Kicked: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (46 page)

“It's so nice to finally meet one of Florian's girlfriends,” my dad said while Rhonda smiled away and watched Florian from across the room with a glint in her eye, like she was fully aware that she'd managed to do the impossible by catching a guy like him. I slumped against the cabinets while my dad and River chattered and touched Rhonda's arms, encouraging her to eat one of the fifty freaking hors d'oeuvres that my stepmother always made. Trays and platters and bowls lay in perfect order on the white marble, filled with things I couldn't even pronounce.

Flor glanced over at me and I caught his eye, wondering what the hell was going through that thick skull of his tonight. He brought a
girl
home and yet he was acting like it was no big deal. He wasn't even talking to her. I watched as Addi made her way over to the counter and started picking at something that looked like a miniature croissant.

“What do you think?” Flor asked, slumping against the cabinets next to me. Close but not close enough to touch, just like he'd done after that fateful kiss. Before that, it had never been a big deal. He'd bump shoulders with me, grab my arm in the hall at school,
smile
at me. He never smiled anymore, not unless that smile was more of a smirk or a cocky grin.

“About what?” I asked, looking away and pretending I didn't hear my dad and stepmom chittering away like birds. Flor sighed.

“About Rhonda. Do you like her?”

“I've met her twice,” I said sulkily. “For like two seconds each. I mean, unless you count the day you did my tattoo for me and stepped out to fuck her. Then it's three times.”

“Don't be like that, Abigail,” Flor said, and I noticed that he sounded tired. Worn-out. Oh well, that was his problem, not mine. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he fished a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and slapped them against his palm. My dad's eyes wandered over and locked on, narrowing almost imperceptibly. My father was, almost ironically, a pulmonologist. In plain English, that's basically a lung doctor. Flor's smoking had always infuriated him, made worse by the fact that there was nothing he could do about it but lecture, pretty much incessantly.

“Take it outside, Florian,” my dad warned, eyes flicking over to me and then, as if he'd seen something terrifying like, oh I don't know, a bloody wound or a black widow spider crawling on my shoulder, his eyes widened. “Abigail.”

Uh oh.

I glanced down and found … that my tank top had ridden up, revealing a narrow strip of skin between the black cotton and the blue denim. My tattoo was showing.

“Oh, Art,” Flor said, sliding a cigarette between his smirking lips. He tucked his pack away and then snapped his fingers, reaching over and lifting up my tank top. His hot fingers grazed my bare flesh, drawing a moan to my lips that I had to struggle to bite back. “Abi didn't tell you that I inked her up a few weeks back?” Flor's index finger swiped around my tattoo, circling it, infusing me with more heat, more desire, more longing that I really didn't need.

I tried to smile, reaching down and taking hold of my own shirt, pulling it back into place.

“How was your first time, Abi?” Flor asked, wrinkling up his brow and looking down at me. The obvious innuendo in his words wasn't lost on anyone, not even my dad.

“When did this happen?” my father ground out, his fingers curling too hard around the stem of his wine glass. Even balding, even in a pair of thick rimmed glasses and a mauve tie, my father could be intimidating. “And how could you keep something like this from me, Abigail?”

I felt my cheeks growing hot, even though I knew I had nothing to be ashamed of. I was eighteen, going on nineteen really. I had my own place, a killer GPA, and … I relied on my father's generosity to keep going to school at the U of O. Shit.

“I, uh, it was sort of a … I wanted it to heal before I showed you, you know, so you could appreciate it.” I moved around the kitchen island, all eyes on me, and scooted past Rhonda and my stepmom, proudly lifting my shirt as my dad wrinkled his brow and lowered his wine glass.

“A deer?” he asked, obviously not pleased by the tattoo, the placement of it, or the design. “I didn't think you were big on hunting, Abigail. Don't you and your liberal friends picket against that sort of thing?” I groaned and Florian laughed, drawing my dad's ire back over to him. If my stepmom hadn't moved forward and placed a gentle hand on his wrist, I don't know what might have happened.

“If she was going to go forward with it, which is
her
choice,” she said, emphasizing the word, “then at least we know she was in good hands. If you're going to get a tattoo, who better than your older brother?”

My lips twitched at the words.
Older brother.
Yeah. Yeah. Great.

“It's a beautiful piece,” Addison chimed in, popping a green olive in her mouth and dropping the toothpick in glass bowl my stepmom had set out for that explicit purpose. “I've never seen anything like it.”

I dropped my shirt and tried to keep smiling, but my nerves felt pulled taut, stretched thin. I almost couldn't breathe.

“I'm just gonna step outside for a minute,” Florian said, flashing my dad another smile he didn't mean. I watched him walk to the French doors in the back of the kitchen and open them, letting in a rush of cool air and the sound of crickets. Once he was gone, the atmosphere in the room seemed to settle.

“Well, you know I don't like tattoos, honey, but I also know that you're an adult and I can't do anything to stop you. But I beg you, don't get any where any decent employer is going to see it.” My dad cast a look at Florian's mom and I just knew, if she hadn't been in the room, he would've added one of his signature anti-Flor barbs, something like
you don't want to end up like your brother, do you?

I sighed and nodded, letting my dad think he'd won for the moment.

As he moved away, taking Rhonda and my stepmom with him, I paused and stared through the glass of the back doors, searching for Florian. He was sitting on some patio furniture, staring off into his mother's garden. His inked fingers clutched the cigarette and brought it to his lips, leaving me to wonder what it was he was so upset about. Obviously there was something going on with him.

I shook my head.

I didn't know why I was even thinking about it; Florian would never confide in me.

I turned around and found Addison watching me sadly. Was I that obvious, that pathetic?

“Come on,” I said to her, feigning a cheerfulness I didn't feel, “let's go eat.”

CHAPTER SIX

“It was the worst family dinner in the history of bad family dinners,” Addison was saying with a laugh as she shuffled a deck of cards and passed out a hand to me, Patrick, and Dorian. “I mean, after we sat down at the table, it was all about
Rhonda
,” Addi scoffed and then shook her head as she continued, “and her relationship with Florian. Not that he offered up much of anything but a grunt. Abi's dad and Flor's mom just grilled her for like an hour and then it was over. I've never been so relieved in my life.”

I frowned and picked up my hand, pretending I didn't care that she was right. It
was
a horrible dinner. I looked up and smiled at Dorian, glad that I'd let Addi convince me to invite him to the Ducks game. She'd also been right about that; it had been a blast. Dorian was so considerate and funny and sweet, everything that Flor wasn't. His only flaw – and I was trying really hard
not
to see it as a flaw – was that he hadn't tried to kiss me yet. Not once. Not even
close.

Hmm.

It had been awhile since I'd had sex and even then, I'd only done it maybe six or seven times. I have to say, it was a hell of a lot easier to forget about sex when I'd never had it. Now that I had … I shook my head and tried to bring myself back into the conversation.

“Abi?” Addi asked, leaning over and peering into my face with a raised brow.

“Yeah, uh, what?” My best friend sighed at me.

“Whatever happened to Flor's dad?” The question took me by surprise. Flor's dad. To be honest, I actually knew little to nothing about him. Flor didn't talk about him and his mom had only ever mentioned him in passing.

“He was a client of hers,” I said, knowing how taboo that was. Flor's mom was a psychologist and her patients … well, I have no idea how she'd ever ended up with one of them. I explained that to the others and watched their expressions as they all thought about it, about a forbidden love, one that crossed boundaries and made people uncomfortable. Just like my attraction to Florian. “I guess a few days after Florian was born, he went off his meds and disappeared. I don't really know anything else about it.”

“Eight years later, she met your dad, fell in love, and then they became
that couple,
” Addi said, digging her fingers into a bag of Doritos and swiping a handful. “The lovey-dovey, way too perfect, together forever kind, so sweet they make you sick.”

“I mean, that's good, right?” Dorian asked, looking down at his cards and then up at me. His green eyes were pretty, but they didn't hold any heat. I made myself smile back at him. “You have stability, parents who actually give a damn about one another, that's pretty rare.”

“It
would
be a good thing,” Addi continued, slightly buzzed on a beer too many. “If Abigail wasn't in love with her stepbrother.”

“Addison!” I shrieked, kicking her under the table. “I am not in love with him.” The words sounded like a lie, even to me.

“Okay then, well you want to fuck him, at least.”

“Addison,” I moaned, doing my best not to make eye contact with either of the boys at the table. “You must be worse off than I thought. No more beer for you.”

“Abi, look, I'm just trying to get this out there, so Dorian knows what he's getting himself into.” I felt heat creeping into my cheeks and raised my gaze to find Dorian looking at me with curiosity, not judgment.
Thank God.
If I was honest with myself, that was the thing I feared most: being judged on my feelings for Florian. “All I'm saying is that you're not the innocent little lamb that you appear to be. Live a little, okay?”

An hour later, Addison and Patrick had disappeared into her bedroom, leaving me and Dorian on the couch in the half dark. The overhead lights were off, but the white Christmas lights that Addi liked to keep year round illuminated the large space, hanging in loops on the bricks across from us.

“Tell me more about yourself,” Dorian said, his right arm wrapped around my waist, his fingers brushing the bare bit of skin below my shirt, right over my tattoo. His touch was warm, but not scalding. I felt comfortable, not like my skin was about to split in half and leave me a bleeding, ruined mess on the floor. It was an interesting change of pace. “I mean, what do you want in life?”

I giggled a slightly alcohol induced giggle.

“Is this where you ask me what my major is?” Dorian laughed and pulled me closer, clearing his throat in an awkward sort of a way that made me think of my high school boyfriends.

“Well, uh, what is
your
major?” he asked and I laughed again, loving the way the booze was going straight to my brain. I refused to let my mind think about my mother, how she'd been an alcoholic. What she'd done didn't have to affect me, not one bit.

“I haven't exactly decided that yet,” I admitted. “I'm just focusing on my gen ed right now, and I'll figure out the rest later. What about you? A degree in computer science is – ” Dorian cut me off with a kiss, leaning over and pressing his lips to mine. I was a little surprised, but I kissed him back, my body desperate for the touch of another.
Not just another, but Flor.
I pulled Dorian closer, opened my mouth and encouraged him with my tongue.

When he groaned and pushed forward, laying me against the couch cushions, it wasn't him I was thinking about, but my stepbrother. Instead of pale green eyes, I saw sharp ones, and instead of red hair, I saw ebony, curled my fingers in that thick darkness and pulled. Dorian was putting his hand up my shirt, feeling my skin, touching my tattoo. He moved his mouth from mine and started kissing my neck as he settled himself between my legs. Already I could feel his erection pushing hard and insistent against me.

He wants me,
I thought, dreaming of Flor, thinking of Flor, aching for him.
I know he does.

“Oh, Flor,” I whispered, realizing when Dorian froze what I had just said. My eyes widened as Dorian pulled back, removing his hands from under my shirt as he stared down at me. There it was, in his dilated pupils and slack jaw, his parted lips and frustrated facial expression: judgment.

“Wow,” he said, climbing off the couch and straightening out his shirt. I followed after him, fixing my own clothes and running my tongue along my swollen lips.

“Dorian,” I said, but when I reached out to touch him, he pulled away. “Dorian, wait.” He turned away from me and moved towards the front door, grabbing his boots off the floor and his coat from the rack. “I'm sorry. Look, can we start over? Can we just talk.”

He just shook his head at me, grabbed the door handle and glanced over his shoulder.

“Look, Abi, you're a nice girl, but you need some serious help.”

And then he was moving outside and I was standing there with my mouth hanging open and sweat beading on my lower back.
What have I done?

“Abi,” Addison said, stumbling into the kitchen in her shirt and underwear. She was smiling only as long as it took her to realize that Dorian was gone. “Where'd he go?” she asked, looking around and blinking like she was confused.

“He left,” I whispered and left it at that. Come tomorrow, both Addi and Patrick would know what I'd done.

No matter what I tried to do, how I tried to get away, Florian had me trapped in some kind of web that I couldn't escape.

Not even if I wanted to.