on me before I can blink, his big-ass hand wraps around the back of my neck as he pushes me out of his room, down the hallway and into his daughter’s bedroom. With a flip of a light switch the foggy details from last night are exposed under one-hundred-volt wattage.
Emery jerks upright in bed and the sheet falls to expose her breasts. I groan at the bright purple hickeys that mar her pale skin. “Oops.” She makes no effort to cover herself and I wince as Coach’s grip crushes my cervical vertebrae.
My jacket is on the floor, jeans in a heap at the foot of her bed, and my t-shirt hangs off her headboard. If I thought I could lie and say it was a team prank that sent me into Coach’s bedroom naked in the middle of the night, the evidence blows my chances of escaping the truth out of the water.
“What did I say when I agreed to let you live with me?” He punctuates the question spoken to his daughter with a sharp squeeze to my neck. I never knew he had a daughter. I always assumed the guy was a life-long celibate because the pent-up sexual frustration made him more of an angry asshole and it’s a fact that angry assholes win games. “I said no fuckin’ around!”
Emery’s glare tightens. “You don’t get to dictate what I do with my body!”
“I sure as fuck can when that body is livin’ under my roof!”
“No, you can’t,” I chime in. “It’s still her body.”
“Shut up, Theodore.”
My muscles tense at the sound of his anger wrapped around every syllable of my full name, bringing me back to when I was a scrawny, helpless kid.
He gives me a shake. “You manipulated your way into my innocent daughter’s bed?”
Innocent? Didn’t seem so innocent when she had her tongue down my throat and her hand in my pants jacking me off on the dance floor.
I was at Henley’s bar with my team doing shots to celebrate a winning game. I thought she was just another jersey chaser. I stare at her now, all that blonde hair, pale blue eyes and creamy skin flushed from a night of sin. She’s like a fallen angel, a corrupted soul wrapped in an armor of virtue.
“Put your clothes on and get the fuck out of my house.” Coach shoves me forward and the forceful blow is so familiar it would usually trigger a violent response.
Instead, I smile at the conniving snake in the Barbie mask. “Touché.”
Her gaze darts to mine and a flicker of a smile touches her lips.
“Don’t fucking talk to her!” Coach is seething at the door watching my every move as I snag my clothes from around the room.
I don’t bother covering up as I slide my jeans up my thighs, commando, just as I was last night. I figure I’m already dead why not give the woman one last look at—
Coach’s left hook comes from nowhere and I stumble back holding my jaw. Emery is out of bed, her sheet wrapped around her as she rushes to my aid. “Are you okay?” She whirls around to her dad before I can answer. “Get out!”
“You’ll have to drag my dead body out of here to get me to leave before he does!”
Emery drops her sheet giving her dad a full-frontal he’ll never forget.
“Dammit, Em,” he says scrambling to pick up the sheet and cover her with it.
She leaves her arms to her sides so the bed sheet falls again to her feet. “I’m naked and need privacy,” she says with no inflection in her voice. “Leave right now or I’ll call Uncle Steve and tell him how you insisted on watching me dress.”
All six-foot-three, two-hundred and eighty-five pounds of Coach Brawley turns on a dime, storms from the room, and slams the door so hard I hear wood crack. I stare in awe at the fiery little blonde. I’ve never seen Coach bow to anyone. I think she could be the devil.
In one quick move she ties the sheet back around her and turns to me. “Are you hurt?” There’s no tenderness in her voice, and for the first time, I see a little of her dad in her.
“No.” I rub my jaw feeling only a mild ache and grin. “I can take a punch.”
She snags my t-shirt and tosses it to me. “Sorry about my dad.” Again, not a lot of feeling in those four words.