In Touch (Play On #1) (19 page)

With nothing else to say, he murmured, “Thank you.”

“But I need you to try. I don’t think I have the strength to watch you suffer.”

Padraig tried to make light of it. “Ach, sure, there’ll be no suffering unless I have to hear the moaning whale songs again.”

Chuckling, she stepped out of his embrace and punched him gently in the chest. “No moaning whales.”

“Thank Saint Anthony.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ve got plenty to keep us busy. Your body will be so overwhelmed with pleasure, it won’t even know any pain.”

That sounded promising. “Ya do?”

She ticked them off on her fingers. “Yoga, massage…” She winked, then continued, “Meditation, and I have a new acupressure technique I want to try on you.”

“And?” Padraig prompted. As he stepped forward, she stepped back until they were circling the table.

“Nature walks and fresh air, great soul food.”

He reached for her but she evaded his grab. “Aren’t we missing something, Gill?

“Hmm…” She tapped her finger to her pursed lips. “I don’t think so.”

Having stalked her out of the kitchen and through the small dining area, they were back into the living room, the dying fire casting shadows on Gillian’s legs.

All of a sudden, she was shy. “Perhaps…”

“Admit it.”

“What? Sex?”

“Now that’s what I’m talking about.”

She rolled her eyes, which made him feel two feet tall and question how awesome he thought he was. She had a way in that.

“Did you know that the pleasure from sex, and especially an orgasm, will override any pain you may suffer from? At least while the endorphins last.” She laughed. “There is something called the gate control theory. There are two tracks going to the brain, one for feeling to travel on, one for pain. Feeling travels faster on its track to the brain than pain does. That’s why moms will rub a sore spot on a child. The feeling of the rubbing will reach the child’s brain faster than the pain that is there.”

“Lovely.” Her smarts turned him on, as well as her ability as a physical therapist, but he couldn’t focus on her words for his attention had shifted to her lips and her hands, fluttering about as she became animated in her passion. Her chest rose and fell when she drew deep breaths between strings of words, blurted out as she did when she was overwhelmed with her own excitement.

“Did you hear what I said, Padraig?”

“All of it?”

Gillian shook her head at him. “Doesn’t matter, anyway… I’ll take care of you.”

And that’s when Padraig knew his heart was gone. Lost to the woman who stood before him. She bent to feed the fire with wood from a basket beside the hearth. The smell of wood smoke so much stronger and fulfilling than the coal and turf they burned at home in Cork. A slow, melancholy solo cello played, desperation in the notes as the song called out for a response from some unknown lover. The music instilled in him that same sense of yearning.

Gillian’s hair had fallen over to one side of her head as she blew on the embers to light the kindling. He could resist no longer and walked up behind her. He grabbed both sides of her hips and rubbed his erection against her backside.

On an airy gasp, she straightened, and pressed her bum against him. He slid his one hand from her hip to her breast then pulled her deeper into his chest and groin, kissing the bare side of her neck. Her hands rested over his, following his fingers to cup and embrace her body. When he led their joined hands over her nipple, a groan hummed in her throat.

As he kissed his way up her neck to her ear, she directed his other hand down to her vulva where she pressed his palm. He dragged his fingers back and forth, the thin material of her dress shifting, causing friction against her sensitive area.

She turned in his arms and shoved him gently in the sternum, forcing him to take a step back. As much as he wanted to pull her back against him, he waited. He braced at a soft ticking at the window. Gillian must have noticed since she smiled. “Just some low branches outside the window. Look at me, Padraig.”

He did. Her eyes on his, she lifted her sundress over her head and let it drop to the floor. She paused as if to let him enjoy the view for a moment. She wore soft pink knickers and matching bra with lace at the top. So beautiful his throat tightened.

As if she had orchestrated her striptease with the music, the symphony swelled when she unclasped her bra and let it slip off her arms onto the floor. Her gaze never leaving his, she stepped out of the panties, toeing them to the side. Sweet, sweet agony. But he still waited.

She stepped forward and rose to kiss him gently on the lips. There was nothing he could do but wonder at her calm while a storm raged inside his own body. She pulled his jersey up over his head, then kissed along his collar bones, letting the shirt drop. Could he touch her now? Something told him no, not yet. She ran her fingertips over his chest as if reading Braille, deciphering without words what he held inside, what he couldn’t reveal to her any other way.

Hooking her thumbs into his shorts and boxers, she urged both down in one sweep. She helped him to step out, then again ran her fingertips up his legs, back to front, kissing the tip of his cock as she passed. Sweet Jesus, he wasn’t that strong. So engrossed in this woman and the play she made with her caresses.

And then silence. The CD had finished, and with the hush, the beating of his heart filled the absence. She stepped into him and sucked first one nipple then the other, her arms around his waist, her fingers trailing up and down his spine.

No more. He grabbed the back of her head and kissed her with urgency, their tongues and lips in a brutal dance for domination. When she broke them apart, he gasped out loud.

She took only a moment to stretch a throw blanket on the floor in front of the fire, then tossed the couch pillows randomly on top. Her hand reached for his and tugged gently.

In the back of his mind, the ticking of the branches at the window registered over the crackle of the fire. Gillian acted a choreographer to his movements, gently directing him over the top of her, where he rested between her thighs. Both of their movements slow and tender, she set the pace, a rhythm he strained against to increase.

His muscles tightened with the need, and when she finally whispered “now” into his ear, a greedy bastard, he filled her, and she arched in response, her breasts beautiful as they spread to her sides. Her face flushed, lips parted. He wanted her deeper so hooked his arm under the small of her back and rolled her on top of him. When she seated his length, he groaned, “Oh, God.”

With the fire behind them, her face was in shadows. And he desperately wanted to see what her expression said. Ecstasy? Love? Passion? For he needed to capture this moment to retain for the rest of his life. One that he could recall at whim.

Hold on.

But he couldn’t, and he called out her name in his release.

Here, he wasn’t so brave or strong. Not here. Everything so foreign and unforgiving. Unlike Ireland, the US had an undercurrent of panic and rush that didn’t permeate the beat of life in Ireland. He couldn’t put his finger on it until now. That sensation that he should be doing something, anything other than what he was. Now, he understood. Because that same panic had his gut and balls gripped and twisted into a vise.

Since dawn, he had stood at the glass sliding doors, staring out the back of the cabin. Beyond the back deck was a small clearing around the house, then thick forest. Gillian had said there was a small lake about a quarter of a mile along a path.

As she had promised, she’d filled his night and the early hours of the morning with pleasure, intense orgasms but also tender and soft moments that had kept him busy, his mind on nothing else but Gillian and him. She alternated feeding him, massaging his body, and long sessions on the floor.

He hadn’t even thought about the pain in his back or the pills that offered relief. She had been his crutch.

Now, unsteady on his feet, he needed to move to get his balance back. He threw off the blanket, drew the sliding door quietly open, and stepped onto the deck. Cold air engulfed him, his breath misting in front of his face. He could imagine his balls shriveling in protest. He braced against the sudden change, his muscles tightening, goose bumps running the length of his arms. Hopping along on the balls of his feet, he danced to the railing.

Bring it on.

He grasped the ledge that ran the length around the deck, waiting for his body to acclimatize to the biting cold. Gillian had said they were quite far north.

A cacophony of birdsong filled the air, screeches and titters, echoes of the same in reply. It smelled of pine and wet earth. He recognized the evergreens sharing space with other types of non-coniferous trees, maples and birches, a type with a peach-colored trunk, the bark in white peels curling off the tree. A mist hovered above the ground, but no higher than the lowest boughs of some of the trees, maybe up to his knees if he was off the deck.

If he didn’t move. If he didn’t do fucking something, he was going to go mad with the need.

He did press-ups against the railing, but when that didn’t help, he began their game warm-up routine, then finally his stretches. When he dipped to touch his toes, his boys were indeed shriveled to prunes. Poor feckers.

His agitation hadn’t lessened, his need consuming every thought, every skip of the imaginary rope as he bounced around the deck like a madman. He grabbed his hair with both fists, a silent scream bursting through his teeth. He wouldn’t wake Gillian, who had worked so hard to keep his mind off his need, his addiction. There, he said it. But it didn’t feel any better recognizing what it was in truth.

Launching himself over the railing, he landed with an awkward thud in the dewy grass. From a crouch, he shot off toward the trailhead like a runner out of the blocks. Even when the trail grew tighter, branches catching his arms and scratching at his legs, he kept his speed. Any low branch that crossed the path, he flew at, grabbing the rough bark and letting the momentum swing his body forth. He stumbled and righted, limbs flailing to find purchase.

The farther he ran into the woods, the more dense they became, the trail trickling down to little less than an animal passage, overgrown by a leafy ground cover. Up ahead, the sky brightened and an oval of light beckoned. He ran harder, leaping great lengths of earth like a hurdler, his head pounding, a stitch in his side, lungs heaving. His toes stung from stubbing them on the rock and roots on the way.

The sparkle of the water was ahead. The density of the forest lifted, the air refreshing after the heavy scent of moss and decay. As he burst from the line of trees onto the sand, a piece of large driftwood caught his right leg, and by association, his free boys.

The pain was excruciating, thrusting him forward. He tucked and rolled in the sand, letting the slight hill to the water roll him to the edge, as they had done when they were kids on the dunes outside of Crosshaven during the short summers in Ireland.

When he stopped, he curled into the fetal position, waiting for the pain to lapse. He was nauseated from the sting, so much more than in his back. He was going to retch, but then it passed. Padraig unfurled his body until he lay prone, his arms and legs stretched out into a star. The water lapped at the fingertips of his left hand.

His body tingled, blood pumping from the run. The adrenaline turning his senses on high. The soft wet sand, pebbles under his shoulders, the distant cry of a heron, a crescent moon fading in the daylight.

He lay there, spread eagle, for God knew how long. And with every moment filled with inactivity, came again the despair at where he was in his life, what he could have been and who he was now. Nothing, that was what. He remembered the disappointment from his friends and teammates, but especially his ma and da. The looks on their faces after word had gotten out. When he’d met them in the pub. The worst were the endless texts and the media. Fuck the press. And his fans. Jaysus, it didn’t take much for loyalties to be lost.

“Are you done?”

He hadn’t heard her approach, so lost in his own self-pity. He had to strain his neck to see her over his right shoulder. Only in his jersey, she stood there with a towel wrapped over her arm.

He lifted his head to acknowledge her, then let it fall back onto the sand. “Not really.”

“After this weekend, you will be.”

“I doubt it.”

She dangled the towel over his face, which he snapped out of her grasp and covered his nudity.

“Or maybe just get the hell out in general.”

She stood close to his head so that a view of her legs from toe to waist crowded his vision from anything else. And just like that, the fine length of flesh distracted him back from the dark place he had gone.

“C’mon then.” She offered a hand up, but he yanked her down to the sand. Her eyes were still glazed from lack of sleep, her face flushed from the same. She had tied her hair up into a messy bun at the top of her head that Padraig released when she rested her upper body on his chest, her legs tucked at an angle behind her.

He ran his fingers through her hair. Beautiful. So much better tousled naturally than when she tied it into a braid.

“That’s gonna itch later.”

“Huh?”

“All that sand you’re getting into my hair.”

“I’ll wash it for you in the shower.”

A slight nod and smile. “That’d be nice.”

She began to trace a fingertip around his face, along his eyebrows, then down his nose and around his mouth. He relaxed into the caress and closed his eyes. This woman could do wonders for his nerves. She pressed at one temple, then the other, then worked her way down his nose and mouth, along his jaw line. Almost certainly not random with Gillian, using her acupressure to keep his demons at bay.

“I’m sorry for last weekend.”

“I know you are. We wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”

“I didn’t want anyone to know I only plan to be here a short while.” God, he could fall asleep right here. “It’s not their business, anyway.”

“But it is. That’s what you still don’t get.”

“How is my life their business?”

“Because your life intersects their own. Your paths are the same right now. Rugby and the club.”

“Perhaps…”

“You can’t live your life without impacting others. That’s not a choice we have. But you can choose what footprint you leave behind. Do you want to be remembered as a dickhead? That self-absorbed asshole that came over from Ireland?” She had grabbed his hand and was pressing up each finger, starting at the base and working up to the tip.

Jaysus, she wasn’t holding back, and the a-word sounded like the devil coming out of her mouth. “How did you become so wise in the ways?”

Her face turned serious. “You don’t think I’ve suffered any loss before? That pain is only reserved for Padraig O’Neale?”

He was a complete tosser, but it wasn’t her that made him feel that way. She’d never do something so immature and base. “Andrew?”

“Yes.”

“The one who played for the Blues?”

“The very same.”

The pieces started to fit. “So you’re trying to save me now. Is that it?”

She brushed his hand away and locked eyes with him so there would be no mistaking her next words. “No, I’m trying to save myself.”

“By helping me?”

“Something like that, but you have to help me, help you.”

“I’m trying, Gill, but you have no idea what I went through over there.”

“Then tell me. I’m all ears.” She switched to his other hand, repeating the pressure points along his fingers and palm. She worked a circle in his hand, starting from the outside and working her way into the center.

He opened his eyes. “What are you doing?”

“This is a calming technique used on children.” She stopped and stared out at the lake as if gathering her thoughts. “OTs use this to calm kids with special needs, ya know with autism or behavioral disorders, if they are worked up or even if they aren’t. The pressure has been proven to help them relax. They use it at the schools, training the kids to do it on their own hands when they feel they are going to melt down.”

“OTs?”

“Occupational Therapists.” Starting at one shoulder, she squeezed along his arm. She counted lightly under her breath until she reached ten at his wrist, then switched to his other shoulder and did the same.

“You’re amazing.” He stared hard until she brought her gaze back to him. “I am so turned on by your passion for what you do.”

She peeked at the towel that had tented at his crotch and laughed. “I can see that.” She grasped his hand and held. “I feel the same about you. Your passion for rugby.”

“You have no idea.”

“I’m still waiting for you to tell me.”

And so he did. From the day everything had turned to shit to landing in Michigan almost a month ago. He revealed how his one dream was to make it to the World Cup, that twenty years or more were spent in anticipation of playing for Ireland. He had watched Ireland at every previous Cup, living every moment as if he had been on the pitch with the team. He told her about when the teams lined up for their national anthems, how he craved to be one standing there in the Irish jersey, singing the rugby anthem for both the republic and northern Ireland. He had imagined that day so often that he could feel the wind across his face, the words belting from his lungs. The pride on his mum and dad’s faces when he announced it. Celebrating his selection. One of the chosen.

He didn’t want to end up middle-aged, watching matches on the telly, having regrets, knowing there could have been a different path for him. He had fucked things up badly but wasn’t sure how to make it right.

She listened to his story with no judgment, no advice, no pity or otherwise, only held his hand in hers.

“So that’s about it, like. All that time, energy, and work gone—just demolished—in one bad choice.” Emotion started building in his throat again and he swallowed hard.

“You still have the Blues. And me.”

He turned his head to face her. “I know.”

“You do?”

“Now, I do.”

“So you’re going to try harder? Put your heart into the game here?”

“I have been. Haven’t ye noticed?” He smiled to let her know he was kidding.

Gillian made monkey lips at him, which made him laugh.

He pulled at her neck so he could reach her lips. A soft kiss since he didn’t know what else to say.

Her lips lingered, but then she pulled away. “How does that saying go? ‘As I look back on my life, I realize that every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being redirected to something better.’”

Gently pushing her aside, he got up and wrapped the towel around his waist. “Okay, so, let’s go eat.” He wasn’t hungry, not for food anyway, but enough had been said. When they came to the path into the trees back to the cabin, Padraig hoisted her up in his arms. She went willingly, hooking her hands behind his neck.

“This is awful chivalrous of you, Mr. O’Neale.”

He smiled down at her. “The least I can do.”