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  “My bad,” Tony said, rising and dusting off his pants. “Since I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut, I better put myself to bed before I take a knuckle sandwich to the face.” He smiled at me, but his eyes didn’t match. There was still that hint of pity in them. Like I’d had my time and it was now drawing to a close. I was about to be overthrown by Adriana Vix. “Get all your ugly, hairy asses to bed,” Tony yelled at the last remaining stragglers gazing with lidded eyes into the fire. “We’ve got some ass to kick tomorrow.”

  A chorus of grunts and hoots followed as most of the guys shoved themselves up and followed Tony into their respective tents or threw themselves across the tailgates of their trucks. This night was so not how I’d imagined it going.

  Jude and I sat huddled together in silence for a minute, both of us staring into the dimming fire, waiting for the other to say something first.

  “Do you like her?” I whispered before I realized I’d even thought it.

  Jude’s sigh was long and irritated. It was the first time I could remember being relieved that he was irritated at me. Spinning me around so I was facing him, but still sandwiched between his legs, he leveled me with those darkening eyes.

  “No,” he answered. “Not in the way your crazy woman mind is thinking.”

  He’d only caught a glimpse at how “crazy woman” my mind could get. “And what about in the other way?”

  I watched the last flames of the fire’s shadow dying on the side of Jude’s cheek. “She’s all right,” he answered, lifting his brows and waiting. Because he knew enough about me to know something was coming.

  “She’s all right?” I repeated, my voice going up. “She’s all right in a I’d-screw-her-in-two-seconds-flat-if-I-was-single kind of way, or she’s all right as in she’s just some girl?”

  Jude had warned me months ago not to ask questions I didn’t want honest answers to. I instantly wished I could take my question back.

  “Luce,” Jude said, unfurling the blanket cinched around me, grabbing my hands when he pulled them free, “you’re my girl. The girl.” To join the other emotions flashing over his face, a trace of pain did as well. “When I look at Adriana, or any other girl for that matter, that’s all I see. Some other girl who isn’t my girl. I don’t see them, Luce. I see you,” he continued, his skin lining between his brows. “I’ve only ever seen you.”

  The worry clenching my stomach started to unravel.

  “So could you please, for the love of God, cut out the paranoid girl act?”

  With Jude, when he was like this, the best thing to do was cease and desist. I knew that, but I was never one to follow that advice and I wouldn’t start now.

  “Kind of like you didn’t go all paranoid boyfriend on Thomas and me earlier tonight?” If my words didn’t point the finger of hypocrisy his way, my gaze certainly did.

  Jude’s words caught in his mouth. Clamping it shut, his forehead lined as he leaned back into the log behind him. Face lined, eyes narrowed, teeth working at the right side of his cheek. This was a new expression of Jude’s I’d become increasingly familiar with lately. It was his look of contemplation, and one he’d worked hard on to replace when his gut reaction was anger.

  I waited, giving him as much time and space as he needed.

  “Luce,” he said at last, his voice soft, “what do you want me to do?” He paused, waiting for my response, but I wasn’t sure what he was asking, so no response came.

  “Please, just tell me,” he continued. “Tell me what you want me to say, and do, when it comes to Adriana or any other girl that looks my way, and I’ll do it. You want me to fire a spit wad between their eyes? So be it. You want me to flip them off any time any one of them looks my way? You got it. You want me to poke my eyes out so I can’t see another one of their suggestive smiles again?” he trailed on, half of his face squishing together. “Well, that would suck, but I’d do it. For you.” Cradling my face in his hands again, he leaned forward so his eyes were staring into mine from half a foot away. “Just tell me, baby. What do you want me to do?”

  I couldn’t put it into words because when asked point blank, I didn’t even know what I wanted him to do or say when it came to other women shaking their tits Jude’s way. Men like Jude couldn’t walk through a cemetery without being hit on. So what did I want from him when it came to the never ending supply of girls ready and willing to throw themselves into his bed at the first chance? Did I want him to be mean to them? Well, yeah, kind of, but some save-the-world part of me recognized this wasn’t the answer. So what was?

  That question would have to remain unanswered because I had something else on my mind.

  Lacing my fingers through his where they warmed my face, I scooted closer until I’d killed the half foot space keeping us apart. “I want you to take me to bed.”

  I was sure I’d never seen the wrinkles lining Jude’s face disappear so quickly. “Now that, I can’t only do,” he replied, scooping me into his arms before rising, “I can do it with a smile.”

  I could have laughed if I’d let myself, but one name still hung between us. I wasn’t ready or able to push the delete button on Adriana Vix trying to get her claws into my man.

  “Wait until you get a look at the set up I made for us,” Jude said, his voice light as he carried me across the makeshift campground to his rusted out truck. It was so rusted you couldn’t tell if it’d originally been black or grey or some shade in between. He’d gotten the truck for next to nothing from some old farmer and had used part of the funds he made working at the garage to buy the parts it needed. The inside of the car was in fine working shape, but judging from the exterior, the truck looked like it needed to be junked.

  I loved that Jude didn’t care what anyone else but me thought. I loved how he’d said the inside was what counted. I knew he’d been talking about cars, his truck specifically, when he’d said it, but I’d still gone a little soft in the knees.

  Weaving through a few of his teammates new, souped-up monster trucks, Jude stopped at the back of his. Lowering the tail gate with one hand, it screeched open. “Your room for the night, Miss Larson,” he said in a sing-song voice, motioning at the air mattress and mound of blankets and pillows lining the back of his truck. He’d even put a foil wrapped chocolate on my pillow, right beside one white rose.

  In high school, I’d learned what the colors of roses meant, and how you could decipher a guy’s intentions based on what kind he gave you. Pink meant he had a crush on you, yellow meant he wanted to be friends‌—‌I couldn’t count the number of abandoned yellow roses I’d seen decorating the insides of garbage cans in the high school halls‌—‌red meant he was in love, and white stood for purity.

  Meaning his intentions were pure.

  Meaning he didn’t want to do all the things a girl was envisioning doing in the back of his truck bed at night.

  Damn white roses all to hell.

  But, even in my white rose hating moment, I kind of loved it too. As soon as I thought I had Jude Ryder close to figured out, he went and left a white rose on my pillow. On the bed we’d be sharing a few hours after he’d just agreed to have sex with me in the cab of his truck, pressed up against the butt of his steering wheel.

  “You can be rather romantic when you put your mind to it,” I said, looking up at him.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” he said, sitting me down on the tailgate. It groaned beneath me. “It would ruin my badass reputation. Plus, you think the girls are lining up now…” he hinted, giving me a boyish smirk.

  I shoved his chest; this reaction earned a chuckle from him.

  So I decided to give him something he wasn’t expecting. Grabbing two fistfuls of his thermal, I pulled him to me.

  “Come here,” I whispered, lowering my eyes to his mouth. “Let me put those girls in their place.”

  His lips had just parted with their surprised inhalation when my mouth covered them, working them further apart. His hands gripped the flesh below my hips, sliding me
to the edge of the tailgate so I was pressed right against him. At this angle, we were a perfect fit. That realization made me kiss him harder, my hands joining in the game of not being able to explore him fast or hard enough.

  I could hear the quickened beating of Jude’s heart. I could feel how every part of him wanted me. I could see the uncertainty eclipse his eyes when I wound my legs tight around his torso, rubbing myself down him. I could sense the conflict trying to take over his bout of carelessness, and I wanted to stop it in its tracks.

  Grabbing the hem of his shirt, I tore it up his back, trying to launch it over his head.

  Only to be stopped before it had made it past his chest.

  “Yes?” I asked again, this time knowing his answer.

  He didn’t pause. “No,” he said firmly. “Not like this.”

  I groaned so loudly I might have woken a couple of the guys closest to us. “Not like what? Hot, passionate, burning the night apart sex?”

  Jude grinned so widely the scar on his cheek puckered. Gripping the tailgate, he worked on regulating his breathing.

  “That sounds good,” he said, his breathing almost normal. Mine wouldn’t be normal for at least another ten minutes. “But I’m not really into the kind where my girl is motivated to have sex with me because of jealousy over another girl. At least not for our first time,” he said, pressing a soft kiss into my temple. “After that, I will gladly entertain and endure any and all bouts of jealous, angry sex you want to toss my way.”

  I shoved him again, resolved to this night taking a chaste turn. Kicking my boots off, I scooted back onto the air mattress, tucking the blankets around me.

  Still grinning at me, Jude kicked his boots off and leapt into the trunk. The air mattress popped me up a good foot. Tucking himself behind me, one arm wound under me and the other extended above me, holding out one white rose.

  Jude laughed into the back of my neck.

  I grabbed the rose and chucked it outside of the truck.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was raining‌—‌more like pouring. At least, that’s what I thought as I drifted awake. Then I heard the stifled laughter and realized the reason my clothing and blankets clung to me sopping wet had nothing to do with nature.

  I’d just opened my eyes when one of Jude’s teammates, hovering over us on top of the cab, upended a five gallon bucket of water on us. I shrieked as the members of the football team exploded in laughter around Jude’s truck. That was, until Jude lurched awake, taking a swing at the first male that moved.

  The player standing on his cab leapt off the truck before Jude could snag one of his ankles, but Jude was out of the bed and chasing him one second later. The poor guy wouldn’t get far.

  “Why you running, Clay?” Jude yelled after him, leaving a trail of water splatters behind him. “We both know I’m a hell of a lot faster than you!”

  Watching Jude close the gap between him and Clay, I wrung my hair out and threw the heavy blankets off to the side. They made a smacking sound when they hit the truck.

  I made sure to aim my glare at every last player standing around, ending on Tony, who was smiling at me with that boyish grin. He was already forgiven before he opened his mouth. “What?” he said, like I was over reacting. “Sorry, Lucy. But it’s no fair Ryder got to stay warm last night snuggled up to your fine ass. We had to even the scales a bit.”

  Bouncing my way down the mattress, I threw myself over the tailgate. “Next time you boys decide to ‘even the scales’ with Jude, could you please wait to dump a crapload of water until I’m out of the truck?” I wanted to grab a blanket to wrap around me, but all of them were drenched. “It’s freezing out here.” My breath was fogging the air, making me shiver even more.

  Tony’s smile faded just barely. “Ah, hell, Lucy,” he said, shrugging out of his sweatshirt. “We’re animals. We live in the moment and don’t really think about the consequences of our actions.” Holding his sweatshirt out to me like it was a peace offering, his brows lifted. “Forgive us?”

  Not in this lifetime, would have been my response had I been able to get it out around my chattering. I hated few things more than being cold‌—‌a root canal without Novocaine one of those few.

  Scowling at Tony, so he knew this didn’t absolve him of any of his involvement in this morning’s prank, I grabbed the sweatshirt that could have fit two normal sized men with room to spare.

  “Take this piece of shit back.” Appearing from behind me, Jude grabbed Tony’s sweatshirt out of my hands and flung it at his face. “Next time you or any of you bastards do that to my girl again, I’m beating all your asses. You got that?” Jude hollered, his eyes sweeping over his still and silent teammates.

  He waited until every last one of them had nodded their agreement.

  “And you,” Jude said, stepping forward and putting his finger in Tony’s face. “Don’t you ever try to give my girl something of yours to put on her body.” The muscles just below Jude’s neck were sticking out like shark fins he was so tense. “Or I’m never throwing another ball your way. Got that?”

  And I thought I’d been pissed over a few gallons of water.

  “Ryder,” Tony said, lifting his hands in surrender.

  Jude took another step at him until their chests were butting against each other. “You. Got. It?”

  Tony dropped his eyes, taking a step back. “I got it.”

  “Good,” Jude replied, turning towards me. The planes of anger dissolved. “Let’s get you some dry clothes,” he said, his voice low and controlled.

  I nodded my assent. I didn’t know how he could turn his anger on and off like it was hotwired to a switch, but it was as much a gift as it was a curse.

  “Hey, Ryder,” one of his teammates called after him. One of the ones who’d been on the outskirts and hadn’t experienced a lethal dose of Jude fury. No one on the inner circle would be addressing him for a while. “What the hell did you do to Hopkins?”

  Jude wrapped his arm around me, steering me towards the passenger side of his truck. “Locked him in your trunk, Palinski!”

  When I peered up at him, he gave me his tilted smile.

  “You didn’t,” I said, knowing he had.

  “Hell, yes, I did,” he said, throwing open the door and leaning across the seat to retrieve his duffel bag. “And that’s not all the payback that little douche is going to suffer today.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  Shuffling through the contents of his bag, he pulled out a dark, long-sleeved shirt. “No. You don’t,” he answered, handing the shirt back at me. “But you’ll see.”

  Tucking the warm, dry shirt into my hands, I nodded. “Something to look forward to.”

  “Ryder,” Tony said, clearing his throat as he stepped around the front of the truck. He was holding out his phone. “Coach just called. He wants us in an hour earlier than usual. I told him it would take us at least an hour to get back. He said we’d better haul ass.” His face was almost a wince, like he was anticipating a fly off the cuff reaction from Jude.

  “If coach wanted us to be there an hour early, he should have told us sooner,” Jude replied, not looking at him as he shuffled through some more contents in his bag. “I’ve got to get Luce some breakfast before taking her back to our place, so coach will just have to wait.”

  “You want me to tell him that’s the reason you’re late?” Tony asked, nothing antagonistic about it, just an honest to goodness question.

  “Damn straight I do,” Jude said, grabbing my waist and lifting me into the cab. “Tell him my girl comes before football. Tell him my girl’s breakfast comes before football.” Turning his gaze on Tony, he stared at him, waiting.

  “You need me to write that down for you or you think you can manage that?” he added when Tony just stared his answer.

  “Nah,” he said finally, managing a small smile. “Girl. Breakfast. Then football,” he recited, tapping his head. “I think I got it.”

  Fastening the ce
nter lap belt over me, Jude slammed the passenger side door and came around the front of the truck. Pausing outside the driver’s side door, he peeled the wet thermal up and over his head, throwing it into the trees. Opening the door, he threw himself in and cranked the truck on. Blasting the heaters on, he centered every one of them on me. I’d just been freezing cold, and now everything felt all gooey and warm, even though the heat hadn’t kicked in yet. All because of one recently de-shirted man, wet and smiling beside me.

  “What?” he said, his smile jacking higher as I continued to stare at him.

  Sweeping my eyes down his upper half, I ended my investigation at his silver eyes. I matched my smile to his. “Now that’s a sight to wake up to in the morning.”

  After assuring Jude I in no way required a sit down breakfast and that an egg white sandwich and a hot cup of coffee would be more than sufficient, we pulled into the driveway of the house he and five other guys rented. If it wasn’t for the man I loved living in it, I wouldn’t have stepped inside. It wasn’t flat out filthy, but it was close, and the whole place‌—‌no matter if it was morning or afternoon, weekend or weekday‌—‌smelled like dirty laundry and sex.

  It took an hour and a half to get back, after taking Jude’s insisted pit stops for food and caffeine, which meant he was already running a half hour late. Jude wasn’t the everyday college football player, he was the one coaches prayed for on Sundays, so he wouldn’t be riding the bench. But he’d be in trouble. Some sort or another.

  “I’ll walk you in,” he said, still shirtless, still smiling that barely-there smile of his. Having to sit next to that man for close to ninety minutes, managing to keep my hands off of him, should have earned me some sort of medal. A big one.

  “You’ve got a game to win,” I said, kissing the corner of his mouth that was upturned. “I know my way around.”

  “Watch your step. I think Ben might have had a party last night while the rest of us were gone and you know how his parties are,” he said, catching my chin between his thumb and finger. Moving closer, his lips barely grazed mine before they ended on the underside of my jawline. Running his lips down, his teeth grazed the sensitive skin. And the man was still shirtless, so I could witness every muscle that tightened and rolled as his mouth and hands explored me.