Blindsided (26 page)

“Dickhead over here”—I cock my thumb in Jack’s direction—“reckons you’re my girlfriend.”

Her lips twitch and she turns to Jack. “That’s real cute. Did you think of that all by yourself?”

He smirks. “Right after I left Macey’s place again yesterday.”

“You mean you managed to give a girl an orgasm and actually think after? I’m impressed.” Leah perches on the arm of my sofa and stretches her legs out, just inviting me to stare at them. They go on forever, all long and tan and toned. I love looking at her legs and touching them, and I’d bet fucking anything that I’ll love the feel of them around me. My waist. My neck.

“Right. I’m not sitting here and watching you undress her with your eyes.” Jack stands.

“Suit yourself.”

“Shall I pass a message on to Macey for you?” Leah smirks at him.

“Better not. Twice with the same girl is a fluke. But if I had time for the relationship shit, she’d be the one I’d tie down. She’s a fucking animal in bed.” He winks and goes, leaving Leah shaking her head.

“Do obnoxious bastards gravitate toward each other naturally, or is it just you two?” she asks, her eyes finding mine.

I grab her hands and tug her toward me. “Just us, babe. If there were any more of us, the city would explode.”

I run my hands down her body and over her gorgeous curves. My fingers curve around her thighs and tickle the insides of them, slowly edging higher, and I brush a kiss to her neck.

“Stop it.” She wriggles. “We haven’t eaten yet. Or talked.”

My fingertips ghost over the crotch of her jeans, making her shiver.

“Corey.”

“Saying my name isn’t the way to make me stop.” My mouth covers hers.

“Corey!”

“Leah, every time you say my name, you’re inviting me to fuck you. Do you realize that?” I kiss her harder.

“We’re not”—kiss—“doing this.” Kiss. “We’re”—kiss—“supposed to be”—kiss—“eating and talking.” Kiss.

“What about?”

“You.”

“I’m boring.”

Kiss.

“Corey! For God’s sake!” She pushes up off me. “I want a real conversation. About you. About me. You know, with words?”

“Words are overrated.”

“Oh? And sex isn’t?”

“Hey, it’s called body language for a reason.”

She gives me a hard look. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” I sigh. “So am I.”

“Drama queen.” She rolls her eyes. “Well, while you and your dick are sitting here feeling sorry for yourselves, I’m going outside. Come and join me when you’ve A, cooked me food, and B, remembered how to word-speak, not sex-speak.”

Fuck. I’m a guy. I don’t do word-talking. I don’t do heart-to-hearts and I sure as shit don’t do life stories.

Yet my newest problem is that I’ll do just about fucking anything for this girl.

I follow her to my yard and find her in my pool. She’s floating on her back in a tiny string bikini that barely covers her breasts. My cock gets hard at the sight of her, and a groan escapes my mouth.

“What?” Leah swims to the side of the pool and gazes up at me.

I adjust my pants. “You want to talk to me and you’re wearing that? Are you trying to fuckin’ kill me?”

A smile pulls at the corners of her mouth. “It’s kinda hot today. I wanted to cool off.”

“And you couldn’t wear a swimsuit or something? You had to pick this?”

“Should I take it off?” Her eyes are full of innocence, but the smirk on her lips is anything but.

“Take that off and I can promise you that the only talking you’ll be doing is my screaming fucking name.”

“I’ll leave it on then. For now.” Her smirk changes to a sassy smile, and the innocence in her eyes gives way to a playful spark that doesn’t help the hard-on trapped by my jeans. She dips under the water, her blond hair fanning out behind her, and I turn back into the house.

There isn’t a chance I’m getting in that pool in jeans. Besides, jeans and erections don’t go together.

I change into swim shorts and head back outside. I feel her eyes on me as I walk toward the pool and sit on the edge. I feel them as they trace over my body, from my shoulders to the lightly defined ‘v’ muscle dipping below the waistband of my shorts. I feel the heat in them, the approving gaze.

“See something you like?”

Blue eyes crawl up my body slowly and meet mine. “I’m still deciding.”

Of course she is. “Well, then. Now is a perfect time to have your talk.”

“So it is.”

“What do you want to talk about?” World’s worst question right there. And not one I thought I’d ever ask.

Leah swims across the pool to me and slips between my legs. I hook my feet behind her back. She slides her arms around me and links her fingers, keeping herself afloat.

“You,” she says softly.

“You know everything about me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do. You know I’m a shit-hot football player, that I’m an arrogant, self-confident dickhead, and that my seduction skills are sexy as fuck. What else do you need to know?”

“That’s not everything, cowboy. I don’t know anything about you before you became a Viper. I don’t know what your favorite food is, your favorite movie, your favorite video game… I don’t know what you do in your spare time, why you’re a football player, how you grew up, why you grew up in Texas although your dad played here, why, of all the tattoos in the world, you got a tiger on your back…”

Jesus Christ. She wants a verbal autobiography. Shoulda written her an e-mail.

“No one knows any of that stuff. Believe it or not, I’m kind of a private guy.”

And that’s the truth. I might not be physically private, but when it comes to me, not many people really know me. Not even the guys. We’re not like girls, where life stories are a requirement for fucking friendship. All we care about is if you like sports, you like girls, and you like beer. If you do, good job.

“But I want to know it,” she replies, tracing her finger across my thigh.

“Why?”

“Because it’s important to me.”

She blinks up at me, her eyes wide and earnest, and I can see that it is. For some reason, she wants to know everything about me.

“Really? It’s that important to you?”

She nods. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. And while I don’t necessarily trust your motives in you asking me to be your girlfriend—”

“I never confirmed I was askin’.”

“Precisely. But on the rare chance that you do, knowing you will make a difference, Corey. I want to know you. And I do mean the real you. You show me glimpses of him sometimes, and truth be told, I kinda really like him.”

I run my fingers through her wet hair and let my arms come to rest on her shoulders. Jesus. Manipulator. Gorgeous fucking manipulator.

“Okay. But only because it’s you.”

A smile pulls at the edges of her lips. “You grew up in Dallas, right?”

“Yep.”

“And?”

She’s not gonna make this easy for me.

“And I had an easy childhood. My dad got drafted to the Vipers after winning the Heisman then married my mom. She lived out here until I was two. Then she decided she didn’t want me to grow up influenced by Hollywood. So she moved us back to Texas, where my grandparents lived.”

“But football was in your blood, right?”

I laugh. “My dad was the best quarterback in fifty years, and I lived in Dallas. I was throwing a ball before I was walking. A love of the game, natural skill, and money meant I went to the best college. We spent every summer in L.A. to be there with Dad during the preseason. When I was fourteen, I started spending my summers at their practices. I wanted to be my dad.”

“What about your mom?”

I shrug. “Most of the time, she was with my baby sister, who whined at any chance about being in my shadow. She could have broken out if she’d wanted to. She had the same opportunities I did—private school, top college, private tutors—but by age sixteen, she realized she got just as much attention for being ‘poor little Lottie’ as she would for actually doing something, so she didn’t bother. We’re not close at all. She practically threw a party when I moved here permanently, never mind that she’s at college in New York.”

Leah rests her head on my thigh. “That’s sad. That you’re not close.”

“Yeah, I guess, but it’s always been that way. Even when I knocked out her ex-boyfriend for cheating on her, she still hated me.”

“Nice. So I guess you haven’t seen her since you moved here?”

“A few times. She goes to Dallas every break except for Christmas. Even then, she only stays a few days before flying out to stay with our grandparents.”

“Wow.” She looks up. “But to summarize: you were a privileged, little rich boy who grew up to be a privileged, self-entitled bastard, am I right?”

I run my fingers through her hair again and smirk. “Your words, babe.”

“So now I know about you growing up.”

“Yep. Are we done yet?”

“No. The tattoo.”

I roll my eyes in a move that’s so very her. “You gonna tell me about yours?”

“You noticed that?” A smirk curves her lips, and she shrugs a shoulder. “It says ‘always believe.’ Just…‘cause, you know. Sometimes you forget to.”

“Philosophical,” I remark. “I got a tiger because it was my favorite animal as a kid. It was my twenty-first-birthday present to myself after the Vipers drafted me.”

“Shouldn’t you have gotten a Viper?”

“Probably, but it wouldn’t look half as good on my back as the tiger.”

“Okay. I get that.” She smiles. “What’s your favorite food?”

“Fucking hell, babe,” I groan. “There are better uses for your mouth, you know?”

She smacks my thigh. “I’ll answer if you do.”

Hello, Leah’s pinkie finger. Nice to meet you—it looks like I’m wrapped around you for the foreseeable fucking future.

“Twinkies,” I reply.

“Twinkies?” Leah laughs. “Seriously?”

“What’s wrong with Twinkies? When they announced they were taking them off the shelves, I went crazy and bought about fifty boxes. They’re in the pantry, hidden on the top shelf.”

“Okay, Twinkie King.”

“What’s yours?”

“Frozen yogurt. When I was eighteen, Mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said frozen yogurt. I was joking, but she’s a regular comedian and bought a freezer full of fro-yo in all the flavors. It took me, like, a year to get through it all.”

“Really? I never pegged you for a frozen yogurt girl.”

“Everything you’ve pegged me for has been completely wrong, so I don’t know why you’re surprised.”

“True.”

She straightens up and hooks her fingers in my waistband. “Favorite movie?”

“Rocky. All of them. I met Sylvester Stallone when I was ten and it’s the closest I’ve ever come to fainting. Yours?”

“Aw, fan boy cowboy.” She grins. “I would pay to see that. And my favorite movie is Magic Mike.”

“Oh, original. Real original.” I run my hands down her back.

“You asked.”

“I know, I know. Are we done now?”

“My next question was your boxer size.”

I quirk an eyebrow. “Do I get your bra size?”

She smiles suggestively. “You get to guess it.”

“Boxers are large,” I say quickly and drop my eyes to her chest. “You realize I can’t tell from looking though, right?”

“Sure you can. You’re a guy. You have a scale or something in your head for bra sizes. You look at a pair of tits and you just know like it’s a freaky psychic power.” She wriggles out of my hold and floats across the pool.

“I need to make sure it’s accurate by touching.” I drop into the water and swim after her.

I come up behind her, and she tilts her head to one side, exposing her neck. Then I press a kiss to her bare, wet skin, my lips wiping away any lingering water droplets.

My hands slide up her stomach to her breasts. They fit in my hands perfectly, round and firm, and her nipples pebble as my fingertips graze over them. She lets out a long, heavy breath when my fingers slip beneath her bikini top, and she rests her head back on my shoulder.

“We’re done talking, aren’t we?” she whispers.

“Mhmm.” I spin her in my arms.

Our lips lock together, and I untie the strings holding her bikini top to her. I tug on it and it comes away, leaving her bare breasts to press up against my chest.

She gasps into my mouth when her nipples rub my skin. My hair is wrapped around her fingers, and she moves her mouth against mine, every kiss increasing in intensity. As I hold her to me, the only parts of us I want bare so fucking badly are covered. My cock is hard against her thigh, throbbing almost painfully, ready and waiting to slip inside her tight pussy.

But she’s still holding a part of herself from me. This is the last time I’m playing this game. This is the last time I plan to have her pressed against me and not fuck her after.