I shrug off her compliment. “Now that I can play again, I’m focused on nothing but soccer. I’m sure Adler Beck has got plenty of women to keep him occupied. I won’t be one of them.” The words are assured. Based on Ellie’s disappointed sigh as we reach our lockers, she believes me.

I wish I was as certain.

My phone buzzes just as I return to my locker from the showers. I scan the messages as I pull on a clean tank top and shorts. One stands out. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Ellie.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve—uh, just going to grab something.”

“Okay.” She accepts my nonspecific answer despite a less than Oscar-worthy delivery. I sound like a freshman trying to sneak out of the house in high school. Not that my father was ever home to listen to any lies.

I step outside the locker room. The hallway is empty. Right or left? The text from a German number I’m assuming belongs to Beck was as vague as my answer to Ellie. Just a Come outside.

I’ve barely made it more than ten feet down the hallway when he appears, opening a side door that blends in with the walls painted with Kluvberg’s signature shade of royal blue. Beck beckons me inside, and I comply, surveying the tiny storage closet with a critical eye.

“Seriously? What is it with you and small—”

He cuts me off by shoving his tongue into my mouth and then walking me backward until cool cinderblock presses into my spine. I forget about any back pain when he tucks his fingers under the hem of my shirt. Swallow my complaints about his choice of venue when he trails his fingertips upward through the droplets of residual water still clinging to my skin from my hasty shower.

Beck breaks our kiss so he can growl in my ear. “Do you know what I was thinking about when I was watching you play?”

“World peace and what you ate for breakfast?”

His rough palm reverses course, sliding back down my stomach and dipping inside the waistband of the athletic shorts I’m wearing. Thank God I just showered, or a very unsexy belt of sweat would have greeted him.

“Doing this,” he whispers in a low, sexy rasp that further ignites the heat already rippling through my body. I lean my head back against the cinderblock, biting down on my bottom lip as he fingers me. Watching him watch me. Imagining him imagining doing this to me. “Come for me, Saylor.”

I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to unhear the sound of Adler Beck murmuring my name, wrapped in layers of lust. I’m not even touching him, merely riding his hand while he does all the work.