Breaking Defenses

by JB Salsbury

  I blow out a breath and tug at my sweater while praying away the nervous sweat. “They’re just men,” I tell myself. Perfect physical specimens, sure, but still just men. No different than Marcus. And yet…not at all similar.

  I place eight pounded chicken breasts on the hot grill pan, they were on sale, two packages for the price of one, and I’d never turn down a food bargain. I figured I’d go big, knowing Carey had roommates, someone would eat it all.

  The water in the pasta pot is boiling, so I salt it and drop in four boxes of fettuccine, give it a stir, and set the timer on the oven.

  I check the sauce and turn the heat down to simmer, then dig into the fridge for the romaine I put in there earlier and start ripping off leaves when Carey finally joins me in the kitchen.

  “Smells like fucking in heaven in here,” he says as he heads to the stove to check out the food.

  “No peeking!”

  He acts like he can’t hear me, so I hook him by the arm and… oh wow, his skin is so soft. Are men usually this soft? His warm hazel eyes dart from my hand to my eyes and there’s a zap of electricity between us. Or maybe it’s just me, all I know is that the tingling is back. I drop my hand and give him a shaky smile. “It’s a surprise.”

  His hair is wet and his jaw freshly shaved and why does he have to smell so good? I’m nervous and sweaty and I could really use a ponytail holder.

  “Drink?” He crosses to the fridge. “We have water, beer, lemonade, and vodka.”

  I don’t usually drink alcohol, mainly because it’s too expensive, but right now I’d take anything to calm my nerves. “Beer sounds good.”

  He smirks. “My kind of girl.”

  My heart hiccups. God, I wish he wouldn’t say things like that.

  Chapter Eight

  Rowan

  How in the hell does a girl like me end up at a table with five college football players watching them devour a meal I prepared?

  I ask myself that question as I sip from my second beer. The first beer made me feel so relaxed, I couldn’t turn down another.

  “This is so good, Rowan.” Spider, the tatted brunette, moans as he chews, his eyes closed. “It’s like the food is fucking my mouth.”

  “Watch your mouth, asshole,” Loren says, his fork loaded and paused before his lips. “There’s a lady present.”

  “I don’t mind,” I say with a giggle. What is it about feeding people who love food that brings me such satisfaction? “That’s probably the best compliment I’ve ever received.”

  Carey, who has seemed annoyed since his roommates descended into the kitchen at the smell of cooked food, swallows his mouthful. “That can’t be true.”

  All eyes are on me and I squirm under the spotlight. “Oh, I don’t know.” I wrap a noodle around on my fork and eat it, hoping by taking away my ability to talk the subject will miraculously shift to someone else.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you’re hot as fuck?” Kaipo, the big guy who I overheard having sex in the library, says.

  I choke on my food and Carey leans over and pats my back like a parent would do to a kid. “You okay?”

  I nod and take a couple sips of beer. “I’m good.”

  He glares down the table at the big guy whose shoulders are bouncing with silent laughter. Carey’s hand is still on my back and I resist the urge to lean in closer to him, searching out the protection and comfort of his big body. “Have some fucking respect. Rowan busted her ass making me dinner. You’re lucky I’m letting you sit at the same table with us, so cut the shit.”

  One of the guys snorts, I think it’s Loren, but I’m not sure.

  “I apologize for these fucktards,” Carey says, his big palm giving my back one last rub before he goes back to his food. He stuffs his mouth full of chicken and noodles, and the table falls silent save for the scrape of forks on plates and moans.

  “That was so good,” Levi says, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his belly. “Are you sure there’s nothing else that you need fixed so you can owe Carey another dinner?”

  “No,” Carey answers before I can.

  Why is he so moody?

  I get the feeling he wants this night over with as soon as the dishes are clean which means I should stop drinking so I can drive home. I push my beer aside.

  “Are you going to eat that?” Carey stares at my remaining food.

  “No, I’m full.”

  He eats what’s left in two bites.

  I stand to take my plate in only to have Carey’s hand whip out and grip my wrist. “Sit.”

  “I’m taking my plate in.”

  He releases me to grab my beer and move it closer, then takes my plate. “Sit. We’ll clean.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Yeah, sweetheart,” Loren says with a kind smile. “We do.”

  Carey glowers at him but picks up the dishes, and one by one the giant men pick up plates, glasses, and silverware, bringing them all into the kitchen until I’m left alone in the dining room staring at my beer.

  Carey

  “What the fuck, bro?” Spider hisses as he brings me plates that need rinsing. “I thought she was just your tutor?”

  I stare down at him, my eyes tight. “She is just my tutor.”

  He chuckles. “Bullshit.”

  “What’s up with you two anyway,” Mac says as he grabs a dish towel to dry the big salad bowl and pasta platter. “Ollie said you two were hugging or some shit outside the library.”

  “None of your fucking business, that’s what’s up.”

  “Clearly.” Loren snorts.

  “Don’t you assholes have somewhere you have to be?” I’ve never been so annoyed to have roommates, fuck!

  “Why?” Kaipo grins. “You want to be alone for some…” He thrusts his hips. “Private tutelage?”

  “No, I just want to keep her around until I ace my final and you pieces of dogshit are scaring her off.” Those words bring a sour taste to my mouth, because they’re simply not true. I want to keep Rowan around for more than tutoring, but I know I can’t.

  The more I get to know her the more I feel guilty for not confessing about the water bottle in high school. When she told me she lost her scholarship over that? I had the power to protect her from that, all I had to do was speak up and tell the truth. I’m such a selfish prick.

  The way I see it, I have two choices. Fess up, deal with the consequences, those being Rowan’s lifelong hatred of me.

  Or, I leave the past in the past, push down the guilt, and take my confession to the grave.

  I could do that.

  But every time I learn more about her, every story about her fucked up parents, her working three jobs just to attend the university that throws money at people like me, the sickness in my gut intensifies and I feel like she deserves the truth.

  Dammit to shit, this sucks.

  Once the kitchen is clean, I head back to the dining room but Rowan isn’t there. She’s not in the living room, or the kitchen, maybe she’s in the back. I head to the glass door and spot her immediately, her pale skin like a beacon in the dark as she walks around the pool and hot tub.

  I slide open the door and she whirls around and smiles. I feel that shit in my chest. “Get lost?”

  “This property is like a dream,” she says in a breathy voice.

  If she thinks this is nice, I wonder what she would think of my parent’s house back home. And why do I have an unnerving desire to take her there?

  “Is the pool heated?”

  I walk towards her, meeting her near the cluster of pygmy palms that Loren got drunk and fell into the last time we had a party. “No, just the hot tub.”

  She peers up at me, her pale complexion ethereal in the moonlight. “You guys use it often?”

  “Most of us are usually pretty banged up after games so yeah, we do.” Among other things, but I don’t share that with her. “You want to get in?”

  “Really?”

  “Of course.” My blood pu
mps a little harder at the thought of a hot, wet, Rowan.

  She slips out of her shoes and heads for the steps, puts her feet in and sits on the ledge. “Mmmm, so good.”

  So fucking adorable. “I meant get all the way in.”

  “Oh, I didn’t bring a suit.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll find you something to wear. Come on.” I hold my hand out and she takes it.

  I try not to rip her arm out of the socket dragging her barefooted up the stairs

  “Your room is gigantic!”

  “It’s the master.” I dig through my drawers searching out a black pair of boxer shorts and, because I’m a fucking gentleman, a dark shirt. “Here.”

  She takes the clothes from me but her eyes are glued to the four-foot by four-foot painting on my wall. “Is that you?”

  I study the image, an action shot of me running on the field, the uniforms of my teammates and opposing team, grass, lights, all just streaks of color as I blaze toward the end zone. “My sister did that for me.”

  “She painted that!” Her mouth gapes.

  I chuckle at her surprise. “She did. She’s pretty famous in the art world.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Whoa, easy there, potty mouth.” I nod toward the beer she still has in her hand, from what I can tell it’s mostly full. “Am I going to have to cut you off?”

  “Probably.” She hands me the beer and sure enough it’s three quarters full. “Where can I change?”

  How ‘bout right here? I clear my throat and my pervy thoughts. “Bathroom is over there.”

  She scurries off to the bathroom, her pretty bare feet on my carpet, and soon her very naked body in my bathroom, and it hits me like a four-hundred-pound linebacker to the gut.

  I brought a woman in my bedroom.

  Rowan

  “Where did your roommates go?” I ask as I step out into the hallway with my hands clasped tightly to the elastic of Carey’s boxer shorts so that I don’t lose them on the walk back to the hot tub.

  There’s something intimate about wearing his clothes, knowing my bare ass and lady parts are touching the same fabric that his bare ass and man parts have touched is surprisingly…erotic.

  I may not be a virgin, not technically, but in comparison to Carey and what I imagine his sexual experience to be, I feel like I am.

  “Why do you ask?” There’s an edge in his voice.

  “I’d hate for them to see me walking out of your bedroom in your clothes and get the wrong idea.”

  He halts abruptly and stares down at me.

  While I was changing, Carey slipped on an orange pair of board shorts. I literally stumbled when I came out of the bathroom and saw him shirtless and waiting. He laughed as though he knew exactly what threw me off balance, and I appreciate that he didn’t tease me too much about it. Clearly the man is accustomed to girls making complete fools out of themselves in his presence.

  “And what idea would that be?”

  “I think you know.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know.” I throw out my hands in exasperation and the boxers fall around my ankles. I shriek, bend over, and shimmy them back up. “That we’re having sex,” I hiss.

  His lips are twitching like he’s trying really hard not to laugh.

  “You think that’s funny, huh?”

  He throws his head back and laughs hard, the sound a deep rumble that settles between my legs. Just fantastic. “Would that be the worst thing? For them to think we’re banging?”

  I recoil. “You don’t have to say it like that.”

  “Fucking?”

  I cringe again.

  “Hmm.” He chews his lip, thinking. “Making love?”

  My eyebrows pinch together. “I don’t like that either.”

  “What name shall we give our fictitious sexual affair?” We move our conversation outside and to the hot tub, my death grip still firm on my waist. “The shirt is long enough, you don’t even need the boxers. I won’t see anything.”

  “Yes, well…” I hold the elastic in an iron grip. “I think I’ll keep them on anyway.”

  I step in the warm water and sink onto the seat while Carey flips a switch that makes the jets bubble. One of them is aimed right at my lower back and the sensation of heat and pressure is divine.

  I drop my head back to the deck with a long groan.

  “No orgasms in the pool. House rule.”

  My head whips up just as Carey settles in next to me. So close his thigh brushes against mine. When my leg jerks he smiles apologetically. “The jets over here are better.”

  I’m a twenty-one-year-old woman, I can certainly sit next to a man in a hot tub without things getting awkward.

  “How about…assault with a friendly weapon?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Woman. The name for our fictitious sexual affair. Keep up.” He slouches and drops his head back, opening up the thick column of his neck. His Adam’s apple rolls as he swallows, and he closes his eyes. “Bonestorming.”

  I laugh. “No.”

  “Bisecting the triangle.”

  “Oh my God!” I laugh harder. “No!”

  “Burping the worm in the mole hole.”

  I roll to the side and bump him. “Gross! Where do you come up with these?”

  He grins, his pretty mouth stretching across straight teeth, but his eyes remain closed. “Hours upon hours of time spent with dudes.”

  I drop my head back and smile. “Sounds hot.”

  “Rowan Campbell, are you admitting you have a reverse harem fantasy?”

  “I don’t even know what that means, so I’m obligated to say no.”

  “Liar.”

  We both relax in the warm water and comfortable silence. Minutes pass and I hope he hasn’t fallen asleep.

  “Pants-off dance-off?”

  A masculine snort sounds from the man next to me. “I like it, but no. Too tame for us. Try again.”

  Us. A sexy shiver races up my spine. I peek over to see his eyes are still closed so I close mine, grinning. “Having relations.”

  “Pass.”

  “Nobbling?”

  He chuckles. “Where did you learn these? Second grade? Come on, Ro, you can do better than that. Dirty it up.”

  I groan, and with my eyes still closed I think hard. “Um…” I chew my lip trying to think of every term I’ve ever heard referring to sex. This seems like a dangerous conversation to be having with someone as sexually potent as Carey, and in a hot tub no less. A recipe for a meaningless hook up. Would that be so bad?

  “Oh, I know! Dungeons and Dragons!” I blink open my eyes and turn to find him watching me. My breath catches.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he says so quietly I almost wonder if he intended for me to hear. “Playing a little D&D, I like it.”

  Feeling shy and nervous I fist the t-shirt under water. “Thank you.”

  His hypnotic eyes narrow. “For what?”

  “For saying I’m beautiful.” The words are hardly a whisper.

  His gaze drops to my lips and I lick them self-consciously. He sits up and as if drawn by a magnetic pull, I follow, until we’re facing each other. Steam rises up all around us, bubbles distort the water between us.

  Oh my god oh my god oh my god.

  He’s going to kiss me.

  In a split second I sort through my feelings and rearrange my thoughts to decide my response. He must see me come to a conclusion in my head because he lifts his hand and slips his fingers into my hair, cupping my jaw with his enormous hand. His thumb brushes along my lower lip, pulling it down as he slides forward. We’re touching from hip to knee. His free hand slides around me, dips under the shirt to press against the bare skin of my lower back.

  “Carey…” I say so softly I don’t know if he heard me. “We can’t.”

  His jaw hardens and pulses under smooth skin.

  “I’m your tutor, and…” I swallow because I know I have to get out w
hat needs to be said even though my body is throbbing for his touch. “I can’t be another Callie, or Annelise, or Serena.”

  His brows morph into a brutal slant.

  “I’m not judging you and I don’t want to offend you.” My defense pours out quickly. “I wasn’t built that way. I know myself and I couldn’t take it if we crossed that line and then you forgot me.”

  His expression softens and he drops his hand from my face.

  “I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad. I didn’t mean to lead you on, I just got caught up in your compliments and you’re hot and you said I’m beautiful and—”

  “Ro, shhh…” His hand is still on my bare skin at my back under the water and his thumb passes lazily against me in soothing strokes. “You didn’t lead me on. But uh…just to clarify.” He tilts his head and squints one eye. “You think I’m hot?”

  I bark out a very unladylike laugh and push him away. He falls back into the water and I’m sorry to lose his hand on me, but I savor the feeling of getting my hands on his bare chest.

  His head pops up out of the water and he’s laughing hard. “Harsh.”

  “I never took you for a fisherman.” I splash him.

  He dodges the wave of hot water and shakes out his wet hair. “What?”

  “Because you’re fishing for compliments.”

  He sobers and shakes his head. “That was lame.”

  “Your face is lame!”

  His mouth drops open in mock offense. “That’s it.” He reaches for me and dunks me under the water.

  I pop up sputtering because I’m laughing so hard I took in water. “I can’t believe you dunked me!”

  He dunks me again, and I take note that Carey’s laughter is the most pleasant and relaxing sound I’ve ever heard. Like a warm blanket to my soul.

  I stand up, my wet hair draped over my face. “Enough!”

  “What are you gonna do? Karate chop me?”

  I do have my hands out in karate chopping position. I whip them around dramatically, still unable to see. “You do not want some of this!” I kick out only to lose my balance and fall back into the water.

  Two strong hands scoop under my arms and lift me out of the water. I blow the water and wet hair out of my mouth and then Carey is there; his hands gently move my hair out of my face, his eyes soft and focused.