She places a hand on Masters’ shoulder and leans over, her breasts touching the side of his face. “When you’re done with your terrible food, I’ve something special for dessert for you.”
The lack of surprise from his tablemates tells me this is a common occurrence.
“Sorry, Bree, you know you’ll get a better response from anyone than me.”
He squeezes her hand and then gently removes it from his shoulder. She shakes her head in good-humored regret. “If you ever get tired of holding that line, let me know. I figured since this is my last year, I have nothing to lose.”
“That’s a good policy.”
“But it’s still a no?”
He gives her a nod, friendly but distant. “Still a no.”
She walks off to join her friends, who wait for her at the end of the long row of tables.
“Don’t like dessert?” I blurt out.
My brother kicks me under the table and his size fourteens hurt. As I bend over to rub my abused calf, Masters says, “I’m saving myself.”
“For what? Marriage?” I joke, because as I told Jack, I don’t know if I believe this virgin stuff.
“Not exactly, but close enough,” comes the serious but casual reply, and Masters shoves the last bit of hamburger into his mouth as if he didn’t just proclaim that the earth was flat.
The chicken breast is as flavorless as I thought, and I’m desperately wishing for sour cream or butter, or hell, I’d even squeeze a mayonnaise packet onto my baked potato if I could find one.
But if I’d been sitting at a five star restaurant and eating the best meal of my life, all the food would have tasted the same—flavored with surprised bullshit.
Which I almost said out loud. Bullshit. There is no way. I’ve seen this guy on television. Knox has more moves than a dancer in Vegas. He can swivel out of an offensive lineman’s grasp in one step, run down a wide receiver, and introduce a quarterback to the soil of the vaunted Western State’s turf.
You can’t help but look at his hands, the heavily veined forearms and the bulging biceps, and wonder whether the parts of him that you can’t see are as big. You can’t watch him move on the field, making fucking magic with his body, and not wonder what it’d be like to feel it flush against your own. Heat chases down my spine and my mouth becomes very dry. I stare at the table in front of him, as if I can see through the tray of nearly eaten food and the wood and metal to see the signs of his virginity.
Which would be what? Do I think there’ll be a little wooden plaque that says “newbie?” Shit. I shake my head at my own ridiculousness and then make the mistake of looking upward into Masters’ ruggedly handsome face that will no doubt adorn cereal boxes, granola bars, and billboards someday. He’s got grass green eyes and a chin chiseled out of granite. In another era, Masters would be the general of an army immortalized in marble for his exploits on the field. Today he’s a different kind of warrior—one that crushes his enemies in ten yard increments.
His wide mobile mouth knowingly curves upward and I have an uncomfortable sense he can tell exactly what I’m feeling somehow. I’ve never felt so exposed. I want to snatch those stupid aviators off the top of his head and plaster them on my own face.
“For religious reasons?” my brother asks.
“For Knox Masters’ reasons.” Masters’ expression doesn’t change. He’s still smiling, but there’s a definite no trespassing tone to his words. Beside me, Jack turns to Ahmed to talk about their single wing formation. That’s too much detail for even a fan like me. I tune them out, which leaves me with Masters, who hasn’t moved his attention away from me.
I drop my eyes to somewhere around his nose, because his eyes are so green and bright it’s like staring into the sun, hypnotic and dangerous.
“I can’t tell if you want it to be true,” he says in a low voice that I feel as if I’m the only one who can hear.
“I don’t know either,” I tell him honestly. “But if you are, I think I need to go to church tomorrow, because that means impossible things exist like unicorns and the resurrection.”
He laughs then, a wide mouthed, white teeth flashing. “Tomorrow’s Friday.”
I nod. “I know, but it can’t ever be too early to repent.”
I feel, rather than see, his eyes sweep over me for a long moment as if he’s cataloguing my stick straight brown hair, face, and loose T-shirt. “You don’t look like you have much to repent for.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” I say archly with a pointed look.
“They can, can’t they?” he murmurs and the deep rumble of his voice does weird things to my insides. Things I shouldn’t feel for a new teammate of my brother’s. I have two solid gold reasons not to date football players, so no matter how appealing Knox Masters is, he’s not for me—even for a one-night stand to alleviate an itch if he wanted that sort of thing, which apparently, he doesn’t. I’m still not sure I believe him.
His sexual status or lack thereof is none of my business. Sleeping with football players is not on my agenda, so I yank out of Masters’ gravitational pull and turn toward my brother.
“You know some of the guys thought you were a dude because of your name.” Masters has finished demolishing his meal, and I feel the full weight of his attention.
I click my tongue in mock sympathy. “It’s terrible when you feel misled about someone’s identity. What kind of monster does that?”