James Games

James Games

A novel by L.A. Rose

Copyright © 2014 by L.A. Rose

All rights reserved. This work or any portion thereof may not be utilized or reproduced in any way, with the exception of review purposes, without the written consent of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to real persons, living or dead, is unintentional and entirely coincidental.

~1~

Life is all about making choices.

At this particular moment, my choice is between A: jumping naked into a bush from a second-story window and B: getting torn to shreds by a gorgeous girl in Prada.

The devil really does wear it.

Text from roommate, Iris:
Amber says that if you’re not downstairs in 3.5333 seconds she’s coming to get you.

It’s funny how jumping out of a window suddenly becomes a good idea when you’re drunk. I run one finger under the sill. Mildew. That’s the problem with frat houses. No upkeep. Dust and mold and debauchery piling up everywhere.

Text from Iris:
Don’t jump out the window
.

Even the music pulsing from the living room has dimmed. The mockingbird in the tree across the yard has shut up. Anticipation is as thick in the air as pot smoke. He’s coming. He’s selected this particular house party on this particular night to attend, and we’re all more important because of it.

Text from Iris:
Okay, no, she’s leaving to find you. Window is best option. Tuck and roll
.

I squint at the bush. Maybe it’s the darkness and the drunkenness, but it doesn’t look too uncomfortable. I bet California hobos sleep there all the time. With any luck, not right now.

I close my eyes and count to twenty.

On twenty-one, someone pounds on the bedroom door.

“Uh, we’re having hot drunk sex in here,” I grunt in my best impression of a wasted frat boy.

“Fiona, I know that’s you. Open the door or I’m breaking it down. This is not behavior worthy of our sisterhood.”

Neither is breaking down doors, but that’s not going to stop her. Keeping my eyes shut, I imagine the bush as a large, comfortable creature, somewhere between the Cookie Monster and the Pillsbury Doughboy, waiting to catch me with open arms. No Prada in sight. I swing my other bare leg over the sill and jump the only way I know how—all at once.

I’m falling and pinwheeling and realizing at the worst possible moment that I forgot to take off my stripper heels, and then the bush catches me. Except it’s less Pillsbury Doughboy and more Hardbury Muscleman. And it’s less of a catch and more of a smashing both of us into the ground.

“Fuck,” someone groans beneath me. It’s not a bush, it’s a man, and to my endless regret, it’s not the first time I’ve straddled him naked.

James Reid.

Even with my life in dire peril, the sensation of his body beneath me turns my thighs to jelly. His dark blonde hair is swept off his forehead, his eyes a reminder of what a stormy sky looks like when it’s noon in Colorado. My hands are on the hard contours of his chest, my nose inches from his shocked expression, and thanks to the positioning of my lady parts, I can feel exactly what happens when he notices how very naked I am.

“Are you okay?” he asks, which is not the first thing I expected to hear from the mouth of doesn’t-care-about-nobody, too-good-for-everybody James Reid.

“Since you caught me, yes,” I manage.

He nods, still beneath me, the damp grass soaking into my knees. “Good. Now get the fuck off and try not to fall out of the sky next time someone’s walking below you.”

There it is. The assholery he’s famous for, the kind the press loves to burn him for but he still gets away with it because he’s such a damn fine actor. And because he’s so damn fine.

I’m about to tell him exactly why I’ve plotted his murder eight different ways since last week when Amber sticks her head out the window.

If she sees me naked on top of James Reid in the beer-soaked grass, she will break several world records in how quickly it takes to decapitate someone.

I spin James in front of me and shove him into the bush. Fortunately, there are no thorns or hobos. Just facefuls of branches and leaves. James is too stunned to speak—it’s not every day that a world-famous actor gets shoved into a bush by a naked college freshman—and I take advantage of his silence, pushing him into the dirt on his back and covering his mouth with my hand.

“Fiona?” Amber yells above us, blood in her voice.

I took further advantage of James’s involuntary silence to tell him off. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me who you were. Do you have any idea how much trouble you got me into?” I hiss just loudly enough for him to hear.

“Are you down there, Fiona? Everyone’s waiting for you.”

I stab my thumb upwards. “Do you hear that? That is the sound of my death. If she finds out I slept with you, I am fucked. And not the good kind of fucked.”

Amber finally lets out a frustrated grunt and slams the window shut. I take my hand from James’s mouth. He sits up slowly, still cover-photo gorgeous even with twigs in his messy dark-blonde hair. His storm-blue eyes are burning, and when he opens his mouth, I know that I’m about to get it.

Instead, he kisses me.

Hard, like fire, like a whiplash, his lips sear into mine, knocking the breath from me. Like lightning he has me on my back, pinning me into the dirt like how I had him barely seconds ago. His mouth ranges over my neck, toward my breasts, and as my head falls back and I gasp, as I fumble to feel him with my free hand and we tear at each other like two starving lions finally loosed, I realize that life really is all about choices.

At this particular moment, my choice is between A: getting hazed to death and B: getting it on with James Reid. Again.

Then again, sometimes your body makes choices for you.

~2~

ONE WEEK AGO

I’m the hottest girl at this concert.

This tidbit seems like it should be shared with someone, so I cup my hand around my mouth and scream at Iris: “I’M THE HOTTEST GIRL AT THIS CONCERT.”

She mouths “what?” at me, not bothering to yell. Iris never bothers to yell. She doesn’t bother to do much of anything, really, except look constantly disinterested with the world and its affairs. Dressed in all black, her arms folded, she’s a an island of I-don’t-give-a-shit in a sea of thrashing bodies.

I type it out on my phone and holds it up. She glances at it and offers a shrug. Two elbows bonk into me at once and my brand-new first-ever iPhone is in imminent danger of being knocked to the ground and crushed underfoot, so I stuff it back in my bra. Nobody here is sober enough to care if I have one square boob. Besides, I could pull off a square boob.

Correction: I
feel
like the hottest girl at this concert. I’m wearing my first bandeau top, and it’s amazing how a tiny little stretch of flower-print fabric across your boobs can make you feel like a seductress. I sawed off an extra half-inch of my cutoffs, and they’re slung low enough on my hips that every single person who presses against me is a scrap or two of fabric away from getting on a first-name basis with my girly bits. And I love it.

I link my arm through Iris’s and dance. It’s sort of like dancing with a dead stuffed crow. But I’m quickly learning: if you don’t dance like you’re a weapon at concerts, all flailing arms and jabbing elbows and swishing hips, you’ll end up feeling like you’re a kitten at an elephant convention. Cute, but dead.

The band is all scruffy thirty-something guys. The drummer has a lit cig hanging out of his mouth and keeps nearly hitting it with his drumsticks. I don’t know the band’s name. All that matters is that they’re loud and the bouncer let us sneak in the back when I turned on the charm. And by charm, I mean a nice sloppy kiss.

“I’M GOING TO THE FRONT,” I scream in Iris’s face.

She takes out her phone and types a response.
If you make that much noise that close to my eyeballs again, I’ll rip out your throat.

Which is pretty much ‘I love you, be safe’ in Iris language, a dialect that I’ve had to take a crash course in after getting paired as her roommate three weeks ago. I give her cheek as sloppy a kiss as the one I gave the bouncer, and she mimes vomiting down the back of some girl’s crop top.

All right. Here we go.

I plow forward into the clusterfuck of bodies, knocking a few people to the side. They glower at me, but really they should be delighted to have touched the hottest girl at the concert. Someone else’s sweat dampens my arm, and I wipe it on the back of a random person’s shirt. Personal space ceases to exist at concerts. Which is good. The more people I get to touch today, the better.

Eventually I figure out that turning sideways and kind of swimming through like a fish in an obstacle course works better than the tractor method. I duck under a bangle-covered arm, squeeze between a couple making out, melt through bodies as if they were swinging doors and suddenly, there it is.

Five inches of space right in front of the stage.

I spot it at the exact same time as a guy to my left does. I barely glance at him—just long enough to see that he’s wearing a black mask, fitted to the top half of his face. Apparently this band likes to encourage concert costumes. I’ve seen two people with giant plastic unicorns heads and one dressed as the Cookie Monster.

I dive for the spot. He dives for it too, and we crash into each other. Since he’s approximately a foot and a half taller than me, I bounce off him into a gang of howling frat boys, who form a human trampoline and send me careening back into him.

He catches me. How gallant. I repay him with a shove. “MOVE! MY SPOT,” I yell over the sound of an electric guitar having violent sex with someone’s pick.

But he’s not giving up either. He turns to face the stage, nodding his chin in time to the music, a very slightly more invested version of Iris’s statue dance. But instead of being in danger of getting buffeted to the moon like she was, this guy exudes a kind of immovability that makes people curve away from him. He’s got his own force field. The kind of energy that a tiger has when it’s lying perfectly still in the grass.
There’s space around me, but it’s mine. Come near me and you’ll regret it.

I’m not afraid of tigers. I was here first. And if he’s not going to dance, he shouldn’t be at the front. I slam my hips into his, dancing like he’s not standing next to me and there’s nothing stopping me from aiming my elbows, my arms, my long chestnut hair at the space his body occupies. Finally I annoy him enough that he glances down. I smirk up at him.

…And get a good look at the part of his face not covered by the mask. He’s got a jawline I could shave myself with, and soft, full lips. Lips that tender and delicious-looking should be on the face of a model in Paris, not a standoffish boy at a concert. His nose is straight and strong, and even if he didn’t have a nose, that mask could balance on his cheekbones alone. Sheesh.

But just because he’s hot doesn’t mean I’m letting him claim my spot. I’m five foot one and a hundred pounds soaking wet, and that has always made me defensive about where I stand. I’m small, but that’s not going to stop me from taking up space. I bruise my hips against him again.
Move, loser.

He glances downward and his eyes flash dangerously. I can see them through the cutouts in the mask. They’re a dark, stormy blue.

I jut my chin at him. The concert has shrunk away, all the flailing people fading back to become a ring for our fight. There’s an actual foot of space around us now, an impressive feat for a concert so crowded that the bodies are packed wall-to-wall. I could just stand next to him, but something about him has made me territorial. I want to claim dominance here. I want to watch him step away, defeated. Just the way he stands there, like he’s always had a right to everything within a ten-foot radius of him, pisses me off.