it was bloody foreign. Enjoyable, but still strange. And conversely, it was exactly the kind of thing my parents always told me I was sacrificing to do what I did.

Don't you want a normal life with a family? A woman who loves you and children to raise? What kind of life do you think you'll have chasing a ball around for millions of pounds every year?

It was something my mum had asked me back when I was getting my first offers in the premier league. My dad had given up by that point. He knew my success in the German Bundesliga had cemented my path. It was only a matter of time before I came back home and dominated on one of the strongest tiers of play in the entire world.

As we packed our bags and locked up, I watched Lia with a dawning sense of accomplishment. The look in her eyes, with the exception of the scones, were all from things I'd been able to bring to her.

I'd accomplished something that my family never thought I'd be able to.

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