Because my friends were traitors and not real friends, after we left Stromboli’s, I ended up in Callahan’s truck for the drive over to his party. Axel and Drake followed behind in Axel’s car. I was about to protest the arrangements—again—when Hotshot turned up the radio. The newest song from Godsmack blasted through the speakers. “I love these guys. It’s kinda funny ’cause my parents love them too.” His head bobbed to the beat as he glanced in my direction. “What do you think, Island Girl?”
“About your parents liking rock bands?” I was still processing being in his truck, which smelled like pine trees and him. The console separating us was its best feature. At least I had some room to breathe now, unlike in the bar. The side of my body that had been pressed to his all through dinner still tingled. Somehow, I needed to exert some control. As tactics went, being contrary wasn’t my best move, but that was what I went with. Blame it on the alcohol.
He barked out a laugh. Apparently, my snark didn’t put him off in the least.
“By the way, we’re alone now. You can stop pretending you don’t like me.”
I rolled my head on the headrest and shot him a glare from beneath my brows.
“We both know you were as into that kiss the other night as I was.” He slid his hand under the front of the console and flipped it back, creating a full bench seat. The move gave him easy access to me, which he took full advantage of. He slid his palm over my knee and halfway up my thigh, resting it there. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you heat up whenever I touch you.”
I pushed his hand away and crossed my arms over my chest while I stared studiously straight ahead. “I thought we established that I don’t date players.”
He eased up to a red light and stopped. Giving me his undivided attention, his voice dropped an octave, his gaze as serious as I’d ever seen it. “I’m not playing you.”
My body flashed fire. How was I supposed to resist the oh-so-gorgeous Callahan O’Reilly, his voice resonating through me when he looked at me that way? The light turned green and he resumed our drive to his place without talking for several blocks.
At last he broke the silence between us. “Our parties tend to be massive. Like house heaving at the seams massive. But you’ll know people there.”
“Axel and Drake. And you. But I imagine you’re going to be busy during this bash, seeing as you’re one of the hosts and all.”
“I’m hosting you, so yeah, I’ll be busy.” He shot me a grin.
“Riiight.” A picture of Tory Miller and her posse of sycophants popped into my head. If they were there—and everything about their stalkerish attention to Callahan indicated they would be—chances were the two of us wouldn’t see much of each other from five minutes after we walked through the door. “Have you told your fan club?”
“We have a bouncer at the door to keep the under-twenty-ones out of the house. We’re football players for a conference championship contender—we don’t need any bad press or run-ins with the cops.” Under his breath, he mumbled, “If Finn doesn’t fuck it up.”
“What does that mean? What will your roommate fuck up?”
Callahan put two hands on the wheel as he drove us around a roundabout and onto a narrow residential street lined bumper-to-bumper with cars. “He can’t seem to say no to jersey chasers. Hopefully, Bax has more sense and overrides him.”
“Bax?”
“Wyatt Baxter, one of our roommates. Danny Chambers, our new roommate, doesn’t do parties, so I know he won’t be any help with the jersey chasers.”
“How can he live with you and not attend a party at your house?”
“By spending the night with his best friend—who is not his girlfriend, despite all indications to the contrary.” He snorted, giving me a good idea of what he thought of his roommate’s love life.
We pulled into the driveway of a two-story Victorian. With all the lights blazing, no one could miss the party. Surprisingly, I didn’t hear much sound. Then someone opened the front door, and loud music poured out into the yard. I gave Callahan a dubious look as I unbuckled my seat belt and stepped out of his ride.
Together, we waited for my friends to arrive. After several minutes, Axel and Drake walked up the sidewalk.
“For a second there, I thought I’d lost you guys at the roundabout.”
“Nah, but parking around here is brutal. Did you know that?” Axel asked.
Callahan laughed. “It’s not all that great even when no one on the street is throwing a party.” Casually, he slipped his arm around me and turned to head inside. “Let’s go have some fun.”
Short of making a scene, I could do nothing about the way he laid claim to me except to throw a glare over my shoulder when my friends chimed “Ooooh” as they followed us inside.
The house was heaving with people when we walked through the front door. We’d barely managed two steps out of the foyer and into the living room when a guy rivaling Callahan in size shoved a red cup into his hand and pounded him on the back—hard. “Fuckin’ A, ’Han! You’re the hero of the day. About fuckin’ time you showed up.”
“Bax, this is Jamaica Winslow. Jamaica, this is my roommate Wyatt Baxter.” He had to shout over the music and raucous laughter whose decibels rivaled a jet taking off.
My hand disappeared into Bax’s giant one. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” He didn’t try to disguise the appreciative once-over he gave me, and I raised a brow, letting him know what I thought of that. “Uh-huh. You’re feisty. No wonder Callahan hasn’t let go of you since you walked through the door. If you were my date, I wouldn’t either.” Turning to Hotshot, he added, “You’re a master of hooking up with the hottest girls on campus. Just once, you could do me a solid and show me how you do it.”
Callahan laughed, took a sip of his beer, then handed it to me. “All the lessons in the world won’t help you, Bax.” He pointed a look at Bax’s T-shirt that read: “The things you do for me, girl, when you walk away.”
Bax flipped him the bird. “When you get tired of this one’s ego”—he gestured to Hotshot—“you can hang out with me. I’m a nice guy.” The tone of his voice implied that the man whose arm was tightly wrapped around my waist was not nice. But at least he wasn’t wearing an offensive T-shirt.
“This is Axel Benson and Drake Jones.”
The guys all shook hands, and Bax said, “Welcome to the party. Keg’s in the kitchen.”
“Great game today. You owned the Bulldogs’ QB,” Axel said.
At the compliment, Bax lit up. “Thanks, man. Their line made me work for it.”
“Yeah, well, that sack at the end of the fourth quarter is the reason this guy gets to be the hero of the day.” Axel hooked a thumb in Hotshot’s direction.
“Exactly,” Callahan said. “It’s why we’re such a damn fine team.”
They all nodded and chuckled in some weird bro code they all understood but I didn’t have a clue. One second they were flipping each other shit, with his roommate obviously hitting on me while I was standing in the circle of Callahan’s arm, and the next, Callahan was bragging on the team.
My plan had been to stick with Axel and Drake, but Hotshot kept me snuggled in close to his side as more people came up to congratulate him on the game. So many names and faces floated by me, and keeping them all straight was giving me a headache. Two I recognized were his roommate Finn McCabe and Enriquè Simms, the basketball player he wouldn’t introduce me to in the library.
As usual, the football fan club gathered around Finn, so apparently the bouncer was selective about that under-twenty-one rule for the party. Tory Miller was chatting up Enriquè. If her hair flips were anything to go by, she was doing her level best to come onto him. His million-watt smile lit up the corner of the living room where they stood until she glanced away and caught my eye. The thunderous expression that crossed her features when she saw who had his arm around me wiped the smile right off the basketball player’s face. When he glanced over the crowd to see who had her attention, a speculative gleam came into his eyes, and all I wanted to do was find shelter before I landed in the eye of a storm.
“I thought you said nothing is going on between you and Tory Miller,” I practically shouted in Hotshot’s ear over the booming bass of the music and the raucous conversation of a houseful of people.
“Nothing has ever gone on between me and Tory,” he emphasized, his breath tickling my ear and sending a ripple straight down my spine.
“Does she know that?”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head, which could have meant anything. “Come on. Let’s find some beer.”
With a sardonic arch of my brow, I handed him the mostly full red cup. He downed it in one gulp and grinning at me added, “We’re out.”
Callahan and his roommates lived in one of the cool old Victorian houses several blocks off-campus. The living room, even with a full complement of furniture in it, held at least sixty people. We weaved our way through them to the equally spacious kitchen at the back of the house. Probably twenty more people filled that space, with most of them crowded near the back door where a seriously large human pumped the keg and filled red cups with a precision that implied this wasn’t his first rodeo.
I glanced around, looking for my friends, but they were nowhere to be found. A frission of panic prickled through me. As though he sensed it even as he chatted with another football player, Hotshot tightened his arm around me. Weirdly, his presence and the way he seemed to be tuned into me grounded me. Relaxed me. I slipped my arm across his waist, and he leaned down to whisper in my ear, “About time, Island Girl.”
I couldn’t be certain, but I think he took advantage and whispered a kiss with his words. A shiver slid over me, and he grinned.
Whispering in my ear again, he said, “Patience, babe. We’ll have time for that later.”
Before I even had a second to sputter at the man’s audacity, the guy at the keg called out, “’Han, my man! This party is almost as good as that last catch you made. Hand me that.” He nodded at the empty cup in Hotshot’s hand.
“Thanks, Fitz. My date needs one too, since you’re pouring.” Turning to me, he said, “Jamaica, this is Jeremiah Fitzgerald, but he answers to Fitz. He plays D tackle.”
“A defensive lineman. Got it.” I nodded to Fitz. “Nice to meet you.”
“You’ve been studying the game,” Callahan said, a note of pride in his voice. “Why am I not surprised?”
I shrugged. “Since you were so generous with the tickets, I thought I should know something before I attended a game.”
“Wait. Are you saying your lady here is not a football fan?” The idea was such an anathema to Fitz that he missed the cup he was filling and splashed beer on the floor at his feet. Glancing down, he righted the spigot with a muffled, “Fuck.” After handing me the cup, he reached behind him for a roll of paper towels, mopping up the mess with his foot and tossing the soiled towels in a trash can by the door.
“After today’s game”—Callahan squeezed his hand on my hip—“she can’t help but be a fan. Isn’t that right, Jamaica?”
The cocky grin on his face dared me to respond in the negative. That, of course, required me to be contrary. With a shrug, I said, “The game might grow on me.”
Callahan barked out a laugh while his teammate looked confused.
With a little nudge, Callahan said, “Let’s go check how the beer pong tournament is going.”
Through a door to my left, I glanced into a spacious dining room. The giggling posse of Finn’s fan club entered the kitchen without their main man. Callahan returned his attention to Fitz, his expression dead serious. “Under no circumstances do you fill any of their cups. Got it?”
Fitz nodded. “Let me guess. None of them are twenty-one.”
“Exactly.”
“How did they get past the bouncer?”
Callahan tilted his head, his tone sardonic when he said, “Two guesses, and the first one doesn’t count.”
Fitz rolled his eyes. “Your roommate’s a slow learner.”
“You have no idea.” He spun us back toward the dining room. “Let’s disappear before they spot us.”
It was marginally less crowded where a spirited game of beer pong was underway. On one end of the table stood a group of big, broad-shouldered guys, some of whose faces I recognized from the sideline of the game. On the other end of the table stood a group of super-tall guys. Callahan positioned us on the end nearest the stocky players and leaned in to explain, “It’s football versus basketball, cutthroat beer pong. Whichever team loses has to chug that.” With his cup, he pointed to the row of whiskey bottles lined up along a side table.
“Do you guys do this often?” The idea of chugging pints of whiskey horrified me.
“After every home win. It gets really ugly during basketball season though.”
I blinked at him. “Worse than this?”
He shrugged. “They play more games. Like us, they’re winning.”
“Why do two winning teams from the same school compete against each other in drinking games?” I already had the notion athletes were over-the-top. Watching the nonsense going on in front of me cemented it.
He laughed. “Isn’t it obvious? To prove who are the bigger dogs on campus.” He glanced at the progress of the game. “Looks like the football team is going to retain the title.” In solidarity with his teammates, he downed half his beer. “As we should.”
I watched in fascination as he ran his tongue over his lips, licking the foam from them. When he caught me, his eyes heated, and involuntarily, I fisted his shirt in the hand that was still around his waist.
A roar went up around the table, tearing our gazes apart and breaking the spell. The last ball dropped, and the basketball team as a unit headed over to the line of whiskey bottles. They uncapped them, clinked them together in a salute to each other, and started chugging to the rowdy encouragement of the winning football team.
“Who cleans your house after one of these events?”
“We do.”
As I watched the basketball players finish their whiskeys, I asked, “Do you draw straws for bathroom duty?”
Following my train of thought, he said, “These boys would never mess up the bathrooms, just like we never mess up at their places.”
I raised a dubious brow, and he chuckled.
“It’s a matter of pride, Island Girl. Losing at beer pong is bad enough. You don’t want to compound it by losing your Stromboli’s in front of the other team. That would be bad form.” The wicked sparkle in his eyes as he glanced at the basketball players told its own tale.
It wasn’t long before one by one they slipped out through the screen door leading into the back yard. Callahan fist-bumped several of the football players as they filed past him back into the kitchen.
“The beer pong ‘tournament’ is over, I take it,” I said, raising my cup to my lips.
He stared at my mouth for a second. “That was the opening round. In a few minutes when the rest of the party sees who’s returned to it, they’ll know it’s safe to come out here and challenge each other.”
I furrowed my brow. “Does no one else take on the winner of that round?”
“It’s a private event between our two teams. Since everyone here—except for you—knows the players on both teams, everyone knows who the big dogs are for this week when they return to the festivities.” He grinned. “I doubt it’ll take you long to catch up now that you’re part of the team.” He touched his cup to mine and tossed back what was left of his beer. “Come on. Let’s go see what else is happening.”
For the next hour or so, we mingled with the crowd. Not once did Callahan leave my side. Somehow, our chance meeting at the bar seemed to have morphed into a date or something.
Someone changed up the playlist to a dance mix, and the next thing I knew, he had me out in the middle of the living room. Our bodies were pressed together from shoulders to knees, even as we danced to a wild and sexy beat. My arms wrapped around his neck. His hands firmly cupped my ass. During the course of the evening, we’d both switched from beer to water, so I couldn’t blame alcohol for the hot way he looked at me as we undulated together in synch.
What was it about Callahan O’Reilly that made me lose my common sense?
My body answered the question. We fit together perfectly, his hardness to my softness. Rubbing along each other as we danced left me hot and bothered, my core throbbing in rhythm with our movements. Where our chests met, my nipples pebbled beneath my oversize sweater. This physical connection had no business sizzling between us, yet it rendered me powerless to step away.
His eyes blazed into mine, daring me. The desire swirling in their sea-blue depths left me breathless. Involuntarily, I gave him the satisfaction of a full-body shiver. He answered me with a wolfish grin. Fortunately, the music drowned out my moan.
Or not.
Setting his lips to my ear, he made sure I heard him. “Admit it, Island Girl. You want me as much as I want you.”
This time when I moaned, it was directly in his ear. Could anything be more mortifying than being so obvious about my interest in him?
“Fuck, that’s sexy.”
His deep voice was another aspect that drew me inexorably to him. Then he kissed the corner of my jaw, and to my everlasting mortification, I whimpered and tightened my arms around his neck.
“Thank you for being here tonight.”
That did it. The man had everything: gorgeous looks, a sexy swagger, intelligence, a sense of humor—and he was grateful I’d attended his party. I melted all over him. When my lips lingered on the kiss I pressed to the side of his neck, it was his turn to shiver. His response ratcheted up the throbbing in my core to pounding.
Right then, the music changed to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”—the song that had cranked up the fans’ frenzy between the third and fourth quarters of the game. It seemed to be a signal of some sort because the entire house shook with the crowd jumping up and down to the beat and singing “Wildcats” instead of the lyrics. Callahan laughed and let me go, the two of us jumping with the rest of the revelers. I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or disappointed at the mood change. But after that, I made sure there was space between us as we danced to a few more songs.
With him being a college athlete, his fitness level was twenty on a scale of ten. Mine, on the other hand, was about a four. Who knew hours of reading didn’t build cardio? At last I had to take a break. We wove our way through the throng to the kitchen for more water, but the cooling liquid didn’t revive me. My day had caught up to me, and I was ready to call it.