Playing Hard: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (10 page)

I lick my lips.

“I — I don’t —”

I don’t get any further than that.

At that moment, Murray bursts back into the room, and Riley and I jump apart from where we’ve been — ever so subtly — leaning in toward each other.

Thank God
, I think to myself. If Murray hadn’t come back, I don’t know what I would have said or done. My head still feels fogged with lust.

What the hell is wrong with me?

“Something’s come up,” Murray briskly informs us. “I’m afraid we’ll have to curtail this discussion. Ava, Mr. Knox, can I organize a car for you both back to campus?”

“Yeah,” Riley says, at the same time as I say “No.”

Murray looks between us, expressionless, for a moment or two, before saying, “Well, I think the two of you could take this time to discuss our next move. I have selected some restaurants that it would be good for you to be seen at. Choose one, and let me know. I’ll organize the rest.” He takes out one of the fifty or so iPads he seems to have on his person at any one time, handing it to me. “I’ll need that back. But information and menus are open in the browser. Let me know by the end of the day.”

I reluctantly take the iPad out of Murray’s hand, putting it in my purse.

Great. Just great.

Now I’ll be stuck in a car with Riley for the twenty-minute drive back to campus. This is the last thing I need.

I stand as Murray goes to the intercom, asking Jonathan if he can call for a car to come ‘round the front of the house.

“A pleasure to meet with you,” Murray says, holding out his hand for Riley to shake.

To my surprise, Riley takes it in a manner that’s really quite civilized, shaking it and offering up similar pleasantries, as if he hadn’t just been talking about making me come right in the middle of my father’s great room.

“Ava, always good to see you,” Murray says as I pass him. I just nod, which I guess makes me rude, but right now I don’t care. All I’m thinking about is how I’m going to survive the next twenty minutes without doing something I know I’ll truly regret. 

CHAPTER TEN

RILEY

Ava doesn’t look at me as we stand in the enormous curved driveway of her father’s house. She’s been obviously ignoring me since we left the gigantic fucking room we had the meeting in, and continued to do so as we walked down the gigantic fucking hallway to the gigantic fucking front door. There are rooms in her house that’re bigger than the entire apartment I grew up in. Not that that’d be hard, really, but I still can’t help but feel a little resentful. When I arrived, I was met by a butler. A
butler
, for shit’s sake. I didn’t know people even had butlers anymore. But I guess when your house is the size of Texas, you must need someone whose specific job it is to go answer your door.

And then there was her attitude when we were alone together, asking me what I was doing there. As if I wasn’t good enough to be in her house. I don’t know why it gets to me so much — I’ve been dealing with this my whole life, and even more after I got the scholarship to Blaketon. But with her… somehow it’s worse.

And worse even than that, I want to show her she’s wrong. Like I have to prove myself or something.

This goes way beyond wanting to fuck her to get her out of my head, too.

It’s been getting my hackles up ever since Coach Jackson told me that while the outside world had to think we were dating, I wasn’t ever to get it into my head that Ava Westwood would
actually
ever think about touching me.

Like she’s so far above me or some shit. Like I’m good enough for this, but to actually date someone like her? Forget about it.

No matter how good I am at football, or how many articles get written saying I’m a football god, or the hottest draft pick of the season, there’ll always be people like the Westwoods around to remind me that I’ll never really be good enough.

Well, fuck that shit.

I might have come from nothing, but I’ll be fucked if I’ll stay there. After I graduate and go pro I’ll be wiping my ass with hundred dollar bills.

I don’t even know why I should care what Ava Westwood thinks of me. She’s nothing to me, except a girl I want to bone. After summer, I’ll never see her again. Why am I letting her get under my skin like this? Why do I want to impress her so badly, and make her see I’m not the dumb, uneducated, meatheaded jock she thinks I am?

As the car Murray called for emerges from the huge garage and swings around the driveway to come pick us up, Ava looks up at me, glancing at me like she’s nervous.

“What?” I ask her, catching her eyes before she has a chance to look away. “Worried about me staining the upholstery?”

Her mouth drops open a little and I see her eyes widen, and it’s only then that I realize how my words could be taken — I hadn’t really meant them as a dirty joke, but now that it’s in my head I can’t get it out. My mind immediately pulls up a picture of Ava sucking me off in the back of the massive, sleek, black limo that’s now coming to a halt in front of us. My cock jumps in response — the image of it, Ava on her knees between my legs, her perfect pink lips around my thick cock, her big blue eyes looking up at me for approval makes me instantly hard. It’s all I can do not to groan as I think of her head bobbing up and down between my legs, her tongue against the base of my dick, her hands coming up to stroke over my balls….

“Are you coming?” she asks, and I almost laugh.

Not yet, but give me a minute.

I bite back on the words, smirking instead. Ava gives me a quizzical look, but she says nothing, turning and getting into the limo as the driver opens the door for her. As she steps in, her conservative, knee-length skirt rides up a little, and I catch a glimpse of creamy thigh.

Usually, a flash of leg wouldn’t be anything to get my heart racing — I’ve been at parties where the price of admission for girls is to take their tops off, at the very least. But Ava’s always so covered up and buttoned down that even this little flash of something more is enough to get me going. It reminds me — as if I
needed
reminding — that there’s so much of her I haven’t seen. It reminds me a bit of Christmas when I was a kid, when I’d unwrap my presents — or, more usually, present, singular — slowly, so as to make the moment last as long as possible.

Ava’s like that too. She’s a present, just waiting for me to unwrap her.

Once she’s inside, she scoots herself way over the other side of the leather seat, sitting with her legs drawn up, leaning against the window. She doesn’t look at me as I climb in. She just ignores me altogether, apparently trying to squash herself up as far away from me as possible.

I sneer. She might be acting like I’m not good enough to sit in her car or be in her house, but I saw the way her eyes lingered on my crotch back there. She wants me. Which is no surprise — I’m Riley Knox, after all — but for some reason, she’s still denying it. Maybe even to herself.

Well, she can crunch herself up into a little ball, but I’m not going to do that. As the driver closes the door behind me, I spread my legs so that our knees are almost touching, and rest my elbows on the back of the seat, letting my hands hang down.

“This is nice,” I say, looking around the interior of the car. “Is this how you came to school every day, or did you just have your servants carry you?”

She glances at me, annoyed. “No, I didn’t,” she says. “After I got my license I drove myself.” 

I nod, grinning. “What was your first car? No, wait, let me guess.” I look her up and down, as if I’m making a judgment. “Not a Ferrari, that’s way too flashy. A Merc? An Audi? That’s about right for you. Something a soccer mom would drive.”

“A Chrysler,” she says crisply. “My dad believes in buying American.”

“Well, good on him,” I say. “That’s very admirable.”

We sit in silence a moment before the car starts up, and we start down the stupidly long driveway toward the main gates. I’ve never been driven anywhere before except on a bus or when I was a kid, and the temptation is to just look out the window and enjoy the ride. But this is the first time I’ve been in close quarters with Ava, and with the limo’s privacy screen up, I’m feeling bold.

“Don’t we have to pick a place to eat?” I ask. “Give me the iPad.”

Ava sighs a little and digs it out of her purse. I don’t really care about picking a place for our so-called date — this is all just a pretext to get her closer to me of her own free will. Then we can start having some fun.

She hands me the iPad, and I swipe it. The first place that comes up in the browser is some insanely expensive-looking place with vaulted ceilings and candles on all the tables, and about fifty knives and forks at every seat.

“We’re not going here,” I mutter, closing the tab. “That’s insane. As if I’d ever go anywhere like that.”

Ava leans over a little, looking down at the screen. I can see the tops of her breasts as she leans down, the curve of her collarbone just visible above her light sweater. Again, the fact I can see so little of her excites me even more than if she’d just ripped her top off right now. And I have no idea why that is.

“This place is nice,” she says, apparently unaware of the fact I’m staring at her tits.

She points to the screen, and I see a place that’s basically a carbon copy of the one I just rejected.

“Nope,” I say, closing it. “No way.”

“Why not?” She sounds a little angry. “We have to choose
somewhere
, so we may as well go somewhere good.”

I laugh. “No way I’m being seen in a place like that,” I tell her. “Anyway, everyone knows I’m on a scholarship and I’m poor as shit. They’d all know you were paying.”

“So?” she demands, her voice rising. “What’s wrong with that?”

I’d only brought up my scholarship and shitty family background to get a rise out of her — if she thinks it’s such a problem, then I’ll rub it in her face. I might be poor, but I still go to Blaketon just the same as her and her snobby friends, only I got here on pure, raw talent.

“Are you joking?” I ask. “I’m not having everyone think I’m your kept man. That’s ridiculous. I’m not having people say that.”

Ava looks up at me, her lip curling a little. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s 2016,” she says. “The women’s liberation movement happened. We can even get jobs and pay for dates now. It’s not a big deal.”  

“Well, it’s a big deal to me. We’re not going there.” I close the tab, and use my thumb to scroll through the rest of Murray’s chosen restaurants. “No. No. No. I’d never take a girl to any of these places, and everyone knows it. Wasn’t the point of this that it has to look real?”

Ava sighs. She’s leaning in so close to me now that I can feel the puff of hot breath against my neck. “All right then, where do you usually take girls on dates?”

I grin, knowing it makes me look cocky as hell, and knowing that girls love it. “I don't. We usually just head straight to the nearest bed. Why not just cut right to the chase? It’s what they want, it’s what I want. Why waste our time?”

“So you’ve never been on a date,” Ava says flatly. “It’s all just fucking from the moment you lay eyes on each other.”

I shrug. “We might go out for pizza and beer. But not this kind of shit.” I point to the iPad.

“Well, the whole point of this shit, as you put it, is to try to make people see that you’ve reformed. So getting trashed at a bar is not an option.”

“We can skip getting trashed and go straight for the fucking then, if you like,” I say, my smartass grin widening. “You’re way too uptight. An orgasm might do you some good.”

Ava jerks back. “What? I am
not
uptight!”

“Oh please. You can barely walk with that stick up your ass. And anyway, who would know? I won’t say anything, you won't say anything. So what's the big deal?”

Ava doesn’t answer that. She just presses her lips together and looks away. 

"We could do it right here," I say, leaning into her. I can feel the heat rising off her skin. “The privacy screen’s up, so the driver wouldn’t know. You can’t tell me you’ve never fucked in the back of a limo before. Even
you
couldn't resist the temptation.”

“I have never done that!” she protests, though I watch her eyes as they flicker down over my body. Even if she’s not lying and she hasn’t done it in the back of the limo, she’s definitely thinking about it now. “Don’t be so disgusting. My dad uses this car.”

“Even better,” I say. The idea that I’d be fucking Orson Westwood’s daughter in the limo he uses appeals to me more than a little. I can’t explain it, but my cock wants what it wants. I’ve never questioned its taste. “Anyway, are you serious? What’s the point in having a limo if you don’t have sex in the back of it? Didn’t any of your boyfriends have any sense of adventure?”

Ava shifts, looking uncomfortable. “It’s not that,” she mutters, shifting her legs so they’re nowhere near mine.

I can see she’s breathing fast, though. She’s a little flushed in that way I find so irresistibly sexy. 

Fuck.

This girl can make me hard even in her conservative sweater and knee-length woolen skirt. They do nothing to disguise her perky tits or the killer curves of her hips. And she's so prim and proper I just can’t help wanting to get a rise out of her.

“Then what is it?” I ask. “Because everything about you screams that you need a good, hard fuck from someone who knows how to do it — someone who’ll make you come so hard you'll scream.”

For a moment, Ava’s eyes flick down to my lips, before she runs the tip of her tongue over her own. “And let me guess, you’re volunteering? I already told you we can’t do that.”

“And I already told you no one would even know about it. So what’s the problem? Didn’t any of your exes ever make you come? Because I promise you that won’t be a problem with me.”

“No,” Ava says, and now her voice is fierce. “No one's disappointed me.”

“Then what?” I persist. I reach out to touch her leg, and she jerks away from me.

“None of my ex-boyfriends have disappointed me, because I don’t
have
any ex-boyfriends,” she finally snaps. “Happy?”

“What?” I ask, not understanding. 

She rolls her eyes. “You heard me,” say says, looking away. “I’m a fucking virgin, okay? Now can we drop it?”

She’s a virgin?
What the fuck.

I’d just assumed otherwise — why the hell wouldn’t I? She’s in her twenties, and smoking hot. Why would she be a virgin?

This makes things a little different. I don’t do virgins. I prefer women of experience, who know what they like and are up for anything. I’ve even banged a few older women in my time, and let me tell you, the stories are all true. For a good time, call an older woman.

But the whole ‘debauching the untouched flesh of virgins’ thing? That’s not me, and I’ve never really understood guys who pop a boner over it.

Screwing virgins has consequences. Girls who know what they’re doing? That’s different. They know who I am and what they want, and they understand there’s never going to be anything in it other than a fantastic lay and a see-you-later.

But I have no intention of being the object of some virgin’s infatuated obsession. I know what happens to guys who deflower virgins. It’s all sobbing phone calls at three AM and boiled bunnies. No way am I going down that path.