I need something… I scan the crowd until I spot it.
“You there.” I point to a girl two rows back. She’s holding a plaid blanket in her hands.
“Me?” she mouths.
I nod and reach into my back pocket. “Five hundred—”
A small hand reaches out and snatches my wallet from my grip.
“I cannot believe you just did that,” Olivia hisses, looking like an angry kitten. Her adorable face is scrunched up and her tiny claws are out.
For what, though, I have no clue. I cock my head. “What do you think I’m doing?”
“You’re looking and talking to another girl. That’s what you’re doing.” She turns to her roommate. “You saw it, didn’t you?”
The small girl nods emphatically, sending her ponytail swinging. “Yes. Definitely. He was talking to another girl.”
While jealousy looks cute as hell on Olivia, I don’t want to do anything to make her feel insecure about my love. Quickly, I explain. “I’m trying to buy you a blanket.”
Olivia’s face morphs from mad to confused in a blink. “Why? It’s like eighty degrees tonight. I’m not cold. Besides, if I was, you could warm me up.” She snuggles up against me, pushing her lush tits into my chest. “You don’t need to buy me a blanket.”
I blow out a frustrated sigh but wrap an arm around her because that’s just how my arms work when she’s near me. They automatically wrap themselves around her body and pull her tight against me.
“Baby, I don’t know why you’re wearing this T-shirt you found in the garbage, but it’s showing so much skin, I think you’re going to start a riot.” I stroke my hand over her back, counting the ridges of her spine.
“I’m what?” She peers around at our fellow students who all look studiously away. “No one’s even looking at me,” she complains as she returns her gaze to me.
“Now. No one’s looking at you now, but, like, five seconds ago, every guy who could see was tracking the trajectory of your chest movement like they’re all physics majors who are going to be tested on it later.”
She waves a hand. “Zeke, you’re overreacting. No one’s looking at me but you.”
“What the fuck are you wearing?” I hear bellowed from about twenty-five feet away.
Olivia turns, cups her hands around her mouth, and yells, “Not a dress!”
The crowd snickers. Even I feel an involuntary twitch of my lips. “You’re wrong, babe,” I inform my girl as Levi climbs over a bench, pushes aside a trainer, and stomps over to the stands.
“About what?” She can’t take her eyes off the menace.
“I wasn’t the only one looking at you.”
“I guess not.” She leans down and reaches out her hands to touch Levi when he and I both shout, “No!”
Behind Levi, a water boy trips. Two coaches run into each other. The medical tent gets knocked over. Levi grabs a towel from his waist and bombs it toward me. I catch it in one hand and thrust it toward a bewildered Olivia.
“What just happened?”
“A natural disaster,” Erika murmurs.
“Here, put this around your neck.”
“It’d be safer for all of us,” Erika urges. I give her a grateful look.
“I don’t know what the big deal is,” Olivia mumbles, but she ties the sweaty terry cloth around her neck.
Some of the tension drains out of my spine. “What happened to you being a rule follower?” I ask. “Back home you never tried any of this.” She wore cute stuff, but it was never revealing. She never really tested us before. In fact, ever since she’s stepped on to campus, she’s turned into someone completely different. Oh, she’s still sweet and innocent and kind, but there’s a mischievousness about her that I hadn’t really noticed before.
It sets me back on my heels. Levi and I thought we could control the whole situation, make sure that everyone toes the line and I guess in our arrogance we thought that included Olivia. That she’d wear what we wanted. Stay where we wanted her to stay. Do what we wanted her to do. But she’s her own person and she’s starting to flex and…that both scares the hell out of me and gives me a harder boner than I’ve ever had before.
I reach for her neck. “What now?” she asks, slightly irritated.
“I’m going to need that towel for a sec.” I pull it off and tuck it into the front of my jeans. No one needs to see my raging hard-on that I can’t do anything about for another—I check the scoreboard—forty minutes. Fuck, why are these football games so long?
Chapter Three
Olivia
“I’m so hungry,” Erika says as her eyes roam over the menu. We didn’t have time to eat before the game. We took so long making our shirts that we didn’t have time to grab a bite. Erica and I worked so hard on those shirts and my men didn’t even appreciate them. They didn’t have one nice thing to say about them. They seemed more pissed than anything else.