Page 1 of Playing By Their Rules

1

BRATS ARE PERFECT

Maisie

Garlic, cheese, onions, spicy sausage, fragrant mushrooms. The combination is nice in theory, but when the scents soak into my clothes after a dinner shift at Pepperoni Palace, it’s less than ideal. I’ll be changing my clothes before I leave this place because I know my roommate will have things to say about it if I don’t.

“You smell too good,” she always says. “Now I want garlic bread. You have to get me a job there.”

I don’t want to get her a job here. As soon as we graduated high school, she followed me from our foster home in Clear Springs so we could save on rent together, and then she followed me to San Esteban University, and now she’s majoring in linguistics, same as me. I love Mina, I really do, but sometimes there’s such a thing as too much time together. So I always tell her that I haven’t been working here long enough to have the clout to get her in. The tactic has worked for two months now, but pretty soon the excuse will wear thin.

“Ohmygosh ohmygosh,” Caitlyn, one of my coworkers, mutters as she walks past me. “They’re here. They’re here.”

“Who’s here?” I ask.

“Shhh.” She changes her mind about going to the soda fountain and grabs me by the elbow to take me toward the coffee makers at the other end of the server station. “Don’t let them know we’re talking about them.”

Matching her hushed, reverent tone, I whisper, “Who?”

“The professors.”

She says this, the professors, as if the title holds some meaning for me. I mean, San Esteban is a college town. We have two universities: San Esteban School of the Arts and San Esteban University. We get a healthy mix of students and, not-so-shockingly, professors.

I simply raise my eyebrows at her, waiting for her to explain.

“You really haven’t been here that long, have you?” Caitlyn says.

“Two months isn’t a short time,” I say indignantly.

Shaking her head and pursing her lips, she drags me behind the coffee machines and physically swivels my face toward the crowded dining room.

Frowning, I say, “How am I supposed to find a special set of ‘professors’ in this mix—oh.”

Because there they are. They stand out from the crowd, but I can’t exactly pinpoint why. They don’t tower over everyone else, because they’re sitting down. They don’t have special clothes that are perfectly tailored to their every muscle or whatever thing my favorite romance novels are always waxing poetic about. I don’t think they’re wearing designer shoes…although I wouldn’t recognize a designer shoe if it hit me in the face.

No, there’s something else about them. It’s subtle, but it’s there. Charisma, auras, whatever—they exude power, domination, sex. Even while taking sips of the water that our stammering busser just dropped off at their table. They look like they’re in charge of everything, even in their sleep.

“Right?” Caitlyn says. “There was this server a couple of years ago. She said she went home with them—both of them—one night.”

“Both?” I squeak.

I still haven’t looked away from the professors, but I can see Caitlyn nodding from the corner of my eye.

“Both,” she repeats. “And—get this—they spanked her. It wasn’t her thing in the end, she said, but the night was unforgettable and she left feeling very satisfied.”

My thighs clench involuntarily at the thought of getting a spanking. I’m not super experienced, unless a clumsy fingering session with Phillip Stiles in eleventh grade counts for anything. I spent high school afraid of having sex and getting pregnant, because I didn’t want to be in the same situation my mom was in when she was forced to give me up to the foster system.

But for these guys? I’d go all the way.

And yeah, with both of them. Looking at the two of them now, the thought of being with two guys doesn’t even sound scandalous like it probably should. It just sounds hot. It sounds right.

It sounds like something I very much want to do.

The guy on the left has light brown hair with some gray in it. There’s a rugged appearance to his face with his strong jaw and chiseled cheekbones. His blue eyes are currently scowling at something his friend says. He looks like a grump, but a sexy grump. He could be the Darcy to my Lizzie Bennet any day. The other has a darker complexion and dark brown hair, also shot through with gray. He’d be the Heathcliff to my Catherine. But his mood seems lighter, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s trying to cheer up his grumpy friend.

Whatever they’re doing, they’re hot as heck.

I didn’t know I was into silver foxes, but here we are.

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