Blindsided (25 page)

And I whisper back, “I’m counting on it.”

I
can feel her skin, silky and smooth, like perfect satin, beneath my fingertips. My hand ghosts across a soft curve until it hits lace. The rough material is enough to jolt my from my hazy half-sleep into full consciousness.

Leah shifts, curling her arm around her body until her fingers wrap around my forearm. I shuffle closer to her, relishing the silence. Relishing the feel of her in my arms, still, relaxed.

There’s a sense of calmness in me. I’ve always been the crazy one, the wild one. I’ve never stopped to smell the roses or think about something other than right the hell now. I’ve never stopped to think about anything seriously.

Except football. The game was always the number-one thing in my life. Nothing else meant a thing. It was all fleeting.

Until this girl.

Until she handed me my ass, sassing me royally, and told me where the fuck to get off on the dickhead train.

Leah Veronica has crawled beneath my skin. With every word she speaks, she inches a little deeper. Every time she laughs, she gets a firmer hold on me. Every day, she grips a little tighter, cementing herself in my life as the most important thing.

She cares. I care.

That’s the problem with playing a game. That’s the problem when you set out to play without knowing the rules. No one can win. At least they can’t win the original prize. Because over time, that prize changes. It becomes more than a carnal need, than a fleeting hour of slick flesh meeting and pleasure reigning.

No. It becomes something stronger. Something so fucking real, so solid, that you can barely grip it. Something so real that it can collapse as easily as it was built.

The prize isn’t her body. It isn’t her pussy, her pleasure, or her nails in my back.

The prize is her heart. It’s the sparkle in her eye, the tremble of her hand, and the security of her in my arms.

The game is convincing her that I’m everything she could ever need.

“What did the student say to the teacher?” she mutters, half asleep.

“What?”

“Stop asking me to find your ‘x.’ I don’t know ‘y’ she left.”

My lips curve. “That was fuckin’ awful.”

“I know.” Leah opens her eyes fully. “But you were looking at me like I was a math problem, so I thought it was appropriate.”

“Math is never appropriate at seven a.m.”

“It’s seven in the morning? Ugh. Go back to sleep, you weirdo.” She attempts to roll away from me, but I leap on top of her and straddle her. “What are you doing?” she moans, covering her eyes with her arm.

“Some of us have a job to go to.” I touch a light kiss to her lips.

“Yeah, well, some of us have sleeping to do. You’re seriously disrupting that.” She bats at my head. “And you don’t have a job. You have a ball to throw around.”

“And team tapes to study, and tactics to discuss, and weights to lift…”

“All right, so you’re the all-American football star.” She drops her arm. “I, however, am not. I’m a twenty-something girl with a love of sleeping in.”

“Yet you run almost every day.”

“I run when I wake up at, like, ten. Macey used to run at five. That was the first time I seriously questioned our friendship,” she says, her blue eyes wide. “The last time was when she went to Reid’s party with the sole objection of sleeping with Jack.”

“I admire a girl who knows what she wants,” I murmur against her.

“So, you don’t admire me?”

“No, babe. You want me. That’s more than admirable. That’s heroic.”

She laughs, pushing her head back into the pillow. “Oh my God. You’re something else, Corey Jackson. For real.”

I grin slowly. “Well, duh. I’m sexy, charming, and funny. You don’t get guys like me that often.”

“Thank fuck!” Her laugh tinkles now, wrapping around me, making my slide my fingers into her hair. “If there were any more than one of you, I’d go crazy!”

“Hey.” I descend my lips onto hers. “You know there’ll never be another me. I’m too fucking fantastic.”

“Yes,” she whispers. “That’s it. You’re so fucking fantastic no one can live up to you.”

“You sassin’ me, darlin’?”

“I’m always sassing you, cowboy. I’m just waiting until you realize it.”

I smile, and the curve of my lips matches hers. “I love your sass. It makes you sexy.”

“So, I’m only sexy when I sass you?”

“Why do you hafta twist everything I say, huh?”

“I’m a woman. I’d twist a steel rod given half a chance.”

“Shit. Please don’t. My cock likes being straight.”

She laughs again. “You’re awful, you know that? Just because you have two heads doesn’t mean you should think with them both.”

“Babe, if I thought with them both, I’d fuck you before I let you sleep in my bed.”

She wriggles her hips. “Feels like he’s ready to sass
me
for sleeping in it without fucking you in it.”

“When you put it that way…”

“Don’t you have to practice not throwing interceptions?”

“Bitch.” I tickle her sides and she writhes beneath me. It does nothing for my growing erection, because fuck, her pussy rubs against my dick, her legs clench, and she grips my biceps.

“Corey! Cut that shit out!” She lightly slaps my shoulder then sighs. “Well, now you’ve woken me up. I hope you plan to cook me breakfast.”

I sit up and pull her with me. “Shit. Someone’s demanding in the morning.”

“Take a note, cowboy. Don’t wake me up.”

“You mean you’ll let me sleep with you again?”

She darts her eyes to mine, and she smiles almost shyly. “Depends how nice you are to me.”

“Is that an anagram for ‘every night’?”

“Oooh, someone’s getting cocky.”

“Someone has a cock to be cocky with.” I slide my hands to her hips and yank her forward. “He’d like it if you stayed every night.”

“Would you?” she asks quietly. Her nails trail light scratches up my arms, and her eyes follow the movements.

I wrap my arms around her so tight that her body is flush against mine. “Every night,” I whisper honestly. “You up for the challenge?”

“For five more nights?”

“And whatever happens after.”

“Corey Jackson, are you asking me to be your girlfriend in some jacked-up way?”

“Are you telling me you’d be comfortable in public with me?” I cup the back of her neck and brush my nose against hers.

“No,” she answers honestly, letting out a long breath. Her hands still at the base of my back. “I wouldn’t be comfortable. But if you wanted me to try, then maybe I could.”

“Leah Veronica,” I murmur, my mouth running across her jaw to her neck. “Are you telling me you’d like to be my girlfriend?”

Her throat bobs as she swallows, and her fingers grip me a little tighter. “You gotta stop asking me questions I can’t answer.”

“Can’t answer, or won’t?”

“Maybe both.”

I kiss the spot beneath her ear. I want to push her. Fuck, I want to tear the answer from her. I want to wine and dine her. I want to wrap my arms around her and kiss the ever-loving motherfucking life out of her right in front of a photographer.

I want the whole damn world to know that this sassy, gorgeous, confident woman belongs to me. And me alone.

I get up and throw some sweatpants on. We’ve known each other for all of a couple of weeks, and they’ve been the most harrowing two weeks of my life.

“What do you want for dinner tonight?” I ask her when she pads into the kitchen behind me.

“How very domestic of you,” she replies, amused.

I turn around to look at her. She’s wearing one of my Vipers T-shirts, and it swamps her, the hem skimming her thighs. My eyes hover on the material moving against her skin as she walks.

“Corey. Hello?”

“What was the question?” I look up. “You’re distracting me.”

Leah rolls her eyes and sits at the table. “I said ‘surprise me.’”

“I don’t have any candles and I’ve never bought a bunch of flowers in my life, so I think you’re gonna be pretty disappointed, babe.”

“Candles are overrated and flowers just die.” She shrugs. “Just…decide on something for dinner and I’ll figure out the rest, okay?”

“Got it.” I pass her some toast. “What are you going to do today?”

“Work.”

I pause and glance over my shoulder, the butter knife resting on my own toast. “I thought you didn’t have a job.”

Her eyes snap up. “I don’t. My mom joked once that my work is looking for a job. It kind of stuck.”

“Right.” I look away but glance back. She doesn’t notice my eyes back on her, but I notice everything.

The long, quiet breath she lets out. The visible relaxation of her shoulders. The slight shake of her head.

And instantly, I know—Leah Veronica has a job.

One she’s keeping secret.

Not for long.

Talk. She wants to fucking talk.

That’s her plan for the evening. I cook dinner and then we talk. ‘Get to know you’ kinda talk.

My dick planned on a different kind of conversation.

“You’re whipped, man. Completely pussy-whipped.” Jack shakes his head.

“What does she even want to talk about?” I drop the controller next to me on the sofa. “I’m fuckin’ awesome, I play football like a boss, and I’m hot as hell. What else could she want to know about me?”

“Don’t ask me. Ask your girlfriend.”

“Leah isn’t my girlfriend.” Kind of.

“Who the fuck are you kidding, Corey? You haven’t so much as looked at another girl since you met her. She has dinner at your place all the time, you have sleepovers, and now, she wants to talk.”

“That doesn’t make her my girlfriend.”

“So, you’re gonna finally get in her pants then dump her?” Jack questions me, raising an eyebrow.

I run my tongue across my teeth. No. I’m probably gonna get in her pants then roll her over for another round.

“She’s not my fucking girlfriend.” I get up and grab a beer from the fridge. “Ask her yourself when she gets here.”

“Ask me what?” Leah strolls into the front room and puts her hands on her hips.