by Sara Ney
Not that I mind white granny panties; they all slip down a woman’s thighs the same way: slowly and with a sweet satisfying sound when they hit the floor.
I smirk knowingly. “Yeah, probably.”
“Do you suppose she’s a virgin?” Dylan wonders out loud.
Zeke snickers, glancing over his wide shoulders toward the librarian, who’s walking the perimeter of the room. He lowers his voice. “Fuck yeah she is; look at her. She’ll be a post-gasm crier for sure when she finally takes it up th—”
“All right, enough.” I cut him off sharply; even I have my standards when it comes to degrading woman. Granted, they’re not high, but I have a few—and condescending them sexually is one of them. “You’re being a douche.”
I give the girl another glance over my shoulder, my tone softening. She really is kind of cute. “Besides, why do you even care?”
“I don’t. I’m just saying, for all the fucking bragging you do, you couldn’t get that chick to bang you, I guarantee it.” He tips his head in her direction. “I saw the way she blew you off, and it’s not the blowing you’re used to receiving.”
True. Take last night for example: it took me almost no effort at all to get laid on the back porch of the hockey house. Some small talk, a few flirtatious smiles, and I’m against an outside wall screwing some girl who didn’t even give me her name.
“…and I bet you couldn’t get her to put her mouth anywhere on you. I’ll even pay you a hundred bucks.”
Wait. Rewind.
One hundred bucks?
That gets my attention and my head snaps up. Why?
Because I’m broke.
The truth is, I didn’t grow up going to the best schools. I was a talented wrestler from the beginning, but wasn’t able to afford extra training; our family didn’t have the money. When I was in middle school, my sister landed her first real job out of grad school but soon ended up embroiled in a legal battle—the details of which I won’t get into—that depleted much of my parents’ retirement.
Money for wrestling clubs and college went right along with it.
So yeah, unlike most of my friends, I’m not blessed to be here at the expense of my parent’s deep pockets. I have no limitless credit cards or monthly allowance.
Nope.
I might have been blessed with a God-given talent for pinning opponents to the wrestling mat, but financially I’m only armed with an athletic scholarship (one I can’t afford to fuck up) and a job. That’s right. A job.
As in J-O-B.
As in, when I’m not in class, at practice, or studying, I’m busting my ass working up to twenty hours a week, driving the fork lift during the night shift at some rinky-dink lumber yard fifteen minutes from campus. It pays the rent on the shithole I share with my teammate Zeke, a football player named Parker, and his cousin Elliot.
The job helps pay what expenses the scholarship and my parents can’t cover—utilities, gas, and groceries—with little left for much else.
And if anyone finds out, I’m screwed.
Technically, I’m not supposed to be working; my contract with Iowa prohibits it. But there’s nothing I can do—I have to work, usually at night, when I should be sleeping, studying, and resting my body.
The body that takes a regular beating and is my only ticket to a Big Ten education.
An additional few thousand grand per year in scholastic scholarships help—those are sponsored by the insurance company my dad works for—but I could really use the money Zeke just threw down, even if it’s only a hundred bucks.
So.
I find myself studying the girl again, scrutinizing her with renewed interest. Buttoned-up cardigan. Serious face. Sleek, dark hair. Mouth pulled into a straight line, pink tip of her tongue peeking out of the corner, indisputably from concentration.
I guess I could stand to have her mouth on mine for a few seconds.
I give Zeke a stiff nod, and because I know he’ll pay, I say, “Make it five hundred and you have a deal.”
He snorts. “Done.”
Leaning back in his chair, my teammate crosses his bulky arms, urging me on with a flick of his fingers. “Best hop to it, Casanova, before she catches you staring and runs off with her tail between her sewn up legs.”
Sebastian
“I thought we already established I’m not a tutor.”
The girl is hunched, boxed out over her textbook, highlighter poised above the right margin. She still hasn’t looked up, but at least she acknowledged me before I had to take drastic measures like clearing my throat and beating on the table.
I call that progress.
“Right. I got that the first time I came over.”
Her neon highlighter stills, hovering above the book fanned out in front of her. She clicks it closed once, removes an earbud, and holds it suspended in the air as she waits for me to say something. “Is there something I can help you with?”
She tips her head to the side, waiting, listening for me to speak but continuing to study.
I decide to go for broke. “I need you to kiss me.”
Nothing.
No reaction.
No balking, no blushing, no comment.
Like this sort of thing happens to her on the regular.
“Would you look at me, dammit?”
That does the trick; that gets her attention.
Her head lifts, her long brown ponytail cascading over her right shoulder, classy and sophisticated.
Her eyes are brilliant blue, lashes long.
Our eyes meet.
Gazes connect.
Heartbeats pound.
Whatever the fuck cliché you want to throw out there—they’re all annoying, but there you have it. She’s watching me warily, those blue eyes narrowing in a surly way.
Agitation flares her nostrils.
Very unpromising.
Dismissing me after a long stretch of silence, she pushes the earbud back in place, head lowering, highlighter resuming its even, effortless strokes across the paper laid out in front of her.
“You’re ridiculous,” she mutters with a cool flick of her wrist. “Go back to your friends.”
“I can’t.” Might as well be brutally honest; maybe she’ll appreciate that. It actually seems like something we have in common: zero tolerance for bullshit.
I can work with that.
She lifts her head and rolls her eyes. “You can’t go back? What does that even mean?”
I smirk, anticipating the bomb I’m about to drop. “Sorry, sweetheart, that’s impossible. I’m here on a mission and I can’t go back until it’s accomplished.”
I hold my hands up helplessly, beseeching.
“First of all, don’t ever call me sweetheart again. I’m a stranger to you. Secondly, I’m not interested in whatever games you little boys are playing. I have serious work to do here, so…”
The girl puts down the yellow highlighter, rifles through the writing utensils on the table, and chooses a blue felt-tip pen. Whatever she’s working on has her full attention, and she goes back at it like I’m not still standing here bearing down on her—all six foot two of me.
Despite the fact that I’m not attracted to her the way I’d be attracted to, say, someone willing to bang me, the competitive D1 athlete in me refuses to budge from this spot; rather, I re-strategize.
I move closer to her chair, large hand resting on the corner of the wood table. Inches from her laptop, encroaching on her personal space, my coarse fingers tap the corner of the desk, slowly stroke the wood. A few more caresses and I’m pulling out the chair beside her, conscious of my teammates watching from across the room.
Nosy assholes.
The legs of the desk chair scrape against the old hardwood floor, causing more than a few heads to snap in our direction.
I straddle it, crossing my arms over the back, and face her head on.
Head tilted to the side as she copies notes from a laptop, she’s handwriting them onto paper. The first
thing I notice when she brushes the errant ponytail back over her shoulder is the smooth skin at the curve of her neck, then the small diamond studs in her lobes.
I observe the soft fabric of her cardigan—and I know it’s soft because I’m pretty sure the last sorority girl I fucked had the same sweater; it’s the uniform of snotty collegiate women everywhere.
This girl is all class.
She’s also blatantly ignoring me.
I watch her a few minutes more as she continues copying classroom notes from her laptop into a spiral notebook, snubbing me. “Why are you copying notes you’ve already taken?”
Long, loud sigh. “Repetition. So I can memorize them.”
Hmmm. Not a bad idea.
Perhaps I’ll try it sometime.
“My name’s Oz, by the way.” I give her a megawatt smile, mouth filled with pearly, perfectly straight teeth that have dropped thongs, bikini briefs, and boy shorts all over this campus—and, truth be told, at several other universities.
Who am I to discriminate?
Still, the girl says nothing.
“Oz Osborne,” I repeat, just in case she’s hard of hearing, because she’s still not answering me. Holy. Shit. What if she’s deaf and can only reads lips?
I wait for the name recognition to set in. Wait for her eyebrows to shoot up or cheeks to flush. Wait for any sign she’s heard of me; they all have.
But my salutation is met with an uncomfortable, deafening silence; so she’s truly never heard of me, she’s playing it cool, she can’t hear me—or she just plain ol’ doesn’t give a crap.
Scratch, scratch, scratch goes the pen across her paper.
Awkwardly, I’m stuck sitting at her fucking study table while my friends gawk from nearby, Zeke’s smug gloating visible from across the room. Arms crossed, he leans back in his chair, pencil shoved behind his ear, watching instead of studying like I’m a sideshow.
His arrogant, angry brows rise.
Whatever; I’ve got this. No snotty chick is going to give me the cold shoulder; I’m Sebastian fuckin Osborne.
Undeterred, I clear my throat and try again.
“Anyway, as I was saying, my name is Oz. Nice to meet you.” I lean my elbow on the edge of the table, my chest hovering perilously close to her personal space. I raise my voice and over-enunciate—just in case she is deaf and can’t hear me.
“See that group of guys over there?” I tip my head toward the table my teammates occupy; they’re egging me on with lewd gestures. Classy. “On second thought, don’t look. They’re assholes.”
The girl sniffs.
“They also don’t think you’ll kiss me.” Each word rings out clear as a bell, loud enough to get her attention.
“First of all, lower your voice.” She rolls her eyes but keeps her head down, writing. “And secondly, your friends are right. I’m not kissing you.”
“Ah! Good—so you’re not deaf. I was getting kind of worried.”
Her head shoots up. “Oh my god, what did you just say?”
“I thought for a second you were deaf and that’s why you were ignoring me.”
“You are an insensitive idiot.” The appalled look on her face speaks volumes, her tone horrified when she parts her lips to say, “I can hear you, smell you—gosh! Even see you! I am one hundred percent ignoring you.”
“I introduced myself to you four times.”
Eye roll. “Haven’t you heard of stranger danger?”
“I left my white kidnapping van back at the crack house, so you’re safe—for now.”
The witty comeback interests her, and she raises her head in disbelief. Sparkling eyes meet mine for the second time since I commandeered her table, assessing me the same way I studied her: with awareness, curiosity, and…
Humor.
She’s amused by me, I can tell.
“You’re kind of absurd, but…funny.” She pauses. “Oz.”
“Thanks? I think.”
“Sooo…” The girl taps her pen on the corner of the desk, squints at the corner of her computer monitor, and eyes me expectantly. “We’re done here, right? It’s getting late and I don’t have a lot of time left to study.”
I clear my throat. “Just one kiss and I’ll leave you alone.”
“What part of no didn’t you get? Did your jock brain not learn that word?” Her voice is measured, slow, like maybe I don’t understand English.
“Technically you never told me no.”
She stares back at me, expressionless.
I persist. “What about a small one? Just a quick peck on the lips. No tongue.”
My joke goes without even the barest trace of a smile.
“Fine.” I laugh. “Some tongue.”
She slaps down her pen and threads her fingers together, blue eyes blazing. “Stop.”
One word.
Stop.
Even I’m not dumb enough to push.
Fine, I’m going to push, but just a little. “C’mon babe. Don’t make me walk back over there with this long tail between my legs.”
At my innuendo, her keen eyes dart quickly between my legs, land on the crotch of my jeans, and widen before she catches herself doing it. If I hadn’t caught it myself, I’d think I’d imagined it.
Her lips purse.
The girl reaches up and pulls the black glasses down off her head, propping them on the bridge of her pert nose, and shoots a scornful glance across the room at my table full of teammates.
“I know how this whole thing must look, but I promise you, my intentions are honorable. We’re just trying to have a little fun, yeah? No harm in—”
“Honorable?” The pink wires are still dangling from her ears when she reaches up and removes them, dropping the earbuds onto her laptop. “A little fun? At whose expense?”
Speaking of expenses, I’m about to lose five hundred big ones to the motion of her hand rising to cut off my reply.
“Tell me this: you come over here, try to get a kiss for god-only-knows-what-reason, and I’m supposed to be flattered by your attention? Please. Who do you think you are?”
I open my mouth to tell her, but she cuts me off.
Again.
“Do you win some special status—a plaque with your name on it, perhaps? The prime parking spot at your fraternity house for the month of September?”
She wants me to be direct? Fine. “I’m not in a fraternity, but yeah, actually, I do win something. I get five hundred bucks if you kiss me, and honestly, I could really use the money.”
Now she’s leaning back in her chair, balancing herself on the legs like a dude. “Ah, so you interrupted my research to act like an asshole on some lark. For money.”
“Yeah, basically.” I shrug. “Five hundred bucks is five hundred bucks.”
We have a reckoning then, regarding each other with unconcealed interest. She does little to disguise her inspection of my body, masked expression unreadable as she starts at my boots and works her way up.
I know when her eyes hit the flat of my sculpted abs. Feel when they run idly over my shoulders and hesitate when they flicker to my spread legs, to the crotch of my jeans.
Long dark lashes coated with black mascara flutter. Flawless pale skin flushes. Her lips, I can’t help but notice, are pursed but pleasantly full.
Pretty damn cute, except I am completely unable to tell what she’s thinking.
“You have one hell of a poker face you know that?”
“Thank you.”
I lean in. “What’s your name?”
She rolls her blue eyes.
Nonchalantly, I shrug. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll have to insist on calling you Sexy Librarian.”
Her eyes take a joy ride up and down my thick arms folded over the chair, the full sleeve of tattoos. “See that woman over there with the gray bun and cardigan cataloging the dictionaries? That’s the librarian.”
Now I roll my eyes. “No shit, she looks like one—but if we’re comparing, all you’re missing is the
gray hair, bitter expression, and nerdy glasses.” Her hands touch the frames surrounding her blue eyes. “Never mind, you hit two of the three. A trifecta of sexual repression.”
“I’m not sexually repressed.”
At the base of my thick neck, I pretend to have a necklace around my throat and finger an imaginary pearl. “Could have fooled me.”
Her eyes narrow. “If this is your way of trying to be charming, you’re failing miserably. I thought you were trying to kiss me.”
“Does this mean you’re thinking about it?”
She pauses for a heartbeat, picking up her pen and drawing little circles in her notebook. “It would surprise you if I said yes, wouldn’t it?”
I chuckle. “Yes.”
“Hold on—I want to remember this moment when I say the words.” She squints at me like she’s taking a picture in her mind, then slowly says, “Yes. I’m thinking about it.”
Not. What. I. Was. Expecting.
Is this chick for real?
“Seriously?” I blurt out, brows planted in my hairline. “You’re not just fucking with me?”
Her shoulders rise into a shrug. “Sure, why not? I could use three hundred dollars.
People don’t surprise me very often, but Sexy Librarian…she just shocked the shit out of me. “Three hundred dollars?”
What the fuck!
“No offense, but I’m not giving you more than half the money; that’s not part of the deal.”
She lifts her earbuds, placing one back in her ear, then the other with a smug, satisfied smile. “See you around then, Oz.”
I catch her eyes rolling again before her neck bends, pen flying into motion as she goes back to studying.
I sigh. “Fine. Fifty bucks.”
“Two fifty.”
She never lifts her head.
What the hell? “This is bullshit. You seriously won’t kiss me for free?”
“Absolutely not.” She looks up and down my chiseled torso, eyes taking in my dense biceps and tattoos with only mild interest. An eyebrow cocks. “You’re not exactly my type.”
Liar.
“Kitten, you couldn’t be less my type even if you were sitting in that chair wearing nothing but that goddamn necklace.”