Getting Played
By Mia Storm
RELEASE DAY: MAY 28,
2015
BUY LINKS:
Rules of the game:
1) Never underestimate your opponent
2) Avoid personal fouls
3) Score early and often
4) Play or get played
1) Never underestimate your opponent
2) Avoid personal fouls
3) Score early and often
4) Play or get played
Coach Marcus Leon has always played by the
rules…until he meets Addaline Grace, the seventeen-year-old senior transfer on
his Oak Crest High water polo team. Addie changes all the rules, mostly because
she doesn’t play any games. But as off limits as she is, the more Marcus
discovers about Addie, the more he finds himself…and the more he questions
whether Addie might just be worth risking everything for.
For Addie, water polo is anger management. She’s driven and focused because it keeps her mind off other things…like the fact she destroyed her family. Her game plan is to keep her head down and graduate so she can leave her father and the crappy town he dragged her to in her wake. But when what starts as friendly completion with Marcus turns into more than a game, Addie has to decide if she’s willing to face down her demons…and possibly ruin the man she may or may not be falling in love with in the process.
What happens when the only thing you need is the one thing you can’t have?
For Addie, water polo is anger management. She’s driven and focused because it keeps her mind off other things…like the fact she destroyed her family. Her game plan is to keep her head down and graduate so she can leave her father and the crappy town he dragged her to in her wake. But when what starts as friendly completion with Marcus turns into more than a game, Addie has to decide if she’s willing to face down her demons…and possibly ruin the man she may or may not be falling in love with in the process.
What happens when the only thing you need is the one thing you can’t have?
Goodreads:
EXCERPT
1
She glances down the hill in the direction
I came from. “So, what’s going on down there, anyway? Someone’s birthday?”
My gaze follows hers. “My sister’s wedding
reception.”
“In a public park?” she asks, her eyebrows
raising in surprise.
I nod. “Graffiti Park is special. We spent
a lot of time here as kids.”
“Graffiti Park? That’s really the name of
this place?” she asks, looking around.
“I have no clue what the real name is.
That’s just what we’ve always called it.” My thumb brushes over where Nate
carved my name into the back of bench we’re sitting on at least ten years ago.
She squints toward the shelter below and
shades her eyes from the last of the afternoon sun. “I don’t see a bride.”
I point to Blaire. “The one in the bright
blue dress.”
“That sort of flies in the face of
tradition, doesn’t it?” she asks, still watching.
“That’s my sister. She’s never cared much
about social conventions. If you search YouTube for her valedictory graduation
speech from Oak Crest High four years ago, you’ll see what I mean.”
Her eyes snap to mine, wide and curious,
and her gaze knocks the wind out of me. “What did she say?”
“She basically told the whole world off.
But that was because her now husband,” I say with a jut of my chin at the
gathering below, “had just been arrested for statutory rape.”
Her eyes widen even more. “Oh my God!”
“She’s always insisted they were in love, and
the age difference shouldn’t matter. It was her giant ‘fuck you’ to society.”
Her head cocks to the side as she watches
the party below. “I like her already.” She turns back to me. “Won’t they miss
you?”
I press myself against her shoulder. “I’m
disturbing you?”
A sardonic smile ghosts over her features
as she lifts the book. “I was in the middle of reading the thoughts of a dying
giant bug-person and not thinking that was at all weird, so I’m obviously
already very disturbed.”
I can’t stop staring, because she’s
suddenly stunningly beautiful. Her eyes flash, looking momentarily more black
then gray, and there’s a long, deep dimple in her right cheek, which is the
only one I can see because of the angle of her head. I’m dying to know if
there’s a matching one on the other side.
The smile fades under my scrutiny and when
she drops her gaze to the book between us, a cascade of strawberry corkscrews
hide her face. “Sorry. Stupid joke.”
“No!” Damn.
A little too eager there, tiger. I work to lower my voice. “I mean, it wasn’t
stupid. It was funny.”
I just forgot to laugh because your smile
knocked me senseless for a sec.
She lifts a knee to her chest, hooking the
heel of her sneaker on the edge of the bench. Her knee pokes through the long
crosswise tear in her jeans. “It’s okay, my sense of humor’s pretty dry. Not
too many people get me.”
“Your sense of humor is refreshing,” I say.
“And as for people getting you, most people don’t pay enough attention to
anyone but themselves to ‘get’ much of anything.”
“Marcus!”
I look down the hill at Deanna’s voice.
She’s at the shelter waving her hands over her head to get my attention.
There’s a sudden cramp in my stomach at the thought of her coming up here.
“Looks like you have to go.” I’d swear a
catch a hint of disappointment in her tone.
“Looks like.” I stand and shove my hands
into my pockets. “My name is Marcus, by the way.”
She smiles and something roguish flashes in
her eyes. “I know.”
Fuck. I do
know her. Everything felt so relaxed and comfortable between us. I hate that I
might have just fucked that up. Before it gets totally awkward, I blurt, “I’d
be up for maybe getting a burger at Sam Hill sometime, if you’re into that.”
She nods, but that wary glint is back in
her eyes. “Yeah…sure.”
I fish my phone from my pocket. “Can I get
your number?”
She reels it off and I type it in. “Girl
who stole my bench,” I say with a cocky grin as I type it into contacts. I turn
my amusement on her. “Or is there something else I should call you?”
He gives me a questioning tip of her head.
“Addie.”
I know that name. Someone I went to high
school with, maybe? My brain chugs harder trying to put the pieces together as
I type it in. “Got it,” I say, holding up my phone. “I’ll give you a call.”
She squints at me. “Okay.”
I start backing down the path. “Enjoy my
bench,” I say with a wink.
She lifts the book in a wave. “See you
Monday, Coach.”
Suddenly I see her face under a navy blue
swim cap with the Oak Crest Cougar on the side. The jolt of electric panic
almost knocks my legs out from under me and I stumble, just catching myself
before I go down.
Because she’s on my fucking team.
I ran tryouts Wednesday and Thursday.
Practices just started yesterday. I’m still trying to get the new girls’ names.
She said Addie, but my roster says Addaline, I think. All I can remember for
sure is she’s a senior transfer and mostly keeps to herself.
“Fuck me,” I mutter, then hear myself. I
hold up a hand. “I mean…” I trail off in a cringe. “Sorry for the language.”
Because I’m not supposed to swear in front of a fucking student.
But fuck.
My mind reels, replaying everything I said and did and trying to figure out how
to backpedal out of this. “So, we’ll talk about a…team dinner…for bonding and
whatever…at practice on Monday.”
Just shoot me now.
She tips her head and bites her lips,
fighting a smile. “Sounds good, Coach.”
After what feels like a small eternity, I
shake myself loose from her gaze and start down the hill without saying
anything else. I can only dig myself deeper at this point. But the whole way,
all I can think about is that, as shitty as my life is at the moment, it might
have just gotten shittier.
EXCERPT
2
His spicy scent wraps me in a cocoon of
bliss and I stop thinking. I know this because when a shard of coherent thought
pierces the bubble, I find my lips are on his. I don’t even know how they got
there. Not only that, but I have a death grip around his neck. In my shock, the
reflex is to let him go…but then I realize he’s kissing me back. His kiss feels
like liquid fire
burning through me. A low moan vibrates between us, and somewhere in the back
of my mind I know it’s mine. The rumble deep in his chest that answers my moan
feeds my hunger for him.
One of his hands grips my arm hard, just
below my shoulder. But it’s the other one that has my attention, sliding slowly
down my hip until it rests on my ass. He drags me over him so I’m straddling
his lap as he tilts his head and deepens our kiss, and the hard bulge in his
swim trunks presses against sensitive spot between my legs. I feel him from the
tingle in my scalp to the curl of my toes. And when he moans into my mouth, the
sound vibrates my bones.
I lose myself in the feeling of his hot,
hard body pressed up the front of mine; his dark scruff scratching my face; his
wet, warm tongue invading my mouth and taking possession of me; the frenetic
beat of our hearts, each matching the other’s.
Time stops. There’s this excruciatingly
intense moment where we exist in a vacuum, just Marcus and me. My senses dull
and sharpen at the same time as the world fades out and everything Marcus is
doing to me is amplified by the electricity flowing between us.
I totally lose myself in the flood of
sensations I’ve never experienced before. When I come to my senses a few
seconds later, Marcus has set me on the cement and is staggering to his feet,
his eyes wide and his head shaking an adamant no. But the bulge in the front of
his swim trunks puts the lie to the denial in is body language.
“I was…that was…” He bumps into the
starting block and it seems to jar him back to his senses. “I’m sorry. I don’t
know why I did that.”
I gain my feet. “It’s okay.”
God. I’m a moron. It was so much more than
okay.
He must see something in my eyes, because
his soften again. “Addie…” He trails off with a slow shake of his head before
taking a deep breath and starting again. “You are this incredible…” He trails
off again and swallows. “…girl. You’re a girl.
I have to keep reminding myself of that, because every time I look at you I see
this gorgeous, sexy, amazing woman.”
EXCERPT
3
“One more thing I can check off my bucket
list,” he says with a grin, then shoves half the slice into his mouth.
“What else is on your list?” I ask.
He gives me a long look as he chews. “I
don’t really have one, now that you mention it.”
“They’re stupid anyway,” I say with a
shrug. “It’s a waste of time thinking about all the things you want to do
before you die. You could die tomorrow and a bucket list isn’t going to mean
squat.”
I only realize how bitter that sounded when
his gaze locks on mine and sharpens, as if he’s lasering in on my thoughts.
I shake myself loose from those eyes that
could compel me to spill my darkest secrets if I were to gaze into them too
long and take a bite of pizza. “But whatever. If you want a bucket list, go for
it.”
“You don’t have anything you want to do
before you check out?” he asks with raised eyebrows.
“Haven’t thought about it.”
“Well you should,” he says, going for
another slice. “I want a bucket list.”
“Then make one.”
He leans back and takes a bite. “So where
should we start?”
“You already have,” I say with a wave of my
slice toward his.
He holds his up. “And you’ve gotten me off
to a fine one. So now we need something to top anchovies.”
“We?” I ask. “I told you I don’t want any
part of this.”
“Tough, because what if your idea turns out
the be the Best Thing Ever and I would have missed it because I never thought
of it.” He tears off a hunk of pizza with his teeth. “Like anchovies.”
I look at him a long second as he chews and
a hot tingle runs under my skin. “So we’d do stuff from the list together?”
He nods as he swallows. “That would be the
general plan. Call it moral support, call it peer pressure, all I know is we’re
more likely to check stuff off the list if we’re both doing it.”
My heart starts to pound as the
possibilities scroll in my head. “How are we going to do this?”
“A collaboration. We’ll each throw ideas
out until we have a list, then we can rank them together.”
“How do you know I won’t put something like
‘lose my virginity’ on the list?” Heat radiates from my face, but I force
myself to hold his gaze.
There’s a second that he just stares at me,
but then his eyes grows softer. “I’d expect you would.”
For several beats of my racing heart, we
sit here staring at each other, then he clears his throat. “I want to try one
new food a week. And I’m open to suggestions.” He says with a nod at the pizza
box. “Your turn.”
“I have to come up with another one right
here on the spot?” I say.
He cocks his head in a question, but then
the light dawns in his eyes. “Ah…virginity. Right…” He pulls out his phone and
starts typing it like it’s no big thing, then shifts and hooks an elbow over the
back of the bench as he thinks. “Swim with dolphins.”
I nod. “That’s a good one. Put that on
top.”
He raises his eyebrows as she shoots me a
glance out from under those long, thick lashes. “Above virginity?”
All the muscles south of my waist contract.
“I guess I’ll leave that up to you, since I’ve never done either.”
About
the Author:
Mia Storm is a hopeless romantic who is
always searching for her happy ending. Sometimes she’s forced to make one up.
When that happens, she’s thrilled to be able to share those stories with her
readers. She lives in California and spends much of her time in the sun with a
book in one hand and a mug of black coffee in the other, or hiking the trails
in Yosemite. Connect with her online at MiaStormAuthor.blogspot.com , on
Twitter at @MiaStormAuthor, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MiaStormAuthor
GETTING DIRTY
Dirty
A poem by Blaire Leon
If sex is dirty, why would I do it with someone I love?
If sex is dirty, then didn’t we all come from the dirt?
What if I like the dirt?
What if I want to get dirty?
What if I want to roll in the mud until I’m so fucking filthy
that I’ll never be clean again?
When twenty-five-year-old graduate assistant Caiden Brenner
asked Blaire Leon how old she was, she said she was a senior. He chose to
believe she meant in college. They connect over Lord Byron’s Don
Juan and, as their conversations become increasingly thicker with
sexual innuendo, Caiden finds himself obsessing over a totally off-limits
undergrad who’s bold, beautiful, brilliant, and one of the most passionate
poets he’s ever met.
But it turns out Blaire hasn't been totally honest. She's the
seventeen-year-old valedictorian of her high school class, taking courses at
Sierra State while awaiting her acceptance to Stanford.
Will Caiden get too deeply into Blaire to back away before he
finds out the truth? Or will their connection be enough to seduce him into
risking his entire future on Jail Bait?
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