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My phone chimed with a message, probably what had woken me up, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. Another chime, and the light flashed in the room from behind me. Right. Parker had put it on his table when I’d thought he was groping me.
I started to extricate myself from Parker’s hold, but his arms tightened.
“Don’t leave,” he whispered.
Not asleep, then. “I’m not leaving. My phone is going off.”
He found my hand and laced our fingers together over my stomach. “Ignore it. Everyone who matters knows where you are.”
And who I was with. Which was the problem. I needed to do damage control before Eva or, god forbid, Mac blabbered to the wrong people.
“They won’t say anything, Lorelai.” Parker nuzzled my hair. “Stay with me.”
This was my favorite Parker—warm from sleep, voice rough, and not afraid to touch me. I didn’t bother questioning how he knew what I’d been worrying about. We had the same concerns.
I trusted him to know what our friends would do, but a prickle of guilt made me try again. “I need to check if it’s Eva. She might have an emergency.”
“She’ll call Mac in an emergency.”
“Still, I’d be a shitty friend if I didn’t check. I’d think you’d appreciate my friend skills.”
Normally, he backed down when I teased him about being friends, but tonight, he wasn’t playing. His arms didn’t loosen one bit.
“I don’t want to be your friend,” he said quietly into my ear. “I want to be able to touch you.” His lips skimmed my neck, and my breath hitched. “Kiss you.” A shiver ran down my back as he rolled his hips against my ass. “Fuck you.”
Hell. Yes. My body was instantly on board, but admitting the truth didn’t change the circumstances.
He slipped a leg between mine from behind and did that dirty roll again. “I want to wake up tomorrow with you curled around me in my bed.”
My eyes closed for a long beat as I tried to remember my weak protests. “We can’t. The university—”
“We can. They don’t get to dictate my feelings or who I have them for.”
“If this got out, the press would jump all over themselves to prove every stereotype of female athletes correct. Even if the administration looked the other way, any hope I had of being taken seriously would be gone.”
His movements stilled, and he loosened his hold enough to let me turn and meet his eyes. “I know. That’s why it won’t get out. What we do in private is for us. No one else gets a say, and no one else needs to know.”
I frowned. “You want me to be your dirty little secret?”
Parker dropped his forehead to mine. “Lorelai, I want you however I can get you. For now, we have to keep our relationship a secret to protect both of us, but one day, the world will see me kiss you on SportsCenter.”
A secret relationship with Parker. I won’t deny I’d considered it once or twice before, but the idea had seemed crazy. Why would he want to go through all of that when he could have his pick of hook-ups?
Parker could take a five-minute walk through campus and come away with a dozen numbers simply from existing. None of those girls would involve risking his future. Or mine.
My phone chimed again, and Parker sighed, then moved away to snatch it off the nightstand. He held it out to me without checking the screen. I took my phone from him and set it face down on the bed. Whatever messages I’d gotten weren’t as important as the conversation we were having.
“We can’t let anything that happens in private affect what happens on the field. Promise me.”
His gaze sharpened. “I promise. Are you going to be able to hold back when Courtney throws herself at me again?”
I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling. Courtney was a cheerleader—one Eva had trouble controlling. She had a bad habit of launching herself at Parker after every game. Last week, I’d “accidentally” gotten in the way.
She’d bounced off my shoulder, then stood around looking lost for a few seconds before heading back to her squad. The timing had been spectacular.
I lifted my chin. “You could try stopping her yourself. I know she’s half your size, but I think you could take her.”
Parker planted a palm on either side of my head, blocking my view of anything but him. “I don’t want to takeher.”
