“It feels so good, Anna. So fucking amazing. I’m trying so hard not to close my eyes, because you’re so goddamn beautiful it hurts.”
The look on his face was so sincere, so loving, that all I wanted was to be pressed up against him. I bit my lip and batted my eyes. “Tal, just take me.”
He grinned, and grabbed my waist with both hands, throwing me back down on top of all the fluffy bedding. For a few frenzied minutes, we were all limbs and sweat, hot mouths and whispered want, desperate to get closer and closer to one another. When all the love and relief and wholeness that I’d somehow gained in the past few hours built up inside me and twisted up with the incredible pleasure of making love to a man I loved, the most incredible orgasm came crashing over me all at once. I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t remember my name. When my muscles tightened around Tal, I clawed at that perfect ass of his, desperate to have him even deeper inside of me. And then, with one hard thrust, he came too, saying my name over and over, first in a moan, then in a whisper.
When we recovered enough to speak, Tal rolled to my side, and I didn’t pull the sheet back up.
“That,” he said between breaths, “was incredible. It has never, ever been that good. Ever.”
“That was my first time,” I murmured, turning to rest my head in the crook of his neck and shoulder and catching a glimpse of the way my hip curved, beautiful and soft, up off the bed and back down again.
He chuckled, still trying to catch his breath. “What are you talking about? I know for a fact that was not your first time.”
“It damn well was,” I said, leaning in to give him a lingering kiss. “It was my first time with the lights on.”
About the Author
ALESSANDRA THOMAS is a new adult writer who swears she was in her twenties yesterday. Since that’s sadly untrue, she spends her time looking back on her college years fondly, and writing sexy stories about guys and girls falling in love and really living life for the first time.
When she’s not writing, you can find her with a spoonful of ice cream in one hand and the newest new adult release in the other.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Field Emotions
MELISSA WEST
One
BLAKE BANKS SCANNED the crowd of people who had invaded his apartment, searching for the one person he longed to see. The only person who could soothe the pounding in his temple. He reached into his pocket for his cell, just as a blonde stepped into his path. She grinned up at him. “The great Blake Banks,” she said, her voice purring like a fucking kitten. “I’m Alexis.” He nodded to her and then continued his search, his six-four height giving him a solid vantage point, but there were so many people. “So tell me about yourself, Mr. Great.” Then she started in on all the questions he hated, each more personal than the last. What is your major? Are you going pro? And then she asked the question he loathed the most. “Where are you from again?”
Blake closed his eyes and released a slow breath. He hated two things more than anything else in this world—the look people gave him when they heard where he was from and the hard fact that he was a virgin as a college freshman. He could hide the virgin thing, but since rising to the top of the Heisman list, he’d had more interviews on ESPN than any other quarterback in the nation. Everyone knew him. And everyone knew where he was from. He stared pointedly at the girl. “Alton, Georgia.”
“Alton?” she asked, her pretentious expression typical of the sorority types at Athens. Blake shook his head in annoyance. He’d received that same look, that same condescending tone from half the girls on campus. Most tried to hide their disgust. After all, he didn’t just play for Georgia, he was the quarterback. But some couldn’t keep their judgment from seeping out.
His mind drifted to the small town where he’d grown up.
Alton, Georgia, was the smallest town he’d ever been in. Maybe the smallest town in America. There were a thousand people, max, and the only source of employment was the textile plant, which took up most of the town, and Ace Hardware. Most everyone lived in a trailer, but few lived in a trailer as run-down as his grandmother’s. Well, besides Summer Earnhardt, his next-door neighbor and best friend. Summer’s trailer made his look like a great-American single-family home. Her mother left when she was six and her dad worked third shift at the plant, so most nights Summer was left alone to make her own dinner and get herself up and ready for school the next morning. Some might complain, but she never did. She respected her father too much and didn’t want him feeling guilty when he did the best he could by her.
That was the problem with people, with life. Just like the blonde in front of him now, people assumed that if you grew up poor your parents were pieces of shit that beat you or molested you or did some other unthinkable thing. But the truth was that the poor people of Alton, Georgia, were some of the best people Blake had ever known.
Blake had met plenty of rich people since joining the Dawgs at the University of Georgia. He was the top recruit in his class. The best quarterback they’d seen since Johnny Football, and suddenly, every school in the country was sucking his dick trying to get him to join their team. He told himself he chose Georgia because his grandfather had been a hard-core Georgia fan, but really it was because Summer couldn’t afford to go out of state, and he couldn’t afford to spend four years without her. Summer was his rock.
A rock that clearly forgot her promise to swing by his place after the game.
Blake looked past the blonde, who was rambling on about his game-winning touchdown pass, and into the sea of people who’d invited themselves to his apartment. The front door sat ajar and people were forcing their way inside.
“Come one, come all!” Jamison, Blake’s roommate, waved from the coffee table, where he stood shirtless and already shitfaced drunk. He yelled for someone to turn up the music, and suddenly the walls and floor vibrated all around Blake, sending his headache into a full-out migraine. How the fuck had he let Jamison talk him into this shit? That’s what he got for agreeing to have a roommate, when he wanted to live alone.
Jamison, a tight end, was Blake’s only roommate, though he used the term loosely. He spent most nights in the bed of some girl who would hate him later. Blake didn’t understand how Jamison could screw around so freely, but maybe that was how people without responsibility behaved. Blake had never known what it was like to not have responsibility.
His grandmother counted on him for money. She had since his grandfather passed away three years ago. And she had ingrained in him from a young age that fucking around would do nothing but land him at the Winn-Dixie asking, “Paper or plastic?” At least, that was what happened to his dad. He, too, was a superstar on the field, but then he knocked up Blake’s mom, and the rest was a nightmare. Blake’s mom died during childbirth, and his dad, who couldn’t handle the ticket God had dealt him, shot himself in the head.
Blake felt like his grandmother blamed Blake’s mother, even Blake himself. If she’d never gotten pregnant, Blake’s dad would’ve still been alive, playing for the NFL. As it was, she spent every waking moment reminding Blake that he was blessed with a gift . . . but God could yank it out from under him if he couldn’t keep his pants zipped. She’d spiked so much fear in him that first Blake decided to wait to have sex until he secured his scholarship to college. Then that day came and went, and suddenly, he no longer wanted to lose it to just anyone. He wanted to lose it to a certain someone—Summer.
Someone cranked up the music louder, and the headache that had been splitting Blake’s head in two since that hit he took in the third quarter pulsed harder in his temples, across his forehead, down his neck. He pushed through the crowd, ducked into his bedroom, and shut the door, locking it before he’d even turned on the light.
Blake reached for the light and immediately heard a scream from his bed. He jerked around to see a couple half dressed. Rage radiated through him. “Get the f
uck out of my bedroom.” He opened the door and pointed. Blake sighed as he slammed the door behind them and rested his forehead against the smooth wood grain.
“Another headache?” a familiar voice called from the corner.
He spun around, unable to keep a smile from spreading across his face. Summer sat in the chair at his desk, her legs pulled up close to her and her arms wrapped around them to keep them secure. Her strawberry-blond hair was sectioned into two braids that flowed over her right and left shoulders, and she was wearing a tank top and those yoga pants girls wore, like she planned to work out, but they both knew she’d never actually go.
“You know there was a couple going at it here?”
She shrugged. “I know. I thought I’d watch for pointers, but their chemistry seemed in question or perhaps the guy lacked confidence. And the moaning from the girl? Was that pain or passion? I couldn’t be sure. It was dark, after all.” She said all of this with only the tiniest of smiles, so you couldn’t be sure if she was serious or not, which made her intimidating as hell to anybody with even a speck of self-doubt. Being a near genius had that effect, but add to it her unbelievable face—ivory skin, crazy blue eyes, and the sort of eyelashes that made guys want to take a cold shower—and suddenly, she became a complex puzzle that too many guys to count had tried to crack.
Blake still wasn’t sure if she was a virgin. He was too afraid to ask, partially because he didn’t want to know and partially because he was afraid she’d ask him and then he’d have to confess the most embarrassing thing possible to the very girl he wanted to seduce into taking the humiliation away.
He sat down on the edge of his bed and contemplated just asking her. So, Summer, I had an idea and there’s a bed here and . . . Fuck! Instead he hit his dock station and Imagine Dragons filled the room. He let the smooth song drown out the rap shit hitting against his walls and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and glanced over at Summer, all words gone for just a moment as he let her face, her simple, beautiful face, ease the tension in his head and heart. If only this were simpler . . .
Two
SUMMER EARNHARDT WATCHED as Blake stared at her, wondering if he wanted her to leave. He’d won the game, single-handedly, though he would never say or admit that. To Blake, there was only a team, never an I. He spent much of high school telling her that he was the dumb athletic one and she was the smart nerd; how had they become best friends? But the truth was Blake was as far from dumb as a guy could get. Sure, she was the valedictorian, the honor student, but she had no choice. She had no skill, no talent, nothing to fall back on. Either she killed herself with her grades and scored a scholarship, or she spent the rest of her life in the trailer park where she grew up. She couldn’t do that, no matter how much she loved her father.
So she spent her days studying, while Blake went to practice, and then they would coop up together at night like an old couple in his bedroom and watch TV on the scrambled set, Blake banging on it to get a clear reception, Summer trying not to spew her Coke laughing. Summer hated staying alone, so Blake would let her pretend that she was too tired to walk home and would cover her up in his bed, him asleep on the other aside. Life had felt so easy then. She knew he would one day be what he was now—a superstar—but she never imagined feeling so left behind.
Of course, Blake would never push her out, but she knew there must be a line of girls outside, waiting to get in his bed. How many had she seen him with already this year, and it was only a few months into classes?
The truth was Summer had always envisioned herself ending up with Blake. Not while they were young and foolish, but once they graduated college. They would run into each other and realize that behind their friendship had been something more. Which was why she had saved herself all these years. Sure, there had been a few close encounters—EJ Long and Finley Anderson—but in the end, she stopped just before the final push from dry hump to real hump. Each time, one face appeared to her, and she couldn’t do it.
Summer swiveled the chair she was sitting in and rested her chin on her knees. “Want to contemplate the possibility of your brain hemorrhaging from one of those hits? I think it’s like a one in—”
Blake ran his hands over his face and closed his eyes. “Let’s not go into how likely I am to break something, become a paraplegic, or die every time I finish a game. You know I’m fine. I’m always fine.”
Summer considered him, the squint in his eyes from the headache. “What can I do?”
“You know.”
Summer cleared her throat and nodded. Ever since his grandmother’s arthritis turned her fingers into knobby twigs, Blake had asked Summer to massage his scalp when he got one of his headaches. She had never minded. It was relaxing, in a way, to help someone else relax, but she hadn’t given him a massage since before they came to Georgia. Since before his already toned body became a force to be reckoned with, a steel structure of hard, cut lines. Since before he became the Blake Banks, or as everyone on ESPN called him, The Great BB.
Every time she saw him on TV, she thought about how close he was to his dreams of playing in the NFL, and how when that happened, he would leave her . . . just like her mother.
That fear was the singular thing that kept her mouth glued shut every time she lay in Blake’s bed and listened to him talk about his hopes for his life. Or when her fingertips ran over his scalp and temples and face during a massage. She knew there was next to no chance that he felt the same way, and even if he did, one day he would leave.
People, they always left.
Three
BLAKE OPENED AN eye to look over at Summer, her expression confusing him, like always. There were moments, brief flickers, where she looked at him like other girls looked at him. And then it would be gone, replaced by sarcasm.
“I’m not sitting on that tainted sheet,” she said, nodding toward his bed. “That couple could have any one of a thousand sexually transmitted diseases, and they’re often transferred by liquid, which means if one of them, you know, spilled, you could be looking at a problem on your hands.”
Blake laughed, wishing a third of the girls he met had half the guile of Summer. If they did, perhaps he could tolerate them for more than a night of making out. Instead, he ended up fantasizing about Summer, and then when he opened his eyes, he felt a surge of guilt and ended it before reaching anything deeper. Clearly, something was wrong with him.
“I’ll change the damn sheets, Doctor. Anything else?”
Summer ignored the jibe. “You’ll thank me when your balls stay intact.”
At the mention of his balls from Summer’s mouth, he felt his pants grow suddenly tighter, pressing against the zipper of his jeans. He thanked God he’d thrown on a long T-shirt and went over to his closet to grab fresh sheets.
Summer nodded for him to sit and took over the work. Normally, he’d brush her away or at least help out, but the pain cutting through his skull had him on the verge of puking or passing out.
“So . . . how bad was the hit?” she asked, her eyes focused as she fanned out the top sheet and it flowed slowly toward the mattress.
Blake glanced over at her. “You didn’t watch?”
“Professor Carmichael needed me in chem lab. I’m assisting in his research, remember?”
“I remember¸” Blake said, but he knew she was lying. She refused to come to his games, had since the first one, where he was sacked so hard all the breath whooshed out of his lungs, and for a moment, he just lay on the field, wondering if that was what drowning felt like. The complete inability to breathe. Summer tried to get to him, but of course, they refused to let her through security. She hadn’t attended or watched a game since.
“Okay, this is all set,” she said, patting the bed. “Come lie down and let me perform my magic.” She grinned wickedly.
Blake nodded. Typically he would respond with something sarcastic, but the pain was too real, the moment too raw. Like something had changed in the air without either of them realizing it. br />
Someone pounded on the door and Blake groaned. “What?”
“Women are stripping out here, man,” Jamison called. “Get your white ass out here and see these bare Dawgs!”
Blake closed his eyes and lay back on the bed, his head in Summer’s lap. “Nah, man, I’m good. Have at it.” He waited to see if Jamison would bust in, but he heard his voice drift away and looked up at Summer, her face impossibly close to his. “I think we’re good.”
She drew a breath as her eyes met his. “Yeah, we’re good,” she said, her voice suddenly small.
Four
SUMMER BRUSHED HER fingertips over Blake’s eyes, shutting his lids. “Relax.” He nodded once, and she let her hands move over his face, through his dark, cropped hair, over the defined lines of his cheekbones and jaw, then she pressed into his temples and ran circles with her fingers, breathing out slowly, her own eyes closing.
They didn’t speak again for several minutes, soaking in the moment. Static clung to the air, an electrical charge, the warmth she normally felt around Blake replaced by something more unsettling. Her heartbeat began to change rhythm as her fingertips continued to work, and she worried that he could hear it, pounding so close to him. Would he know what it meant? Would he know that every nerve ending in her body had come alive as soon as she touched him?
Embarrassed, she cleared her throat and opened her eyes, only to find Blake watching her, his expression seeming to mirror her confusion. Instantly, she looked away. “Did you know that breathing can help calm you in almost any situation? It has to do with the flow of oxygen back into your body. It helps settle—”
“Summer.”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t want to talk about breathing right now.”