Page 3 of Daring You

He knew what touching me would do. Nobody’s allowed to lay a finger on me. Not my adoptive parents, not my friends, not even women. Not unless I give her the go-ahead, and that’s usually made very clear, in the form of guiding head to dick.

Tackling, however, is an entirely different matter, and I’m jonesing to lay this guy out right here and now.

My nostrils flare, my upper lip twitches, and if I don’t get in my car, I’ll break bones.

Dodge continues to chuckle. “Am I pushing your buttons, brother?”

“You are not my brother.”

“True,” Dodge muses, “But you’re about to fuck a sister.”

I rear, and this time the rules are out the window. I slam my palms against the car windows, making them rattle.

“Give me your answer, and I’ll move,” Dodge says, unaffected by my fury, or maybe too far gone on drugs to care. “You gonna fuck Acne Hayes or what? ‘Cause that’s what it’ll take, you know, to settle your debt with me.”

I breathe deep, wondering how many punches it would take to break his face. Probably one.

“Fuck Locke’s twin sister, and we’re even.”

I whirl and punch him target center.

“Och!” Dodge stumbles back, clutching his nose. Blood streams out between his fingers.

That’s the thing about clocks to the nose. They bleed like I fuckin’ just tore open a full-bellied leech.

“Consider that my answer,” I say.

“You—you—this makes it worse, you moron!” Dodge attempts to scream through his fingers, but with his quickly clotting airways and swelling nose, he sounds exactly like he should on a regular day. His true voice coming to light.

I stalk close and grin when he flinches and retreats. “Then make it worse, I don’t care anymore.”

“Really? Really, Hue? You don’t care?” He cackles, but it’s wet and broken sounding, enough to grate against my ears and make me grind my teeth. “You know what I can do with this sort of information?”

I falter, but not because I’m going to cave and do as he asks. He’s a sick fuck, to want to settle a debt through me screwing my best friend’s sister and showing him some proof afterward. Probably wants a photo of Astor in bed, half-naked, something he can jerk off to later.

I falter because of what saying no to him will do. I breathe out the nausea as I think about Astor Hayes, and what she’s been doing to me since the day I met her. First day at college, I’m paired with my roommate, Locke Hayes, a fellow pursuer of the NFL, so we got along fine. Great, even. I don’t pride myself on becoming close with anyone, mostly because I don’t need camaraderie to function, but Locke was easy with me. If I talked, great, if I didn’t, that was okay, too. We grew close mostly through silence and allowing each other room to breathe in a tiny, 15x15 cell meant to be our living space for the next eight months. We practiced together, eventually studied together, until we ended up hanging out during our down time. We found stuff in common with our neighbors, Asher and Easton, and before we knew it, we were together, getting drunk and taking bets on each other’s idiocy. It was a helluva way to pass the time when we weren’t on the field, and became addictive shortly thereafter.

That’s when Astor Hayes walked in.

Locke needed help with physics, said his sister was a pro at all things scholastic, and asked her around for a study session. She came into the library one night, all windblown and agitated because Locke begged for her help last minute when she was supposed to be at mock trial tryouts. And she smelled like roses.

Actual, literal roses, and her scent reached my nostrils about the same time her gigantic eyes did.

They were overly large, like two circles on her face, and an incredible, piercing blue. Coupled with her pouty pink lips and flushed cheeks, she was basically a blow-up doll.

One I instantly wanted around my dick.

I blinked back the image about the same time Locke introduced us, covering my growing bulge with a quick adjustment under the study table, and shook her hand.

Long, lithe fingers. A skinny beanpole, really, with tangled, shoulder-length brown hair and one dimple on her left cheek. Did she have some rough skin to earn the nickname Acne Hayes? Sure, I guess. I didn’t focus on the bumps on her cheeks or the dots on her nose. There were too many other things about her calling for my attention. She looked nothing like her brother, and that was a good thing—for me, at least, since I was already picturing her naked.

Then she spoke.

“Astor,” she said while still shaking my hand. She had a firm grip, one I was impressed with, since most girls I met fluttered around shyly and turned into a limp fish in my grip. But she met me dead-on, and when she said her name it was like she wrapped it around smoke and velvet, making me the limp fish in our handshake.

“Ben,” I replied, real cool.

“You need help with physics, too?”

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