5
MASON
I was running late to the party. Well, not exactly. Running late implied that I had intended to be on time. Which I hadn’t. I couldn’t say what it was about this party, but something made me not want to go. Which was crazy. It was exactly what I’d been saying we all needed for a while now. But I knew how Ryder operated, I knew that this bash of his was going to be some huge overblown orgy and I wasn’t really in the mood for it. Even my bear was grumbling at the thought of an overly crowded party.
True, I was typically the one encouraging Ryder and Kingston to lighten up and live a little, but when it came down to it, I preferred ‘living a little’ with only a few close friends. Not half the town.
Not to mention we were almost done college and on our way to the NFL. We weren’t unknown nobodies. We were regulars on ESPN on Saturdays for college football. Featured in Sports Illustrated every now and then as up and comers. We couldn’t just have crazy parties and expect there not to be some sort of recognition.
And call me crazy, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of having my face showing up in the news with this type of association. So I was taking my time showing up. I didn’t figure anyone would exactly miss me anyway. Despite my fun-loving attitude and persona, I really only ever wanted people to get together. I didn’t care a whole lot about participating once I knew everyone else was socializing to their heart’s content.
But by the time I got to Ryder’s house, the place was hopping. Music poured into the street, which was littered with cars for a few blocks. And it looked like Ryder had outdone himself with the guest list. I didn’t even know he knew so many people. I could see them all crowding in the house through the windows and I wiped my hands on my pants.
Performing in front of fifty thousand people in a stadium? No problem. Making small talk with a bunch of strangers at a party? Sweaty palms and a pacing bear. Of course.
That’s why I’d always been grateful for the three musketeers. We all had strengths to cover the others’ weaknesses. Ryder was particularly good at getting all eyes on him so I could just hang in the perimeter and enjoy everything from a distance. I liked it that way. Even if it meant he normally got all the girls I was going after.
Not that it left me with any lack of interested participants. I was still a well-known athlete after all.
I couldn’t delay the inevitable forever, though, and I knew I’d need to at least make an appearance if I didn’t want never-ending shit from my friends and teammates, so I sucked it up, found a parking spot down the street, and headed in.
The music got louder and louder the closer I got to the house and I was thankful that Ryder didn’t have any neighbors directly beside him. Up here in the hills of Hamilton, NY, outside of Colgate’s college town, the houses were spaced plenty far apart for privacy and solitude. Not that I trusted the guard house to keep out photographers the way Ryder did. He had too much faith in people sometimes. The last thing we needed was for word to get out to the public, or even more importantly, to Coach.
People were spilling out of the front door as I approached, mingling on the front lawn where Ryder had a shaded seating area lit by solar lights along the walkway. Somewhere in the shadows, I heard a girl panting, the sounds of kissing and moaning, but I didn’t look too hard for the lovers, just grinding my teeth as I stepped inside.
Like I said, I wasn’t at a loss for interested girls, and my bear definitely got riled up by beautiful women, but the problem was finding one that interested me. Because I wasn’t like Ryder and Kingston. I couldn’t just fuck a girl and forget her, no matter how many times I tried it just to get them to stop busting my balls. The truth was, I wanted to care about a girl, at least find her somewhat interesting as a person, before I tried to get in her pants. It didn’t need to be love or anything, but I wanted to at least know her name. Make her laugh. Like her enough that — even if briefly — I considered seeing her again. And maybe some day I’d finally be ready to find my mate.
I didn’t think Ryder had ever been with a girl that even played hard to get, and King… Well, I didn’t really know what kind of girls he was into. He was kind of an enigma like that. But at least we’d never fought over the same girl like Ryder and I had. More than once I found a girl I really liked and then she met Ryder, the quarterback, and threw herself at him before I even got a shot. I thought he did it on purpose the first couple of times, but then I realized that’s just the kind of guy Ryder is. That’s how girls reacted to him. He couldn’t help it.
Didn’t make me less irritable about it though. Though those instances were long in the past.
“Yo! Took you long enough,” Kingston said as I walked in, spotting me almost right away. We clapped our hands together and went in for a one-armed hug.
“Hey, how’s it goin’?”
King shrugged, looking around. “You know how it is. It’s weird, I know we haven’t done this in forever, but it feels like old times, doesn’t it?”
I grinned uneasily while my bear growled. He had no way to know that I was just thinking about how not great those ‘old times’ were.
I mean, yeah, they were great in the sense that I had my two best friends and we tore up our college campus. And not only that, but we’d gone to multiple bowl games in our college career, putting our school and its athletics program on the map. And now, we were so close we could almost taste the jobs we had been dreaming of since we were kids.
So it wasn’t fair to say that the old days weren’t great. It was just that I’d gone through three years of college without a single meaningful relationship, and every time I looked at what had gone wrong, it was my best friends standing there greeting me.
I knew what Kingston would say. Who needs a girl when you’ve got musketeers, right? And I knew how I’d respond, chuckling awkwardly and nodding just to drop the subject. How could I tell either one of them that I wanted someone in my life for real? That I wanted a girl by my side, in my bed, carrying my child, wearing my ring? That I longed to actually find a mate some day?
I sighed, shaking my head free of all those idiotic thoughts. They weren’t going to go anywhere with me living the way I was, so what was the point in dwelling on it?
“Yeah. Like being at a Delta Delta Mu party all over again,” I laughed. We used to crash Greek parties all the time, but we tried to stay away from them for the most part now. We had our fun, but with Coach’s strict rules we didn’t want to ruin any chances of him helping us make it pro.
“Where’s Ryder?” I asked with a frown, trying to scan through the crowds but not spotting him..
“Who the fuck knows, man? Get a drink and have some fun. Try not to stay in the shadows the whole time, yeah?”
My bear roared and I didn’t respond. I knew he was just trying to look out for me. He wasn’t trying to taunt my social anxieties. I wiped my palms on my jeans again, feeling stupid for being so awkward in my best friend’s house.
At least the place itself wasn’t strange. Ryder had invited me and Kingston over a bunch of times when he first moved in. We’d had all kinds of barbeques and movie screenings in his basement while we put away cases of beer.
But during preseason we started losing focus and that showed in our performance. And Coach wasn’t happy. He’d put the fear of god into Ryder and ever since then, something had changed in my friend. We hadn’t really hung out or had much fun in the last year and a half and I wanted to blame Coach, or football, but I didn’t really know what the deal was.
“Yeah,” I answered, trying to see how far away the drinks were through the crowd. Maybe if I could just shoulder my way through, I could make it outside and raid the mini-fridge on the patioif it was stocked.
“Oh, hey,” Kingston said, grabbing my arm.
“Yeah?”
“My sister’s here too, so don’t go getting any ideas.”
I chuckled to myself, shaking my head and rolling my eyes.
“There’s a hundred girls here,” I said.
“Yeah, but I know you,” he answered with a growl. I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. Ryder was the one he should be looking out for. Though, knowing King, he’d probably already given the same warning to Ryder.
I held up my hands in surrender. “I’m just here to have a good time with my team, man.” Never mind that I already wanted to find some reason to get the hell out of this crazy press of people.
“I mean it,” he grumbled, and I brushed him off, pushing through the crowd, saying hello Hudson and Jace and some of the other guys from the team that I rarely spoke to outside of practice.
I got close enough to the kitchen to be able to reach through the crowd and wrap my fingers around the neck of a bottle of vodka. At least if I was going to be here, I could be hammered. Moving away from the crowd, I screwed the lid off the bottle and downed three big chugs, the burn not even really hitting me until the second, and even though I wanted to cough and sputter and spit it all back up, I kept swallowing until I felt it melting into my veins, a pleasant fuzziness settling through my nerves.
“Save some for the rest of us,” someone grumbled and the bottle left my hand, disappearing through the crowd, my hand clenching at nothing but empty air while my insides burned like I’d just downed lava.
My bear grumbled, and my head grew a little fuzzier but the pressing need for more alcohol only grew stronger. Having the bottle ripped right out of my hands like that just made me want the stuff more, even though I probably would’ve been setting it down anyway if it hadn’t been taken.
But reasoning with myself has never been my strong suit, so I braced myself again and made another attempt at breaking through the crush into the kitchen.
Everyone else seemed to have the same idea, because even though the kitchen was a huge open-plan space, it was crammed full of people, all jostling to get to the alcohol. This really was just like being back in a frat house again, but instead of the bargain shit, we were drinking top shelf these days.
“Coming through, coming through,” one of the big guys from defense was saying, pushing through to the bar where the liquor was kept. I didn’t know his name — truth was, I hardly knew anyone’s name on the team other than the people I regularly ran routes with — but I recognized him and gave him the head nod.
He nodded back, filling his cup to the brim.
“Take it easy out there, man,” he said, turning back into the fray. But just as he turned, someone did the same and they crashed into each other, the newly full cup slipping right from his hand, sloshing on an unsuspecting girl nearby who wasn’t involved at all.
She shrieked, her blonde hair and thin top doused with alcohol that I could smell from feet away.
“Oh. My. God,” she said, dripping all over while my teammates continued on without noticing much of anything. I mean, he noticed that he spilled his drink, and was already getting a refill, but no one was paying any attention to the poor girl dripping booze everywhere just staring around in open-mouthed shock.
I shoved my way over to her and grabbed her forearm gently. “Come on, I know where you can get cleaned up.”
Her eyes narrowed at me and I realized it sounded like a line.
“No tricks, I swear,” I said, holding up my hands. “I just know my way around the place.”
She looked down and sighed, plucking at the fabric that clung to her skin.
“Okay,” she finally said, letting me take her hand instead of her arm.
I led her through the crowd and up the stairs, straight to Ryder’s massive master suite. When I closed the door, the sounds of the party all but disappeared, just a low thump of bass coming up from the floor.
“I can’t believe this,” she muttered, and I led her through to the attached bath, not holding her hand anymore. “I thought there were going to be adults here, but it’s just another frat party.”
I chuckled, swaying a little on my feet as I found her a towel and wet it.
“Yeah, it’s a little rowdy down there, sorry.”
I tried to help her mop the booze off, but it was really no use. She was thoroughly drenched, all the way through her thin t-shirt and bra, dusky nipples poking through like headlights. I forced myself to look away, but my bear roared for more.
And then my eyes settled on her face and she was gorgeous. Dainty, pointed features, big blue eyes framed by thick lashes, and a petite curvy body that damn near made my mouth water. She was small enough that I could probably haul her over my shoulder without a problem, but — I couldn’t help my eyes from drifting back down — her breasts were definitely enough to be a comfortable handful.
I licked my lips, watching a trickle of liquid slide down the side of her neck. I almost offered to clean it up for her. With my tongue.
She sighed, leaning against the counter, obviously a little tipsy herself. The vodka was still pumping through my system, making the whole world a little blurry and wobbly, but it couldn’t distract me from her or mute the now loud roar of my bear.
“I should go find my ride so I can get home, but he’s probably plastered.”
My jaw clenched tight at the thought of her being there with another guy. I’d only been standing there with her for a couple of minutes, but I’d already found myself thinking about those plump lips, running my tongue along them to taste her sweetness, hearing her moan.
It had to be the vodka. I didn’t normally get this into a girl this fast.
“Boyfriend?” I asked, holding my breath.
She snorted, shaking her head. “Yeah right.”
“I’d offer to take you, but I’m not exactly sober myself.”
She sighed and plucked at her shirt again. “I hate being wet.”
I held my tongue. She was clearly having a hell of a time and I didn’t need to make it worse.
“Hold on,” I said, dipping out of the master bathroom to the bedroom. I didn’t figure Ryder would mind me rummaging through his drawers to help out a damsel in distress.
I found one of his t-shirts and knocked on the bathroom door. She opened it just a crack and I grinned. “I found you a new shirt.”
She eyed it carefully. “Where’d you—?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, pushing it through the crack.
“Thanks.” She closed the door again and then a split-second later, I heard the water come on in the shower.
I froze. Was she really going to—?
I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do in this situation. I could try to join her, or just try to sneak a peek. Or I could leave entirely without saying anything.
In the end, I didn’t do any of that. I took the excuse to not rejoin the party and I kicked off my shoes, slumping into one of the big overstuffed armchairs he probably didn’t pick out himself.
I flipped the TV on, my head buzzing, my limbs heavy and full of cotton, and I listened to the water falling in the next room and the constant groaning of my bear, imagining the girl in there naked and wet, soap bubbles sliding down her curves.
I reached down into my jeans and readjusted myself just in time to hear the shower turn off.
She came out a few minutes later in nothing but the t-shirt, her hair wrapped in a towel. Ryder’s shirt looked like a dress on her though, going all the way to her knees, but the implication was there, and it was enough to have me at full-mast.
“Oh good, you’re still here,” she said grinning. I lifted my brows. That wasn’t exactly the reaction I expected from her.
I shrugged. “Yeah, I’m not really big on the kind of party that’s going on down there and I thought I should probably sober up some…”
“Good idea,” she said nodding. She sat down on the edge of the bed, still towel-drying her hair, looking over her shoulder at me every so often even though I pretended I didn’t notice.
“Did you need something else?” I asked, feeling like I should offer her a drink or something even though she just said it was a good idea to sober up.
“What were you going to put on?” she asked, folding her legs up under herself, pulling the t-shirt down over her knees to hide all her curves. But I didn’t care. I knew they were there and I’d gotten enough of a glimpse to know I wanted more.
I shrugged. “Any requests? Pretty sure we’ve got anything we could ever want at our fingertips here.”
She bit her bottom lip and the little action made my cock surge. I was glad I was sitting in the chair, hoping the rolled arms were hiding my embarrassing predicament.
“What’s your favorite movie?” I asked.
She laughed and shook her head. “No.”
Her laugh was bright and bubbly and contagious and I couldn’t help but smile with her.
“Okay, we’ll you’re going to have to give me something to go on.”
“Do you like sci-fi?”
I gave her a look that clearly said ‘of fucking course I like sci-fi’ and she laughed again.
“Okay, how about Fifth Element? That’s always a crowd pleaser and I don’t have to feel bad if I stop paying attention.”
“Seen it a couple of times?” I asked.
“More like, know it by heart,” she answered.
“Your wish is my command,” I said, searching, purchasing, and playing the movie, getting settled in for a couple hours of having an uncomfortable erection.