by Marie James
His jersey, her dress, and the tiny scrap of lace between the cheeks of her ass—all of it is orange. Welcome to an LVU party. Does anyone involved in picking colors for colleges even consider how hideous the color looks against tan skin and dark hair? Gag me. I’m drowning in it. Everywhere I turn, orange and white assaults my vision. School colors were the furthest thing from my mind when the college offered me a partial scholarship, and since I’m not one with very much school spirit, it wasn’t really an issue.
Firm hands grab me as I attempt to squeeze through another clump of rotating hips and breathless, slutty moans.
“No thanks,” I say without even looking over my shoulder, swatting at the unrelenting grip on my body.
Turning to face the guy who is either too stupid or too drunk to take a hint, my eyes land on the handsome face of a tall blond with the lightest blue eyes I’ve ever seen.
The smirk on his face clearly indicates he believes I should be impressed. And I am. There’s no doubt about it. I’m completely fascinated by the ego this douchebag emits with one simple look. Without a word, I let my eyes trail from the top of his purposely mussed hair that probably took longer to fix than mine to the orange chucks adorning his big feet.
He allows the perusal, awaiting my approval. Cocking an eyebrow at his blatant, pompous attitude, I push his hands off my hips.
“Not a chance, buddy,” I say before turning back toward the kitchen.
My legs tremble, wobbling on my already unsteady heels. I release a long, slow breath, hoping he disappeared into the crowd. The last thing I need is for him to notice the way my eyes lingered on his stubbled jaw and the muscles of his chest even his clothes can’t hide. I’m almost certain he could sense my quick, unmasked arousal. One look was all it took for this man to creep his way under my skin and throb in my core. He’s got self-entitled, bad boy, asshole written all over him—character traits I would have dropped anything for a few years ago. Not today, though. Those are flaws I left in Utah when I graduated high school.
The same firm grip reaches for me again, wrapping all the way around my body and pulling my back against an incredibly strong chest.
I close my eyes for a moment, allowing only a second of contact before turning around and readying my hand to slap him across the face for taking such liberties without my permission—just another alpha asshole attribute that used to make me swoon.
“You need to get your—”
His finger covers my lips, preventing me from getting my words out. My attempt at what I’m sure was going to be a very eloquent threat against his manhood falters as he pulls me closer to his body. His leg somehow finds its way between mine as he squats a couple inches to decrease the differences in our height.
The steady hand that has reached for me twice tonight is around my back, fingers splayed against the thin red fabric. The finger that halted my words trails down the column of my damp neck before gripping around at my nape. Gooseflesh follows the trail, racing over my fevered skin. He holds me against him, guiding me to the rhythm I hated until this very second. Like the traitorous slut she is, my body molds against him, every soft inch against his hardness.
“I don’t,” I begin again, only to have his hand leave my neck to push another finger against my parted lips.
I watch, enthralled and utterly stupid, as his bottom lip rolls between his teeth at the same time his thumb sweeps over mine.
I cave, wholeheartedly capitulating to the moment. Ignoring the warning bells going off in my head, screaming at me to bolt through the front door and not look back, I grip the silky athletic fabric of his jersey and pull him closer. A knowing grin lights his face and sparkles in the crystal blue of his eyes.
One song blends into another as our bodies close every millimeter of distance. No words are spoken as the countdown begins. No promises are made when the clock strikes midnight. No way I’ll survive this man when his breath becomes mine. No chance I’ll see him again when swaying all night turns into dancing tongues. No possibility of keeping my promise of no bad boys when one hand grips my nape and the other squeezes my ass.
Alcohol has never really been my thing. The memory of the first time I drank heavy liquor in high school is enough to make my stomach sour, but the bourbon on this guy’s lips is the perfect mix of sweet and spicy. It’s, hands down, the most satisfying thing I’ve tasted since the ice cream I had after getting my tonsils removed when I was seven. I savor every fraction of a second, every slow glide of his tongue against mine, each time his lips pull back a fraction and turn up to smile against mine.
Without so much as one spoken word, this man has managed to master my body, persuading it to beg for more, coaxing whimpers from my mouth when he pulls away, only to ensure it pants a seductive moan when those skilled lips find my neck.
Warm breath hits the opposite side of my neck a split second before the weight of another person presses against my back. My seducer pulls his lips from my skin and the cold air mixes with the wet warmth his mouth left on my neck. Icy blue eyes glare over my shoulder for a brief second before calming to a cooler, if annoyed, slightly darker cerulean.
Turning my head a few inches to the right, I notice the familiar shock of bright red hair hanging down my arm and roll my eyes as Charity clings to my shoulder. I do my best to resist the urge to shove her off me and pretend I don’t know her. The compulsion to stay in this moment with Mr. Nameless in lieu of helping a friend, who, in her obvious state, has no chance of making it home safe, makes me realize just how fast I’ve transitioned into the same girl who disgraced her loved ones several years ago.
He sees the decision in my eyes before the words can make it past my lips, so I don’t even bother to speak them aloud. Unwilling to accept what he knows is going to happen, he reaches for me, and I do the only thing I can fathom: I grasp my drunken friend, arm under hers to lend a steadying hand, and get both of us out of there as fast as her stumbling legs will allow.
Chapter 2
Blaze
“Fuck my life,” I mutter as I hit the sidelines of the practice field for the second time this afternoon. Bending at the waist, my body attempts to alleviate the abuse I put it through last night. I heave with a violence I thought I was past the first time I got sick this morning.
“Porter!” Coach bellows from the other side of the field. “Get your ass back out there. The goddamn center isn’t going to throw the fucking ball for you!”
I spit on the grass one final time before turning back to my teammates. I want nothing more than to punch Danny in the face as he shuffles toward me.
“Get it together, fucker,” he says, slapping my shoulder pad.
“This is your damn fault,” I mutter as I push past him to the center of the field. The blame comes easy—something I’ve perfected since an early age. All my successes are mine and the failures belong to someone else. It was a way of survival growing up.
“Ten,” he yells, a repeat of his argument from this morning when the texts came through about practice. This impromptu practice was never supposed to happen. Coach wasn’t meant to find out about the little get-together we planned last night. “I handed out ten fucking flyers. It’s not my fault someone made hundreds of copies and passed them out to every fucking person on campus.”
“One job,” I mutter more to myself. “You had one damn job.”
“He’s going to fucking kill us,” the lineman to Danny’s right complains as he crouches low, his gloved knuckles on the ground. “This isn’t how champions are supposed to be treated.”
I shake my head, hating everything in my life as I squat and place my hands against Danny’s ass, readying them to grab the ball at the snap.
“We aren’t champions yet, idiot,” I grumble, unable to focus on the one thing I’ve loved all my life.
Danny hikes the ball between his legs into my hands—an action we’ve mastered a million times over. Rather than staying in my hands like it’s done for nearly a decade, the brown leather hits
the ground between our feet.
“Fuck,” I groan as the other players on the field scramble—futile efforts since I can’t get my shit together.
“Again?” Coach screams, not for the first time today. “You fuck-ups are playing like this two days before we leave for Tampa? I might as well call them and tell them we forfeit.”
“His ass acts like we didn’t just win the fucking Mountain West Championship,” Danny whines as our red-faced coach throws his clipboard and marches onto the field. I focus on the papers fluttering to the ground rather than making eye contact with the two-hundred-pounds of disappointment zeroing in on me.
Boise State nearly overpowered us three weeks ago, and I know that’s why he’s frustrated. Next week’s win against reigning champions at the University of Alabama isn’t a given. Hell, based on history, we don’t stand a chance. Wagers in Vegas are a hundred to one that the Crimson Tide is going to roll over us without so much as a blink of an eye.
This may possibly be the longest fucking day of my life.
Three hours and a dozen more fumbles of that stupid fucking ball later, all players are in the locker room, feeling like shit, yet knowing we deserved every second of that torture session. Less than a month is all we’re given between the Mountain West Championship and the National College Football Championship in Tampa.
Coach doesn’t give a shit that last night was New Year’s Eve. He couldn’t care less that mere hours before the ball dropped, ringing in 2017, we’d been on the field strategizing and working our asses off. Not one single fuck does he give that we felt the need to celebrate, since it was the very first time where all players on the team were able to ring in the new year as divisional champions. His eye was on national success, no matter how crazy the odds are against us.
Every muscle in my body screams at me, every inch of my exposed skin both frozen and burning in succession.
“Ice up that damn shoulder before you leave,” Coach insists as he walks past, slamming the door to his office.
I don’t lift my head to even acknowledge him. It’s not a request, but a demand. I could easily grumble, bitch, and complain, just like the other guys as they slam helmets into their lockers and kick benches in frustration.
I’m just as pissed as they are, only I’m not upset at Coach. It’s not his fault I drank my weight in Maker’s Mark. That shit is solely on me, and Danny, of course, since he’s the asshole who made the liquor run last night. The acrimony I’m feeling is one hundred percent on my shoulders. I, along with every other guy on my team, acted as if last night was the final win. We drank and partied as if we didn’t have another reason to walk onto a field wearing our orange and white jerseys until off-season practice starts in a few weeks.
Maybe everyone else on the team has concluded that we’re just going through the motions on the ninth. Not the case for me. I have every intention of giving everything I have to that game.
Regret swims in my veins as I situate an oversized bag of ice against my shoulder. Flashes of red dance behind my eyelids when they flutter closed. The up-close image of that gorgeous brunette from last night invades my senses. I feel the heat of her body against mine, the coarse texture of her dress against my fingers. Even after brushing my teeth twice this morning, and puking my guts up just as many times, if I concentrate long enough, I can still taste the pure sweetness of her lips and the faint, salty sweat as it slid down her neck onto my tongue. She was the only thing I could see the second she unknowingly ran into my back as I danced with another girl.
The same things I imagine now were in full HD color in my dreams last night—dreams that were crushed when Danny woke me up telling me how fucked we were that Coach found out about the party.
Today sucked more than I can describe, but it pales in comparison to the way I felt when I watched her scoop up her redheaded friend and walk away without a single fucking word. I didn’t even catch her name.
Last night was a one-off. A celebration of sorts. For me, it was more than just a holiday or party because we won a football game. Last night was about triumph and achievement, not only for the game, but my success in life. Four years ago, my senior year in high school, doubt was an everyday occurrence. Every day I left that shitty apartment, I didn’t know when the other shoe would drop, in the form of a drive-by shooting or getting stabbed because my mother couldn’t figure out a way to pay for her heroin habit.
The victory over Boise State cemented the fact that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. It all but writes in stone that the hard work I’d been putting in over the last near decade worked out in my favor. I’d rewritten my destiny, and if that wasn’t a reason to celebrate with a few drinks, I didn’t know what was.
My only regret is, in my drunken stupor, I never sealed the deal. The fire in her eyes when I refused to let go of her is what made me want to come back for more, but it was the way her hips moved against mine and the soft whimper that escaped when I pulled my mouth away from hers that made me ache with a need I’ve never felt with a woman before.
As the starting quarterback of a championship winning team, I had my pick of females at that party, yet the one woman brazen enough to push me away after looking into my eyes is the one I can’t stop thinking about. I may never see her again, and that thought alone may haunt me for as long as I live.
“Let’s get out of here,” Danny says as he walks past me toward the door leading out of the locker room. “I need a seriously long shower and my damn bed.” I blink several times, my eyes only focusing on him before he rounds the corner.
While I sat here daydreaming about the gorgeous woman in the slinky red dress, the locker room all but cleared out. I cut my eyes to the still closed door of Coach’s office and guilt washes over me. As the unofficial leader of this team, I know I should’ve acted differently last night. I lower my head into my hands, fighting the need to go in there and apologize for the negative influence I had on other players, and the even shittier way I practiced today, but I know he has no desire to listen. The only way he’ll forgive me is if I don’t totally fuck up in Tampa next week, and at this point, there’s no telling how that game will turn out. I don’t expect to win against Alabama. I’m a realist, but holding our own against a team that already owns several national titles would be a dream come true. The only way I can prove myself to Coach is by bringing my A-game and showing him he hasn’t been coaching a team of complete fuck-ups.
Chapter 3
Fallyn
“Seriously, Char? ESPN?” Disbelief is all over my face when I look at her, then back to the broadcaster on the screen of our small TV.
“This is kind of a big deal,” she counters, popping a chip in her mouth while never taking her eyes from the screen.
“You don’t give a damn about sports,” I mutter as I plop down on the sofa beside her.
“That’s true,” she agrees, pointing to snippets of video from the game a few days ago and shushing me so she can listen.
The ticker at the bottom informs viewers that the Las Vegas University Tigers are first-time national champions, winning the game against Alabama by only one point.
“I do, however, care about the massive blowout party they’re having this weekend.” A mischievous grin spreads across her face and I groan internally, already knowing what’s coming next. “You should go with me. It’ll be a blast.”
I look at her and shake my head. “Not a chance. Parties aren’t my thing.”
“Seemed like your thing on New Year’s.” The eyebrow she cocks up at me makes me want to go back to my room.
“You mean when I had to practically carry you out because you were too drunk to walk, blabbering about the guy you showed up to “wow” being buried balls deep in some skank from the Omega house?” I roll my eyes at her. “Yeah, that was the time of my life.”
“Not my finest moment,” she admits. “But I was talking about the guy you were wrapped around. I can guarantee he’ll be back at that party.”
I
shake my head again. “We danced for a few songs. That was it.”
I snatch the bag of chips from her lap and pop two in my mouth, a vain attempt to end my side of the conversation.
“I know what I saw, Fallyn. You were practically fucking him on the dance floor. Everyone saw you, me included.”
My cheeks flush, but I don’t know whether it’s because I can feel his lips on mine at her words or the knowledge that we were the center of attention. Everything faded away during those glorious thirty minutes I spent wrapped around him. I assumed everyone else was doing their own thing as well.
“A couple kisses from a drunken guy doesn’t mean I need to go back to another party and troll for more,” I mumble, chip crumbs falling from my mouth. I busy myself by picking them off my lap and piling them on the coffee table as she huffs her disagreement.
“You don’t have a damn clue, do you?”
“I can admit I had a good time. Feeling wanted, if only for a moment, is always a great self-esteem booster, but that was a one-time thing—a way to let loose for the holiday.” The smug look on her face is nerve wracking, almost as if she knows something I don’t. “School starts in less than two weeks and that’s what I need to focus on, not hanging around drunk people and searching out a hot guy to make out with.”
“The one you picked that night was top notch, girl. You have to admit that at least.”
I huff a laugh. “I didn’t pick him. He pulled me from my trek across the room to get more water.”
I swallow roughly, realizing I never did get that bottle of water. I walked away from him thirstier than I’d ever been in my life, but water was the last thing on my mind.
“Even better if he picked you. Makes you less desperate.”
I snap my gaze from the mini pile of chip particles and glare at her. “Less desperate? I’m not freaking desperate at all.”
“That came out wrong,” she backpedals.