Tackled: A Sports Romance (4 page)

M
y advisor looks
across from his desk at me, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. "This is … not what I expect from you, Cassie."

I swallow hard. I'm supposed to be further along on my thesis than this, a fact that Professor Richards keeps reminding me of via email after nagging email. And now I just gave him a lame proposed thesis topic. "I know. It's the topic. I'm not sure –"

"It's not interesting," he says. "Toss it."

"Excuse me?"

"I can tell you're not interested in it." He pulls off his reading glasses and sets them on the desk. "This is my research area, not yours. Give me something better. It's your thesis, Cassie. It's not mine. You're supposed to roll this into your dissertation, so it had better be something you're interested in doing for the next few years."

"Right," I say absently. Why can’t I get that stupid jock out of my head?

"Did you hear anything I just said, Cassie?"

"Yeah," I reply, pausing to look down at my notepad. There's nothing written, no notes detailing what we’ve even been talking about during this meeting. Just a doodle of my initials and a couple of flowers. Like I'm a sixth grader. At least it's not a doodle of Colton's initials. "Totally. That's a good idea."

"You need a new thesis topic," he insists. "Preferably something you're interested in. And something publishable. At least if you still want to pursue a career in academia."

"I do," I say firmly.

"Are you sure everything's okay?" he asks, his expression concerned. Professor Richards is a great advisor. He's basically the professorial version of Santa Claus, kind and good-natured, except in Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops most of the year.

"Absolutely. I was just distracted by finding a teaching position and… it has a slightly steeper learning curve than I expected."

"I forgot about that. You're teaching at…"

"I'm tutoring at the athletic center," I finish for him. "One of the football players."

Professor Richards leans back in his chair. "That's interesting. Have you thought about going in that direction?"

"For my thesis?" I ask.

"Football teams are an interesting in-group,” he points out. “Or there’s –“

“Masculine identity in college football players." It pops into my head, just like that, and I blurt it out.

“You should run with that."

I shake my head, reconsidering my impulsive idea. “I can’t use anything I learn while tutoring,” I say. “I signed a non-disclosure agreement.”

“You don’t need specifics,” he assures me. “It’s a proposed study. Propose it and then for your dissertation, you’ll see if you can get permission to run it through the athletic center.”

Professor Richards is right. I wouldn’t be using anything I learned while tutoring in my thesis, and maybe my sessions Colton King will give me insight I wouldn’t otherwise have.

Masculine identity in college football players. I wonder if winding up underneath one of them counts as "research".

“
S
o
?” Sable yells over the excessively loud music in the bar. We’re at one of the cheapest happy hours in town, which makes it the favorite hangout for poor college students everywhere. Cheap drinks and tacos – the perfect combination.

Coupled with an interrogation by my roommate.

“So what?” I ask, scooping up a glob of queso on a tortilla chip. I pop it into my mouth and crunch so that I have an excuse not to answer her questions.

“You know what I’m asking, so don’t play coy,” Sable yells. “How did it go?”

“I signed a confidentiality thing, Sable."

She rolls her eyes dramatically. “Oh, please. I’m not asking for specifics. I don’t give a shit about the academic bullshit. I want to know if Colt –“

I interrupt her, clearing my throat loudly. “No names,” I say, looking around.

“A code name, then,” she suggests. “I want to know if Horse –“

I roll my eyes. “Do I need to ask why you picked that as a code name?”

“I was trying not to be subtle." She runs her finger along the rim of her margarita glass and licks salt off her fingertip. “Because he’s hung like a horse, obviously.”

“Yes. I got the joke.”

“Yeah, you should have, especially given the fact that you’ve seen all of the goods."

“I’m not referring to him as Horse,” I protest. “Donkey would be more appropriate, since he’s a jackass.”

“Oh, that fits, too,” she says, laughing. “Donkeys have huge dicks.”

“Conversation with you is always so classy, Sable. It’s really a testament to how you were raised. Those classes in etiquette must have taught you a lot.”

I don’t know if Sable ever had to take etiquette classes, but that’s the type of family she was raised in. Her family is the Pierce family, one of those old money families, like the Carnegies. She had a butler. An actual, real-life butler. I’ve never seen a butler, except for on television.

“Oh honey." Sable laughs. “Rich people talk about cock just as much as poor people do. They just do it while they’re wearing designer dresses and drinking from crystal glasses.”

“Clearly, since you’re so focused on donkey dick.”

“Sure,” she says, sipping her margarita. “It’s
me
who’s focused on that.”

“I’m certainly not,” I protest. “I haven’t said a word about
you-know-who
.”

“Mmm-hmm. You can’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about it.”

“I haven’t!” I lie. “Not even a little bit.”

“Sure you haven’t, doll,” she says. “That’s why your cheeks get all pink when I mention donkey dick.”

“My cheeks get pink when you say that phrase because it’s crude and disgusting,” I say.

“Oh, don’t be such a prude,” she scoffs at me. “You really do need to get laid. Donkey might be the guy for the job.”

“Not nearly,” I say. “He’s about as far from my type as someone can get. He’s more your type.”

“I’m not sure whether or not to be offended by that. Are you saying that jackasses are my type?”

I cock my head to the side as I look at her. “Are we really having this conversation? You’re the Queen of dating jackasses.”

“I beg your pardon! I haven’t dated
all
jackasses.”

“Name a nice one,” I challenge.

Sable purses her lips and looks into the distance, tapping her finger on the side of the glass. “David –“

I raise my eyebrows. “The one who said he really preferred thinner girls than you?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Oh yeah,” she says, remembering. “He had that weird model fetish. I forgot that’s why I dumped him. Okay, then. Cooper. He wasn’t bad.”

“The drummer in the band?” I shake my head. “No. Just no.”

“He wasn’t a jackass,” she insists.

I roll my eyes. “He brought his band over to play in our living room until three in the morning. And they brought groupies.”

“The groupies are par for the course."

“He borrowed money from you so he didn’t have to get a job,” I remind her. “And his band sucked.”

“He was an artist!"

“Oh!” I point at her, recalling another one. “The artist. Remember him? The guy who thought he was French?”

“Okay, he was kind of horrible,” she agrees with a wince. “I’ll own that.”

I giggle, recalling him. “He was insufferable,” I say. “He thought everything was superior in France. And wasn’t he from Miami or something? He wasn’t even French.”

“His French was not good, either,” Sable points out. “Oh God, I’ve dated some terrible people.”

“Yet you keep trying to get me to get into the dating game!”

“No, no. I’m not trying to get you into the dating game. I’m trying to get you laid. There’s a huge difference between the two.”

“It’s basically the same thing."

“Hardly! Some of those guys were great in bed, despite being total jackasses. In fact, sometimes the sex is better with someone you can’t stand.”

“That is not true,” I protest. “I’m not going to have sex with someone I can’t stand just to have sex.”

“I just find it unbelievable that you’ve made it twenty-three years without losing it,” she says. “I mean, how many twenty-three-year-old virgins are there in the world? Do you think there’s anyone else on campus who hasn’t lost it at your age? You’re like a freaking unicorn.”

“Are you purposely trying to make me feel bad?” I ask. “And how am I a unicorn?”

“You know,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “You’re like a rare, exotic, fictional creature. Unicorn and Donkey Dick. You're a perfect combination.”

I reach for her margarita. “You’re cut off.”

“Just because you don’t appreciate creative literary metaphors doesn’t mean that I’ve had too many margaritas.”

“Neither of those are creative metaphors,” I point out. “And Donkey Dick is more your type. He’s a jock and you were a high school cheerleader. In fact, you two should go out.”

As soon as I speak the words, I feel annoyed at the very prospect of Colton King and Sable Pierce hooking up. I shrug it off because I’m not stupid enough to think that someone like Colton King goes out with someone like me.

And besides, he's an undergrad. That makes him practically a high school student.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be great in the sack.

I silently curse my increasing libido and it’s obviously poor taste in men.

Sable narrows her eyes at me. “Well, if you’re not going to take him, maybe I
should
go out with him,” she says.

“You should,” I say, my voice tight.

“Mmm-hmm.” She sips her margarita, still looking at me. “It wouldn’t bother you, though, because you totally can’t stand him.”

“Can’t stand him at all.”

“And you don’t have the hots for him, either."

“He’s completely repulsive,” I lie.

“You never told me about the tutoring session,” she notes.

“Because you went off on a drunken tangent about horses and donkeys and unicorns!”

“Horses, and donkeys, and unicorns?” comes a voice.

I turn around to see one of the girls from our program, Dana, and her boyfriend Paul standing behind me.
Oh God.
That’s exactly what I need. Another embarrassing conversation overheard by someone.

At least I didn’t loudly proclaim I was a virgin this time.

“We’re talking about the size of cocks,” Sable explains.

I choke on my tortilla chip. “We are
not
.”

“Sounds interesting,” Dana says, sliding into one of the high-top seats at our small table. “You don’t care if we join you, do you?”

“No,” I say, shooting Sable a
stop-talking-about-this
glare. “We were just talking about Sable’s dating life.”

“Oh, that’s why you’re talking about horse and donkey dicks?” Dana asks.

Her boyfriend Paul groans. “I think I walked into the wrong conversation. I’m going to go grab a beer from the bar. Does anyone want one?”

“I’m good, honey,” Dana says, patting his arm. “I get the horse and donkey thing, but what’s a unicorn dick?”

"
W
hat the hell
are you doing?" Emmett asks, reaching for the book. "I told you. Twins."

"Huh?" I look up from my history textbook.

My roommate grabs the book out of my hand. "Why are you reading this shit?"

"It's for class," I say, an edge in my voice that isn't usually there. "Maybe you've heard of classes? I have to get my GPA up."

The words come out of my mouth before I realize they're basically a parroted version of what Hot Librarian said to me. Shit. Now I'm sounding like that nerdy virgin. That hot nerdy virgin.

"Since when are you studying on a Wednesday night?" Emmett asks. "You don’t need to do that shit."

I shrug. "I have a paper to write."

"Don’t you have a tutor for that?"

"Yeah," I say, shaking my head. "She's not going to write my paper for me."

"You need a better tutor, then," Emmett says.

I can't think of a better tutor than Cassie.

"Take a break," he tells me. "This chick Ally told her sister you were going to have beers with us. For some reason I can't possibly understand, her sister is your biggest fan. You know what that means, dude."

I groan. I know what that means. When a girl is my biggest fan, I can get her to do anything. It means blowjobs in the backseat of the car on the way to my place, getting my fill of her, and then kicking her ass out the door. They're always grateful to have gotten a piece of me.

Part of me says I should close the book and go fuck the girl's sister. Or hell, both of the twins, even if Emmett thinks he’s claimed one of them. I haven't gotten laid since that damn tutor started working with me, giving me grief about studying and shit. By my own standards, I'm practically a monk now.

The problem is, the thought of yet another girl on her knees between my legs, looking up at me for approval with big doe eyes, doesn't make my cock stir the way it usually does.

Shit.
Something is wrong with me.

"Jesus, man," Emmett says, shaking his head. "I can't believe I offered you a chance at this girl's sister and you're turning guaranteed sex down to sit here and read a stupid book."

"It's actually kind of good," I say halfheartedly. "I mean, it's interesting and –"

"Shit," Emmett says. "I can't listen to this. It's sad as hell."

Later, I stare at the blinking cursor on my laptop as I try to formulate a sentence that doesn't make me sound like a fucking third-grader.

I shouldn't give a shit. Why am I even trying to write a dumb paper, anyway? Impressing Hot Librarian should be nowhere on my list of priorities. Who cares what some nerdy girl thinks about me?

Dumb jock.

That's what she called me. I don't know why it grates on me the way it does. I've always been a dumb jock – not like my brother Drew who's smart as hell. Of course, he's not going to get drafted into the pros with a multi-million dollar contract, either.

So, writing some bullshit history paper is irrelevant. Studying plays, that's relevant. That's what my future is about. Not writing some crap about stuff that happened a million years ago.

I
glance
up from my playbook at my watch again. Three minutes past the start of our tutoring session. One minute since the last time I looked. Not that I'm counting or anything.

She probably reconsidered after the last session when I lost my shit. I shouldn't have lost my shit. But she was sitting there across from me, and that look on her face… smug, like she was better than me just because she's good at schoolwork. It just got to me.

She's the kind of girl who doesn't understand wanting to move up in life. She's smart and pretty and I'd bet a million dollars she didn't grow up poor on a farm in East Texas.

"Studying?" A voice interrupts my thoughts, and I look up to see her standing there. This time, she's not wearing a little skirt and heels, no longer the hot librarian. She's wearing jeans that hug her curves like they were designed for her body, a pink tank top that skims over her full breasts, with a messenger bag slung over her shoulder.

Her cheeks are flushed, her breath is short, and all I can think about is that she'd better not have just come from hooking up with someone.

"Yep," I answer, my voice tight. She crosses the room and slides into a chair on the other side of the table. Why the hell am I so annoyed at the thought of her being late because she was with someone?

"That's not school stuff," she says, eyeing the playbook. "Sorry I'm late."

"It's the only studying that matters," I say.

She purses her lips. "Unless you're ineligible and can't play," she says. "Then knowing all those football diagram thingies won't help at all."

"Football diagram thingies?" I ask, leaning back in the chair. "Do you know anything about football at all?"

Her cheeks flush and she looks down, digging in her bag for a notebook and a pen. "It's not my forte."

"It's not your forte?" I ask. "What does that mean? You can't use your fancy words around me."

I'm only half-joking. I don't know what the fuck
forte
means.

She sighs. "I know nothing about football, okay? Nothing. Not a single thing."

"But you're in Texas," I point out. No way does this girl go to a huge football school in Texas, for shit's sake, and know nothing about football. That would mean she genuinely knows nothing about
me
.

"I know." She shrugs like it’s irrelevant. "I just never got into it. So, did you read
Pride and Prejudice
?"

"Yeah." I wave my copy dismissively at her. Of course I didn't fucking read it. Not only am I not reading something like that, but I was busy staring at my laptop and trying to write that stupid history paper. "Have you ever even been to a game?"

She pulls out her copy of
Pride and Prejudice
. "I sold my student season tickets last year."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"What do you mean?" she squeals. "There are plenty of people in the world who don't watch football."

"Not in Texas."

"Stop avoiding work," she says. "Did you do your History paper? It's just a reaction paper, so it's short. Do you want to talk about
Pride and Prejudice
or do you want me to look over your work?"

I open my laptop and the document containing the paper, then turn the computer to face her. "If I have to learn this bullshit English stuff, you should have to learn football. It's called
quid pro quo
."

That's literally the only Latin phrase I know. My brother taught it to me when we were in high school, said it's a smart-sounding way of getting girls to put out when you take them out someplace.

She laughs. "Yeah, sure, if you think you can teach me something about football."

"Okay," I say. "My place. Eight o'clock."

Cassie looks up at me, surprised. "I wasn't serious. I was kidding. You're not teaching me about football."

"Oh, 'cause you're too good for it?"

"What?" she stammers. "I did not say that. I didn't even imply that."

I raise an eyebrow. "I learn, you learn."

"I am
not
going to your house," she says. "That's such an obvious ploy. Does this stuff really work on women?"

"I've never offered to teach a chick about football," I admit. That’s honesty right there. I really haven't. Why the fuck would I need to teach a girl about football? The girls I screw know exactly who I am. They're groupies, fans of the game. And of mine.

She rolls her eyes. "'Come over to my house and I'll teach you all about the game?'" she asks sarcastically. "That's so transparent. What's next? '
Baby, I need you to help me get a home run?'
"

"Are you just fucking with me now? Home run is baseball, not football."

"It is? Isn't that what you score?"

"You
are
fucking with me," I say, shaking my head in disbelief. "You actually don't know that a home run is baseball? Hit a home run? There's nothing to hit with in football."

"I'm not into either sport."

"Well, I'm not into English," I retort. "Or whatever the hell it is you're studying."

"Sociology," she informs me. "And my graduating doesn't hinge on my learning football."

"You're a terrible tutor," I say, leaning back, arms crossed over my chest.

"Why is that? I can tutor you without knowing anything about football."

"You're supposed to give me an incentive to learn," I point out. "Make it interesting."

Her face colors. "I'm not even going to ask what you think an incentive is."

"I was going to suggest that you legit learn about what I do," I say. "But if you insist on a more…
physical incentive
, I'm game. If my paper passes, you take your shirt off."

I don't expect her to take her shirt off. In fact, I fully expect her to slap me for the suggestion. I just want to get a rise out of her.

"I am
not
taking my shirt off," she says. But when she averts her gaze to look back at the laptop screen, she pulls the edge of her lower lip between her teeth and shifts in her seat.

I know that look. Little Miss Goody Two Shoes might be dirtier than she appears. So I push my luck.

"Your panties, then," I suggest. "And if I get an A, I get to put my face between those thighs and make you come on my tongue."

Now her cheeks turn scarlet. But when she looks at me and doesn't say anything for a minute, I think she actually might be considering it.

And hell, now that I said it out loud, I'm not going to be able to get the image out of my head – Cassie on her back, her legs spread as I bury my face in her pussy. Cassie bucking against my face, her hands on the back of my head as she presses me harder against her. Cassie, as she pants my name when I thrust my tongue inside her.

Fuck. That just gave me the biggest raging boner ever.

Cassie looks at my face, and then looks down. Yep, she just saw it. And she looks at it just a little longer than necessary.

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and clears her throat. When she speaks, her voice is tight. "Looking at the quality of your paper, I could safely agree to that with no qualms whatsoever."

"Does that mean you're agreeing that if I get an A, you'll let me lick your pussy until you scream my name?"

"You're so crude. I did not just say that," she protests. "But there's no chance of you getting an A."

"I just need the right incentive."

She just shakes her head and doesn't respond, instead turning her attention to my paper. "I think I get what you're trying to say here, but it's not organized well. Even if the paper is only a page, you should still organize it the way you would a longer paper. Do you know what a thesis statement is?"

Suddenly she's all businesslike as she pulls out her notebook and writes down an example of an outline, something about structuring papers, but I'm not paying attention. All I'm thinking about is the raging hard-on I have that's in no danger of deflating anytime soon — and the fact that I can't stop thinking about what it would be like to make Little Miss Goody Two Shoes come on my tongue.