Quarterback: Bad Boy Sport Star Romance. Read Online Free

without protest, listening as she moved through the apartment gathering her clothes, but not getting up to help or hinder.
    The next day, I tried all the places I’d seen her when we had class together before, but there was no sign of her. It was like she’d just disappeared, leaving him with no idea how to find her. She was an apparition: here one moment, gone the next, and I couldn’t believe I’d let myself think she would be different than my other hook-ups.
    The next day at lunch, Jude asked, “Hey, whatever happened to that redhead from the party last night? I figured she’d be stumbling out of your room sometime this morning.”
    “Nah,” I said, my brows furrowed, a stormy expression darkening my face. “She didn’t stick around.”
    “Just how you like it, huh, Action?” Jude said, smacking my back.
    “Yeah,” I said, looking off into the distance. “Just how I like it.”

Chapter 4.
    I tug at the hem of my blazer to pull any creases out. It wouldn’t do to make my big debut looking rumpled. When you make a living telling other people what makes good art, they tend to judge your appearance rather harshly.
    Funny how it never seems to work that way for the artists. They can show up to their own shows in grungy, paint-stained overalls, but if I have a flick of acrylic on my skirt, the show gets panned by the critics.
    And tonight, I’m determined not to give them anything to be critical of.
    The collection, National Pastime , is like nothing I’ve ever done before. It’s a collection of photographs of NFL players, naked from the waist up, playing baseball in their football gear. It’s meant to be a commentary on the way our nation clings to outdated ideas of its own identity. I like that about it, and the photographer, Jens Thornton, certainly has a love affair with light and shadow playing off each other.
    I pause in front of my favorite: a black and white of a quarterback leaning into a swing, dust kicked up by his cleats, so finely timed that you can practically see the vibration of the bat as it connects with the ball. His torso is twisted, and tiny droplets of sweat slide down the creases formed by the contortion of his muscular form. The light catches the drops flung from his long, thick, blond hair. The curve of a dragon’s tail around his throat is almost hidden in shadow.
    It’s easy for me to get lost in this picture, to stop and catalog the way this body has changed since I last saw it naked.
    “Kasey?” The voice of my assistant, Genevieve, pulls me from my reverie. “Are you ready to open?” She pauses when she sees what I’m looking at, and I can feel a faint color rising in my cheeks. “Man,” she says with a sigh, “I could eat ice cream off that plate.”
    “I think you’re missing the point of the exhibit, Gen.”
    “You’re telling me you wouldn’t say yes to a night with Action Malcolm Jackson?”
    “I’m telling you it’s not what the photographer was thinking of,” I quip, dodging the question. “Check in with the caterer and make sure the waiters are ready with the hors d’oeuvres, and then we can open.”
    “Sure thing, boss,” she teases, pivoting on her chunky heels and bouncing away to the back. I’m fairly certain I hear, “And that’s exactly what he was thinking,” from under her breath as she goes.
    I allow myself another minute to just revel at the beauty of the form in front of me. He had only gotten more attractive with the years that had passed since I had, well, taken advantage of him. It’s strange to say, and maybe a little arrogant, but I always felt his eyes on me in that art history class. At first I thought maybe there was something on my coat, or that my hair had been blown into absurdity by the wind, but once when I looked up from my notes, he had just looked down and he was smiling. He had such a warmth about him that I couldn’t help enjoying his gaze. From then on, I always sat in front of him, so I could feel his eyes all