Her chin rests against her hand as she studies me. “Dare I ask what you think this is?”
“Do I really need to say it? Isn’t it obvious?”
Delilah releases a heavy breath. “Clearly it isn’t or else I wouldn’t be asking.”
“You want to fuck me.” I can’t help but grin ear to ear like an arrogant asshole because I know I’ve nailed it.
It’s going to happen.
She’s going to lick her lips and blush and act like she’s all indecisive, and then I’ll move in for the kill.
Screw Coach’s orders.
I can break the rules just this once.
Just for her.
“Go to hell.” Delilah rises, throwing a couch pillow in my face and storming toward the door. It slams, and I watch from the living room loveseat as she marches back to Rue’s house.
Chapter 7
Delilah
My heart pounds in my ears, drowning out my thoughts, and my feet carry me down the sidewalk with quick, determined steps. It’s a good thing the agent and buyer are gone already because I need to get inside Rue’s house and take a minute to figure out why the hell I ran out of there scared shitless when all Zane did was speak the truth.
I do want to fuck him.
So badly.
I want to fuck Zane de la Cruz so badly it scares me.
And I didn’t even realize it until he just put it out there like that.
My body was all, “Yes! Do me right here, right now! Slap my ass and pull my hair while you’re at it.” And my head was all, “Absolutely not! This guy is an asshole, get the hell out of here immediately unless you want to be yet another one of Zane de la Cruz’s many conquests.”
My defense mechanism kicked in, and I bolted, and now I’m standing at Rue’s door, trying the security code over and over and getting a red light instead of a green one.
He’s the antithesis of the kind of man I’m usually drawn toward, and I know he could crush my heart in two seconds flat if I so much as entertained any kind of mutually beneficial, physical situation he might be seeking.
And Rue.
Damn it.
Rue would be so upset with me. And she’d literally chop off his balls. And that’s just not something I want to be responsible for.
I try the code one last time, slower now, pressing the keys harder, and waiting a full one-Mississippi between each number.
Green light.
Thank God.
I’m greeted with a burst of cold air, a quiet house, and loud thoughts.
Heading to my room, I plop down on the bed and grab a book in a feeble attempt to distract myself from what just happened. My eyes are laser-focused on the words, my fingertips grazing the thick paper, but it’s no use because my mind is still next door, running an instant replay of my conversation with Zane.
I slam the book shut and push it aside, swapping it out for a pillow instead.
Maybe I should nap.
If I’m asleep, then I can’t think about him.
And if I can’t think about him, then I won’t think about what it might be like to sleep with him.
Using a method that I learned in a one-credit graduate study techniques class I took last fall, I quiet my mind using simple breathing exercises as I try to envision my mind as a white canvas. Any thoughts that float in are carried away on a light breeze.
Mentally, I repeat my mantra: Be still. Be present.
And it works . . .
. . . for a minute.
That smug, dimpled smirk of his fills my mind’s eye, and I can’t stop picturing the way his white teeth play off his muscled, tawny skin and golden, honeyed eyes.
He’s deliciously sexy. He makes me want to yank my hair from my perfectly twirled top knot, tear off my clothes, and offer myself up to him like some desperate bimbo who threw caution out the door the second she found herself being eye-fucked in the living room of an NFL legend.
Whoa there, sister. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror across from my bed, and I barely recognize me. My chest rises and falls rapidly, my lips are swollen from all the biting I’ve subjected them to, and my hair is falling in tendrils around my face.
And my body. My body is . . . lit.
I get it now. I get why girls throw themselves at these men. It’s all the muscles and testosterone. We can boil it down to basic human nature and genetics. At our simplest, we’re creatures who are born to procreate, and men like Zane – men who are healthy and attractive – tend to ignite a hormonal frenzy in our monkey brains, especially when a woman’s cycle is nearing its peak, because good health represents fertility.
Rolling to my back, I smile.
There.
I just explained all this nonsense with simple science.
I’m not crazy. I’m just a woman at the mercy of her insanely frenetic hormones. My body is programmed to respond this way in response to any man who looks like Zane.