Open Play: Ladies, Goals, The Everything System in-between

Chapter 44: [44] "The Fortress Has No Locked Doors"

Luc didn’t actually need the bathroom.

He left the media room with the excuse hanging in the air behind him. Hugo didn’t question it. Hugo never questioned anything that wasn’t football.

The hallway outside curved left toward the east wing.

Valérie’s footsteps from minutes ago were still fresh in his memory. A woman who walked like she owned every square foot of marble beneath her, because she did.

He followed the sound of a phone call instead of any directions.

---

Her study sat behind a set of double doors thicker than the ones in the media room. No security guard posted outside this one. She didn’t need to be guarded from the people she let inside her own house.

Luc didn’t knock.

He pushed the door open the same way he walked into any room.

Valérie stood by the window with her back to him, phone pressed to her ear, she was catching the last of the afternoon light.

"No," she said into the phone, flat and final. "I don’t care what the sponsorship clause says. Renegotiate it or lose the account."

She hung up without a goodbye.

She didn’t turn around immediately.

"What were you looking for? A bathroom or something?"

"Yes."

"Liar. This house has six of them. You’d have had to actively avoided stumbling into one."

Luc closed the door behind him. The latch caught with a soft click.

"I got lost," he said.

Valérie finally turned. The silk blouse from earlier had lost its top button somewhere between the media room and here, whether by accident or design Luc didn’t bother guessing.

"You’re a terrible liar of a man. You know that right."

"I don’t lie to you. I just don’t always say the true things out loud first."

[System Notification]

[Impending Reward: +15 General points, +15 Skill points and System upgrade]

He’d seen this notification enough times now that it barely registered as a system prompt anymore. It registered as a weather report... "Impending reward for doing what?" Luc asked himself.

Valérie set her phone down on the desk with the screen facing down, trying to seperate business from whatever was about to happen.

"Dropping three points to a Ligue side that’ll soon be fighting relegation," she said, crossing the room slowly. "And yet here you are. In my house. In my study. Looking too comfortable for a man who should be reviewing tape."

"I’ve reviewed it already."

"And?"

"Normandie sat in a low block we couldn’t break mostly because Hugo’s out. We’ll fix it before Tensé."

Valérie stopped a foot away from him. Close enough that the jasmine and tobacco scent he’d come to associate with danger filled the space between them.

"You’re very calm for a man who’s two goals behind," she said.

"Panic doesn’t score goals."

"No. I guess your right, it doesn’t."

She reached up and undid the second button of her blouse, slow and deliberate, in a motion designed for seduction. Valérie didn’t do anything without intent.

"Your... What’s even your relationship? Juliette isn’t around this week, I was informed."

"You checked."

"I check everything, Luc. It’s how I stay rich." Her hand flattened against his chest. "And you came looking for a bathroom in the one wing of this house that doesn’t have one."

He didn’t deny it.

"You came for me didn’t you."

"I guess you could say that," Luc said as he held her waist with one hand and pulled her closer. Her breast was pressed up against his chest.

"Easy, Beaumont. You want to go another round, huh? I had to pay the hotel last time for destroying their bed frame."

"The frame wasn’t strong enough. It wasn’t our fault."

"Or you thrusted to hard, which is it. I had issues walking straight after that, you know."

"You didn’t tell me--"

Valérie began biting his lower lip.

She reached down and grabbed what was already hard as a rock.

"My God, Beaumont. Come here." She pulled him towards her desk and sat on it. "You don’t know how long I’ve been thirsty for this."

Valérie did the work for both of them, unbuttoning and pulling off whatever needed unbuttoning and pulling off.

She wrapped her legs around Luc’s waist.

Ahhhh-- "Here it is, Fuck!"

The desk shook and her paperwork scattered all over the floor.

Ahhh. Mmmm. "Harder, Beaumont. Harder!"

Luc increased his pace, the thrusts had almost emptied out the whole surface of the desks, papers and accessory everywhere.

"Fuck! Beaumont I’m about to---"

Ahhhhh

[System Notification]

[Objective complete]

[Reward: +15 General points, +15 Skill points and System upgrade]

[Balance: 15 General Points, 20 Skill Points]

[System upgrade in process....]

"Wait! We’re not done yet." Valérie said as she could barely get up to her feet. "Let’s continue this in my room."

---

Luc lay back against the headboard, breathing slow, the ceiling above Valérie’s bedroom more ornate than anything he’d grown up under.

Valérie was beside him, one arm resting across his stomach, an unlit cigarette between two fingers because apparently even she respected Luc enough not to smoke while he was there.

"You’re quiet," she said.

"I’m always quiet after."

"No," she said. "What are you thinking about? Tell me."

He was thinking about the wager, Tensé on Sunday, Phocéen the following Saturday. All of it sat behind his eyes the way it always did, even now, even here.

"Two goals," Valérie said, reading him without needing to ask. "You’ll get them easy."

"I know, I just need the team to give me the ball in better positions. Hugo’s the only one who reads space like that. Everyone else is still learning the dialect."

Valérie propped herself up on one elbow, studying him in the low light.

"You talk about football like other men talk about war or something. It’s unsettling. I find it attractive honestly, but it’s still unsettling."

"Most things I do are both."

She laughed, it was low and genuine, the laugh she rarely let anyone hear outside of a boardroom.

"Get dressed, American," she said, finally rolling away from him. "Before Hugo sends someone looking for the bathroom you never found."

---

Luc dressed without rushing.

He found his shirt draped over a Chippendale armchair, something he probably couldn’t afford, atleast not before Valérie tripled his salary.

Valérie watched him from the bed, a silk robe loosely tied to her body, her dark hair down for once instead of pinned into the severe shape she wore to board meetings.

"Tensé," she said. "Sunday. I expect goals."

"You’ll get them."

"And Phocéen after that."

"I know the schedule, Valérie."

"I know you do," she said. "I just like hearing you say it. It reassures me more than you know."

Luc buttoned his cuffs and didn’t bother arguing with the framing. She’d built an empire out of treating people as assets. But now, she was starting to slowly become one of his.

He left the bedroom the same way he’d entered the study, a man who’d accomplished exactly what he’d set out to do, even if the bathroom excuse had been the worst lie he’d told all season.

---

The media room hadn’t changed in his absence.

Cillian was face-down on the rug, his controller was abandoned, he was complaining loudly about a hamstring he’d pulled celebrating a goal that wasn’t real.

Hugo was still on the couch with his leg locked in its brace, his eyes were locked on the screen with the same intensity he brought to studying tactics.

Bastien sat quietly in his armchair, his sparkling water was still mostly full.

"You got lost for almost forty minutes," Cillian said, not lifting his head from the rug. "This house doesn’t have forty minutes of bathroom... except it does?"

"It’s a big house," Luc said.

Hugo didn’t look up from the screen, but something in the way he adjusted his shoulders suggested he wasn’t fooled. Hugo rarely needed to look at something to understand it.

"You smell like her perfume," Hugo said quietly. Hugo went back to the game.

"Smart kid," Luc thought.

---

The drive back into the city started loud and stayed that way.

Cillian had insisted on a ride, claiming his mum’s car was "having an episode," which Luc suspected meant he simply didn’t want to ask her to come pick him up or pay for a cab, begging the question of how he got here in the first place. Bastien climbed into the back without complaint.

The Porsche’s engine cut through the quiet hills as they descended back toward the city, oak trees giving way to streetlights.

"So," Cillian said from the passenger seat, already reaching for the radio dial without asking. "Tensé on Sunday. You think they’ll actually show up or?"

"What-- why won’t they show up," Luc said, eyes on the road. "Every Ligue Beta side that gets a cup draw against us treats it like their World Cup final."

"Brutal," Cillian muttered. "Imagine peaking against us."

From the back seat, Bastien spoke without prompting, which was rare enough that both Luc and Cillian glanced at the rearview mirror.

"Hugo said their right-back overlaps constantly," Bastien said. "If we isolate their left side early, we punish the gap before they adjust."

Luc met his eyes briefly in the mirror.

"You’ve been paying attention to Hugo a lot."

"I always pay attention," Bastien said. "Nobody usually asks what I noticed. But he does."

Luc didn’t respond to that immediately. He took the turn onto the main road instead, the city skyline rising ahead of them.

"I’m asking now," Luc said. "Keep talking."

Bastien did.

Cillian groaned about being ignored, reached for the radio again, and the Porsche disappeared into the late evening traffic, three players and one domestic cup game incoming, all of them driving straight into December.