Outside Ace’s room, I slip on my socks and then glance back into the room. The two are going at it on the very sofa he screwed some other girl on just a few hours previously.
I run a hand through my hair. I don’t know what’s going on with Ace. He’s usually not like this. Yes, I know he has sex, and I know he has plenty of girls on campus after him, but I could have sworn he had real interest in Stella last semester. Now he’s acting like a manwhore without a conscience, and that’s just not him.
Something is wrong with Ace, but short of stalking in there and pulling the girl off of him, I can’t really address it with him tonight. Or, I guess, it’s morning. I pull out my phone to check the time. It’s nearing two in the morning. I have a ten o’clock class. I’ll deal with Ace tomorrow but for now? I just want a damn place to sleep.
If my apartment wasn’t being fumigated and if breathing pesticides wouldn’t kill me, I’d go home. But I’m stuck here. Somewhere in this place has to be a place for me to crash.
I trot downstairs and find the living room empty. It’s not my first choice, and half the house is still out partying, which means I could fall asleep only to be woken up several times as Ace’s roommates straggle home, but I don’t have many more options.
A couple of raised voices coming from the porch catch my attention. I quietly approach the front door to see who’s arguing, only to jerk back like a character from a bad spy movie when I see Matt and Jack.
Shit. I’m totally not prepared to deal with Matt so soon. The imprint of his body is fresh in my mind. I might still be a little drunk from his kiss. I need some time and distance to build up an immunity to him so I can see him and not want to tear off my clothes and his.
I peek through the sidelight. Whatever Matt is trying to sell, Jack isn’t buying. His arms are crossed and his jaw is set in a hard, unhappy line.
What did Ace say this morning? Better than former National Championship player demoted in favor of true freshman recruit.
Surely he wasn’t referring to himself? Surely…I yank open the door and the two shut up the moment they see me.
“What are you doing here?” I accuse.
“I live here,” Jack says with a grin. It’s a fake grin. There are worry lines around his eyes. The suspicious kernel that formed when I first saw the two arguing starts to take shape.
“This is about Ace, isn’t it?” When the two don’t answer, I reach out and jab my finger into Jack’s chest. “Your quarterback is losing it. He’s drunk, screwing random girls, and acting like a teenager with her first bout of PMS.”
Jack raises his hands. “I’m too drunk to deal with this right now.” What a fricking lame-assed excuse. Jack’s as sober as a judge on Monday mornings. “Good night, Lucy.” He leans down and gives me a kiss on my temple. “Nice jammies.”
I look down at my Harry Potter pajama top and matching shorts. “They are nice,” I yell at his departing back. I turn my irritation on Matt. “What’s wrong with my jammies?”
“Nothing’s wrong with your pajamas, Goldie, but I’m definitely not a fan of your socks. Where’d you get those?”
“Goldie? What happened to Luce? One nickname’s not good enough for you?”
“You looked like a fairy tale tonight with your hair up like that.” Matt spins his finger toward my head. “Are you trying to avoid my question about your socks?”
“What is your obsession with my socks?” I lift one foot up. “These are my dad’s.”
“Then your socks are fine.” There’s a banked heat in his eyes that makes it hard for me to meet them without blushing.
“Speaking of Ace—”
“I wasn’t actually speaking of Ace,” Matt interrupts. “I was speaking of us. You and I and how you’re really heartbroken that we were interrupted before we could take a few more risks. Me, too.” His voice thickens seductively. He steps forward, and I step backward because it’s two hundred and fifty pounds of male coming at me, and he keeps coming until the door is closed behind him. “But we can patch our bruised hearts by seeing each other tomorrow night.”
“I’m busy.” I cross my arms, in part to ward off his charm and in part to keep from grabbing his shirt and whipping it over his head.
“Yes, studying, but you can’t study all the time, and you aren’t studying now.” He pulls gently on my crossed arms, dragging me across the wood floor until there’s hardly a breath between us. “How was the reward, Goldie? And don’t tell me it didn’t exist because you’d be lying. I was there. I felt you. I swallowed your sexy little gasps, and I felt you grind—”
“Okay!” I throw my hand across his mouth. “I felt something. Something good.” His eyes gleam in the night. He’s like this big cat just waiting to devour me, and worse? I want to be devoured. “But it’s late, and my head is muddled. I can’t think or sleep.”
I know I’ve just admitted to him that I can’t stop thinking about him, that he’s actually keeping me up at night, but the words tumble out of me. And once they’re out, I have a certain sense of relief. The tension had been building and building, and it had to come out.
His whole face softens beneath my hand. He presses a small kiss into the palm and then pulls it gently away from his mouth.
Still holding my hand, he asks “Why aren’t you in bed, Goldie?”
“You know why.” It’s embarrassing. “Because Ace brought a girl home.”
His eyes search my face, looking for hurt, I suppose. I’m not hurt. I’m pissed off and tired.
“I think he forgot he said I could stay.”
Matt’s lips thin out in disapproval. “You can’t sleep down here. Half the offense is still at the Gas Station.”
“I know. I wasn’t planning on getting much sleep.”
His eyes dart to the sofa where I left my backpack. “You’re coming with me.” He releases me to go over and shoulder my backpack. He stops near the front door and eyes all the random coats hanging on hooks. “Where’s your coat?”
“Upstairs. Why?” I ask with growing suspicion.
“I guess you don’t need it.” He throws out a hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“No.” Oh no. I’m not going home with him and sleeping in his bed. I wasn’t born yesterday.
“Now, Goldie, despite all evidence to the contrary, I believe you’re a standup woman. If you pinky swear to keep your hands to yourself and not take advantage of me, I’ll believe you.” He wiggles his pinky in my direction.
I can’t even do the pinky swear because I don’t know if I can keep my hands off him. After what happened in the kitchen, he’ll be lucky to make it to his house unmolested. Spending a whole night with him by my side? He’s going to need a chastity belt.
At my hesitation, he points upstairs. “Or you can go upstairs and enjoy Ace’s floor show.”
I tell myself that I’m agreeing to go with him because it’s the only good choice I have left.
“Fine.” I grab one of the coats from the hall and shrug into it. But there’s no way we’re sharing a bed. Absolutely no way. “You’ll be sleeping on the floor.”
13
Lucy
“Are you really making me sleep on the floor?” Matt lies on four yoga mats taped together while I’m ensconced in his cozy bed. His room is about the same size as Ace’s with a small refrigerator, a desk, and a chair situated by the window overlooking the back of the house and into the common area all the houses share. It’s why they call this particular set of student housing the Playground. The guys party out there during the warmer weather and throw snowballs during the colder weather, or so Ace tells me.
There’s a door situated slightly behind the chair that leads to the bathroom. All the bedrooms have their own bathrooms. How nice for them. How awful for the cleaning crew.
Matt also has a nice large bed, larger than my twin, but instead of the sofa running across the far wall like in Ace’s bedroom, there are the yoga mats.
His bed smells nice, like citrus and…well, him
. Of course, I like it, as I seem to like everything about him, and surreptitiously take another deep sniff. I’m going to have to buy an orange and rub it on Heather so that the smell starts having a negative connotation. Otherwise, I’m going to get excited at breakfast every morning.
Want any orange juice?
No, ma’am. It makes me orgasm. Can’t drink OJ in public now.
“Yes, I’m making you sleep on the floor. Why do you have the mats there anyway? If you had a sofa, you’d be able to sleep on that instead of the mats.”
“Because I like to stretch. Good stretching equals fewer injuries. But these mats are meant for stretching, not sleeping.”
“I know you don’t have practice tomorrow and that you don’t have practice for like three weeks, so I don’t care.” I stare at the ceiling so I can avoid looking toward Matt. He got undressed in his bathroom but came out wearing flannel sleep pants and no shirt. And those sleep pants are somewhere on the floor between us. He’d taken them off under the thin blanket covering him.
I almost swallowed my tongue at the sight of shirtless Matt, so I huddled under the covers, hands clenched together, exerting as much control as I can so I don’t launch myself at him. “You’re the reason I have to sleep here anyway. If you and the rest of the team hadn’t made Ace miserable, he wouldn’t have come home with a woman and essentially kicked me out of my room.”
“Why were you there again?” he asks.
I can hear the skepticism in his voice. It’s so typically male of him to think the opposite sex can’t be friends. Ace and I’ve tried to explain it. Most of my female friends get it. Ace’s friends assume we slept together and when Ace moved me into the friend zone, I continued to hang around hoping he’d realize what a prize I truly was.
“Because Ace is my best friend. Has been since third grade. We met in the nurse’s office. Ace had childhood asthma, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know,” he admits. “What were you in there for?”
I prevaricate, not willing to get into the whole diabetes thing tonight. “Wasn’t feeling well.”
He moves again on the mats. It can’t be comfortable down there. I can feel myself weakening.
“What if we sleep with the pillows between us like the Puritans did?” he suggests.
I can’t help but laugh. He’s got a one-track mind. “Did you take that class, too?”
“You bet your ass I did. Who knew the Puritans were so horny?”
“I don’t think it was the Puritans who were horny. I think it was Professor Collinsworth.” Professor Collinsworth is a tiny woman who looks like a raisin with white hair. Her class, Early American History, is all about sex and violence during the colonial period.
“When did you take that class? Were we in that class together?” There’s more rustling, and I can’t help myself from glancing in Matt’s direction. I find him lying on his side, propped up by an elbow, his golden, perfectly formed chest highlighted by the moon.
“Yes, but not until last semester. I didn’t know about it until my roommate Charity told me that it’s a great filler class.” A class to pad your GPA.
“Ahh, my student advisor signed me up for it second semester sophomore year.”
“You have Public Safety with her.”
“Describe her for me.” His head falls onto his hand as if he’s settling in for a nice, long chat. There’s something irresistible about a man who wants to listen about nothing and everything. I mentally add that to the reward column, which keeps getting longer each moment I spend with him.
“She’s about a foot shorter than you with wavy brown hair. Kind of has a ’50s pinup style to her. Wears a lot of silver bracelets on both arms. Jingles like a Christmas tree. Very attractive.”
Matt squints as if trying to picture her. “Not seeing it.”
Neither of us seems interested in sleep. It’s like the first night we were together, when all we wanted to do was talk. “If you slept with her, would you remember her?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I?” He shrugs. His shoulder roll actually highlights his muscles, lifting the pecs up into the light and then down into the shadows. “I haven’t slept with that many women.”
“So you could name them all?” The seemingly unending list of winners that popped up in the hashtag scroll by in my mind’s eye. That bit weighs heavily in the risk column.
He sighs deeply. “Probably not. Does it matter, though? The women I’ve slept with have wanted the same thing. Simple, easy release. There’s no shame in the hookup. Not for the girl or the guy as long as everyone’s on the same page.” He rolls onto his back, taking the peep show with him.
He has me there, and frankly, I don’t want to know his list of past conquests. I don’t know why I brought it up in the first place other than I need a reason to dislike him. I need to remind myself that he’s a risk with a capital “R” because my defenses toward him are so weak right now.
I play my last defense card. “You’re really not going to tell me what’s going on with Ace? What made you and Jack argue earlier?”
“No.”
He shifts again on the mats but doesn’t invite himself into the bed, even though I’m pretty sure he wants to. He’s not the only one.
Finally, I give in, because I’m weak and he’s so damned attractive. “You can sleep on the bed with me, but I swear to you if you try to feel me up tonight, I will cut off your hand.”
He’s up and at the bed before I finish.
Grinning down at me, he says, “I kind of need my hands. Would you consider cutting off a finger? Or three? Because apparently you can still be a damned good linebacker with only a few fingers.”
“Depends on the infraction.” I move over to the far side of the bed. Matt climbs in beside me.
“I like you, Goldie. And your insistence on labeling me as risky does not make me like you any less,” he says cheerfully and tucks his hands under his pillow. His elbow lands close enough to my head that if I simply turned my cheek, I could kiss it.
I force myself to lie still.
“I don’t know what that means,” I tell him.
“It means I’m not done with you.”
I frown. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“Nope. You can’t stop me from liking you. It’s just a thing. Like the sun rising and the tides coming in.”
“You’re bored, aren’t you? You’re an obsessive sort of guy, and without the object of your obsession—aka football—to distract you, you’ve latched on to me for some reason. Is that it?”
“If that argument makes you feel safer, go with it.” The smile is still on his face. I can hear it in his voice. “The thing is, Goldie, if you don’t sleep with me now, it’ll be this niggling regret you’ll have all your life. You’ll be thirty-five and on your wedding day—”
“I’m not getting married until thirty-five?”
“Hush. This is my story. Anyway, you’re on your wedding day. The wedding march begins. The double doors open. At the end of the aisle stands some pasty-faced groom you settled on. In the back of your mind, you think, I wonder what Matty Iverson was like in bed. And then you won’t be able to walk down that aisle. You’re haunted by this lack of knowledge. You turn on your heel and run. Ultimately you ruin this poor sap’s life, make enemies out of his entire family, and spend a shitload of money you’ll never get back because you didn’t take up this opportunity when you had it.”
“That’s quite a line.”
“It’s the truth.”
I roll over and try to forget I’m lying next to the first guy I’ve been attracted to in a long time. Matt has no such problem. His gentle snores fill the air minutes later. It’s a long, frustrating night for me.
14
Lucy
I dream the dirtiest dream that night. It consists of Matt’s very large hands throwing the covers aside and then running themselves all over my body. I moan so loudly when his fingers delve between my legs, I wake myself up. Only to find him sle
eping next to me like a baby.
I place my hand over my galloping heart and breathe a huge sigh of relief that I haven’t woken him up and that I haven’t done what I warned him against—middle-of-the-night creeping.
Matt’s still sleeping and hasn’t moved an inch since last night.
I give myself a few moments to gawk at him. He has a hard, hot body that apparently does not need any covers because the sheet and blanket are kicked down around his thighs, revealing an expanse of golden skin stretched over muscled shoulders, chest, and abs. He’s an athlete, I remind myself. They’re all hardbodies. But as much as I tell myself he’s not my type, I can’t keep the lie in my head long enough to be convincing.
In my dreams, he was exactly my type. Probably my only type. I shudder and try to shake free of the vision of him touching me, kissing me.
His right arm is thrown across his forehead and his left rests across his abdomen. His fingertips are touching the waistband of his underwear and I’m helpless to stop my eyes from drifting downward where an impressive morning erection is barely held inside the stretchy fabric. My fingers itch to reach over and palm that bulge.
Holy hell, I feel lightheaded this morning.
I allow myself ten more seconds of ogling before I push myself upright—only to immediately fall down again. I guess my weakness is due more to low blood sugar than to my inability to control my body’s response to Matt. Or maybe it’s just my body thoroughly betraying me on all levels.
The thump serves to rouse Matt from his sleep. He blinks, slowly, gradually gaining consciousness. I avert my eyes when his hand drifts lower to cup himself. He halts halfway there, as if suddenly remembering my presence in his bed.
He turns his head lazily toward me. “Hey.”
“Good morning.” I try to smile but even that seems like too much of an effort. Is it any wonder I’m cautious? Because here I am in a gorgeous guy’s bed, and I have to tell him I’m not healthy enough to leave. I battle back my embarrassment.
Jockblocked (Gridiron Book 2) Page 12
