Page 73 of The Penalty

“Not sure. I can only see you from the waist up.”

“I can change the view if you’d like.” He ran a hand through his hair.

“That will only lead to trouble.” I dipped another piece of crust in the dressing and slowly sucked it into my mouth.

His demeanor changed in an instant. Relaxed and casual morphed into taut and carnal. We’d agreed to keep our video chats on the cleaner side. Needless to say, our track record was atrocious.

“Do you really want to go down this road, Tori?”

Yep.

I dragged the crust through more dressing, held it in front of my mouth, and licked it clean.

“Fucking hell,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t be this hard watching you lick ranch dressing off pizza.”

I choked on the wine I’d just sipped. Spit it out everywhere. It landed on the screen, the keyboard, the counter, my food.

“Was not expecting that,” I said once I’d composed myself and cleaned up. Xavier watched in silence, an amused expression on his face.

“It’s what you get for breaking our policy. Then again, you’re an expert in that department.”

I shot him an incredulous look, scanning his shirtless, tattooed torso through the screen. If that body doesn’t illustrate the saying rules are made to be broken then I don’t know what does.

I grabbed some ice cream from the freezer.

“What flavor?”

“Mint chocolate chip. Does that meet your fussy standards?”

“So long as you don’t drown it in ranch dressing.”

I made a face. “Gross.”

We filled each other in on our schedules for the week. He let me know he’ll be training with the national team in London instead of using the facility near Birmingham as originally planned. We agreed to squeeze in one more video call before my flight to Miami.

“Everything else going alright?” The change in his tone gave me pause. He sounded uneasy.

“Yeah. Why? Something wrong on your end?” You haven’t knocked out Jordan again, have you?

The longer he stayed quiet, the more my anxiety ramped up.

My phone vibrated.

Unknown: Almost time

Frustration overpowered me. “Ugh.” I deleted the text and slid the phone across the counter.

“What happened?” Xavier’s sharp tone pushed through the speakers.

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” I balled my hands into fists.

“You seem awfully stressed about nothing.”

I stabbed the spoon into the ice cream. “It was a wrong number. I must be on some spammer list. I keep getting random texts. It happened to one of the equipment guys too. So annoying.”

“When did it start?”

“I don’t know. June?”

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