Tackled, Page 3

  Drew texts back a photo of himself grinning. My brother and I have been best friends our whole lives. He's playing baseball at a college in South Carolina. It's been a weird adjustment to be separated from my twin, for sure.

  I scroll through my photos and find a picture of my dick – yeah, I have dick pics on my phone – and text it to Drew.

  Then I get out of the car. This is supposed to be the tutor's address – Coach gave it to me, even though he wasn't supposed to. I promised on pain of death that I was going to be polite and gentlemanly and not do or say anything remotely inappropriate.

  I inhale deeply. I can do appropriate.

  Fuck. When's the last time I didn't say something inappropriate?

  I'm screwed.

  5

  Cassie

  "Roomie," Sable calls, her voice a sing-song.

  I stomp out of my room, yanking one of my earbuds out of my ear. "Sable!" I yell. "Stop yelling at me from across the apartment, you lazy b—"

  I stop short. The door to our apartment is wide open, and Colton King is standing just inside of it.

  He's wearing clothes this time. Thank God.

  I give Sable the most deathly death glare I can muster, but she grins anyway, ignoring my obvious ire. She's practically giddy, bouncing as she stands there. "Well," she says, clasping her hands together. "Please come in. I just have something I need to get in my room, so I'll leave you two alone."

  "Sable…" I warn half under my breath, but she bounces away. After I kick Colton out of here, I'm going to have to go murder my roommate. The least she could have done was to come back in my room and give me some advance notice that he was here.

  "So…" Colton says, his eyes traveling up the length of my body. "I mean, this is – obviously you weren't expecting anyone."

  My hand immediately flies to my hair. My hair. Oh God. It's pulled up into a messy ponytail on the very top of my head, the kind where you hastily pull it back without even using a brush. Did I even brush my hair today? I didn't have classes, so I was working on my stupid thesis proposal.

  And that means I look like ass.

  I'm wearing tattered flannel pajama pants and a grey tank top that used to have a beer logo on it, but is now so faded it looks more like an imprint than a picture. And no bra. Of course.

  I'll kill Sable. I will actually murder her with my bare hands.

  "Clearly I wasn't expecting anyone," I hiss, crossing my arms over my chest. I can feel my nipples at attention underneath the cotton fabric of the tank top, something the football player probably thinks is hilarious. He's not smirking, though, so at least he hides it relatively well. "Why are you at my house? How did you get my address?"

  Colton raises his eyebrows. "I assume the same way you got mine. From my coach."

  Touché.

  Warily, I eye the flowers he's holding.

  "They're not going to explode or anything," he assures me, handing them over.

  "You brought flowers," I note flatly. Flowers from a football player? What kind of warped parallel universe did I just enter?

  He shrugs. "Chicks like flowers, don't they?"

  "Your charm is overwhelming, only surpassed by your sexism."

  "What? I'm not sexist," he protests. "Sexy, obviously, but not sexist."

  I roll my eyes. "Did you come here to talk about how sexy you are? Because if that's the case, I have plenty of other things to do."

  "Like take a shower?" he asks.

  "Yes, like take a – you know what? Thanks for the flowers. And the peek into a football player's life. It was… fascinating. But now, you really should be going." I turn, putting my hand on the back of his arm to push him toward the door.

  He looks down at me. "Are you trying to move me, little girl? Because I can tell you right now how ridiculous that is."

  "Little girl??" I ask.

  He turns to face me, inches away. Uncomfortably close. I can smell him, soap and aftershave and I totally want to touch his massive chest but –

  "Look," he says, "I came here to apologize."

  "Well, you're off to a great start," I spit back.

  Don't think about the way he looked when he got out of the pool, all hot and muscled and wet and …

  "Shit," he says. "I don't really – well, I've never done this before."

  "Stalk a girl?"

  "No. Apologize. Obviously I did something that offended you, since you huffed and stormed off from my place with your panties in a wad. I don't know, maybe it was the nudity or the whole stripper thing, but –"

  "Is this your apology?" I interrupt. "If it is, you really suck at it."

  "Fuck. You're kind of a pain in the –"

  "Again, not really helping."

  "Look," he groans in frustration. "I'm here with flowers. Obviously, I'm sorry that you got all pissy at my house."

  I laugh. "Goodbye, Mr. King."

  "Seriously," he says. "Most girls would be glad to see … well, you know.” He gestures toward his crotch.

  I don’t bother to hide my laugh. "Little King?"

  "Did you think it was little?" he asks. "Because I'll show you again if you –"

  I hold up my hand. "Thanks, but no thanks. It's not like I've never seen a naked guy before, bucko."

  Bucko? Where the hell did that come from? I'm just blurting out random words like I'm in a Western, suffering from Tourette's.

  "Good," he says. "So the sight of my cock didn't run you off."

  I shrug and laugh breezily, or how I think "breezily" should sound, except when I hear myself, I think it sounds more crazy than breezy. "Of course not," I huff. "I see enormous cocks all the time."

  Oh God. Did I just say that? It sounds like this apartment is Grand Central Station for dicks.

  Colton gives me a look.

  I clear my throat to cover my embarrassment, but my face must be scarlet. "You know, I … um … have something I need to do?" The statement comes out like a question. “Would you excuse me for just a minute, please?"

  I don't wait for him to answer. Instead, I dash to Sable's room, opening her door without knocking, and slamming it closed behind me.

  Sable is sitting on her bed, her back against the wall and a laptop balanced on her legs. "Colton King is in our apartment," she whispers.

  "Yes, he is," I hiss. "And it's too bad, because he's going to be the only witness to your imminent demise."

  "Oh, don't get mad at me because I let the hottest guy to ever grace the doorway of our apartment inside to see you. He's even hotter than Brad," she says, naming the model she dated for three weeks last October. Brad wasn't really hot, though, just pretty and skinny.

  Not like Colton King. There's nothing small about him, anywhere. And he certainly is hot.

  Focus, Cass.

  "You let a total stranger who tracked down my address into our apartment – and then left me alone with him!” I whisper. "What kind of a roommate are you?"

  "I'm the awesome roommate who's going to get you laid," she says, grinning.

  "Sable Pierce," I say through gritted teeth. "Look at me. Take a good look."

  "You look super cute," she says. "Like you're ready for bed. That's good. Guys like when you look ready for bed. It reminds them that they should take you to bed. You look … easygoing. Not high-maintenance."

  "I look no-maintenance."

  "Eh, details."

  "Remind me why I agreed to live with you again?"

  "Because you're cheap, and when we started rooming together, my mother had cut off my allowance because of my 'grievous error' in choosing to go to grad school in sociology, which left me briefly poor," Sable says. She shudders exaggeratedly. "A dark time in my life that I hate to recall."

  "This is going to be a darker time," I say through gritted teeth.

  "I think you should go out there in what you're wearing now," Sable says.

  "You can see right through my tank top!" I protest.

  "I know," Sable says, grinning. "That's exactly why
you should go back out there in what you're wearing. Proudly display your headlights, girl."

  I stomp over to her bureau and open the second drawer, rifling through it until I find a sweatshirt, which is definitely going to be the only item of Sable's clothing that will fit me. I slip it over my head while Sable protests.

  "Seriously, what are you doing?" she asks. "You're covering up the goods."

  "I have no goods, Sable," I say, slamming the drawer shut. "These are the boobs of a girl who wears sweatpants and eats Chinese food while she binge-watches reality TV. These are not the boobs of a girl who proudly displays them to football players."

  She purses her lips as she eyes me. "Fine. But you're never going to lose your virginity with that attitude."

  I pull open the door, turning to hiss at her before I leave. "I'm not going to show some dumb jock my tits or lose my virginity to him."

  I pull the door shut and turn – right into that dumb jock.

  Ooph.

  "How much of that did you hear exactly?" I ask, hoping with every ounce of hope I have inside me that he'll say he's actually hard of hearing. I issue a silent prayer heavenward.

  Please say he didn't hear me say I was a virgin. Or call him a dumb jock.

  "All of it," he says.

  "Well." I move around him and walk down the hallway. I hear his footsteps close behind, and when I reach the living room, I gesture toward the door. "So. I guess you should be leaving now."

  After I pass out and die of embarrassment right here in my apartment.

  "I wasn't eavesdropping," he says, holding up his phone, a sheepish look on his face. "I just got a text from a friend, and I had to go, and you were taking a while, so that's why I was in the hallway and … yeah, I came by to ask if you would reconsider tutoring me."

  "I see." Those are the only words I can get out. I think my heart stopped beating when I ran into him in the hallway — right after I called him a dumb jock and said I was a virgin.

  "I wasn't trying to take your virginity," he says.

  Oh, dear God. Did he just say that?

  Is it possible to die of mortification? Because I think I might actually be dying. My face is probably the deepest shade of burgundy on earth.

  I try to speak, but no words come out, so now I just look like a fish sucking air. A burgundy-faced virgin fish.

  "It's okay," he says. "I wrote down my number on the card with the flowers. If you still want to tutor a dumb jock, just let me know."

  Colton is near the door when I finally get my voice back. "Colton?"

  "Yep."

  I exhale heavily. I feel awful that he heard me call him a dumb jock. Heaven help me, I can't believe I'm about to say this. "Fine. Can you start this week?"

  6

  Colton

  It's early evening but it's still hot as fuck. The summer air here, even at night, is thick with humidity, and I'm drenched with sweat. We're running seven-on-seven drills, and I couldn't be less focused on what's happening right now if I tried. I've dropped the ball six times, run two routes backwards, and collided mid-field with one of the receivers.

  I'm jacked up nervous. I'm supposed to meet Cassandra for tutoring tomorrow.

  Cassandra.

  Coach Walker told me her name. Maybe she goes by Cassie. I like the name Cassie better. It sounds kind of country, like she belongs in a field picking flowers or something.

  The mental image of her in a yellow sundress picking flowers in a field flashes in my head. Yeah, right. That girl is way too uptight for that.

  I replace that image with one of Cassandra behind a desk in the library, those glasses perched on the tip of her nose, scowling from behind a pile of books. Except she'd be wearing a white button-down shirt with nothing underneath.

  The way she was bare under that tank top in her apartment.

  My cock jumps at that image.

  Focus, Colton. Get your mind off the librarian.

  The virgin librarian.

  Your virgin tutor.

  The one with the full tits, perky underneath the thin cotton top, her hair stuck up in a ponytail on the top of her head, jutting out in every direction like she just stuck her finger in a light socket.

  Shit. That's not helping either.

  It also doesn't help matters that when I walk into the room at the student center where I'm supposed to meet her the next day, she's wearing a white button-down shirt and a skirt, like she just stepped right out of my daydream. When she stands up on the other side of the table, I can see the way the fabric of the skirt skims the curves of her hips, accentuating her body so much that I have a hard time looking anywhere else.

  This time, her hair is pulled up, but neatly. I think I preferred it when it was a mess. I have to resist the urge to reach up there and undo it.

  "Colton," she says, and I blink.

  "What's up?"

  "You're just staring at me."

  Shit. "Oh, yeah."

  There's a table and two chairs facing each other. She's standing on the other side of the table, which means I’m supposed to sit here across from her. And I’m supposed to focus on school bullshit when she sits across from me looking like that.

  "I realized you don't even know my name," she says. "Or you do, because you found my address, so you probably have my name too, I guess."

  "Cassandra," I say, flopping into the seat facing her. "Coach gave me your name."

  Her cheeks turn pink again. God, she blushes easily.

  I wonder what she looks like after sex.