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“Mmm, spread those legs wider and get that sweet butt up higher, babe.”
Despite our teasing, heat floods my belly. But I give him a dirty look over my shoulder. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
He winks. “You know it. Snap count on three.”
“What does that mean?”
“Third sound I make, you hand me the ball.” He gives my butt a light slap. “Keep up, Jones.”
And then his voice rolls over me like thunder. “Hut, hut, hut!”
Jesus. My nipples tighten, and a thrill courses through me as I obey and toss. He manages to catch the bobbling ball. I turn to watch him, and it’s gorgeous. He’s gorgeous. Up close, his body is poetry. His muscles ripple along his torso and up his arm as he throws, his expression fierce and focused. I want to tackle him, throw myself on his body and devour him bite by delicious bite.
I’m so caught up in gaping at him that I nearly forget to watch the ball, but I keep it together and look.
“Damn,” I say. The ball is a rocket, hurtling through the air in a high arc. It keeps going. Until finally it comes down from space to land with a hard bounce in the end zone.
Drew’s lips curl up at the corners. “Good throw.” He says this to himself, not exactly as praise, but satisfied, and I wonder if he always appraises his work.
My curiosity is drowned out by a long, appreciative male whistle.
The tall blond guy I often see hanging with Drew jogs down the stairs. “Beautiful, fucking bomb, man. But you missed me by a mile.”
Drew laughs. “And we know how hard it is to miss that big head of yours.”
“You best be thinking about connecting with my hands and not my head, dude.”
The blond holds a hand up against the sun’s glare to study the field. “What was that, anyway? Sixty-five yards?”
He whistles in appreciation again and then lopes across the grass, moving as though walking is never an option when he can run.
“Seventy-one,” Drew answers. “But who’s counting?”
Drew’s shoulder brushes mine as the guy stops before us. He is massive, an inch or two taller than Drew and easily twenty pounds of muscle heavier. The guy eyes me with caution, but he puts on a polite smile. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I’m pretty sure Drew’s talked about me, us, and his friend doesn’t approve.
“Anna,” Drew says, “this is Gray Grayson. He plays tight end.”
“Ass jokes are welcome and encouraged,” Gray adds with a wag of his brows. Like Drew, he’s extremely good-looking, but in a California surfer way, with his mop of sun-streaked blond hair flopping over his tanned forehead.
“Gray Grayson?” I shouldn’t repeat his name that way, but I can’t help myself. What were his parents thinking?
Gray winces. But beneath dark blond brows, his blue eyes show no hint of annoyance. “I know, right?” he says to my unanswered question, which he must get a lot. “My mom had a total crush on Gray Grantham, a character from this John Grisham book, The Pelican Brief.”
“She named you after a character in a book?” I blurt out. Atticus Finch is one thing. Hell, I’m pretty sure the South is peppered with Atticuses and Rhetts for that very reason. But this is a new one to me.
“She was reading it during the end of her pregnancy. Anyway—” Gray shrugs “—she thought Gray Grayson would be ‘just so cute.’”
He makes a face, but there’s no real anger behind it, only fondness, and a slight wince as if it pains him to think of his mother. “So that’s what I got stuck with.”
“Sometimes we call him ‘Gray-Gray,’” Drew puts in helpfully and earns a punch on the arm from Gray.
“And sometimes I call him—” Gray nods toward Drew “—‘QB with my foot up his ass.’”
Gray eyes the ball waiting in the end zone then looks at Drew. “You ready, man?”
Because Drew is standing so close, I feel the tension in his arm.
