Jock Row (Jock Hard #1)(75)

Other stuff. Fuck yeah to other stuff.

“You’re my friend, Scar. I feel like the physical part is the natural next step. Plus, I want to bone you so hard it’s becoming both physically and mentally draining.”

“I don’t even know how to respond to that,” She giggles.

Laughing is a good sign, right?

I swallow the lump forming in my throat, pressing on my Adam’s apple, to make it go the hell away, so I can say what I’m about to say.

“You know the night you went to dinner with your friends from bio lab? I knew I wanted to be more than just your friend.”

“How?”

“Don’t you ever just look at something and know? I just…did.”

I fell in love with her that night.

Gag.

“I can’t believe we’re having a relationship talk.” My mother must be rubbing off on me, dammit.

“I love that we’re talking.”

Love.

There’s that word that’s wreaking havoc in my damn chest. I wish she’d stop saying it so my heart would stop racing.


Scarlett

“My mom said I should talk to you more about this stuff more often.” He averts his eyes, watching the ceiling as he speaks, a lopsided smile plastered on his face. “Feelings and shit.”

He’s pleased with himself for opening up to me.

Truthfully, I am, too.

“Oh?” I feign ignorance. “Did she?”

“Yeah. Both my parents are a wealth of infinite wisdom. Today when we got on the boat, my dad told me to use my common sense this weekend and wear a condom.”

Condom, condom, condom.

My body temperature skyrockets, and I brush my gaze toward the thermostat. How hot do they have it set in here, anyway?

“He never had the sex talk with you when you were growing up?”

“Oh, we’ve had the sex talk all right—a few times, actually.” Rowdy readjusts his large body on the bed, folding those thick biceps behind his head, mattress dipping from his weight.

“My senior year of high school, they both sat me down to explain that since I’d signed my letter of intent to play for Iowa, girls were going to be coming out the woodwork.”

“Were your parents right?”

A brief hesitation. “Yeah.”

He casts me a guilty look, thick eyebrows knitted into a frown as if just realizing what that one word implies: he took full advantage. Had lots of meaningless sex with countless meaningless women.

Well.

That information I certainly could have lived without, but I asked, so I have no one to blame but myself for the small crater of jealousy forming in the pit of my stomach.

“They’re always riding my ass about groupies, and safe sex, and using my head—not the one inside my boxers.”

“I don’t blame them. I bet it’s not easy watching your son work his ass off, keep up his grades, and then have to fend off all the girls.”

“I guess I don’t either. The girls are…” He clears his throat, once again directing his gaze toward the ceiling, as if the answers are spelled out for him up there. “I was done with the parties and the casual sex by my sophomore year. That’s why I moved out of the house. It got real old—not for everyone in the house, obviously, but it did for me.”

I can’t imagine what that world is like. Being a biology student is so far removed from the world of athletics, it’s laughable.

“Do you feel like you have to be on all the time?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like…” I prop myself up so I can see him better. “You can’t say or do what you want because people are always watching.”

He nods. “That’s exactly it, yes. Coaches, the media, other students with their fucking cell phones recording us. The popular players can’t even take a dump in a public bathroom without it ending up online.”

I try to picture my face on some stranger’s profile online, or an article written about me on the internet.

“What’s it like?”

“It doesn’t happen to me often—I’m not a big enough name for anyone to give a shit about. I play ball for Iowa, Scarlett, not Miami or Vanderbilt.”

“Are those teams good?”

“Those teams are the best.”

“Could you have played there?”

He goes quiet. “Yeah, I could have played there.”

“Should you have played there?”

“No.” He turns his head toward me and studies my face. “I’m right where I need to be.”

My heart leaps, damn if it doesn’t, and suddenly we’re not talking about baseball anymore. We’re talking about us—him and me and the fact that we’re lying here now, alone in this room, alone in this bed.

“You can touch me, you know.” His voice has a hesitance to it, as if he’s afraid I’m going to reject him. “I want you to.”

His voice is rumbly and low, twisting up my insides like it always does. So deep from fatigue, my stupid, neglected ovaries clench into a tight fist while the space between my legs grows uncomfortably hot.

Rowdy is so achingly handsome. So. Freaking.

Hot.

I could stare at him all day and he wouldn’t have to say a single word to entertain me.