and shove my phone and wallet into my back pockets. “That I’m not stupid.” My gaze tightens on her. “You used me.”
“You used me too.”
I can’t argue that. One-night stands have their perks—no attachments, a hell of a lot of fun, and plenty of orgasms. “Why didn’t you tell me you were Coach Brawley’s daughter?”
She lifts a brow. “I thought you said you weren’t stupid.”
“Why me? There were twenty other football players in the bar last night.”
She eyes the colorful tattoos on my arms, the inked skull on my throat, and the piercing in my lip.
“Clean cut dude wouldn’t cause a big enough stink, huh?” I chuckle. “Smart. But you didn’t know I’d stumble into his bedroom by accident.”
“He wakes up at four-thirty every morning. I’d planned to seduce you at four-thirty-five and make sure he heard.”
“That’s some sick ass shit.” I’m strangely attracted to the idea of it. But then, I’ve always been attracted to the deranged.
With my hand on the doorknob, knowing Coach is standing on the other side like a bull ready to charge, I say, “For what it’s worth, that thing you do with your tongue—”
The door swings open and Coach roars, “Out!”
Emery bites her lips, but I catch the way the corners tip up on the ends.
This chick is a fucking psycho.
I kind of like it.
TWO
Spider
“HOW DID YOU do on the topology exam?” Rowan, my teammate Carey’s girlfriend, is a spunky little redhead with an insane IQ.
After getting bored of last year’s computer science major I switched to civil engineering and found myself in the same class as Rowan. Little did I know she’s as competitive in the classroom as her boyfriend is on the field.
“I got an A.” I open the classroom door and hold it for her to walk through. “You?” I hook her around the shoulder and pull her to one side of the busy breezeway to keep her from getting plowed over.
“B plus.” She groans and sets her jaw stubbornly. “Should’ve been an A. I studied so hard.” Her gaze darts to mine. “Did you even study? How does this stuff come so easy to you?”
My brain works in fucked up ways. I did well in school so my stepdad didn’t have another reason to smack me around. Not that he needed one. Or, maybe all those hits to the head opened up some part of my brain I wasn’t using that made me a goddamn genius.
“Get your paws off my woman.” Rowan’s boyfriend Carey shoves me playfully from behind. He lifts her off the ground like she weighs nothing and walks a few steps nuzzling her neck. “I missed you.”
She giggles and squirms. “It hasn’t even been two hours.”
Her frown from earlier is erased by Carey’s presence. I find it fascinating that two people can have that kind of effect on each other. Women have never provided me with more than a quick and temporary relief—more of a distraction than a remedy.
“Theodore!”
I freeze mid-step at the sound of my full name. And I’m not the only one. Carey steps shoulder-to-shoulder with me, his big body radiating tension. The sun lights up a head of thick blonde hair as Emery closes in on us. She looks like a prep-school student body president in her khaki slacks and pale-yellow cardigan, complete with pearl buttons.
She stops in front of me, and eyes Carey and Rowan curiously.
“Don’t call me that.” I grip the straps of my backpack to keep from grabbing her and shaking her buttoned up look loose.
“Isn’t it your name?”
“Nobody calls him that,” Carey says with a heavy warning in his voice.
Most people find him intimidating, but she smiles at him as if he’s a puppy. As if his defensive response pleases her.
“What do you want?” I know she’s after something. She doesn’t strike me as the type of woman who’d waste her time with someone she couldn’t use to further her cause.
Her eyes come back to me. “You left in such a hurry we didn’t get a chance to exchange numbers.”
“Why would we do that?” The way we left things, with Coach breathing down my neck, made it obvious there wouldn’t be a repeat of our night together. “You’re hot, but football’s the only thing keeping me out of jail. There’s plenty of pussy that won’t get me kicked off the team.”
“Spider!” Rowan sounds worried, as if maybe I’ve insulted the woman, but she doesn’t know Emery like I do. She may be soft and delicious on the outside, but inside