Blindsided (37 page)

I
drop back onto the hotel room bed with a happy sigh. New York City—my favorite place in the world. I’ve been here plenty of times, yet it never seems to be enough. There’s something about the magical charm of the city that sets it worlds apart from L.A.

There’s also the fact that my designs are in this city right now. So close that I could touch them, fiddle with them, and alter them… But still, I can only dream of it.

I slap my cheeks. I’m not going to think of the fact that I’ll only get to experience New York Fashion Week as a spectator. Maybe one day, my work will be respected enough that I can step from the shadows and experience all the Fashion Weeks around the world as a designer.

My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out. “Shit!” It drops onto my face and I rub my nose, bringing Corey’s message up at the same time.

Are you here yet?

My lips form a smile.
I’m in bed.
Sort of.

Do you know how mean that is when I’m stuck on a practice field?

Thrown many interceptions, cowboy?

None. Would you believe it?

Shouldn’t you be practicing now? Just in case that changes?

The phone rings and I answer, laughing. All he says is, “Fuck off,” before he hangs up. I roll onto my stomach and laugh into the bedspread. Of course he’d say that. He knows I’m one hundred percent right.

When my laughter subsides, I get up and stroll to the window. There’s a perfect view of the city skyline, even if the backdrop is currently a bright blue instead of the inky blue this city thrives on.

My phone rings again, and I answer, knowing who it is. “What now?”

“Knock knock,” he says at the same time that there are two knocks on the door.

“You—what?” I dart around the bed and toward the door. Pulling it open, I gasp and drop my phone. “What are you doing here? I thought you were at practice!”

“You could at least pretend you’re happy to see me,” a grinning Corey says, stepping into the room.

“I am. But you’re supposed to be practicing.”

He laughs and grabs me against him. “We were up at the ass crack of dawn. We got the afternoon off, so here I am.”

“How did you know my room number?” I lean back in his tight embrace to look up at him.

“Don’t tell my girlfriend, but I charmed that chick at the reception desk,” he whispers conspiratorially, looking around shiftily.

“You’re an ass.” I run my fingers through the hair at the back of his head. “I thought you wouldn’t be free until later.”

“I wasn’t going to be. I was with the guys in that bar across the street when you said you were here. And that was that.” He finishes his explanation with a sweet but hot kiss on my lips.

“It didn’t sound like you were in a bar when you called.”

“I stepped outside, all right, Detective?”

“Don’t get cocky, cowboy.”

He cups my ass and pulls my hips against his. “I’m very cocky, as you well know.” He sucks lightly on my bottom lip. “Would you like a demonstration?”

“We’re in New York and you want to have sex instead of being infuriating tourists?”

“Darlin’, I can assure you there’s a part of New York you haven’t seen yet, and it’s between those sheets on your bed. I’d be happy to take the tour with you.”

“Deal,” I whisper, nipping his bottom lip and walking back to the bed. At the last minute, I turn and whip the top sheet off. “Interesting. I think I’ve seen the between-the-sheets attraction.”

Corey shakes his head, a wildly sexy smile on his face, and pounces toward me. I squeal at how quickly he comes toward me, but instead of jumping over the bed, I fall onto it. He climbs on top of me, pinning my hands above my head and pressing his hips against mine.

“They have different attractions,” he murmurs onto my neck. “Creased, fisted, tangled… We have enough time to explore them all.”

“We do. I agree.” I slip my hands beneath his shirt and run them up his back, enjoying the smooth shapes of his muscles beneath my fingertips. “Once we’ve been and ‘done’ New York.”

He drops his head, releasing my hands, and groans. “Really? Haven’t you done it a million times?”

“Yes,” I reply, turning to face him. “But it’s my favorite city in the world.” I run my fingers through his hair. “Plus, there’s the added bonus that us being seen together will quash those rumors that I’m too classy to go out with someone who has naked pictures.”

His face darkens a little. “Mmm. You are.”

“And you’re too hot to go out with someone who lies to everyone about what she does for a living, so we’re even.”

“Definitely not mmm,” he responds, his mouth hovering just above mine. His breath flutters across my lips. “I don’t care about them or what they say. I care about you, babe.” Corey’s hand slowly travels up my side to the back of my head. “I care about you, and if this is your favorite city in the world, then let’s go see it all.”

“All of it?” I smile.

“We have…” He glances away and presses the home button on my phone so the screen lights up. “We have three hours until dinner. Then until midnight at the latest. Think we can do it?”

“Yes… But why until midnight?”

“Because, at midnight, you’re gonna be the Cinderella who doesn’t lose her shoe,” he whispers into my ear. “I’ll give you a slice of your happily ever after if you want it.”

My heart skips a beat. Or two. Or ten.

“You mean you’re going to fuck me, don’t you?”

A slow grin breaks out across his face. “That, too.”

Broadway, Rockefeller Center, and Sixth Avenue—all by dinner. I’m impressed. I’m even more impressed by the way we managed to do it fairly unscathed by the media. So they’re outside of the restaurant now, trying to get their shot of our apparently ‘rocky relationship,’ as we knew they would be.

“Where next?” Corey looks up at me. “Times Square?”

I shake my head. “Times Square is better in the dark. All the lights.” I sigh happily.

“Oh shit. You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

“One of what?”

He waves his hand. “Lights and sparkles and fireworks kinda girls.”

“Uh, you’re aware that I’ve grown up with a view of Los Angeles and Hollywood, their lights, and their holiday fireworks, right?”

“Yes…”

“And with a superstar for a mom, I’m pretty accustomed to sparkles. As long as they’re on someone else.” I shrug. “Give me a Murano glass necklace over Tiffany’s any day.”

Corey tilts his head to the side, his gorgeous, blue eyes intense. He studies me the way he did when we just met—as if he’s trying to make sense of what he’s hearing.

“You know,” he says, looking at me over the top of the glass, “the more I get to know you, the less I understand you.”

“I’m a woman. You’re not supposed to understand me. It’s why you keep coming back. I’m that pretty little algebra puzzle on your test you should know the answer to but can’t work out.”

His lips pull into a smirk—a smug, cocky, yet happy smirk. “Keep confusing me,” he says quietly, leaning forward and grabbing my hand. “I want to keep coming back to you.”

“You know, you don’t have to be all flowers and roses now that we’re in a real relationship. You can still be that cocky guy. I did kinda like him.”

“Really? You gave me a ton of shit about him.”

“Because it was fun!” I defend. “I miss him. I don’t think I’d be here if you kept being this whipped idiot you’re being. I mean, come on, Jackson. Grow a pair of balls, okay?”

“You’re lucky we’re in public with a table between us, babe, or I’d show you what goes with my balls and I’d make sure you never fuckin’ forget it.”

“There he is.” I laugh into my glass. “This guy. He’s fun.”

“You saying whipped Corey isn’t fun?”

“Whipped Corey is sweet. But Cocky Corey is why I’m here. He’s the guy who reeled me in.”

In all honesty, I can’t pinpoint the moment his obnoxious arrogance became something I readily accepted or when his cockiness turned into a personality quirk instead of something that riled me. I can’t work out when or how I went from not wanting anything to do with him to needing to be near him—I just know that I did.

I’m totally honest when I say to him that I don’t want him to change. I want that arrogant side to come out to play sometimes. It’s fun, it’s annoyingly endearing, and it makes me laugh because it’s true. He is hot. Hell, he’s fucking flawlessly gorgeous. He is an amazing football player, as much as I tease him otherwise, and he sure as hell knows his way around my body.

Every girl wants to catch a bad boy and change them. Make them perfect. Coax them into being their dream. It’s a challenge between us all: catch him and change him and you’ve won at life. Here I am, faced with a bad boy, the biggest man-whore with a filthy mouth, and I’m the exception.

So isn’t falling for the bad boy the thrill? Isn’t it their asshole personality that attracts us? The cocky smirk, the overconfident glint in their eyes, and the unwillingness to listen to the word no? Isn’t that what makes them
them
?

Doesn’t changing them defy the very reason you fell for the bad boy in the first place?

Not that I’ve fallen. Not completely, anyway. I could still walk away tomorrow if the powers that be decide that that is what I have to do. It would hurt more than I want to admit, but I could. I’m not so far fallen that I’d be utterly devastated by it.

Although, if he carries on being this intoxicating mixture of sweet and sexy, my heart might just fall those last few inches.

“Let’s go.” He throws some cash on the dish holding the bill and gets up.

No sooner have I stood up than he wraps his hand around mine and pulls me sharply from the restaurant. Our move doesn’t go unnoticed by the paparazzi waiting for us outside, and Corey surprises me by tugging me across the street, where we’re still in full view of them, and pulling me into him.

His body is taut, his muscles hard as rock. “You know what my problem was when I acted a total arrogant bastard to you?”

I shake my head.

“I had this insane need to grab you in public and kiss the fuck out of you in front of the cameras. I had an unrelenting desire to make sure every fucker knew you were mine.”

I can barely breathe, and what breaths I am taking are short and sharp, but I somehow say, “Do it. Do it now.”

Because my heart is pounding and screaming at me to tell the world that
he’s mine.

He crashes his lips down onto mine. Hot and heavy, his hand clasps the back of my neck while the other arm wraps around my back. Then he sweeps his lips across mine in a kiss that reeks purely of possession.

It’s not romantic. It’s not seductive. It’s raw and primal, possession echoing in every clash of our lips.

I feel it everywhere though. It’s more than a message to the world. It’s a message to me. And I hear it. I hear it loud and fucking clear.

He won’t let go. It’s as real as real it’s gonna get. This is it. There’s no turning back.

Any way you can say it, he does—without saying anything at all.

And come on. He’s kissing me like I’m his oxygen on the streets of New York while a thousand lights glitter around us. This shit is so real that it floods my veins.

He pulls back, his face still lingering close to mine, and breathes heavily. My body tightens with the words I want to hear, but as a second of silence stretches into a minute, I know they won’t come.

I’m crazy because I can’t say it back, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear that he loves me.

I fist his shirt, it not mattering that we’re in public, the realization washing over me that he
isn’t
in love with me. That maybe he’s in the fucked-up emotional limo I am in. That, like we have been from the very beginning, we’re on the exact same page in this relationship.