Page 20 of Cold as Ice

Then let’s get a smoothie at Sammy’s.

Ramsey sent a thumbs-up.

Ten minutes later, he was sucking down his favorite peanut butter banana smoothie—and wishing it had a nice shot of peanut butter whiskey added to it—when Ramsey slid into the booth opposite him.

“It go that badly?” Ramsey asked mildly. “I swung by the library. It was still standing, so it couldn’t have beenthatterrible.”

“Have we ever taken a swing at each other?” Elliott demanded.

No, they hadn’t. Because if he touched Mal, it wasn’t going to be with aggressive intent.

Ramsey considered this. “Maybe you should,” he suggested.

“Are you crazy? I’m freaking trying to pass this goddamn class so I canstayon the team. If I took a swing at Mal, I’d be off it in point five seconds.”

“Or, option number two, you could just tell him you want to fuck him, badly,” Ramsey said bluntly.

“Or he could fuckme. I’m not picky. But you weretherethe first time I tried that. You saw how it went.”

“Yeah, you pulling out the cheesy lines and trying to flirt with him. WithMal. AKA a block of ice. You don’tflirtwith a wall. You break it down. Youmelt himdown.”

They’d talked about Elliott’s frenemy status with Malcolm more than once since Elliott had come to Portland U. Okay—abunchof times. But Ramsey had never been this blunt before.

“I think I was plenty clear—”

Ramsey sighed, running a hand through his short blond hair. “I didn’t say you weren’t.”

“Oh.”

“I mean actuallyseducethe guy. You’re cute. You know you’ve got moves. But every one of them that works on all these other poor suckers I see you move in on at the Gamma Sigma house every Saturday night—they’re not going to work on Malcolm. You should know that by now.”

“Aren’t you worried that we’re going to finally fuck and it’s going to ruin the team?”

Ramsey shot him a frank look. “I’m worried that if you don’t fuck, you’ll kill each other instead and then nobody’s going to be scoring any fucking goals.”

Elliott stared at his smoothie. He understood what Ramsey was saying. Sometimes it felt like there was a rubber band stretched tight between them, and it kept straining harder, until one day it was just going to snap.

Would there be collateral damage if that happened? Elliott didn’t want there to be, but he was beginning to think it might be inevitable.

Still, it didn’t feel great to have Ramsey—practically his hero—lecturing him on how to pick up a guy. He knew how to pick up a guy.

“Well, don’t hold back or anything,” Elliott complained. “I’m nottrying—”

“Lie to yourself if you want but don’t lie to me. You still want him. You wanted him the moment you showed up at that first party. Your eyes lit up when you saw him there. Isawit. And I saw the fucking aftermath. I’d tell you that he doesn’t wantyou, because past experience is generally an indicator of future success.” Ramsey paused, and Elliott knew there was abutthere.

Waited for it.

And not just because he wanted to finally get Malcolm McCoy naked, in his bed, scratching the itch that had been tormenting him for ages now.

“But . . .” Ramsey sighed profoundly, like he already knew he was going to fucking regret saying the rest. “But,I’ve been playing with the guy for four years and I’ve never seen him get pissed off. Not once. Not until you.”

“So, you think I should seduce him.” Elliott grinned around his straw.

“I’m sorry, haven’t you been trying to do that this whole time? I mean, don’t just spout some nonsense and lean in and then yank his string when he doesn’t immediately fall to his knees in front of you.”

Elliott winced. “Ouch.”

Ramsey reached across the table. Patted him on the shoulder. “You have potential, Jones, but you’renotme. Not yet.”

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