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Prologue

The air had changed, and I knew he felt it too, when he finally stopped fidgeting and his hands were still. His nearness was suddenly too much for me to bear.

As my heart raced, he slowly raised his head from staring at his feet, to finally look me in the eye. The paleness of the blue of his eyes was disturbing. I felt my heart lurch.

It was taking all of my strength not to kiss him.

I forced myself to place my palms flat on my thighs. I felt a pain and realized it was my own fingernails digging in to my soft flesh. Unclenching them one by one, I watched, fascinated, as the blood rushed back into the little white half moons.

"Casey?"

My voice sounded squeaky and young, and I felt a flush of embarrassment.

"Casey?" I repeated, unable, it seemed, to say anything but his name.

"Lexi." The sarcasm and gentle teasing humor of just moments ago was gone from his voice. The low yearning stirred something else inside of me and once again I had to fight the urge to fling myself into his arms.

Instead I flopped backwards onto my bed. It felt vulnerable to be lying there next to him, a vulnerability I hadn't felt when he had first come to the door and asked if we could hang out. My parents were gone and both of my sisters were at various practices, so I had a rare moment of quiet in my usually crowded house. It hadn't felt wrong to invite him in. Not until this moment.

I knew my mother would be scandalized. In all of our friendship, she had never let us close the door to my bedroom when Casey and I spent time together. I was only fourteen. Too young to have boys alone in my bedroom. But until this moment I hadn't considered Casey to be a boy in the sense that my mother considered it.

He was just my friend.

"Lexi." He repeated my name with a heaviness in his voice. Like saying it was painful.

And then he touched me.

It was a gentle caress, just his fingertips, trailing lightly up my forearm. Nothing more. It was innocent, a friend touching a friend.

Except I knew that wasn't what he meant when he placed his hand on my fevered skin. I knew he meant it the way I meant it.

And I wanted him to touch me like that again.

"Casey," I breathed. My heart was about to beat out of my chest. I wondered if he could hear the fevered pounding too. Conscious of the fact that if I looked at him now, I would lose what little powers of speech I still possessed, I instead stared fixedly at the ceiling. "Casey, what do you think of me?"

I don't know why I asked that. As soon as the question left my lips, I wanted to snatch it back and stuff it down inside my throat. It sounded desperate, clinging, the kind of sniveling desperation I despised in other girls my age. The way they were with boys our age.

I had always thought myself to be smarter than that. I had told myself my friendship with Casey would never make me stupid that way.

I was wrong.

I heard him inhale sharply. "I think...." The bed springs shifted under his weight. Though he was only two years older than me, Casey already had the size and bulk of a grown man. My tiny twin bed was struggling to hold the two of us.

"I think," he repeated, "that I've never met a girl like you before."

My fragile self-control broke wide open. The desire to kiss him and hold him and have him hold me became too much.

It lifted me upward and straight into his lips.

It was my first kiss.

At the first soft brush of his lips against mine, I nearly startled and pulled away. But his huge hands caught the back of my head. He tangled his fingers in my wild red curls, gripping me firmly. When his lips parted and his tongue met mine, I gasped.

This was bad. This was wrong. This was sinful.

I didn't stop. It felt so good to have our mouths meld together. I wanted to dissolve into him even more.

It was everything I'd ever hoped it would be.

Our hands were everywhere. Gripping, stroking, beating. Tugging at clothes. The wild sensation of need was unlike anything I had ever felt before. The guilt, and reluctance, died away as I felt the surge of what I realized could only be love. The need to say it rose up from my stomach, drowning out all of my other thoughts until it was the only thing that I could say.

"I love you Casey," I gasped, finally saying what I had known for so long.

He pulled back from my lips. His pale blue eyes were so close to mine, I could drown in their icy depths and never return. The moment stretched out long and interminable, and my excitement began to wither in shame.

Until his mouth twitched, and the pale light in his eyes gleamed bright and warm and trusting.

"I love you too."

Our next kiss was even more frenetic. Our hands were even more fast-moving. The clothes that kept me from feeling his skin on mine became unbearable. I slid my hands under his shirt, wanting to feel every inch of him against my own body.

He pulled back sharply, and swatted my hands away. "Leave it," he ordered, in a tone that broached no argument. His words hit me like a punch to the gut.

"I'm sorry, I…" I hesitated. "Did I hurt you?"

His mouth twisted and his voice caught as if he was trying to stifle the words before they came out. "No," he said. "You didn't hurt me."

The way he said it left something hanging in the air. A question he wanted to me to ask him. So I did.

"Who hurt you?"

His eyes met mine and he searched me for several moments. They darted back and forth wildly. I saw panic in his face.

"Who hurt you?" I hadn't known what I was asking at first. But now it was vital to know. Concern made my voice louder. "Did someone hurt you Casey?"

He still didn't answer. He looked everywhere but at my face, his whole body tense, ready to run. It seemed like a struggle for him to even be in the room. He looked down at where my hands sat, still resting on the skin of his belly. Following the cue of his gaze, I slowly lifted his shirt.

"Casey," I breathed. "Oh my God, Casey. Who did this to you?"

His stomach was a roadmap of scars, criss-crossing his abdomen in a wild landscape of wounds old and new. They snaked around each other, the deep old brown scars and the angry new red ones all coiled together like a nest of vipers.

I stared, horrified. The tears rushed to my eyes and I feared I would vomit.

He still hadn't said anything, but the shame in his eyes as he watched me pity him was almost as devastating as what I was seeing. "Casey," I breathed again, not knowing what to say. "Who did this to you?"

He looked away.

The sickening realization punched me in the gut yet again. "Your brothers. Has this happened to your brothers too?"

"No," he croaked. "I keep them safe."

"So you..."

"I could take it. They can't. They're too little." He swung his long legs off of the bed and sat, shattered , his blond head cradled in his hands. He wasn't quite a man yet, but his shoulders slumped with the weight of a burden that even the strongest couldn't bear. I futilely reached out my hand as if I could take it from him, catch it before it sent him crashing to the ground and crushed him underneath.

"You can't say anything, Lexi." His voice was a broken, ragged thing. "If anyone finds out, they'll take them away from me again. They'll separate us and then I won't be able to keep them safe."

He whirled on me and I saw terrifying violence under the surface of him. "You have to promise me, right now Lexi. Never tell anyone, do you understand?"

"Never tell,
anyone!"

Chapter 1

Lexi

The air was heavy with the threat of snow, I breathed in the smell of it, that little extra bite in the already frigid air. The dull gray sky was flat and indistinct and the whole world seemed to hesitate and wait for the weather to make its next move.

I hunched my shoulders and pulled down my cap, grateful for the little extra warmth my riot of red curls provided. But when the wind whipped them into my face, I cursed my hair like always and hurried across the concourse towards the coffee shop on the corner. Getting to campus early and grabbing a cup of coffee at La Colombe was my own special treat to myself, a treasured ritual I had developed over the course of my first semester. I could usually depend on being the only student there.

I liked the impersonal bustle of the office workers, silent and surly over their electronic devices. No one called to each other. Everyone minded his or her own business. It was a world I appreciated and understood well. So unlike the forced sociability of college life.

Plus I needed coffee. Badly. This morning's study group was going to be awful, and I needed caffeine fortification.

She's going to hate me. She's going to cry. This is going to suck and the whole group is going to lay the blame for kicking her out at my feet.
I pushed the intrusive thought aside. It couldn't be helped. It had to be done.

I stepped up to the counter to place my order. Dark roast. Black, no sugar. I don't fuck around when it comes to my coffee.

As I waited by the counter, anticipating that first life-giving sip, I thought I heard someone say my name. But that couldn't be. No one knew me here. That's why I came to this shop specifically. It was far enough outside of campus and into Center City that no one should know me here.

"Lexi?"

There it was again. With dull trepidation, I turned to face Sean Gibbs' eager, hurt eyes. "Where have you been?"

I swallowed, readying myself to let him down as gently as I could. It was shitty of me to have stopped calling. I knew it. But being the frigid bitch was a lot easier than trying to explain why we couldn't keep seeing each other.

I was saved by the call of my order number. I practically leapt for the steaming hot cup, scalding my tongue eagerly as I gulped down the first sip.

Sean was waiting for me to respond. He was planted in the lobby, a knit cap pulled down low over his normally mussed up dirty blond hair. It made it easier to not see it. Blond was my weakness.

"Sean." I took a deep breath. "It's not working."

He hung his head. "Can't we talk about this?"

"Here?"

"Please, Lexi."

"Can we at least get out of everyone's way?"

He moved quickly over to an empty table and stood there waiting. I gritted my teeth in irritation. I should have known he wasn't going to go easily. He was the kind of guy I dreaded. Eager, sensitive and romantic. The kind I always ended up shattering a million different ways when they realized I could never love them. But what they didn't realize was that it was for their own good.

I'm bad luck.

And the sooner they realized it, the better off they were.

"What isn't working?" he whined. "I call you, you don't call back. I text you, you don't text back, we sleep together, you're out the door two seconds later. I'd say it was you who wasn't 'working!'"

I looked at him steadily. He was a good-looking guy, of that there was no question. Broad swimmer's shoulders, a nice flat stomach, deep blue eyes set wide and guileless across an open, honest face. He was funny, smart and determined. I should be able to like him more. I should be able to love him.

I wished I could force myself to love him.

"You're right, Sean. I'm not working. Because it's not worth it to me to keep it up. You should find someone else." The hurt in his eyes was replaced with rising anger, letting me know that my words were not having the effect I wanted. "Find someone who is right for you, Sean," I begged, feeling my fragile composure starting to break apart. "Someone who can love you the way you deserve."

He opened his mouth and closed it. Over and over, like he was swallowing back horrible, hurtful things he wished he could hurl at me. I closed my eyes, readying myself to accept his abuse. I deserved it.

Instead he sighed raggedly. "They did warn me. 'Don't go after Alexandra Delaney,' they said. She's a frigid, heartless bitch."

There it was. I exhaled. It was a relief to finally hear it. "They were right," I agreed. "I wish you had listened to them."

When I opened my eyes, he was still standing there. But not for long. He turned deliberately and walked slowly to the door. He struggled for several moments against the winter wind as he tried to push it open. I cringed, feeling guilty for the wind robbing him of his dignity. Another man I ruined. Another man who attempted to melt the ice around Alexandra Delaney's heart and failed miserably.

I took a sip of my coffee and watched him finally succeed in escaping the coffee shop. When he was sufficiently far away, I grabbed my bags and headed into the morning.

BOOK: FORCE: A Bad Boy Sports Romance

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