by Lane Hart
Roxanne walks three big steps away from the tripod metal football holder, sighting the goal with her raised right arm and then takes two giant steps to the left, just like I’ve done a million times before. She goes for it at full speed and…
Whoosh.
The ball sails right through the center of the goal posts with plenty of ass on it. She could’ve made it from fifty-eight yards out or, hell, maybe even sixty.
Some of the guys standing around watching hoot and holler, either because she actually made the kick or because of Roxanne’s sexy celebratory dance. Both of her arms are raised straight up in the air as she does this little swiveling hip shake that causes all dicks within a ten-mile radius to stir in interest, including my own.
“Well, if nothing else, she’ll be one helluva distraction,” Lathan declares when he takes a seat on the bench next to me, pink haired, drenched in sweat, and guzzling from the water bottle clutched in his hand.
“A distraction for the other team or us?” I ask with a snort as we hear Coach Griffin yell, “Okay, ladies and Roxy, get back to work!”
“Hopefully we’ll all be immune by game time. Or not,” my best friend croaks right about the time Roxanne looks over her shoulder, still smiling triumphantly from her kick, and makes eye contact with me for the first time since we got to campus last night.
Like a rerun of Baywatch, Roxanne comes running over towards us in slow motion, her ponytail swishing, hair so light it looks white like a halo in the bright, summer sun.
“Oh God. I can’t be this close to her yet,” Lathan groans as if in pain before he slides down the length of the metal bench and heads for the other end of the field.
“Hey, Kohen. How are you feeling?” Roxy asks when she comes to a stop in front of me. Since I’m still sitting down, that puts me right at navel level with the scantily dressed woman. There’s a drop of sweat that’s hanging suspended right above her bellybutton, and my mouth waters, my tongue desperate to lick it up before it falls.
Fuck.
Clearly, I’m in serious need of some self-love. I hate that it’s all her fault for leaving me so horny, and now she’s flaunting her hotness inches away from my fucking face. I’m sure this is nothing more than part of her maneating, ball-busting scheme. Annoyed even more than I was thanks to the heat, the corners of my lips tug down hard in a scowl.
“I’m just great,” I answer her question sarcastically. “My armpits hurt from having to shuffle along on fucking crutches everywhere I go, and my knee is aching like a son of a bitch after my first rehab session. But enough about me. How are you, Roxy? And why are dressed like a slut? Looking for your next wordjob victim, or have you already progressed to handjobs and blowjobs?”
“Fuck you,” she replies. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s hot as hell out here. And are you always such a dick to women, or should I feel flattered to be the only beneficiary of your sexist insults?”
Son of a bitch. Is she threatening to report me? No way I’m gonna tell her that I haven’t actually signed the goddamn addendum.
“Hendricks! Good to see you back on the field.” Coach Sigmon says when he walks up next to us. “Roxy, you and Dane get stretched out, and we’ll call it quits for the afternoon. I’ve gotta work on receiving with special teams the rest of the day.”
“Thanks, Coach,” Roxanne replies before jogging back over to Dane in the end zone. The two talk, standing closer than necessary before Roxanne lies down on her back in the grass. One leg on the ground, she lifts the other straight up in the air. Dane grips her leg with both of his hands, pressing it down, guiding her thigh to her chest, leaning over her in what looks just like a sexual position. That’s when I start seeing red.
Getting to my feet, my fingers clench around the hand grips on the crutches as I watch him manhandle her. I want to storm over there and beat him with one of my sticks while warning him to back the fuck off; but before I can hobble two steps, they’ve switched positions. Now Dane’s on the ground with Roxanne stretching him out. She presses his legs to his body and then leans down to whisper something in his ear. Whatever it is makes him smile and makes me fucking furious. Yesterday she was acting like she wanted me, like she could barely keep her hands off me despite the fact that she hated me, and now she’s flirting and shit with another teammate.
The sun’s bearing down on me, heating me up and making me swear I’m in hell, especially when I watch Quinton jog over to them, eating her up with his eyes and glaring at Dane like…well, like I’m doing. But for some reason, my team captain’s response to her makes me want to shove my foot up his ass. Roxanne gets to her feet and walks up to Quinton. She doesn’t seem bothered by his cotton candy head either as they talk and grin at each other like they’re both smitten.
Goddamn it. It looks like overcoming my suspicions of her ulterior motives was premature. Roxanne’s a maneater, no different than Lola. I made the mistake of trusting a woman once, and she made a fool out of me. That shit won’t happen again.
In the preseason of my second year, I met Lola Davis. She was a gorgeous, outgoing Lady Cat who could flash a smile while tossing her long, raven hair over her shoulder, making even the strongest men crumble. We started dating exclusively within weeks, and she practically lived in my apartment by Christmas. During the off season, we were so serious that I asked her to marry me. And when she agreed, I bought her the gigantic rock she picked out that cost more like six months’ salary instead of the standard two. Then, I let her help me choose the houseboat because I thought we were going to be sharing it together. She wanted the one with extra bedrooms I didn’t think we needed and all sorts of other fancy upgrades, stretching my budget more than I should have. But I wanted her to be happy with our home because I loved her.
Apparently, she couldn’t wait to christen our new houseboat. The week after I bought it we threw a party, inviting half the team, including our new rookie quarterback. Quinton had just signed a fat four-year contract worth five times that of my own. Chasing those dollars, my fiancée gave Quinton the grand tour of our new home, ending in our master bedroom where she fucked him.
How did I find out? Well, Quinton was kind enough to apologize to me for screwing in my bedroom, but couldn’t resist telling Lathan and me about how limber his recent conquest was before kindly sharing her name with us. I lost my shit and got in a few punches on the asshole’s perfect face before Lathan and some of the other guys broke it up.
Quinton swore he didn’t know Lola and I were together and promised he was done with her for good. He kept to his word, so I eventually gave him the benefit of the doubt, especially after Lola moved up the chain to her new conquest --- our defensive coordinator. Seems she decided to focus on a long-term investment. Coach Powers was only in his early forties, making a decent earning with the potential to coach professionally for many more years to come, perhaps even moving up to head coach for a team someday.
The two were married before the end of the year and just had their first child together. That means I still, unfortunately, have to see the whore at all the group functions. Lola never wastes an opportunity to find me and say hello, reminding me how stupid I was and how easily she manipulated me. The bitch didn’t even give me back the engagement ring I spent a fucking fortune on.
So, for the past several years, thanks to Lola, I’ve lived by an entirely new dating playbook. For starters, I never see the same woman more than three times. I never take her anywhere but out to dinner. If we have sex, I refuse to ever spend the night sleeping in the same bed. No uses of pet names, not even the generic “baby” or “sweetheart.” And last, but certainly not least, I never, under any circumstances let a date meet my friends, family or teammates. Without these rules in place, things can become complicated with women. Shit gets serious and then hearts get broken.
I’ve learned my lesson, so despite how gorgeous Roxanne might be, I refuse to get played by any woman again on or off the field.
Chapter Ten
Roxy
“Tell me I’m wrong, but it sure looked like Dane was getting a little too touchy-feely with you,” Quinton says after he jogged over to the end zone.
“It’s fine,” I tell him with a smile, trying to appear as though my heart isn’t racing in my chest and I want to throw up on his shoelaces. “I was just telling Dane that I would stomp my cleat into his balls so hard it would leave permanent imprints if he touched me like that again.”
“Good,” Quinton replies with a smirk in the asshole’s direction. “And then you’ll have to answer to me and Coach Griffin. Got it dickhead?” he asks Dane, who is still sitting on the ground.
“We were just stretching. What’s the big fucking deal?” Dane replies, getting to his feet and trudging back to campus.
“I’ll talk to Coach about getting you some security or some shit,” Quinton says, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair and then pausing and wincing when he remembers it’s now a pink Mohawk. “Hard for me to be threatening with pink hair,” he grumbles.
“Don’t worry about it. I can take care of myself. Dane’s not the first jerk to mess with me and won’t be the last. I don’t want to cause problems any more than I already am being the first woman and all,” I tell him with a shrug, swiping away the sweat dripping from my forehead. Quinton was right about the blistering heat, so during the lunch break, I said fuck it, trading my black pants in for white shorts.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re the first or the five hundredth woman to play in this league. You shouldn’t have to put up with that shit,” Quinton says, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder into the direction of Dane’s retreating back.
“It’s fine, really,” I assure him. “Let me handle it.”
“Okay, but you tell me if Dane crosses the line again,” he says.
“I will, or more likely, you’ll hear him screaming when I remove his testicles.”
“Is that how you got the Ballbuster nickname?” Quinton asks, arching a dark eyebrow and smirking.
“Mostly it’s for kicking balls through the goal posts; but once, when I was in high school, there was an incident,” I tell him honestly. I’m not sure why, but I feel like I can trust Quinton not to run his mouth and to actually have my back. Maybe even be a friend. He sort of reminds me of Paxton, who I miss like crazy.
“An incident?” Quinton repeats.
“Let’s just say the asshole now only has a fifty percent chance of having biological children,” I explain, unable to prevent my smile when I remember badass Tommy Wilson falling to his knees and shrieking like a little girl.
“Ouch,” Quinton mutters, shifting his hips away from me. “Guess he deserved it?”
“Yeah, he did. See ya later,” I say with a wave before lumbering off the field, back to the dorms to get a cold shower and get ready for my first press conference.
Thinking back to my sophomore year in high school on the way, I was so damn young and naïve. When I made the varsity team, suddenly I was the most popular girl in school. My teammates were giving me flowers and other gifts and asking me out like crazy. I was flattered but ignored them all until Tommy, the senior star running back on the team, started flirting with me. He was funny, charismatic and the hottest guy in the school, if not the whole town. Every girl wanted him, and I felt special that, out of all of his available choices, he wanted me.
On our first date, we just kissed goodnight, but then things got hot and heavy real fast. Tommy had serious skills in foreplay that, to a girl like me with zero prior experience, were almost overwhelming. I got wrapped up in his compliments and blame it partially on my raging hormones that liked how easily he could have me begging him for more. Before long, things with Tommy progressed to his hand in my panties. And then during the homecoming party at his house, he convinced me to take my panties off for him. That night I lost my virginity in Tommy’s bed. It was like ripping off a Band-Aid, quick and painful. When it was suddenly over, I was still lying there stunned, frozen while Tommy wasted no time going back out to the party with all our teammates. The asshole actually waved around my white panties, a symbol of my innocence he carelessly stole, before collecting his winnings. That’s right. Most, if not all of the varsity players had placed bets on who could pop my cherry first. What should have been special and meant something was nothing more than a prize to be won, along with the bragging rights. Tommy was paid his winnings, and then he spent the rest of the night in the hospital after I found him and kneed him between his legs so hard and so many times that his right testicle ruptured. Whoops.
His parents actually wanted him to press charges against me, the sixteen-year-old girl who lost her virginity to the inconsiderate asshole. My dad stood up for me, but the rest of the team gave me hell after that. They slashed the tires on my first POS car, peed a miniature lake in my locker, ruining all of my books, and told everyone I took part in a gang bang with the offensive line, including disgusting, explicit details that never happened.
It was obvious that in White Falls I would never be more than a joke to everyone in that school. All the girls already hated me before any of that happened. So, my dad quit his job as a history teacher and coach at a middle school and moved us to a new town a few hours away where he got a job coaching at a small, private university. Some of the kids there had heard the stories from White Falls, but the coaches stuck up for me, shutting down the bullies. They actually worked with me to help me improve on the field. The one good thing from the whole ordeal was that I learned an important lesson about not sleeping with teammates. What stuck with me the most was that men, especially football players, are assholes who can’t be trusted.
While I love my father like crazy and know he would do anything for me, he didn’t instill in me much hope for the opposite sex either. My mom up and left us right before my sixth birthday to be with her high school sweetheart she had been cheating on my dad with for months. My dad was obviously crushed by her betrayal and abandonment. A few years later, he seemed to rebound, though, and started dating again. Only, my dad rarely saw a woman for more than a handful of dates. As I grew older, I realized that the women in our house on weekend mornings didn’t actually come over to cook us breakfast. No, they had spent the night. After my dad grew tired of them, they would never come around again.
My mother, my father, Tommy Wilson, the White Falls football team --- these are all the reasons that I’ve never put much faith in relationships. They’ve all taught me that everyone is selfish, and the best thing to do is look out for myself because no one else will. Love is a sham. Being intimate with a man is fun and feels great for a few wonderful seconds, but then it’s back to reality. One where feelings are bound to get hurt, so what’s the point?
“How was your first day of practice as a Wildcat?” one of the men with a recorder asks me.
Winona was allowed to come to campus this afternoon to help guide me through the press conference. An hour before it started, we practiced several question and answers that I would likely be asked, including this easy one.
“I think my first practice went well. There’s still a lot for me to learn as a rookie in the league, but I’m surrounded by a great group of players and couldn’t ask for a better coaching staff.”
“Speaking of your teammates,” a reporter with a pixie cut starts, her nose wrinkled like she smells shit. My gut clenches in a knot, expecting the worst. “How unfortunate is it that Kohen Hendricks, the team’s starting kicker for the past five years, has been injured on the first day of the season? A dislocated knee is not only uncommon but unheard of outside of a brutal hit during a game, isn’t it?”
“We all wish Kohen a speedy recovery. He’s not only a veteran but one of the best kickers in the league, so I know I can learn a lot from him this season once he’s able to get back on the field.”
I hate lying, but management is right. There’s enough heat on me as it is. Throw in a Tonya Harding scandal, and I’ll be forever screwed. The fans would automatically hat
e me for injuring their starting kicker, even if it was an accident, and the press would eat me alive. Hopefully, the rest of the team will keep their mouth shut about what really happened.
Winona lets me field a few more questions before she calls a stop and thanks everyone, ushering me out of the conference room.
“You did good,” she whispers as we make our escape. “Thank fuck the story is still buried, or all hell would be breaking loose.”
“Yeah really,” I agree.
“Oh my God,” she mutters, her high heels freezing in the middle of the hallway. “Who knew pink hair could be so hot on a man?”
Following her line of sight, I see she’s referring to Lathan and Quinton standing across the lobby with Kohen, all three dressed in expensive looking suits, looking every bit like the million bucks each of them is earning on their paychecks.
“Yeah, those two pull off pink Mohawks pretty well,” I admit, even though my eyes are on Kohen.
Every time I see him it’s like someone lights a match and tosses it into my belly that’s more flammable than gasoline. Heat with an intensity that could rival a wildfire rages through my soul, especially when his dark eyes meet and hold mine from across the room. The crutches are propped under the arms of his dark suit jacket, but they don’t distract from his gorgeousness. His longer on top dark hair looks like waves of melted chocolate, styled to stand up in the front, giving him a fresh-from-a-roll-around-the-hay look. There’s a dusting of dark scruff along his chiseled jawline, making him look even more masculine and sexy. Knowing exactly the type of muscle definition he’s hiding underneath the well-fitting suit, Kohen belongs on billboards modeling boxer briefs rather than on a football field.
“Will you introduce me?” Winona asks, snapping me out of the staring contest with Kohen. But the memory of running my fingernails over the curves and valleys of his sculpted stomach lingers, keeping me off balance.