She’s much better suited for Loren, the Ken doll look-a-like who grew up on a farm milking cows and bailing hay. He’d respect her boundaries and her body.
Me? I’m already thinking of the hundred different things I’d like to do to her.
“Spider?” Her soft voice calls me from my thoughts. “Do you want to dance?”
My booze-riddled mind is slow to register. “I don’t dance.”
Her mouth tips up on one side and she grabs my hand under the bar. “Let’s go.”
Emery
I got him.
I knew I would. I’m aware of what men see when they look at me—naive, pristine, virgin. The perfect canvas for corruption. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
I stepped into the bar tonight knowing exactly what I was looking for. The options of men are endless. When I spotted the one they call Spider across the room—all those tattoos, the lip piercing, the fuck-everyone-attitude etched into his expression, he is everything I’d been looking for.
He wasn’t kidding when he said he didn’t dance. He stands still as a statue on the dance floor only moving to draw from his beer as he watches me sway to the music. His gaze is like fingers against my skin as he searches, explores, and tries to figure me out. Heat flickers in his eyes when he studies my lips and I’d bet my pearl earrings he’s wondering what my mouth tastes like.
I move closer to him, put a hand at his waist, and stare directly into his hauntingly dark eyes. So brown they’re nearly black and the darkness that calls to me like a bottomless abyss where feelings don’t exist.
“Do you want me to kiss you?” I already know the answer, but I’ll make him say it anyway.
“I want you to do a hell of a lot more than kiss me.” He runs his fingers through the ends of my hair while he studies my neck as if he’s thinking about biting it and drinking my blood. The very thought sends a thrill through me.
“Like what?” I slip my hand between us and palm the semi-hardness behind his zipper. “This?”
His eyes widen minutely and his lips peel back over clenched teeth. “Yes. Just like that.”
I squeeze him until a hiss escapes through his teeth. “I’d like to kiss you now.”
He snags the back of my neck and brings my lips to his. I struggle to stay on my toes as he hovers his lips close to mine. “What’s your name?” he breathes against my mouth, his lip ring brushes against my skin.
“Does it really matter?”
His dark brows pinch together seconds before he presses his lips against mine. I tilt my head, part my lips, and lick into his mouth. The sharp flavor of alcohol mixes with the taste of sin and the promise of pain that I suspect is uniquely his.
The boys in boarding school only ever tasted like tobacco and breath mints.
I moan into his mouth, claw at his shirt to get closer, and shove my hand behind the button of his jeans until he teeters on his Converse.
“Fuck,” he says, breaking the kiss with wet lips that he licks and savors. Sometime during the kiss, he tangled his fist into the back of my hair, holding my head in place. “You’re not what I expected.”
No. Shit.
“Come home with me.” I don’t ask because I won’t take no for an answer like the last girl did.
A wicked grin tilts his lips. “I’ll get the Uber.”
Fish in a barrel.
We kiss feverishly in the back of the Honda Accord while our driver Hector watches from the rearview mirror. At one point I meet his brown eyes through the mirror and wink making him swerve.
Once home, I drag the tattooed football player through the dark house and into my room. With the lights off, he can’t learn much about me from the space. Not that he could even with the lights on. I haven’t lived here long enough to leave any kind of personal mark by way of photos. He’s clueless as to who I really am, exactly how it needs to be.
I make quick work of pushing down his jeans and tossing his shirt, then do the same with my own clothes and we tumble to the bed in a tangle of naked bodies and lust.
I smile into the dark as he rakes his teeth down my throat, between my breasts and settles his head between my thighs.
“You should know,” he says then bites at the tender skin of my inner thigh. “I’m not the relationship type.”
Grateful he can’t see my eyes, I roll them hard. “Who says I’m looking for a relationship?”
“Most girls like you are.” He licks my skin, sucks hard enough to leave a mark.
Girls like me.
People are so easy to fool. They make judgments on face value alone never taking the time to peer just a little bit deeper. Not that I’m complaining. I’ve used the simplicity of human nature to my benefit more times than I can count.
I’d give it all up if I found one single person who surprised me.
“Maybe after tonight, you’ll change your mind.” I grin at the way his muscles tense and wish I had the lights on to see the panic I’d surely find in his eyes.
“I won’t.” He squeezes my hips hard enough to get my attention. “Tell me you get that and we can move on.”
“This is a one-night stand, I get it. Loud and clear.” Of course, I already know this. I never even gave him my name.
We spend the next hour wading in the waters of sexual pleasure, pushing, pulling, scratching, and biting until we crash, spent and breathless against my bed sheets. My pulse throbs, muscles limp, and my hairline is damp with sweat. Spider knows his way around the female body.
I study his shadowed form in the dark. “You should probably send for an Uber.”
“I will when the feeling in my arms and my legs comes back.” He rolls to his stomach and gets more comfortable. “An hour.”
“Sure. Stay as long as you want.” His colorful arm tucked up under my pillow as his breathing slows to a soft snore. “I’m in no rush for you to leave.”
I push my body close to his so that I’ll wake if he tries to sneak out while I’m asleep. Eventually I drift to sleep.
Shortly after I startle awake as I feel him slip from my bed. I watch his tall, dark figure move to the bedroom door, but I make no move to stop him. He’s naked so I know he’s not leaving. Not yet. Maybe he’s looking for the bathroom.
As he walks out the door I sit up and see him make a left down the hallway.
I cover my mouth to keep him from hearing my laughter.
I thought I’d have to do a lot more manipulating to get my plan to work, but he’s unknowingly walking right into my trap.
I lie back down, close my eyes, and pretend to be asleep.
That’s when I hear my dad’s deep, booming voice from the next room. “Who the hell… Spider? Is that you?”
Chapter Two
Spider
One more step would mean certain death.
Naked, with my dick and balls held protectively in my hands, I stand eye-to-eye with the man who could end my life as I know it. I sway on my feet, dizzy from the combination of last night’s tequila and middle of the night confusion.
“Coach?” My nuts retreat further into my body as I mutter the word. To some, it’s just a title. To those of us on the Bear State University football team a more accurate translation would be “God.”