The Lion Heart: Rogue Academy, Book Two

by Aarons, Carrie

  Jude’s words echo in my head as sleep mercifully steals over my brain. Out of my league.

  I wonder, for the millionth time as I give in to the haze of alcohol-fueled dreams, if I was out of my league in this world before I even had a chance.

  4

  Kingston

  The air in my lungs burns as I wheeze out a breath, trying to give the conditioning hour my all but failing miserably.

  “Pick it up, Phillips. You look like my grandma over there, and she can balance better than you!” Anders Slotken, the head trainer for strength and conditioning at the RFC facilities, adds salt to my already sore invisible wounds.

  I squat lower, one foot on the floor and the other raised to the height of my hip. Whoever invented these single leg squats on a BOSU ball should be hung in the town square for attempted murder. I swear, my leg went numb ten minutes ago and I’m on my way to fully dying.

  “This is why he’s riding the bench.” Alexander Karlsson, the fair-skinned Norseman who plays right back, breathes heavy as he performs the same exercise with much more ease.

  “Shut it, Alex,” Jude shoots across the room, three-hundred pounds worth of dumbbell precariously balanced on his shoulders.

  “Hey, you might be our prodigy, but we’ve been here longer than you’ve been having wet dreams. Pipe down,” Luigi Buosco, who starts over me at left back, scolds my best mate.

  I would take up for Jude, hurl a lewd comment, especially at Luigi whose balls I love busting, but I’m in too much pain.

  Slotken blows his whistle, and the room fills with huffs of relief as everyone drops to the floor in a heap of exhausted muscles. We may be professional athletes, but that only means the trainers keep coming up with punishments fit for the devil to test us.

  “You’re dismissed. Aside from Phillips, hit the showers.”

  “Fuck …” I mutter under my breath.

  Jude raises an eyebrow in my direction, as if he’s asking if I want backup. We’ve had each other’s backs since we were kids, Vance’s, too. But Vance isn’t here and Jude can’t fight this battle with me, so I nod toward the door, silently telling him to go.

  The trainer’s ugly mug glowers in front of my face, and where I’d typically insert a dirty joke or a pithy comment, I shut my trap. His face says he isn’t playing, and I know I’ve spent all of my jester pounds today.

  “If you don’t show some improvement, and actually apply yourself, they’re going to trade you. And from what I hear, Niles is considering a championship team. Think about how embarrassed your father will be.” Slotken lowers his voice for this last kernel of wisdom, as if I don’t know just how much my father would hate me if that happened.

  “Yes, sir.” I nod my head, letting a rare vow of seriousness past my lips.

  He eyes me warily, like what he just said didn’t even penetrate my skull. “Just get out of my sight.”

  This is serious, and my head begins to spin with what-ifs. If they sell my contract to a club in the lower ranks of the British Premier League it will be a fate worse than death by conditioning.

  A player doesn’t come back from something like that, once you carry the stench of failure, it doesn’t ever quite wash off. Maybe it would be better if that happened, if I didn’t have the pressure of the world riding on my shoulders. Or maybe it would destroy me worse than this rubbish is tearing me up inside at the moment.

  The thing is, I can never figure out if I’m actually afraid of what my life will be without football, or how my parents would view my life without football.

  I never had a choice when it came to this sport. It’s in my blood, practically lives within my DNA. Oftentimes, I wonder what I would be doing if they hadn’t placed a ball at my feet at birth. I’m bloody good at it, but I’m not sure I’ve ever loved it. Or, if I have, I don’t love it as much as someone like Jude. He bloody lives and breathes this game; it brought him from nothing to being able to care for his younger brothers when tragedy struck. Not only does he have a true passion for it, but he has more talent in his pinky than most have in their whole body.

  And … well … I do, too. I just don’t use it. When something comes easy, that’s when you take it for granted the most. And if I don’t have to work hard, why would I? The only thing that seems to kick my arse into gear is a trainer’s boot up it, threatening to sell me and tell my father about it.

  I’m the last one into the showers and am greeted by the usual bare asses and swinging knobs. No new sight for me, but it always makes me laugh like an immature twit. In what other profession do you see your colleagues naked every other day?

  The guys are waxing poetic on this week’s latest hookups, and I cut into the conversation, trying to get my mind off all the deep bullshit Slotken just brought up.

  “Poppy Raymond, you know anything about her?” I direct this at Luigi.

  Alex flashes a glare at his veteran teammate, warning him not to answer the question. It was well-known that Luigi cheated on his wife regularly, especially with girls who weren’t actually age appropriate to his elderly thirty-two. That kind of number was basically a death sentence on your career in football.

  “Don’t you dare. I don’t want to know if you slept with that girl, basically young enough to be your daughter. And you don’t want anyone, especially your wife, to hear you confess to that either.” Alex points a finger at him and then exits the showers.

  But Luigi, per usual, doesn’t listen to what’s good for him. His eyes scan the showers, assessing who is in the room, and then he talks out of the side of his mouth.

  “Rumor is, she doesn’t put out for anyone. Never takes anyone home, goes solo to most industry events. So, it’s said that she’s either a complete prude or an undercover slag. I … I vote for the latter. No woman who looks like that, with how long she’s been in this world, isn’t a total freak in the sheets.”

  Jude just rolls his eyes. “So, all you know is whispers and rumors? Great, we’re really running on credible information here. Can you drop this? The girl has a biting tongue, but she’s voiced her distaste. Go pick on someone your own sleaze size.”

  It’s directed at me, but I’m still hanging on Luigi’s every word. “So, you’re saying there could be an in?”

  The Italian arsehole shrugs. “It won’t be easy.”

  That makes me square my shoulders because as I said, why work at anything that comes easy?

  “Good thing hard is my middle name.” I waggle my eyebrows and a couple of the blokes on the squad snort.

  We exit the showers, moving to our individual lockers.

  “No, easy is your middle name. When it comes to matches, work, money … but especially women. You love easy women. Stick to them.” Jude claps me on the shoulder.

  “Says the man who groveled at a woman’s feet the minute she became a challenge,” I mutter, and he glares at me.

  Nothing seems to come easy these days. Not football, and not women.

  Well, that isn’t entirely true, I’m just feeling pity for myself and taking it to the nth degree. In reality, I could call up any fit bird in London and she’d be over to my flat, on her knees, in seconds. There was available pussy everywhere, and it was mine for the taking.

  But ever since Poppy Raymond turned me down, I’m like a dog with a bone. Or a dog with an itch I can’t scratch. Either way, I’m a bloody horny animal with rocks that I can’t get off. I even slept with one of those D-list reality show girls last night, and it got pretty wild. Though not enough to make me forget one sassy brunette with a chip on her shoulder.

  Out of my league? Yeah, right. If anything, Poppy and I are perfect equals. The poster children for our given crafts, and bloody hell, we’d make one dishy pair. So what the hell is wrong with her? If she’s not a lesbian, like I’d guessed all those months ago, and she wasn’t in a relationship …

  I was going to bet on Luigi’s intel. Or at least, pray like bloody hell she wasn’t some devout prude.

  There was nothing worse than a
face like that being wasted on something as bloody useless as abstinence.

  5

  Poppy

  “Poppy! This way!”

  “Over here, Poppy, look over here!”

  “Ms. Raymond, smile! Give it to us!”

  The photographers shout my name, a frenzied fever sweeping over the junket of them from where they stand on the other side of a metal barricade.

  I give it to them, as they say, pouting appropriately and then dazzling them with a mega-watt smile. My body moves in its typical poses, the one the thousand-dollar-an-hour consultant taught me when I was a gangly, awkward teenager just breaking into the modeling industry.

  It’s the dance we do, the one to stay in the spotlight. The slow steps in a burning room, eventually bringing us all the way to the ground, to ashes. It scalds a little every day, not enough to notice at first, only a layer of skin. But eventually, give too many pounds of flesh you can’t get back, and you’re left with nothing at all. Just a hollowed-out shell of the person you used to be.

  As soon as I exit the red carpet, I steel my nerves for the real shark pool. It’s not the photographers and the press junkets you need to be scared of, it’s the vicious carnivores inside this awards show that are toxic. The United Kingdom Television Awards are a sought after invitation every year, and for this awards show, the Gallileo fashion house wanted me to wear their signature dress of the season. There was no way I could say no.

  The dress is a column of shimmering sparkles, the color of the sea when it rolls and crests on the beaches of the Maldives. No really, that’s what the designer who sketched it out told me was her inspiration. It’s an ombre, skin-tight frock that rests on my bust, no straps, and cascades to the floor. The six-inch silver heels I have on can’t even be seen, but they make me impossibly tall.

  Heads begin to turn as I make my way through the room, a couple of celebrities I’ve encountered in the past stopping to say hello or admire my ensemble. Some of the girls I’ve worked jobs with or actors I’ve done magazine spreads with, halt my progress to chat and rub elbows. If we can all appear in photos together, they’ll end up on some entertainment website and being seen with this person or that person raises your clout. It’s all a game.

  My game tonight? Make it to the bar with the least amount of interactions under my belt. I want a healthy amount of champagne coursing through my system before I have to be seated at my table. I shimmy my way through the crowd, already craving the taste of bubbles on my tongue. As soon as my veins succumb to the floating feeling of a buzz, this will be easier.

  Slapping my palm on the bar, the bartender’s attention homes in on me and I order. Perks of being extra shiny in a room of already-sparkling people.

  “Well, hello, gorgeous.”

  The deep vibrato tone licks up my spine. He has one of those voices that can completely undress you, causing a stir of arousal deep in your belly, even if you’re fully clothed in a room of people. The feeling is so foreign to me because, of course, I’ve read about this kind of thing, or watched it acted out in a movie, but men never affect me this way. Quite the opposite; when a man of a certain caliber, like those in this room, talks to me with anything that signals sexual interest it makes my blood run cold.

  But I know who this voice belongs to, and it’s why I’m extra miffed about the way it warms everything south of my belly button.

  “Hm, seems we haven’t yet gotten the clue.” I throw a sneering smile Kingston’s way.

  He’s too dapper in his jet-black tuxedo, that mop of sandy blond hair slicked back. It makes him look like James Dean … or like he has womanizer written all over him.

  “And what clue would that be? That you detest me? Oh no, love, I’ve gotten that loud and clear. Seems I just don’t care.” Those emerald eyes spark with the wit from his banter.

  A flute appears in front of me and I suck down half the liquid, the carbonation tickling my nose. “How caveman of you.”

  “Tell me a secret.” He winks, holding a brandy snifter to his mouth. “Any secret. I want to understand the enigma that is Poppy Raymond.”

  Now he’s just raving mad if he thinks I’m going to do anything of the sort. “You really are off your trolley. Why the bloody hell do you think I’d share any kind of secret with the likes of you? You couldn’t handle this enigma.”

  My glass is midway to my lips when I spot him.

  Everything in the room freezes from my vantage point. The chatter, the music, the glitz of the lights and the waitstaff catering to every guest’s every whim. In my ears, a whooshing sound starts, like I’m literally being pulled under a current and the water is drowning my senses.

  I knew this was a possibility. There always is when I agree to attend one of these events. I’d talked myself through the scenarios, but it seems that hasn’t worked in the slightest.

  It all hits me in one nauseating wave, and I almost double over with the horrific proximity of him. He doesn’t see me, has some rail-thin girl on his arm—and I do mean girl. She can’t be a day over sixteen. With his dark hair peppered with gray, sagging tan skin and those piercing blue eyes that haunt my dreams …

  It all has me turning, running.

  Because I can’t stay here. There is no way I can sit in the same ballroom as him and not be mentally bloody dismantled. My mind will go into a tailspin, my body will collapse into the fits of a nervous breakdown.

  No one will notice if I leave now before the tables are seated. Sure, someone might assume I had too many drinks during the cocktail hour, or that I’m off puking my guts out from bulimia in the bathroom. But who cares? Let them. It’s loads better than the actual truth getting out.

  “Poppy?” Vaguely, I hear my name called out as I retreat.

  My vision blurs as I run from the room, and as I reach the sidewalk, flashbulbs begin to dot everything I see. The car my publicist ordered must be out here somewhere, and when I spot a large black sedan, I know it’s my escape option.

  Collapsing into the back seat, my limbs are so knackered from the deflating of adrenaline and burst of exercise, that I slump against the leather, trying to catch my breath.

  That’s when the door on the other side of the back seat swings open, and Kingston folds his long limbs inside.

  6

  Poppy

  “Get the fuck out of my car!” I screech at him, incensed.

  I haven’t allowed a man this close to me, in such an enclosed space, in years. And while the usual alarm bells aren’t triggering in my head, I am brutally aware of his masculine proximity to my body. The fact that his knee is almost touching mine, and that he plans to keep it that way for however long it takes to reach his end destination for the night, is making my heart go bonkers.

  “This is my Uber, babe. So you can either stay, which I’d be more than happy with, or you can go. Your choice, doll face.”

  The nickname makes me cringe. “You’re disgusting. And who in your position in life takes Uber?”

  I stare at the driver of the black Escalade, who I now realize is a thirty-something girl who looks vaguely like Kristen Bell. Before I got in, I thought this was the town car that had been ordered for me, and she hadn’t even bothered to ask my name or suggest that she wasn’t a hired service. Which only demonstrates how dangerous the car-ordering service is.

  “It’s much cheaper than a car service, and you meet some interesting people in these things.” The arsehole shrugs, looking too cute and devilish at the same time, which until now I didn’t realize was possible.

  “I’ll tell them that when they ask me for a quote for your obituary. You know, when you’re murdered.” I roll my eyes.

  “If you have to explain the pithy comment, it wasn’t really that pithy.” Kingston looks so chuffed, I want to sock him in the mouth.

  “Are you all going to the same location?” Kristen Bell-lookalike asks in a bored tone.

  “Yes, we are!” Kingston answers cheerfully, cutting off my protest.

  “You
don’t even know where I’m going!” I hiss at him, thoroughly fuming when he moves over enough in the roomy back seat so that his tuxedo-clad knee is pressed against the sequined skirt of my dress. I can feel the heat through the fabric.

  Damn this wonky heart and its irrational beating.

  “You looked practically lurgy back there. Either you saw a ghost, or snuck a few too many tuna tartars before the show. I wanted to make sure you are okay.” His voice takes on a tone of concern, and I give him my full gaze.

  For a moment, we stare at each other, and I think I see something deeper than the jester’s costume he shows to the world.

  But then he speaks. “It’s not every day a woman runs away from me. I needed to know why.”

  That has me rolling my eyes. “So it wasn’t about if I was ill or not. You just wanted to bandage your wounded pride.”

  “And now you’re riding home with me. So it worked, didn’t it?” His handsome face creases into a pleased grin.

  Turning my head toward the window, I refuse to give him any more leverage. There was something about that beat of a moment that had just passed between us, and it both frightened and intrigued me. I can’t allow the latter feeling to get the best of my good sense.

  When the car pulls up to Charlton House, I glance across the car at the building my flat resides in.

  Catching a glimpse of Kingston’s chiseled face, I notice the look he wears is one of curious, confused amusement. The streaks of moonlight that fall into the back seat of the car light up his green eyes, which dance with some expression I can’t place.

  “Don’t think that because you followed me back to my flat, I’m allowing you up. In fact, I’m calling security if you even step foot in the lobby.” I turn my nose up in his direction, then barrel out of the car, heading with purpose up the steps and through the glass entrance doors.