Page 66 of Wild Catch
I take a step back like that’s enough to blend me in with my surroundings, except that I do have a phone camera pointed at his face. That doesn’t make me inconspicuous at all.
“What?” I ask when he doesn’t stop.
My back bumps into a wall and suddenly I’m trapped. Logan braces himself against the wall with one arm, which brings him way too close. Closer than we’ve ever been.
My breath hitches. This would be so much easier if he smelled bad. Clearly he worked out since we last talked. That should be enough to make him reek of sweat and body odor, and yeah, I definitely detect the sweat. But there’s also something that is fogging up my brain and weakening my knees. Suddenly I’m real glad that I have a whole wall behind me to prop me up.
I stiffen as he touches me—wait. Not him. The socks. There’s enough space between us that I can look down. The balled up socks are pressed against my belly, right against my exposed skin.
Slowly, he leans down to my ear. “If you like them so much,youwear them.” His voice is raspy and soft, nonetheless deep.
Annoying. Now I have goosebumps all over.
Thewear themchants morph into wolf whistling and hooting. Logan pulls away to look down into my eyes. My flaming face goes from could-boil-an-egg to fire-itself when I realize what he’s doing next.
Carefully, without touching my skin with his, he slides one end of the balled up socks into the waistband of my leggings.
Air rushes out of my lungs.
Before I can even formulate what to say, he pulls all the way off and turns his back on me. “Okay, that’s enough, assholes. We have a game to play,” he barks, clapping his hands.
Squeezing my phone against my chest, I keep my head down and make a whole dash out of the clubhouse before anyone starts divesting himself of clothes. I take one last peek at the door, and find Logan’s eyes on me until the last second.
They were blazing. I don’t know if from anger or, or…
Nah. Definitely anger.
Obviously I’m not the mastermind of the prank, we all know that’s a Lucky Rivera special. But I overheard him and Cade talking about it when I was returning from Audrey’s office, and they were sneaking out of the canteen. One thing led to another, and I agreed to record the whole thing for social media.
I touch my face with the back of my hands. Yep, fire itself.
“Hey, Rose.” I screech to a stop in front of Hope. She’s drying her hands with paper towels, clearly returning from the restroom. “What brings you around here?”
“Ah.” I clear my throat. “Your boyfriend and his bestie let me know they were pulling the socks prank on Logan, so I came to record it.”
“Aw dang it, I missed it.” Her frown clears away as quick as it forms, replaced by a smile. “So, you and Logan, huh?”
I give a strained laugh. “Wild, right?”
“Not really.” She wiggles her eyebrows. “We all saw the sparks that time at Cade’s place.”
“Sparks,” I repeat amid more of those awkward chuckles.
“I’m really happy for you. Logan’s genuinely a good guy, despite that bad boy persona of his.”
“He really is,” this I say with a lot more confidence, because it’s true. He’s far from perfect and annoys me too easily, but he’s a gentleman.
And he smells really damn good.
“Well I, uh… gotta go. To edit this. See you after the game.”
“Yep.” Hope waves at me and jumps back into the alligator’s den.
I breathe funny while I basically run for my life. It’s not like the guy is chasing me down, but I still feel the need to put as much space between us as I can.
*
I’m freaking exhausted. It must’ve shown bad enough for Dave to send me home early while the game was still going. He’ll cover the rest and even told me to go to the doctor tomorrow if I still look like gum someone stepped on. Geez.
