Tackled Read online

  Drew texts back a photo of himself grinning. My brother and I have been best friends our whole lives. He's playing baseball at a college in South Carolina. It's been a weird adjustment to be separated from my twin, for sure.

  I scroll through my photos and find a picture of my dick – yeah, I have dick pics on my phone – and text it to Drew.

  Then I get out of the car. This is supposed to be the tutor's address – Coach gave it to me, even though he wasn't supposed to. I promised on pain of death that I was going to be polite and gentlemanly and not do or say anything remotely inappropriate.

  I inhale deeply. I can do appropriate.

  Fuck. When's the last time I didn't say something inappropriate?

  I'm screwed.

  5

  Cassie

  "Roomie," Sable calls, her voice a sing-song.

  I stomp out of my room, yanking one of my earbuds out of my ear. "Sable!" I yell. "Stop yelling at me from across the apartment, you lazy b—"

  I stop short. The door to our apartment is wide open, and Colton King is standing just inside of it.

  He's wearing clothes this time. Thank God.

  I give Sable the most deathly death glare I can muster, but she grins anyway, ignoring my obvious ire. She's practically giddy, bouncing as she stands there. "Well," she says, clasping her hands together. "Please come in. I just have something I need to get in my room, so I'll leave you two alone."

  "Sable…" I warn half under my breath, but she bounces away. After I kick Colton out of here, I'm going to have to go murder my roommate. The least she could have done was to come back in my room and give me some advance notice that he was here.

  "So…" Colton says, his eyes traveling up the length of my body. "I mean, this is – obviously you weren't expecting anyone."

  My hand immediately flies to my hair. My hair. Oh God. It's pulled up into a messy ponytail on the very top of my head, the kind where you hastily pull it back without even using a brush. Did I even brush my hair today? I didn't have classes, so I was working on my stupid thesis proposal.

  And that means I look like ass.

  I'm wearing tattered flannel pajama pants and a grey tank top that used to have a beer logo on it, but is now so faded it looks more like an imprint than a picture. And no bra. Of course.

  I'll kill Sable. I will actually murder her with my bare hands.

  "Clearly I wasn't expecting anyone," I hiss, crossing my arms over my chest. I can feel my nipples at attention underneath the cotton fabric of the tank top, something the football player probably thinks is hilarious. He's not smirking, though, so at least he hides it relatively well. "Why are you at my house? How did you get my address?"

  Colton raises his eyebrows. "I assume the same way you got mine. From my coach."

  Touché.

  Warily, I eye the flowers he's holding.

  "They're not going to explode or anything," he assures me, handing them over.

  "You brought flowers," I note flatly. Flowers from a football player? What kind of warped parallel universe did I just enter?

  He shrugs. "Chicks like flowers, don't they?"

  "Your charm is overwhelming, only surpassed by your sexism."

  "What? I'm not sexist," he protests. "Sexy, obviously, but not sexist."

  I roll my eyes. "Did you come here to talk about how sexy you are? Because if that's the case, I have plenty of other things to do."

  "Like take a shower?" he asks.

  "Yes, like take a – you know what? Thanks for the flowers. And the peek into a football player's life. It was… fascinating. But now, you really should be going." I turn, putting my hand on the back of his arm to push him toward the door.

  He looks down at me. "Are you trying to move me, little girl? Because I can tell you right now how ridiculous that is."

  "Little girl??" I ask.

  He turns to face me, inches away. Uncomfortably close. I can smell him, soap and aftershave and I totally want to touch his massive chest but –

  "Look," he says, "I came here to apologize."

  "Well, you're off to a great start," I spit back.

  Don't think about the way he looked when he got out of the pool, all hot and muscled and wet and …

  "Shit," he says. "I don't really – well, I've never done this before."

  "Stalk a girl?"

  "No. Apologize. Obviously I did something that offended you, since you huffed and stormed off from my place with your panties in a wad. I don't know, maybe it was the nudity or the whole stripper thing, but –"

  "Is this your apology?" I interrupt. "If it is, you really suck at it."

  "Fuck. You're kind of a pain in the –"

  "Again, not really helping."

  "Look," he groans in frustration. "I'm here with flowers. Obviously, I'm sorry that you got all pissy at my house."

  I laugh. "Goodbye, Mr. King."

  "Seriously," he says. "Most girls would be glad to see … well, you know.” He gestures toward his crotch.

  I don’t bother to hide my laugh. "Little King?"

  "Did you think it was little?" he asks. "Because I'll show you again if you –"

  I hold up my hand. "Thanks, but no thanks. It's not like I've never seen a naked guy before, bucko."

  Bucko? Where the hell did that come from? I'm just blurting out random words like I'm in a Western, suffering from Tourette's.

  "Good," he says. "So the sight of my cock didn't run you off."

  I shrug and laugh breezily, or how I think "breezily" should sound, except when I hear myself, I think it sounds more crazy than breezy. "Of course not," I huff. "I see enormous cocks all the time."

  Oh God. Did I just say that? It sounds like this apartment is Grand Central Station for dicks.

  Colton gives me a look.

  I clear my throat to cover my embarrassment, but my face must be scarlet. "You know, I … um … have something I need to do?" The statement comes out like a question. “Would you excuse me for just a minute, please?"

  I don't wait for him to answer. Instead, I dash to Sable's room, opening her door without knocking, and slamming it closed behind me.

  Sable is sitting on her bed, her back against the wall and a laptop balanced on her legs. "Colton King is in our apartment," she whispers.

  "Yes, he is," I hiss. "And it's too bad, because he's going to be the only witness to your imminent demise."

  "Oh, don't get mad at me because I let the hottest guy to ever grace the doorway of our apartment inside to see you. He's even hotter than Brad," she says, naming the model she dated for three weeks last October. Brad wasn't really hot, though, just pretty and skinny.

  Not like Colton King. There's nothing small about him, anywhere. And he certainly is hot.

  Focus, Cass.

  "You let a total stranger who tracked down my address into our apartment – and then left me alone with him!” I whisper. "What kind of a roommate are you?"

  "I'm the awesome roommate who's going to get you laid," she says, grinning.

  "Sable Pierce," I say through gritted teeth. "Look at me. Take a good look."

  "You look super cute," she says. "Like you're ready for bed. That's good. Guys like when you look ready for bed. It reminds them that they should take you to bed. You look … easygoing. Not high-maintenance."

  "I look no-maintenance."

  "Eh, details."

  "Remind me why I agreed to live with you again?"

  "Because you're cheap, and when we started rooming together, my mother had cut off my allowance because of my 'grievous error' in choosing to go to grad school in sociology, which left me briefly poor," Sable says. She shudders exaggeratedly. "A dark time in my life that I hate to recall."

  "This is going to be a darker time," I say through gritted teeth.

  "I think you should go out there in what you're wearing now," Sable says.

  "You can see right through my tank top!" I protest.

  "I know," Sable says, grinning. "That's exactly why