Offside (Pro-U Book 2) (10 page)

Chapter 16

Jacob

I knew it was the damsel in distress kiss and nothing else, but I would take attention from Emily any way I could get it. I was going to fucking kill Brody Jackson for manhandling her again after I whooped his ass the night before for hurting her. A call in to Micah, Jayce and Lucas and we would be paying the quarterback pretty boy a visit.

Where Emily wasn't mine just yet, she sure as hell wasn't his anymore. I was going to make damn sure of that, even to the point of having an intervention or fundraising event for her. The poor girl had her signals mixed up on what was important and what wasn't. Not that I had much room to talk.

After giving her grief over staring at my ass, I walked back to the walk-in to get the stuff out for our shift that day and got busy. I needed a shower like nobody’s business, but I was hoping that the extra deodorant and cologne I sprayed would get me through the day.

As much as Clayton teased me for smelling like a gentleman's club, I was pretty sure I was going to make it. The day went by quickly, and I didn't get the chance to see Emily nearly as much as I wanted to, but the small glimpses I caught were enough to set my heart on fire each time.

I was in trouble where the pretty cheerleader was concerned.

"I like her. A lot." My father stopped beside me as I finished putting a large pizza in the oven and dusted my hands on my apron.

"Me too. She's beautiful, isn't she?" I leaned down a little to watch her through the kitchen window as she smiled at some new customers.

"Very. I think we could get every male on campus to start coming in if we just advertised that she worked here." My father laughed and patted me on the back as I turned to glare at him. "No? You don't like that idea?"

"No. I don't. She's a good woman. We're not going to let anyone come in here just to ogle her." I pulled down the next ticket as he patted my back.

"Good answer, now, make sure you ask her out before someone else does. She's not going to be free too long."

"How do you know she's free now?"

"Because of you being so protective over her." He crossed his arms over his thick chest. "You have feelings for her, no?"

"Yeah. I do, but I wish I didn't. She’s far too good of a woman for a guy like me." I shrugged and worked on the pizza, ignoring my father’s chuckles as he walked back toward his office. It was true, and she and I both knew it. As much as I wanted to take advantage of her hurting over the shit with Brody and her sister, there was no way I could.

Fuck, she might be the only woman on campus that I couldn't take advantage of, and sadly enough, she was the only one I wanted.

*

"Oh no," Emily whispered softly as she stood at the front counter in the restaurant.

I was watching her quickly from behind, and didn't mind so much the idea of her turning around and catching me. She was stunning and left my body aching in ways I didn't know were possible. What I wouldn't give to have the right to move up behind her and wrap her in a tight hug, pulling her close and loving on her like I wanted someone to love on me.

"What's up?" I walked up beside her as she jumped.

"Oh, sorry. My sister just texted finally."

"She okay?"

"Yeah, but she can't find my mother. I guess she didn't come home from work last night, and my sister called up there and they haven't seen her either." She closed her eyes and dropped her chin to her chest. "Why can't anyone just get their shit together long enough for me to have a day of peace?"

"Because we live in a crazy world. Let's clock out and I'll go with you to look for her." I touched her back softly, praying like hell that she would take me up on the offer. A movie would have been better, but there was no way we were moving from the tension we had the day before to being lovers without me trying to weasel my way into her heart as a friend.

"What? No way. That's not happening." She turned and walked to the back. "I can't deal with my shit on my own most of the time. I'm not bringing you into the middle of it too. No way."

"Yes way. I don't wanna deal with the shit out at the Omega House right now. Give me an out and let me just come tag along. Besides, I have my truck with me and you might need me."

She clocked out and turned to face me as tears filled her eyes. "Why are you being nice to me, Jacob?"

"Because Micah thinks you're something special, and I do too, honestly." I reached out and brushed a tear from her cheek. "Stop pushing me away."

"I'm not sleeping with you again. I can't."

"I get that. I'm not trying to get into your panties. Stop making me out to be a monster. I beat up your piece of shit boyfriend twice in the last two days and now I want to help with your mom. It's that simple, all right? Maybe I'm looking for a friendship. You know, like me and Layla have." I was lying through my fucking teeth, but it was all I could offer in my desperation to have her see the real me.

"And what do you expect in return?" She glanced around and let out a soft sigh. "Nothing is free around here. Everything has a cost."

I moved around her and put my arm over her shoulders. "I just want to get to know you, Em. With your clothes on, all right?"

"Fine, but if you hurt me."

"What?" I jerked back. "I would never hurt a woman."

"I'm not talking about physically." She moved past me and hit the back door a little harder than was needed.

"Oh," I mumbled under my breath. She had feelings for me too, obviously. I just needed to tread lightly if I wanted to figure out what exactly they were.

"I'll give you some money for gas when we get paid next week." She turned to face me as she pulled her hair down from the ponytail she had it in.

"No. I'm good. Honestly. I have plenty of scholarship money left." I moved over to open her door for her.

"Then why are you working for your dad?" She hopped up in the truck and pulled at her seatbelt.

"Because I care about him." I moved closer and reached up to work my magic on the stubborn thing. "Let me help you. The truck is old and this thing gets stuck all the time."

"Is this a ploy to touch me?" She sounded like she wanted to tease me, but she couldn't muster the playfulness needed for it.

"I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that I'm always looking for a way to touch-"

"Girls?" She gave me a cheeky smile and I leaned across her and buckled the seatbelt, almost pressing my chest to hers to do it. The tight buds of her nipples scrapped across my stomach, and I stifled a groan before turning my gaze onto her.

"No. You." I kissed the tip of her nose and got out of the truck, shutting the door and walking around the back so I could adjust myself. My body was as hard as a rock, my stomach tight and aching with the need to do much more than dote on her for the rest of the night.

"Please don't come on to me right now. I'm so tired and fucked up that I'll give in, and neither of us need that." She glanced over at me before pulling out her phone.

"I beg to differ, but I'll take a step back."

"Thank you."

*

The scene at her mother's place was almost surreal. The cops were in the front yard, and her little sister was standing to the side of the rundown trailer in an older woman's arms, crying as we approached.

"What the hell is going on?" Emily moved toward the women as I walked toward the cop.

"Hey there. Can you tell us why you guys are here?" I extended my hand toward the cop.

"This your family?" He nodded back toward the house as his eyes filled with sadness.

"No, but it's my girlfriend’s." I slipped my hands into my pockets. "Is her mother okay?"

"She's all right, but has been taken downtown because of a DWI. The little girl here was home by herself, freaking out, which isn't the first time she's done this. We're waiting for CPS to show up."

"Oh. Shit." I glanced back toward Emily as my stomach turned. How could things keep going from bad to worse for the pretty girl? Life had to let up eventually and give her room to breathe.

"Yeah. We're going to make sure the child is taken care of and then we'll head out."

"Thanks," I mumbled and walked over toward the girls as the older woman holding Cally shook her head.

"I don't know why she can't get her shit together. This is the last straw though. They're going to put Cally in with CPS, and I'll just step up and adopt her. I should have done it when your momma started drinking. I just kept hoping she would get better."

"Me too," Emily whispered and glanced over at me with a helplessness in her eyes. "This is my Aunt Dara and you saw Cally last night. This is Jacob Wright. He's a friend of mine from Providence."

"Nice to meet you." I shook her aunt’s hand and wrapped an arm around Emily's shoulders. She might not want my affection, but she needed someone to remind her that things would get better.

Dara turned her attention back to Emily and gave her a sad smile. "Go ahead and get out of here. We don't need you in the middle of this CPS shit. I'm here with Cally and I'm not leaving her alone. I promise."

"Okay." Emily reached out to touch the side of her sister's face, but the girl jerked away and made an angry sound.

"It's all right, Em. She'll come around." Dara leaned in and kissed the side of Emily's cheek before nodding to me. "Take care of my girl for me?"

"Of course." I pulled Emily back toward the truck and opened the door for her as she stood in stony silence. "Hey, it's gonna work out. I promise."

"Tasha's out of town tonight, and I don't wanna be alone." Her face held so much hurt that I automatically stepped closer.

"Then come home with me tonight. I'll sleep on the floor and no one will mess with us."

"Are you sure?" Her eyes moved down toward the ground, and I slipped my hands around her face, forcing her to look up at me.

"Yeah, and if you need strong arms to hold you, use mine. A warm body to bring pleasure to yours, have mine. A person to remind you that tomorrow will be better, that's me."

She pressed her forehead to my chest and let out a long, painful sob as I wrapped my arms around her and kissed the top of her head. I prayed that she wouldn't ask me why I was willing to give myself up for her because I couldn't have lied about my feelings in the place she was in.

I'd have told her that three years ago, I'd started to fall in love.

Scarily enough, I realized standing there that the feeling never died or stopped.

It grew.

Chapter 17

Emily

I needed to right the wrong of leaning on him. It wasn't fair to either of us. I had a million messes to clean up in my life and Jacob Wright wasn't the kind of man to want long-term. I'd been watching Jacob since we met three years before and never once in all that time had I seen him in a steady relationship. I wasn't ready for anything like that even if he were capable of pulling it off.

"Don't change your mind on me." He reached over and took my hand as we pulled up to the Omega House.

"I'm not, but don't expect anything from me. I don't want to lead you on in any way at all."

He nodded and released my hand before getting out of the truck and waiting at the front of it for me.

"I don't expect anything, Em. I'm just here as a friend." He walked up the stairs and reached for my hand. I didn't deny him, but pressed against his back as we moved through the horde of people drinking and dancing in the living room.

"How in the world do you live with all of this noise all of the time?" I moved in as close as I could while he worked on the lock to his bedroom door. I didn't have to ask why he had a lock. There were too many shady characters living in the house. All of us with any sense knew that.

"I've gotten used to it over the years." He opened the door and moved back as I walked in. The room hadn't changed at all, and the hint of his cologne was almost too much for me in my exhausted state. The large king sized bed that sat in the middle of the room was made up as if he knew he would have company.

Yeah, some random chick.

"Thank you for your help tonight." I sighed and turned to find him watching me. "And this morning. I'm going to have to start paying you if you keep showing up to save me."

"No, you're not." He moved around me, brushing his shoulder by mine. "You take the bed and I'll sleep on the floor."

"No. We can share the bed. It's huge. Just stay on your side of it." I walked to the large window at the end of the room and pulled the curtains back. The backyard was full of people too. "Must be weird to live in the middle of a party all the time."

"Stop being nervous. Take off your shoes and get comfortable." I did, and he did too before wrapping his arms around me from behind and pressing his chin softly to the top of my head. "I'm not going to try anything."

"Part of me wants you to." I closed my eyes. "I haven't stopped thinking about that night we had. It's so stupid and I feel like such an idiot for hanging on to it, but-"

He moved back and turned me to face him as his eyes moved across my face. "It was the best night of my life."

"You're so full of it." I reached out and ran my hand over the thick muscles under his shirt. "I'm sorry for pretending like it didn't matter."

He trapped my hand over his chest and rubbed my fingers softly. "My mom was my whole world when I was growing up. She was all I had for a long time after my dad just decided to up and leave one day. There wasn't even a note waiting there for us."

"Jacob," I whispered as my lust bled into sorrow. "You don't have to-"

"Hush." He leaned down and kissed me softly a few times.

Fuck me if I didn't lean into the kiss and moan against his lips. I wasn't going to last the night in his room and walk out untouched in the morning. I could lie all I wanted to about not wanting to feel him deep inside of me, but the truth would soon come out. To me and to him.

"My stepdad was such a good guy. A funny, real, wholesome sort of guy. He taught me how to toss a pizza in our shitty little kitchen when I was ten, and man, you would have thought I knew how to do quantum physics. I told all of my friends and showed them when we could afford to." He moved back and took a shaky breath. "The night my mom left, we'd been driving around, looking at Christmas lights. Just me and my dad because Mom had something else to do. We didn't know that something had a name - Charles."

I slid my arms around his waist, giving up on trying to hold back. If he was going to open up to me, I wasn't going to pretend that his pain didn't matter. It did. Almost more than my own.

"He was a good friend of my dad's, which shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. I don't think I'd ever had an experience before where a friend stuck a knife in my back, but to watch my dad go through it." He shrugged and ran his fingers through my hair. "She left with Charles that night while my dad begged her to stay. I've never cried so hard in my fucking life. I kept thinking surely she was going to come back, you know? I mean, yeah she messed up, but I was her son. I didn't have anyone but her. But she never did."

"You haven't seen her since?" I pressed myself to the front of him, reveling in how good his warmth felt. Sexy didn't begin to cover how good he looked. Now wasn't the time, but my body had a different agenda than my mind.

"No. I'm glad too, but I think it really skewed the way I see women. They all want something from me, namely my dick. I think you're the only one that's ever really made love to me, you know?"

"Have you not had a girlfriend?"

"No. Never." He shook his head and laughed as if embarrassed. "I was too scared to have my heart torn out again. I didn't think I would survive it. Unlike me though, my dad's pretty resilient. He's loved and lost five or six times since then. He just had his last girlfriend walk on him after cheating."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. I'm just spilling my guts because it seems like a safe place to do it, and the last thing I want you to think is that I'm the asshole everyone thinks I am. Don't get me wrong, I
am
an asshole, but it's just a protection thing. I-"

He was blabbering, which wasn't at all his style.

I lifted to my toes and brushed my lips by his, closing my eyes and breathing in deeply to experience all of him. "Hush."

His fingers felt good pressing into my lower back, his arms strong as they held me.

I licked at his mouth and studied the deep need in his eyes before locking my arms around his neck and sliding my nose past his.

"I don't have much control, Em. Stop teasing me if you don't want me buried deep between your thighs tonight. My good boy act only holds up under a certain amount of pressure."

"I want you to." I kissed him a few more times as he flattened his palm against my back, his fingers gripping the top of my ass tightly.

"You want what? Tell me and it's yours."

I swallowed hard as every emotion possible rolled through me. I brushed my nose by his before whispering my need against his perfect lips.

"Consume me?"

A yelp left me as he turned us and lowered me to the bed behind me before crawling on top of me and pressing his lips to my ear.

"Don't you think for one fucking minute that I'm going to give myself over to you and watch you walk away again tomorrow like you did three years ago. I need you now like I needed you then. Don't fuck me over."

His words bore down deep inside of me as I opened my legs and wrapped them tightly around him.

"Just don't hurt me," I whispered and lifted my hips as he ground against me, pressing the hardness of his erection against the softness of my sex.

"Hold on tight, sweet girl. Tonight's all about you." He moved down and pressed his lips over my nipple, tugging softly as he squeezed my thighs and moved back.

I moaned again and reached for him as he swatted my hands away. He worked on my pants, pulling them and my panties off before I could reach down to help him.

"Leave my t-shirt on." I reached for him as he shook his head.

"No. I want all of you, Em. I need to see you bared to me. You know I'm already sold out for you. Don't deny me tonight." He pulled me up and tugged my t-shirt over my head before crawling up on the bed and kissing me a few more times.

"Come up here and ride my face." He licked at my mouth as I jerked back.

"No. I can't do that." I moved to my knees as the desire to bolt raced through me.

"Yeah, you can. Take your bra off and let me make you feel good." He pulled his shirt over his head and lay back, reaching for me as his tongue darted out to lick at the side of his mouth. I wanted to let loose and give myself over to the passion, over to him, but fear held me back.

He gripped my hand tightly and pulled, forcing me to crawl up his chest. I sat down on his upper stomach and reached back to undo my bra as he groaned and palmed at my breasts softly.

"Come here, baby." He ran his hands down my side, gripping my hips and pulling me up farther. I complied and moved to press my knees on either side of his head as I began to tremble.

"I'm sorry," I whispered and glanced toward the window. "I can't do this with you."

I wanted him so fucking bad, but I knew that giving him access to my body would open up the parts of me that wanted more than another night beneath him. There was no way that one more night would ever be enough. Not with him.

"You already are." He gripped the tops of my legs and pulled me down. His wet tongue danced across my sensitive skin, leaving me weak and needy.

"Grip the headboard and work me." He slid his hands up my body to cup my breasts as his thumbs flicked across the sensitive skin. The fast flicking of his tongue had me panting within minutes, wanting more. So much more.

I gripped the wooden headboard in front of me and cried out before rolling my hips. I lost myself in the delicious truth that the baddest boy on the whole damn campus was trapped to the bed beneath me. A groan ripped out of me as he moved one hand down to rest on my ass, squeezing it tight and using his hold to work me against his face until the world exploded and warmth engulfed me.