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  Inhaling through my nose, I pushed past the muscles clenching tighter in my stomach brought on by the way he was staring at me. Opening my eyes wider, I blinked them slowly, infusing as much innocence as I was capable into them. Then, biting my lower lip suggestively, I parted my mouth just how I imagined Holly would have wanted it.

  Jude might have just wavered in place. Adriana’s scowl screwed deeper, resembling a rare form of outrage.

  I owed Holly big time.

  Weaving out of Adriana’s death grip, he cut through the rest of the room towards me. Adriana slammed her hands on her hips, looking one quake away from exploding. It was a beautiful sight.

  Even more so was the one grinning at me as he shoved through the rest of the crowd, moving as fast as he could. Stepping in front of me, his eyes were swirling pools of silver.

  “Damn, Luce,” he said, sounding out of breath, appraising me with his eyes again. Looking at me with the excitement and anticipation of unwrapping a present.

  I didn’t have words for the man standing before me, worshipping me with all he was. Flattening my hands over his chest, I pressed against him. His mouth parted with a surprised inhalation. The heels made it so I didn’t have to press onto my tip-toes when I crushed my mouth into his. My mouth was unyielding against his, smoothing, sucking, and smashing his lips like all we had left in life was this moment.

  After his surprise passed, his hands lowered into place over my hips, kneading into them with an urgency that tightened the muscles in my thighs. By this time in our public make-out session, the crowd had starting hooting, and when Jude’s hand rounded around to my backside, digging into the flesh back there, they started hollering.

  My breathing was becoming irregular, what amount I was able to manage in this state of tongue tangledness low. Running my hands up his neck to cradle his face, I pulled it back. Looking up into those hungry eyes, feeling the warmth of his breath gusting over my face, I smiled.

  “Good game.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “You better not be staring at what I think you are, Kurt,” Jude warned, reappearing with a couple of beers in hand and clearing up the K kicker’s name.

  “I most certainly am not staring at what you think I was,” Kurt said, tilting his beer our way before fading into the crowd.

  “He most certainly was,” Jude said, handing me one of the beers before resting his hand on my side. “Not that I can blame him.”

  Clanking my bottle against Jude’s, I took a drink. “But you will beat him if he does it again,” I guessed.

  “Hell, yeah I will,” he said, nuzzling my neck before he laid a path of kisses down it. The slippery glass bottle almost fell from my hands. “That goes for you too, Denoza,” Jude said, peering over at one of his teammates while his mouth continued to wet the skin above my collar bone. “And I’ll start by prodding out those wandering eyes.”

  “Sorry, Ryder,” Denoza said, smiling sheepishly between the two of us. “What can I say? Your girl is meant to be stared at.”

  “That’s right. She is,” Jude said, straightening up and putting himself in front of me. “By me.”

  Denoza lifted his hands in surrender. “No harm, no foul, man,” he said before setting his sights on a single girl sprawled out on the stairs and beelining her way.

  “Not in my book,” Jude muttered after him, before turning around. “You’re gonna get me killed, Luce,” he said, his face twisting when he took another look at me. “I’m one tough son of a bitch and I can fight off every one of these guys one loser at a time, but I think they could take me if they all came at me at once.”

  “Should I go change?” I suggested, taking a step towards the stairs.

  “Shit, no,” Jude said, grabbing my hand and pulling me back. “I just wish it was you and me so I could enjoy you all to myself.”

  Lifting my arms, I wound them over his neck and started swaying in time to our own beat. Dancing to the beat of Jude and Lucy’s song.

  “It is just you and me, baby,” I said, resting my head against his chest, closing my eyes when his arms fastened around me. The music wasn’t fitting, the crowd wasn’t fitting, but everything about the way Jude held me to him made up for our inability to fit into the world around us.

  Not even a minute later, the music came to a screeching halt. Jude and I continued to sway in time to the silence.

  “Okay, everyone,” a familiar voice spoke through a microphone. “It’s time to play a new game night game that’s sure to become a tradition.”

  I thought we’d been playing a game all night.

  Sighing, I lifted my head from Jude’s chest to see what the bitch had up her sleeve now.

  “As everyone knows, the starters are all assigned a Spirit Sister at the beginning of the year.” I rolled my eyes at the rest of the cheerleaders grouped around Adriana, bouncing and clapping in excitement. “Our goal is to make their lives easier so they can focus on kicking ass every Saturday!”

  A roar burst through the room.

  “But a man’s got to have his fun too, right?” Adriana’s brows lifted in suggestion as the roar amped up.

  “So tonight marks the beginning of a new Spirit Sister tradition.” Lifting the arm she’d hidden behind her back, she revealed a full bottle of top shelf vodka. Another explosion of cheering. Over a pretty girl holding a bottle of liquor.

  It was oddly depressing.

  “We don’t only do your laundry and make you brownies, we’ll get you drunk as a skunk!” Adriana waited for the crowd to quiet before continuing. I was already feeling sick to my stomach before her eyes landed on Jude. “Each Spirit Sister will serve a shot to her assigned player, starting with the quarterback first.”

  Yep, that’s what I was waiting for. She was using the ruse of a game and the motivation of peer pressure to separate Jude from me. Holly’d been right with her manipulation meter readings on Adriana.

  “That means you, Jude Ryder!” she shouted into the microphone, waving the bottle at him.

  Jude groaned, peering over at me, but before he could say anything, a herd of his teammates moved up behind him and began shoving him towards the front of the room.

  “Don’t worry, Jude’s date for the night, you’ll get him back,” Adriana said, staring right at me. I wanted to slap that smug smile off her face for referring to me as nothing more than “Jude’s date.” “That is, if he wants to come back after playing the game we’ve got planned for him.”

  A couple of guys around me hung their heads back and made coyote calls. I was reminded, yet again, that men were evolved from apes.

  Shoving Jude up next to Adriana, the herders stepped back into the crowd so everyone could see what was happening up in front. I didn’t like seeing Jude standing so close to Adriana, seeing how close in height they were. In her heels, only a couple inches separated them. They’d fit together perfectly. Why my mind went there, I don’t know, but the image of Jude bracing himself above Adriana while he kissed her, moving inside of her, made me clutch at my stomach.

  “Here’s how this works,” Adriana said, looking over at Jude, who was rubbing the back of his neck, looking every shade of uncomfortable. “Shot glass,” she began, lifting a small glass. “Shot,” she continued, pouring the clear liquid to the brim. Then, handing the bottle off to one of her fellow cheerleaders, she raised his index finger to the crowd, who was looking around at each other like big deal.

  Rolling down the top of her strapless dress, she tucked the shot glass between her huge tits. “Enjoy,” she instructed. “No hands allowed.”

  Oh, hell no.

  The guys had turned into rabid beasts, throwing their arms in the air and cheering.

  Adriana took it in, managing a tiny curtsy without spilling a drop of liquid, right before her gaze shifted on me. “What are you waiting for, Jude?” she said, looking nowhere else but at me. “Drink up.”

  “What the hell are you doing standing here, you stupid, stupid girl?” Holly hissed beside me, sh
oving me towards the front of the room. Reaching down my dress, she slapped the panties into my hand. “Go beat that bitch at her own game.”

  It took one more solid shove from Holly, but then I went into action. Hurrying through the bodies chanting “Ry-der” and throwing fist pumps into the air, I balled the panties up into my hand, watching Jude, who was watching me. I had his attention, likely because he was worried about me getting eye molested by one of his teammates, but right now, I’d take his attention any way I could get it.

  “Your shot’s getting warm,” Adriana said into the microphone, giving her bust a little shake. This time, a splash of liquid spilled out, running down her cleavage.

  Shoving the last hulk of a man standing between me and Jude, I brushed past Jude, curling my pinky over his, waiting for his hand to open. As soon as it did, I slipped the lacy thong into his hands, arched a brow at him, and kept walking.

  Walking away from Jude, standing there beside with Adriana, all but being peer pressured by his entire team to upend a shot of alcohol from Tits R Us, brought me near to hyperventilation. But I couldn’t turn back because what was I going to say? What was I going to do? I had to trust that Holly, in all her man-eater wisdom, knew what she was doing.

  The crowd started thinning out by the time I made it to the hall, and there wasn’t a sign of anyone when I walked into the bathroom at the end of the hall. Closing the door behind me, I braced my hands over the sink and focused on breathing.

  Before I’d completed one full breath, the door whispered open. Looking up in the mirror, my smile pulled so tight it almost hurt when I saw Jude’s face, wound into a hungry expression, staring back at me.

  “I think you lost something,” he said in a low voice, lifting his hand where my underwear dangled from his finger.

  My smile stretched farther. Now it was hurting. “Looks like the right person found them.”

  Stepping inside, Jude shut the door behind him. The bathroom was small, and small was a generous term for it. For the two of us to fit in here, my butt was rammed into the sink counter and Jude’s back was pressed up against the shower wall.

  “So does this mean…?” he said, gazing down my body, ending at the center of it. I felt every muscle inside of me contract, right before it went soft under the weight of his stare.

  “Why don’t you find out for yourself?” I whispered, my breath already coming in short bursts.

  His gaze stayed fixed on that point south of my navel as a slow smile crept into place. “Happily,” he said, his voice husky and deep.

  Then, before the flash of heat had a chance to spread, Jude threw himself against me, lifting me onto the counter. His mouth crushed against mine, forcing his tongue inside and running it over every plane it could reach. Overwhelmed, my head fell back against the mirror, trying to keep pace with him.

  Right in the middle of our kiss, Jude pulled back suddenly, appraising me where I sat sprawled over the counter, breathing like I’d run a two minute mile. Looking down at the space between my legs, his forehead lined, like he was tortured, right before a tilted smile ironed it out. Grabbing my waist, he shifted me down to the very edge of the counter. Resting his hand on the inside of one knee, he pushed it open. Repeating the same with the other, he stepped between my legs, looking down at me like he couldn’t handle the emotions he was feeling right now.

  Gripping the hem of my dress with both hands, Jude rolled it up one revolution, his thumbs trailing along the sensitive skin of my inner thighs. My heart was racing and everything was quickening in that way.

  And he hadn’t even touched me there yet.

  His fingers rolled the dress higher, and then higher still. The entire journey up, Jude’s eyes stayed fixed on mine. Like he wanted to watch every reaction that played out on my face from the way he touched me.

  One more roll and there was nothing left to slide higher. My body was aching for some release, pulsing like it had its own heartbeat.

  Jude’s thumb skimmed up the rest of my inner thigh. When he pulled it away, I almost whimpered out loud. And then, when he lowered it back into the place that was throbbing the worst, I did cry out. Grabbing the edges of the counter, I forced myself to keep looking into those eyes of his that were darkening with their want.

  “I’ll be damned,” he breathed, the words all throaty and rough.

  I couldn’t acknowledge him with words‌—‌I was one thumb stroke past words.

  Closing the space between us, he kissed the corner of my mouth. “I love you,” he whispered outside my ear, right before his thumb started moving in slow circles over me.

  My head fell back, smashing into the mirror, but the dull pain felt good paired with the acute throb spreading its way through my body from Jude’s skilled thumb.

  My breath came in shorter gasps as everything tightened into a ball. I was so close.

  “I love you so damn much, Luce,” Jude said as his mouth explored my throat.

  And that was all I needed. My fingers dug into his back as my body quaked against his.

  As my muscles went limp, I let myself curl into him. I managed to sigh through my staggered breathing. I could feel his smile against my skin.

  Holy shit. My body felt like it was still intact, but a few moments ago it felt like it was falling apart from the center. I couldn’t calm my breathing and my inner thighs were still trembling as Jude continued sucking on the soft patches of my shoulder.

  Right as my head was falling back again, the bathroom door exploded open, slamming into Jude.

  “I think we better find you another bathroom to freshen up in, Adriana.” Holly peered over Adriana’s shoulder, shooting me a smile of camaraderie. Adriana took in the scene, my legs wrapped around Jude where he held me captive on the counter, still exploring my skin with his mouth. New tears pricked to life in her reddened eyes. “This one’s… occupied,” Holly added, flashing me a wink before pulling on Adriana’s elbow.

  But before she backed out of the room, her eyes met mine. My mouth curved up, my lips still parted from my clipped breathing. Keeping her gaze, I curled my fingers into Jude’s back, arching my neck higher to give Jude better access. I didn’t have to utter a single word for Adriana to get the message. It was crystal clear.

  Jude was mine.

  Only after the door closed again did Jude’s mouth slow. Giving one last nip over my shoulder blade, he lifted his head. His face was smug as he took me in, still rattled from what he’d done to me.

  “I guess she figured out what ‘came up’ when I left her high and dry with a shot between her tits,” he said, bracing his hands over the counter outside my legs.

  “I guess she did,” I replied, scooting off the edge of the counter since the backs of my legs were falling asleep. Bad idea. Because nothing that was supposed to work in my body was. Jude’s arms wound around me, keeping me steady.

  “I guess I showed her,” I said, gripping Jude’s arms as the sensation drained back into my legs.

  His eyebrows squeezed together. “Showed her what?”

  “That she better keep her hands and sights off my man,” I replied, not sure I should be admitting this to him, but my mind was still foggy and punch drunk.

  Looking down at me, his eyebrows pulled tighter for a moment before his whole face flattened. “That’s what this whole thing is about,” he said, running his eyes down my dress that was still rolled up to my waist. “Isn’t it? This whole night has been about Adriana. Not about me.”

  Okay, yeah. I shouldn’t have said anything. Especially when the corners of his eyes lined from the words he’d said.

  “No, this was for you,” I said, rolling my dress back down.

  “Don’t lie to my, Luce,” he said, the muscles in his jaw going taut. “Everything‌—‌the dress, the coy little smiles and flirty eyes, the panties, the damn orgasm in the bathroom as Holly ‘accidently’ shows Adriana what’s going on‌—‌it was all just some calculated plan put into play by a jealous girlfriend.”


  “No,” I said. “This whole thing in the bathroom was one big, spontaneous, pleasurable surprise,” I argued back. “At least up until right now. There’s nothing pleasurable about my boyfriend calling me a calculated, jealous girlfriend.” Even as I said the words, I knew they were true.

  “So this wasn’t planned,” he said, waving his finger around the room, “but everything else was. And you sure as hell didn’t mind when Adriana got an eyeful of us all hot and heavy.”

  Why was he being like this? Jude rarely raised his voice to me anymore. And the fact that the reason he’d broken tradition was because of Adriana made me as outraged as it did sad. “If that’s what it takes‌—‌seeing you doing me over any and every surface in the goddamn state‌—‌then yes! I sure as hell don’t mind!” Super, now I was shouting.

  His forehead lined as he pressed as far away from me as the bathroom allowed. Going from the intimacy we’d just shared to him wanting to separate himself as far from me as space would allow made my body hurt. “So still, after everything, after all this time,” he paused, inhaling through his nose, “you still don’t trust me?”

  He waited for my response, but I didn’t have an immediate one. His question had thrown me, not at all what I’d been expecting. Was that it? Did I not trust him? My first response was ‘no,’ but why else had I been acting like such a crazy girlfriend? If I trusted him, would it matter if every Adriana in the world threw herself at him?

  I didn’t want to admit my answer to that question.

  “Yeah,” he said, moving towards the door, “that’s what I thought.” Opening the door, he looked back at me. “Here, you can have these back now.” He tossed the underwear at me. “Well played. Glad I could be a pawn in your little game.”

  “Jude,” I called after him.

  “Leave me alone, Lucy!” he hollered back, disappearing down the hall.