Kulti(94)

Eventually, I’d found that person. Not a model and not a physique competitor in a bodybuilding competition. Just me.

Plus, I’d seen Kulti’s ex-wife and his ex-girlfriends. He liked them tall-ish, long-haired with small breasts, just between the line of slim and fit.

Which was not my small C-cups that didn’t shrink no matter how much bench pressing I did, or my hamstrings and butt that only fit into the most stretchy of jeans after ten minutes of wiggling, jumping and tucking. I didn’t even think about my face because that was a whole different matter. It had scars and freckles that I couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything about.

“Fine.” Dropping my hands, I held them up before pulling my shirt over my head. Screw it. What were boobs and some freckles, when he’d seen me without make-up nearly every day for the past two months?

His lids dropped low over his hazel-ish eyes, but he didn’t say a word. Instead he watched me with that heavy gaze as his hands wrapped over my sides just below the smallest part of my ribs. They were cool and firm. I couldn’t help but notice his hands were big. I only just barely managed not to make a sound at his touch. I mean, Marc touched me all the time. It was no big deal.

His hands slid up, his palms so wide and fingers so long, he could almost reach all the way around.

Then he squeezed, and I let out a really unfeminine grunt.

The German didn’t break eye contact with me once, even as his thumbs pressed into the hollow between my ribs, the pads resting on the scraped-up skin above the flat muscle of my abs. My nostrils flared as he squeezed a second time, my heart racing, racing, racing under cover. The hair on my arms prickled in response to him.

Did he need to look at me while he did this? “I’m fine. If anything, they’re just a little bruised,” I said in a controlled voice that didn’t even hint at the fact the big organ right in the center of my chest thought it was heading into Nascar.

One thumb absently stroked a line upward to the elastic band of my bra, which I couldn’t help but remember was literally just a centimeter from the bottom swell of my breast. “You’ll be fine,” he stated confidently like he had x-ray powers that told him everything was all right.

His hands dropped from my stomach.

I swallowed, trying to get myself together. “My, uh, keys are in the side zipper of my bag. Can you grab them for me or pass me the bag so I can get them?”

He shot me a look, reaching for my bag off the ground before unzipping the pocket and fishing my keys out, holding them clasped in his palm. “I would drive you home but…” His lips curled over his teeth, almost as if he were going to smack them.

But.

“Don’t worry about it.” I didn’t ask him if he couldn’t. He couldn’t. It was that simple. I didn’t know why exactly, but the clues were there.

He didn’t even blink or look mildly uncomfortable, I understood that much. He nodded once, his lips still tight. “I’ll follow you.”

Follow me home? “That’s all right. I promise. I can make it home in one piece.”

“I’ll follow you.”

Dear God. “I’m sure you have better things to do. Trust me, it’s fine.”

“I don’t. I’ll follow you home,” he insisted. I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off. “Get in.”

That was exactly how I found myself leading an international soccer icon to my garage apartment.





Chapter Seventeen





It was the knocking.



It was the freaking knocking that finally made me roll out of bed.



I was going to kill whoever was on the other side of the door. Okay, maybe not kill but seriously maim.



The fact that my feet were dragging behind me at ten o’clock in the morning was the first example of how horrible I felt. Though I knew better, I wasn’t actively stretching any of my muscles, which explained why I felt even worse than the day before.



“Coming!” I barked out when the knocking became even more obnoxious.



Murder. Screw it. Maybe I could get away with a crime of passion.



When I looked through the peephole that my dad had installed the minute after he’d finished helping me move in, I thought about slapping myself in the face to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.



“Coach?” I asked as I unlocked the top lock and then the bottom, pulling the door

open just a crack.



His big German face stared at me through the slit. “Rey is fine. Let me in.”



He would like being called Rey—king in Spanish.



I let him in.



Only after I opened the door, did I think about the fact that I’d just rolled out of bed a second earlier. My hair must have resembled something out of John Frieda’s worst nightmare and my face… puffy. It was definitely puffy and drool-stained, definitely. “I just got up,” I explained weakly, watching him lock the door once he was inside.