The Rotation
Katie Gills knows how to compartmentalize. She has a plan in place and although she has physical needs, those can be met by a simple set of rules created, in her mind, to save her from the ultimate distraction. Love. Limiting herself to a single sexual partner could lead to attachment and that would be breaking rule number one. Instead Katie maintains a rotation of perfectly distant and secretive lovers.
Augustus ‘Tuck’ Tuckman hadn’t been on campus long enough to get the feel of the place. The junior transfer had played his way into a football scholarship and he was using it for its intended purpose. Get a degree and get out. Life came after a career was established.
The crash of a beautiful girl into Tuck’s arms had feelings sparking in all parts of his brain, but she had a wall in place that made a future questionable. Can he play the game by her rules and still win? Or will he need to show her every thing is legal between the whistles? Even love.
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Release Date: November 5, 2019
Genre: Contemporary | New Adult | Interracial Romance
Pink Satin Romance
Excerpt
Chapter One
Running down the hallway, trying to get away from my best friend Mark, shouldn’t have been so eventful. Sure he was chasing me with a Super Soaker, but the worst I expected was a wet ass. Instead as I took the corner going Mach 1 I ran straight into a brick wall.
Okay, so it wasn’t a wall, but it felt like one. Unfortunately, it smelled like Hugo Boss and made me fall back. But to its credit, the wall reached out and caught my wrist, pulling me back before I landed hard on the floor.
The whole thing probably only took less than five seconds, but those five seconds changed my life forever. His name was Gus Tuckman, but everyone called him Tuck, I was under the delusion that he was an offensive lineman known for protecting the quarterback, later I’d be corrected. The wall in question was his large frame that culminated into a set of abs that you could do more than laundry on. He was massive, standing at least a foot over me with biceps that were bigger than my thighs but that day I learned a lot more about him.
First, over his strong right pectoral muscle was a tattoo of a hawk, I assume, fighting its way out of his chest. There were others, but at the moment it was staring me in the face as it exploded from his sweet caramel colored skin with a dark chocolate nipple in my eye.
Maybe I was hungry, but something about the way he smelled, and his body was formed made me want to lick him. All right why lie. I’d seen him over the last few weeks and had noticed him more times than I’d like to admit.
Never half naked. I didn’t think he could look better than he did with his jeans hanging off his hips and a polo shirt. Don’t get me wrong he didn’t sag his jeans instead he wore them right on his waist so if I had been lucky enough to catch him in a white wife beater I could see the cut of his muscles as they came together to point to something greater beneath his top button.
“You can’t escape me,” Mark yelled as I felt the cold water hitting the back of my head and Gus’s chest causing him to yell out.
“Death wish.”
“Oh shit, Tuck, I’m sorry I totally was going after Katie. I never meant—” With that Mark turned and ran for the safety of his room. For the first time I realized I had wrapped my arms around Tuck’s waist. I started to let go when one of the defensive lineman Cedric ran down the hall and pulled the towel from Tuck’s waist. Tuck’s response was to pull my body tight to his covering the now bare front of him. To say it was awkward would be the understatement of the century.
“Don’t move,” Tuck warned.
“Gotcha,” I replied swallowing hard. Why did he have to smell so good?
“Ced—give me the towel back.”
“Dude, I’ll leave it here for you.” He threw it into the phone booth at the end of the hall. “I told you I’d get you.”
“I thought you meant on the field.”
“Life’s a field, baby. Life’s a field.” With that Cedric took off down the hall.
So here I was holding on to Gus Tuckman trying to preserve a small amount dignity for him. I couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or my desire to see where those abs led that made me want to pull back, but I knew better. Opening a can of worms I wasn’t ready for at that moment. Wanted. But not ready for.
Tuck’s breathing was even, and he didn’t appear to be upset or ashamed. That was my department. The heat in my cheeks made me long for a good second-degree sunburn. At least that would be cooler. Instead I knew I was red, I’d say about one shade under fire truck.
I kept my face forward, but that just allowed the sweet smell of his cologne mixed with some intoxicating sweet smell to invade my nasal cavity. My hands, tight to his back, but I could feel the top to the curve of his ass. Something that I had been observing a little too much lately.
Curiosity is for scientific research not for sexual exploration. Spending your teenage years with an overbearing father you hear it all. It’s not like I hadn’t done worse with a guy, luckily, when he caught me before the long lecture it was early in my sexual exploration and clothing hadn’t been removed.
I digress as I could feel my hands start to slide. Tuck made me jump and reposition my hands in his mid-back.
“I’m Gus by the way,” he said looking down at me.
“Katie. So you’re a lineman?”
“No, defensive back.”
Who was the new lineman everyone was talking about? Okay, normally small talk is hard. With a man who was obviously naked under his towel on the way to the shower standing with your body as a guard it’s extremely unsettling. Especially when he’s so damn good looking I get fantasies when I see him clothed a hundred yards away.
“So you think we’ll win this week?”
To that Gus laughed causing both our bodies to shake so not a good idea.
“I’ve got a t-shirt on under my sweatshirt how about I…”
“Yes, please. I’m sorry I—wow—” he said nervously.
“It’s okay, I watch Seinfeld.”
“Are you saying something about shrinkage?”
“No, it’s just I—Oh man—” Suddenly there was something very large and very hard pressing against my stomach. “I didn’t mean to imply...” Well that answers the final question I had about him. I thought you had to buy things that big.
“Now I’m sorry.” His voice was a tidge higher than before.
“Felt a breeze, did you?” I joked trying to regain my composure.
“That’s all it takes.”
“So they say.”
“That and the squirming you’re doing to get that sweatshirt off isn’t helping.”
“I’m not used to looking up when I take off my shirt. Never thought of that before. Here.” I held out the sweatshirt and he wrapped the fabric around the front of his waist as he walked backward toward the phone booth.
Stepping in he couldn’t fit so he just looked at me. “Do you mind?” His finger twirled in a circle.
“Yeah...I gotta go anyway.”
I turned taking off down the hall back toward Mark’s room. Oh. My. God. I think I just hit fire engine red.
“Marcus Kloski you’re so dead,” I yelled as I went into his room. “Did you see Ced coming down the hall when you ran?”
“Of course I did. I thought he’d back up Tuck in my annihilation.”
“I’m going to assist in your inhalation, loser.” I picked up his pillow and beat him repeatedly about his head. “Are you kidding me? That was humiliating.”
Mark grabbed me and flipped me to his loveseat sitting on my stomach. We’d been friends since we were toddlers and became best friends in middle school, after a failed attempt at dating for two whole weeks in seventh grade. People couldn’t understand how we could stay friends, but that’s what seventh grade dating is for. Setting up your future best friends. You never kiss, you may hold hands and you tell them everything because you’re in love.
Luckily for me Mark weighed only about one sixty and his six-foot frame made him a twig. He was the normal preppy guy with the perfectly quaffed blondish brown hair styled to look windblown, but I knew how much product he goes through to look ‘natural’. The only thing that made him different from anyone else in our class were his dimples.
I don’t know how a guy that had absolutely no body fat and even less muscle had a fat face with dimples. Either way he was adorable especially when the light would catch his hazel eyes with the small specs of green in them and his slightly crooked nose. It’s not like he couldn’t have gotten it fixed years ago, but he said it makes him look tough.
Truthfully his nose was broken in the car accident that killed his parents. The one thing about him I know a hundred percent is that he’d never fix that nose of his no matter how much his stupid girlfriend bugs him to do it.
“Oh, come on you ran into some guy. You get his digits? You were gone forever.”
“That’s what happens when a guy loses his towel in the middle of the hallway and uses my body as a fig leaf.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, dickwad, now get off me before I pee my pants on your couch.” I shoved on his back making his bony little butt dig into my gut.
“You know some would see that as an idle threat.”
“But you know better.” I started slapping him until he began to move.
Content with his torture of me, Mark got up and crossed to his beanbag. “So was he naked?” he asked drawing out the word naked and accenting it like an SNL character.
“And happy to see me.”
“No!”
“Yes, jerk off.”
“You gonna hit it?”
“Shut up.”
Mark was the only guy who actually had a vague idea of who I was sleeping with. A few guys tried to say I had been with them, but they’d never say it to my face. Mark always wondered why the guys I slept with never admitted it. He liked to say I was so bad they blocked it out. I say I stunned them into silence. Plus they knew they’d never get a second shot if they ran their mouths.
“Is he what women find attractive?” he queried as he flexed his pathetic muscles.
“Tall, dark and handsome? No, we go for chicken legs like yourself. Don’t you know I only keep you around to feed my deepest, darkest fantasies?”
“I know where the bodies are buried, but a hand job would make it so I kept quiet.”
“Too late. Missed your chance.”
“Come on, you know it turns you on.”
“If I wanted something small and hard, I’d suck on a Jolly Rancher.”
“See now you’ve upped it.”
I don’t know why he even joked about sexual favors. We had crossed that bridge long ago and not only decided against it when we realized it skived both of us out. But for some reason we still liked to tease each other. If nothing else, it kept everyone else guessing. Mark might as well be my brother. Come to think of it messing with one of my brothers wouldn’t be as disgusting to me since all but one were practically strangers to me anyway.
Bringing my hands to my face in an attempt to bury the thoughts brought Tuck back to me. The smell of Hugo Boss mixed what could have only been the most amazing sweat smell created from a human had left its trace on my hands.
That made me remember my digits had been clinging to his hips and back. I couldn’t help remembering the feel of the soft skin that surprised me. The pads of my fingers recognized a two-inch scar at the top of his pelvic bone. Maybe a keloid scar. It was smoother than his skin more like silk to satin. All of it made me warm and I had an itch I needed to scratch.
“What do you know about him?”
“Him who?” Mark asked while flipping through channels hoping to find something of interest.
I glared at Mark; he knew me better than that. He smiled at me and leaned back.
“You are interested. He must have had a very strong showing.”
“Yes. Yes. Now dish. You know the boys dorm is more of a gossip mill than the women’s any day.”
“Men’s dorm,” he corrected. “And yes, it is. I can report that he has a steady stream of visitors and phone calls in any given night. He’s a transfer student from some Ju-Co and he’s supposed to be the best end on the team. But I don’t know if that’s his position or a body part description. Now, my bestie...” he said sliding his hand up my leg.
“How many years will I have to say no before you stop?” I asked leaning in toward him as he sat on his knees looking at me like a lion to a gazelle.
“I shouldn’t have screamed like a girl in seventh grade.”
“Told you, you had your chance. It’s too bad you were so stupid you had to find out from Todd that you missed the time of your life.”
“Why did you jackoff Todd?” Mark asked, doing a backwards tuck and roll, landing in front of his bed.
“He started it.”
“If your daddy knew about you...”
“I get A’s and I’m not picking up the latest antibiotic, so he’s happy.”
“Are you?”
“Always. I’m living life without regrets. Speaking of which, I have a friend to see and a paper to write.”
“Who is it tonight?”
“I’ll never tell, and neither will he.” I kissed Mark on the forehead and headed for the stairs to see if my friend on the second floor was around.