I was confused as well. And scared. Yet in the middle of those tumultuous emotions, I was drawn to him. My body hummed with an acute awareness of our proximity, and my heart thumped so loudly that I pressed my hands to my chest. I was sure he could hear it.
What was this thing between us? Adrenaline? Lust? Destiny? I didn’t know.
But I did know he sent a buzz straight to my heart.
I wished the moon had been bright enough to see the color of his eyes.
I wished I knew his name.
I wished . . . I wished fate would bring us together again, some other time, some other place.
But not today.
With one last lingering look at his face, I turned and ran into the woods.
Three Years Later
Max
MY ALARM BLARED AND I reached over to click it off.
God, it was early. I rubbed my temples, wishing I’d passed on that last shot of celebratory tequila.
Welcome back to Leland University, I muttered under my breath.
A naked female body jostled into mine, and I froze, distinctly remembering going to bed alone.
I jumped up and yanked my jeans on. “Who the hell are you?”
A brunette raised her head up, eyes like road maps. Nice.
“Shit,” I groaned, recognizing one of the groupies who hung around the football team. At least when I’d had a girlfriend, they’d left me alone.
“Sierra, silly. I come to all the home games, and sometimes I watch you practice.”
“How’d you get in?” I asked.
Coming more awake, she propped herself up until her tits popped out from the covers. “Felix picked the lock last night . . . said you were a grouch and needed to get laid.”
Felix—all around asshole and second-string quarterback. We’d had a small party last night and he must have showed after I crashed. I cracked my knuckles. He was messing with me. Again.
Freshman year, he’d put a black rat snake in my car and I’d nearly hit a tree when that damn thing wrapped itself around my leg. Just last year, we’d had a brawl over my ex in the locker room, and I’d broken his nose. That shit was supposed to stay between the team, but somehow the media got a whiff and my temper had been called into question—when he was the bastard who’d started it. I suspected he’d been the one to leak the story to the news.
Did I mention he was dating my ex? Yeah. It was screwed up.
This year, I had to keep my fists down and my head in the game because this was going to be my year.
“Did we have sex?” I scrubbed my face, then looked around for condom wrappers.
“You passed out,” she huffed, a peevish expression on her face. “Which is sad. You are my favorite player. I even had your number put on a jersey. I sleep in it every night.”
In other words . . . I have our relationship all planned down to me getting pregnant.
“You were amazing at the scrimmage,” she continued, her gaze lingering on my crotch. “Three touchdown passes . . . a hundred yards rushing. You’re going to win the Heisman this year.” She bit her lip, pumped her hips like she was having an orgasm, and moaned. “I can feel it, Max.”
I couldn’t deny I wanted the Heisman like a man in the desert wants a tall glass of water—but I had other things to take care of first.
I grabbed her phone off the nightstand. “What’s your code?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not stupid.” My gaze was hard as nails.
She poked her lip out. “Why are you being so mean? It’s my phone, not yours.”
“If there’s nothing to hide it shouldn’t matter if I check out your photos, huh?” My lips tightened as I dangled the phone.
She confessed the code. Sure enough she’d taken several selfies of me stone-cold passed out. She’d arranged my hand on her bare boob and snapped pics of her kissing me. She’d pulled down the covers and snapped a pic of me in my black athletic boxers and a pic of her hand wrapped around my cock. I swiped to the last pic, one of her licking the tiger tattoo on my bicep. Fuck.
Nausea simmered under the anger. Shit like this sent me over the edge. If I hadn’t found these, they’d be posted all over social media or possibly sold to some magazine—and my chances at a Heisman would be pulverized.
And wouldn’t Felix just love that?
After deleting the pics and tossing her phone back, I strode to my bedroom door and flung it open. “Time for you to get out.”
“I’ll text you later,” she said as she sat up on the bed to pull on her underwear and pants.
“I won’t respond.”
“I don’t care. I just like knowing you know I’m thinking about you. I picture you seeing my text and smiling. It’ll make your day better. Like a little ray of sunshine.”
Psycho. I gritted my teeth. “Trust me, I don’t think about you. I don’t even know your name.”
“Sierra.”
“Fine, Sierra,” I growled. “Just because you slept in my bed and did a cock selfie with me doesn’t mean jack. I don’t do groupies.”
Her lips curled in a half-smile. “I don’t give up that easily.” With a little wave she stumbled out the door.