Free Quarterback Bait by Celia Loren

my early enrollment materials from UT, as well as a personal note of
congratulations from my advisor. In the note, a one Mrs. Kepling had called my
application materials “stunningly precocious” and “self-possessed.” I was
looking forward to college, all while living out a daydream fantasy in my head.
But in one pizza party, everything now seemed ruined.
    I stared up at the Day-Glo stars smattered across my ceiling
(left by a previous tenant) and tried to prioritize the problems at hand. So, okay—I'd
very nearly got it on with my step-brother. That was maybe a 7 on the 1-10
disaster scale. More pressing was the fact that my crazy ma seems to have
fallen head-over-heels for an old, crusty charlatan. As much as I wanted Anya
to be happy and cared for after I flew the coop for school, wasn't leaving her
in the clutches of Pastor Sterling a poor move on a daughter's part? The guy
could barely walk, and the first words out of his mouth to me had been
disciplinary. I didn't trust him. Their whole, whirlwind romance seemed...off.
    And then there was the fact of the step-brother himself. It
had been one thing to see him standing there, looking especially smug and tan
in the kitchen doorway, and have to contend with the possibility that he was
more of a jock dirt bag than I'd let myself believe on the roof. But the way
he'd acted outside the bathroom? Trying to come onto me, and shit? I couldn't
believe how quickly it was possible to go from lust to repulsion. I also
couldn't believe how warped my own judgment of people could be, especially
given all the lunatic step-fathers and druggies my mother had introduced me to.
The whole thing was nauseating. As if to augment my fury, Joe Strummer now
screeched into my ears about being lost in a supermarket.
    The instant I threw my headphones aside in frustration, the
overhead lights in my room snapped on. Blinking, I sat up to see jock
boy—looking confused (and extremely naked, from the waist up). For a
split-second, we just regarded one another.
    Another source of extreme fury was the fact that—yeah, okay,
sure, whatever, he was kind of good looking. I saw in the full light
that his football camp tan ended at t-shirt level, while his pecs and chest
remained a lighter color. There was something cute about the farmer look. There
was something cuter about the coils of dark hair on his chest. The hair was
darker than I would have imagined, and it grew thick at a spot just below his
navel. When he inhaled, his core expanded in a way that suggested every fiber
of his body was made of muscle. His form was tapered like a swimmer's. Either
I'd forgotten the whole Adonis body thing while in the dark of his Saab, or
he'd really outdone himself on the free weights in Galveston.
    But it wasn't like any of this mattered, or made him less of
a creep. It was like Carson said: “You can admire the house without signing the
deed.”
    “I got turned around. Thought this was the bathroom,” Landon
grumbled, scratching at the side of his face. Even in the hours since dinner,
it seemed as if stubble had begun to erupt on his jawline. Or maybe this was a
trick of the light. Unbidden, I recalled his proclamation on the rooftop: I'm
a man. I will fuck you senseless.
    “It's not, genius,” I managed to huff, hopefully concealing
some of my gawkery. But Landon didn't turn around right away. Instead, I got
the sense that he was staring me down. Seconds too late, I remembered the
loose-fitting nightshirt I'd elected to wear—the one I treated like a second
skin. It was a gauzy, practically see-through t-shirt that just barely covered
my ass—one of mom's old faves from the seventies. A lot of faux-Spanish
embroidery framed the plummeting V-neck. I never had to think about how
suggestive my sleeping clothes were when I lived in a house with no men.
Blinking with fury, I shifted a pillow in front of my chest.
    “Is that all?”
    Landon nodded, but I watched his eyes pull themselves from
my body and