Page 51 of Matched

“Better?” His voice was low in my ear. I gave a jerky nod, breathing him in as my arms wrapped around his waist.

He felt so good against me. We fit so well together. Like we were made for each other.

My cock was enjoying the feel of him against me, too, and I couldn’t even bring myself to care that Nate could no doubt feel the effect he had on me.

Because I could feel that Nate was affected as well.

“Nate,” I whispered.

“Why is this so fucking hard?” he muttered, releasing me.

“Hard in more ways than one,” I pointed out, my cheeks heating, and he gave me a wry smile. I noticed his face was flushed, too.

“Too soon to joke about that. Shit. I don’t know what I was thinking. I feel like I’m losing my mind when I’m with you.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Glancing back at the basketball hoop, I realised the timer had run down when Nate had been…uh, basically fondling me. “Want to just call it a draw?”

His mouth twisted. “It’s probably best. Maybe next time we meet up, we should be in a group setting.”

“I agree.” We’d managed to mostly behave up until this point, but who knew what might happen next time?

“Alright. Let’s call it a night, and I’ll see you at football?”

“Yeah. I’ll be there. I’m not gonna miss any more matches if I can help it.”

His soft smile took my breath away. “Good. We missed having you there. You’re a part of the team, even if you’re not training with us anymore.”

“Thanks. I’ll be there. I promise.”

20

“We’ve got this. Only forty-five minutes to go, and we’ll be in the southern division semi-final. The semi-fucking-final.” Travis took a moment to make eye contact with everyone in our huddle of players. “I dunno about the rest of you, but I’m planning on winning this thing.”

“Fuck, yeah!” Ander shouted. “Let’s kick their asses!”

We filed back out onto the pitch, taking our positions for the second half of the match. Across from us, Kingston Uni’s team looked just as determined, but we were 2-0 up and determined to keep our lead. It was a home match, so we had a sizeable number of supporters, but Kingston University was local, and their team’s supporter numbers almost equalled ours.

Somewhere out there, my sister was watching.

Charlie was, too.

I couldn’t let myself think about any of that now, though. Every single team member had an important part to play, and I wasn’t going to let any of my teammates down.

The whistle blew, and we began.

It was one of those matches where everything just seemed to go right. The rush of the game, the wind in my face, the grass beneath my feet—all my senses were heightened, andevery time my boot connected with the ball, I felt alive. By the time Bryan, our coach, shouted that we had five minutes remaining, the score was 3-1. Five minutes longer. That was all we needed.

I tackled Kingston’s number nine when he hit the box, sliding across the grass to boot the ball away from him. He went down, clutching his leg, and even though I hadn’t touched him, the ref came running over. I paced up and down, breathing deeply so I wouldn’t get riled up when Kingston’s players were shouting for a red card and a penalty kick. Getting angry solved nothing—it only led to yellow cards, or even red, and I wasn’t going to jeopardise our chances for anything.

“Fucking bastard, playing it up for the ref, trying to get a penalty. You didn’t even touch him,” Liam huffed as he jogged up to me.

“I know. They want the win.”

“They’re not gonna get it.” He grinned at me, holding out his hand, and we exchanged fist bumps.

The referee conferred with the assistant ref for a moment, and then he jogged back over and blew his whistle. “No foul.”

A cry of outrage came from the Kingston players, and there was some pushing and shoving, but the game finally got back underway.

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