The Hot Shots: Prequel (Indiana Panthers Book 0)

by K. M. Bishop

  Finally, I saw him literally squatting down below other players as if he was hiding so I couldn’t find him. What the hell?

  I was hit hard.

  My body lurched and my feet left the ground. I was flying through the air. And my side hurt badly. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck.

  When I landed on the ground the wind was instantly knocked out of me. I saw the world spinning around as I tried to open my eyes and I began gasping for breath. Oh, this was so hard. What in the hell had just happened?

  “Hey, you ok?” Joey was standing over me now.

  I blinked several times and then started to get the feeling back in my body as the air finally seeped back into me. I rolled over and got to my feet stretching out my back and trying to regain my composure. My body felt wrecked, but I was pretty sure I’d be ok.

  That was when I saw Mark laughing his ass off to the side. He and Ricky both were slapping each other high fives. They had planned this. Were they actually trying to hurt me? If I got hurt then Ricky would be next in line to be the starting quarterback. He’d had that spot until last spring when the coach told me I would have it. Then when Coach Targus retired unexpectedly due to health issues, the new coach had accepted those recommendations.

  “That son of a bitch…”

  I walked over to Mark and punched him square in the mouth. His face collapsed and he fell to the ground. And just as was expected, Ricky took a big swing at me. I ducked under it and tackled him to the ground. The second his head the dirt, I was on top of him throwing hard right hands into his jaw.

  “BREAK IT UP! BREAK IT UP!”

  I heard the coach screaming and a moment later I felt several hands on me pulling me off Ricky.

  He was still lying on the ground wondering what month it was.

  Mark was getting to his feet now, his lips smeared with blood. His eyes were filled with rage, but there were now several players between him and me. The smile was wide on my face and it felt good. That bastard. I was sure that this wasn’t the last I’d have to deal with those two, but I would be ready whenever they were.

  “Dude, that was awesome,” Jacob said standing beside me holding me back.

  “I agree,” I said.

  Coach smith was now standing amongst us. His face was as red as his coaching shirt. “What the hell is going on here? There is no place on this field for this type of malarkey. Is that clear! The next time this happens—and I mean for everybody—those involved will owe me fifty laps and will sit on the bench the next game. Do you hear me?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Back to work!”

  We started to line up again.

  “This isn’t over punk,” Ricky said.

  “Looking forward to it,” I replied.

  After my shower, I received another text from Lucinda. I ignored it. She was asking me if I wanted to grab a bite to eat after practice. When would she ever learn? I had so many other things to think about. I’d told her how I felt and that we were done. I wasn’t sure what else could be done. I figured I would just ignore her.

  When I got back to my room, it was nice and quiet. Jacob had a project he was working on, so he went straight to the library after class. I had the place to myself for a few hours. I figured I’d order some food and just relax a bit. My body was beat. The first week of practices were always difficult. Your body was used to not being in a state of playing football daily, and it would take a bit of getting used to.

  I sat my bag down in the living room and walked towards my room. There was a good book I was reading in there before I fell asleep last night. It was the newest Joe Hill novel. I’d become hooked on his stuff recently.

  Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I opened the door.

  Lucinda was lying on my bed, almost naked. She was wearing nothing but a lacy pair of bra and panties. She looked amazing. And the lust in her eyes was very enticing. I almost forgot to be mad for a second.

  And then it hit me.

  “What in the hell are you doing here?” I demanded.

  “Oh, babe. You are so tense. Why don’t you come over here and let me take care of you?”

  I shook my head. “You are demented. How the hell did you get in here?”

  “Well, that’s not important,” she said. “It’s more important that I am here. I’m ready for you. I know you must have had a hard day at practice. And I saw you punch out those creeps. Oh, that was hot. My baby is so strong.”

  “You are crazy. I want you to get your clothes on and get out of here. I’m not in the mood for these games.”

  Lucinda got off the bed and strode slowly towards me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was insanely beautiful and sultry. But oh, that was the worst combination in a mentally disturbed woman. The thing about crazy women was that they tend to be crazy in bed, too.

  Lucinda stood in front of me. She smelled so good. Her perfume wafted up to my nostrils, teased them, and then invaded my head where the scent danced around my brain for a while. Oh, I was getting so turned on. And she knew it.

  “Baby… you need to relax,” she purred. Her lips were close to my head now. So close to my neck. Then on me. She kissed my neck slowly, softly, finding the jugular and moving upwards inch by inch until she reached my ears where she cooed gently and blew a little tendril of air into the opening.

  I was getting very excited. And so hard. I wanted to give in and just ravage her right there and then on the bed. Maybe a slight setback in things would be ok. And then I could talk to her calmly and rationally to explain to her that this had been a mistake and we should never do it again. And we should break up. Yes, this was very important.

  But no. I couldn’t do that. It was wrong. I needed to end it with her and not give in, no matter how much I wanted her.

  Her body was pressing slowly against mine. So soft… her curves were sensuous and crying out to be touched. Her skin was soft and smooth, and this was so apparent as my eyes dropped to her cleavage. She was about to bounce out of that tight bra. It was see through… so erotic.

  And then her hand was on my crotch, pressing lightly. Then closing her hand in and out as she grabbed me and released me through my pants. I was so turned on that I couldn’t think. What was I doing? I didn’t care. I just wanted to let this happen.

  “There baby,” Lucinda whispered. “You just need to relax. I’ll take care of everything.”

  Somehow I found the courage to step to the side and move away from Lucinda. I shook my head to clear my mind and then I did my best to forget about how good this willing woman who was throwing herself at me in my room looked.

  “No. We can’t do this. We are broken up. That’s not going to change. If we do this then it will be that much harder to break up and that’s not the right thing to do. We are done Lucinda. Please leave.”

  I opened the door.

  Lucinda stood there, her lust turning to rage. She was staring at me as if I’d just strangled her kitten.

  “Are you serious?” Lucinda asked.

  “Yes. Leave. Now.”

  She grabbed her clothes off the floor and got dressed quickly. “You are crazy. We are meant to be. I just wish you would see that already.”

  I didn’t say anything as she walked down the hall and out the door. I then locked the door behind her and leaned up against the frame to steady myself. I was so turned on. What had I just done? I’d turned down sex from a beautiful, willing woman who was always game for anything fun and kinky. My will power amazed me.

  If I’d told any of the guys about this they wouldn’t have believed me. It was almost unheard of.

  I shook it off and went back to my room where I changed into something comfortable. As I did so, I noticed I was still raging hard. I glanced at myself in the mirror and considered working out the sexual tension all by myself, but I didn’t.

  I just wanted to rest for a while. After I changed, I grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat down on the couch with my book. It had been quite a stress
ful day and I knew I should have been going over the new playbook that Coach Smith had mandated we get used to, but I was done with thinking about the game for the day.

  As I tried to read, my thoughts kept distracting me. I was thinking about the void in my life. Lucinda had a way of bringing this to the forefront of my mind. I was a bit lonely without a great woman in my life. It had been a long time since I’d been with someone special, and I’d never actually been in love before. And I wanted that. I never talked much about it, but I was getting to the point in my life where I wanted to be in love with a very special woman.

  But right now, my career was the focus. I could find love later, conceivably, but football was here and now. I could not take a few years off from that and expect to come back to it again. But with romance, I probably could. That was my thinking anyway.

  Yet, it did not comfort me to know this. I was lonely. I wanted love. I was so tempted to give in and be with Lucinda just to fill that void, but that was a mistake. That was how I let her into my world to begin with. I had that void in my life, and I didn’t have football for the time being. So, I went with it to see what would happen.

  And then Lucinda tried to dig her hooks into me. And it had been fun at first, but then I came to my senses that I was wasting both of our times. I had ended it.

  And now Lucinda would not let go. I was a bit nervous about what the future might hold…

  CHAPTER 3

  Jacob

  I closed the book and leaned back in my chair. It was getting late in the evening and I was tired, but I also felt like getting up and doing something. I’d been sitting in my desk chair in my bedroom for the past three hours, studying for an English examination. I felt that I was going to ace it with no problem.

  Checking the time, I saw that it was almost seven-thirty. I decided it would be a good time to go for a jog. If I didn’t get some sort of physical exercise in after a long study session, I often found that my mind was much more tired than my body and I would not get any sleep.

  I quickly put on my sweats and running shoes. Then I took off.

  The evening was nice and peaceful. I decided to take my usual jogging route which took me off campus and out into the underlying community. It was nice to get away from school every now and then. The college experience could all too often put you into a weird little bubble as if the rest of the world did not actually exist. You were stifled in this little community. It felt kind of isolated, even though there were thousands of people there. But they were all your age doing the same thing day in and day out. It could mess with your mind a bit.

  And tonight I needed to clear out some things. I’d been a bit off the past few weeks. Talking with Chance the other evening had helped and I was glad that I had decided to play on the football team after all. It had been very nerve racking trying to think what I wanted to do, but once I got out on the field, everything just fell into place.

  I’d been thinking a lot about my dad recently. I missed him so much. We’d always been so close, the best of friends. He was the one person in the world who I could always count on no matter what. I knew that he would always be there to welcome me with open arms and an open heart.

  And now he was gone.

  Since then I’d felt totally alone in the world. It didn’t make sense since I had so many friends, I had my mom, and I had plenty of family that I saw regularly. It just didn’t feel the same. Everything in the world seemed to have less color than it once did. It was tough to explain to anyone who had never gone through it, but losing a parent, especially when you were twenty years old—that could make you feel like you were just floating along in the world with no anchor, nothing holding your feet to the ground.

  That was how I felt all the time nowadays.

  But I was trying to get past it. I knew it would take time. I firmly believed that time could heal anything, but how much time? That was the question that could never be answered. It took as long as it would take and there was nothing you could do to rush it.

  It felt good to let loose on the jog, allowing my feet to hit the ground in a sweet rhythm. The jarring motions of it made me feel like I was being hypnotized a little bit, but I was still in control. And the rest of the world was being shut out of my mind.

  Which was probably why I didn’t see the girl until I was almost running over top of her.

  A blur came suddenly into my field of vision. I knew it was another person and I quickly stopped and twisted my body away to avoid running right into them.

  Luckily, I missed the collision, but my body momentum combined with the twisting motion I managed, sent me flying to the ground where I landed safely in a nice, thorny, bush.

  “Are you ok?”

  The voice sounded female. I looked up and immediately noticed the twinge of pain in the back of my neck. A bit of the pain moved up my neck muscles and then merged into the top of my spine where it branched out to the sides of my head.

  But none of that mattered. I was looking into the face of a beautiful woman. She was standing over me looking down trying to see if I was still with her. The pain suddenly did not matter. I was ready to just get up and pretend nothing had happened. I am a man. And I needed to act manly and tough.

  But I felt silly.

  “Are you ok?” The young woman asked again.

  I smiled. “Yeah. I’m fine,” I said as I got up to my feet.

  The pain was still echoing in my head as I tried to figure out where I had hit my head exactly. But at the same time I was much too entranced by the beauty in front of me. This woman was gorgeous. She was about average height with a curvy, athletic build, a nice chest, and the sweetest smile that paid the perfect complement to her high cheek bones and bright, blue eyes. All of this was topped off with long, flowing, blonde hair.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t see you.”

  “No, it was my fault. I guess I’m used to running by myself through here this time of night.”

  “Ah, well you might want to get used to me then,” she said. “I just started here and I decided to go for a run.”

  “Nice,” I said. “You a freshman?”

  “I’m actually a sophomore transfer. I spent my freshman year at a community college trying to figure out if this college thing was even for me.”

  She giggled. It was sweet and cute.

  “I hear that,” I said. “I’m Jacob.”

  “Codi,” she replied. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow I can jog with you.”

  She looked me up and down and then got a nice little smile on her face. I loved to see her smile. Her whole face lit up, along with the world around it. She was quite amazing.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll meet you in front of Michael’s coffee bar.”

  “Great, I’ll be there,” I said.

  “Goodnight,” Codi said. She jogged back towards campus and I watched her for a few minutes until she was out of sight. She only looked back once, but she was smiling when she did it.

  I jogged on, but my head was now filled with Codi. She was fantastic, by far the prettiest girl I’d met at school for a while. And she seemed actually interested in me.

  I kept thinking about what Chance had talked to me about before. Romance, or the chance of romance could really be a distraction right now. If I was going to go full boar into this football dream of mine then maybe I had better give up on dreams of women for a while. I would say that and really mean it, but then fate would deal me another hand and I’d meet a woman like Codi. It just wasn’t fair, was it?

  When I got back to my room, Chance was just heading out.

  “Hey, man,” he said. “Nice jog?”

  “Oh, wow,” I said. I told him about the girl I’d met.

  He sat down at the table with me and gave me his undivided attention. “So, what are you going to do?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you mentioned her, which means she is in you
r head and already starting to take up space of some kind of importance in your life.”

  I sighed. “Damn, man. Just when you think you can get away, the world finds a way to throw a wrench in your plans.”

  “Well, it’s only a wrench if you let it be. Right now it’s just a fleeting fancy. But it can become much more if you give it that power in your mind.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I guess it all boils down to what my heart truly desires.”

  “Right. Having a goal and a plan can never be ahead of following something your heart truly desires.”

  “I guess that is the rough of it,” I said. “Thanks.”

  Chance left then to go get something to eat. I sat at the table and thought about what he was getting at. The guy knew some things, that was for sure. I wasn’t sure how he became such a big philosopher since I don’t think I’d ever heard of him being in a philosophy classroom. He’d missed his calling academically, that was for sure.

  I took a quick shower and then I decided to lay down to get some rest. I had that English class staring at me bright and early in the morning.

  But the last thought in my mind before the world faded away was the beautiful, sexy, Codi. I wanted her. And I knew she wanted me.

  What was a man supposed to do?

  ────═❁═────╌

  Her mouth was on mine. The warm breath flowed from her body into mine igniting me with a fiery passion that burned deep within my very soul. My whole body was turned on bright red. I could barely breathe, but her warmth filled me with love and sweetness. I wanted to let her consume my entire being.

  The tongue moving in my mouth was not my own. I let myself stay still; it was her turn to explore me and every orifice she chose. She pulled back and let the tip of her tongue just dip into my waiting mouth, growing both of our oral cavities wetter by the second. Finally, I could take it no more and I pressed up to wrap my mouth around her oral expressionist.