turn the application in and by that time the coffee shop is slammed with college students and professors. I bury my nose in my Anatomy of a Motive textbook when I feel someone nearby staring at me.
Well I’ll be damned.
Theodore Web.
His dark hair is a little overgrown and curls around his ears in a boyish way that takes the edge off his neck-to-toe tattoos. His body is covered in colorful ink that would take days to explore and discover all the pieces of art on his body. His green eyes are tight, and he uses his top teeth to toy with the ring on his lower lip. His knuckles are white on backpack straps pulled tightly over muscular shoulders and a wide chest.
He’s every woman’s dirty fantasy.
And every dad’s nightmare.
I hold eye contact with him for an uncomfortably long time.
He finally gets restless and saunters to my table. He doesn’t sit down. “Are you stalking me?”
“Is my pursuing you in an obsessive manner upsetting?”
His gaze darts from my eyes to my lips, my hair and not so subtly to my breasts before making the trip back up. “Yes.”
I close my textbook and fold my arms on the table, leaning into them and tilting my head to look up at his six-foot-something height. “Do you want me to stop?”
“We had this conversation yesterday,” he growls.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Coach warned me to stay away from you.”
I bet he did, controlling prick. “You don’t strike me as the kind of man who does what he’s told.”
His eyes narrow. “How old are you?”
“How old do you want me to be?”
“Don’t fuck with me,” he says under his breath. “You told Ro you just graduated. But you were in the bar the night we—”
“I have a fake.” I smile seductively at the thrill of seeing flickering dread behind his eyes. “I’m nineteen. Don’t tell me you actually care.”
He runs a hand through his hair and scratches at his jaw dusted in a day’s worth of beard growth. I have an urge to rub up against it and feel the burn against my skin. Lick from his throat to his lips—
“Stop looking at me like that.”
I uncross my legs under the table, feeling restless and hot. “Like what?”
“Stay away from me.”
Do I detect a quiver of unease in his voice?
“I’m serious, kitten.”
Kitten? Meow.
“Promise me.”
When I don’t answer he turns and storms out of the coffee shop.
I’ve got him right where I want him. The bad news for him? I never do what I’m told.
FIVE
Spider
OUR TEAM DRAGS ass to the showers after a killer training session. Emery’s obviously getting to her dad in ways that don’t include me because he was in a foul fucking mood. Practice went two hours over, and half the team ended up puking on the sideline.
The hot water is heaven on my fatigued muscles, and I plan to eat my weight in carbs as soon as the nausea wears off.
Carey stands at the spigot next to mine. “Rowan told me you ran into Emery at Bean Madness.”
I drop my chin to my chest allowing the water pressure to pound against my neck.
“You need to leave her alone, man. If coach finds out—”
“I know.” I’m fucking trying. Everywhere I look I see her. Between classes, in the commons, I swear she’s following me. “I’m trying.”
“What do you mean you’re trying? Just do it.”
If it were only that easy.
I wish I’d never met Emery Brawley. I wish the night she approached me in the bar wearing that conservative black dress that I’d have brushed her off as a basic, uptight bitch. I wish I never saw the flicker of danger in her eyes, never tasted the rebel that lives beneath her librarian exterior. I wish like hell I could erase the memory of the filthy things she whispered in my ear while I pounded her into her floral bed sheets.
But I can’t.
She’s bad for me—an immoral indulgence wrapped in Sunday school teacher’s clothes. Her neurotic personality intrigues me. Am I too far gone, fallen too far that there’s no going back? Am I drunk on her deviancy that she’s tattooed on my insides now?
I finish with the shower and wrap a towel around my waist. Once at my locker I use my towel to dry my hair when a tension fills the room with muttered what the fucks. I turn around and my gaze snags on the source of the disruption.
Emery strolls through the room filled with a couple dozen naked men as if