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For the next half hour, we went at it hard. I actually hip-checked him once and caused him to miss a shot, which earned me another startled glance. But I couldn’t help it. I was just on this morning.
Life poured through my veins, and I felt the need to conquer this session.
From that point on, he had no mercy, either. It didn’t take me long to realize that all this time, Parker had merely been going easy on me. He’d never let me win before, but today—today he pulled out the big guns. Yet, I still made him work for his money. We started playing dirtier, nudging the other in the gut, hips, and sides, and grabbing arms to foul like crazy.
At one point, he shoved his elbow at me, bumping me out of the way so hard in order to make a three-pointer that I lost my balance and tumbled to the ground.
“Oh, shit,” he said, realizing he’d been a tad bit too aggressive. “Sorry. You okay?” He paused the game to hold a hand down to me, and for some reason, when I looked up, the first thing I saw was not his hand but the front of his black shorts, where I could make out the distinct impression of his jock bulging slightly out the front.
A stain immediately blushed my cheeks. But I’d never, in all the time Parker and I had worked out together, noticed that before. I mean, this was probably the first time it was right there in my face, but still…
Strangely, I wasn’t panicked by it.
Worse yet, I was embarrassingly curious.
Oh geez.
What was wrong with me? Avoiding his outstretched hand, I scrambled to my feet, only to realize he’d seen me gaping right at his junk.
Lord, kill me now.
He lifted a single eyebrow, but said nothing except, “You okay?”
Absolutely not. But I cleared my throat and rubbed the back of my neck to hide my blush behind my lifted arm. “Yep,” I answered. “Yeah. Fine.”
He nodded and picked up the ball before tossing it to me. “Your turn.”
From that point on, I backed off a little, freaked by my own reaction. And Parker ended up beating me by two points.
“Good game,” he panted as soon as it was over and he’d collapsed onto the gym floor next to me, where I was already sitting and gulping copious amounts of water. Then he stole my bottle and squirted a healthy amount into his own mouth. “But I gotta know,” he asked, only to hold up a finger and pause to catch his breath before he exploded, “What the hell has gotten into you this morning?”
Heat broke out over my flesh, but I tried to keep a straight face, even though I was probably as red as a strawberry when I mumbled a very evasive, “What do you mean?”
“What do I…?” His mouth fell open. “Are you serious? First, you crack the sex joke as soon as I show up. That is not like you. At all. Then you run like a two-minute mile, play ball like a freak-of-nature, badass athlete or something, and then—then you check out my damn dick print.”
“Oh my God!” I exploded, covering my face with both hands. “No…no, I didn’t.”
“Yeah,” he countered slowly. “You totally did.”
“Not on purpose,” I moaned in complete humiliation. “Please, can we stop talking about this? I am so sorry. But it was, like, right there. In my face. I couldn’t help—I just—I just—I—I—”
“Don’t worry,” he assured, chuckling as he nudged my shoulder to stop the skipping record I’d become. “I’m not mad. I’m actually kind of proud of you. You didn’t react with horror like you thought it was going to jump out of my pants and attack or anything. That’s progress.” He nudged my shoulder again. “This is good, El. Own it.”
Okay. So he thought checking out a guy’s dick print was good. It was official. I had the strangest life coach ever. Then again, I’d probably hired a life coach for the strangest reason ever, too.
“I’m guessing last night’s assignment went over well,” he concluded, finally pulling out his notebook from his sports bag. After tossing my bottle back to me, he flipped through pages, only to pause when he came to the one he was seeking. “Let’s see, we came up with the objective for you to go to the movies by yourself, right?”
I drug in a deep bolstering breath and nodded. “Right.”
When I didn’t say anything else, he finally glanced up. “So? How’d that go? Did you make it through the entire film?”
“I…” Blushing as Gracen Lowe’s blue-gray eyes and quick-witted smile flitted through my brain, I nodded some more. “Yeah, I, um, I made it through the entire thing.”
Go me.
Beside me, Parker’s eyebrows quirked with confusion before he pointed. “Wait... You met a guy there, didn’t you?”
“Oh my God,” I moaned with mortification and buried my face in my hands. “How did you even guess that?”
